Friday 10 April 2020

My World: David Rothenberg

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 157, May 2020.



Nightingales, cicadas, whales, lyrebirds: the list of David Rothenberg’s collaboratiors makes it obvious that he thinks and feels music in a different way to most. Across his books, albums and films, Rothenberg has examined the sounds of the natural world and their inherent musicality. Although he tackles these projects with an academic eye (he is the Distinguished Professor of Music and Philosophy at the New Jersey Institute of Technology), he does not do so as a stoic, distanced researcher, but as an active and passionate participant. With his clarinet, he creates fascinating inter-species jams that span the realms of jazz, ambient music and electronica, all the while tapping into worlds that are ultimately beyond our understanding.

To understand the sonic beauty of nature, Rothenberg has his own deep relationship to music of human origin. One of his key inspirations as a musician and musical thinker is the output of the iconic jazz and art music label ECM. “What interests me in ECM artists is that everyone is such an individual. Everyone has a unique quality that’s not super-fast or constant, in-your-face showing-off.” For Rothenberg, the profundity of the label’s output is distilled in his first playlist track, Sinikka Langeland’s 2011 piece ‘What is Tomorrow?’. “This to me is like the ultimate ECM track, it has everything and it’s unique,” he says. “Some people say that ECM sounds are kind of blurry, generic, too much reverb – this does not have any of that. It really stands out because it mixes jazz improvisers with folk music. When I lived in Norway after college, I heard her sing and play the kantele, and what was remarkable about that performance was that she cried in the middle of it. She was performing this Finnish folk music that brings you to tears as you play and sing. She has a very special tone of voice, it’s unusual, compelling. In her band, she has these great soloists who don’t solo, it’s this beautiful understated style. You couldn’t find anyone else to play just like that.” As is the ECM speciality, it’s an intense but calm sound full of emotion, and one that is easy to draw comparisons to the transcendental.

Taking that vibe to the next level, another next playlist pick, ‘Prayer and Despair’, was composed by spiritual leader and esotericist GI Gurdjieff. “I learnt about [him] in high school and college, mostly. We were into all this spiritual stuff, we saw Peter Brook’s film Meetings with Remarkable Men, and read Gurdjieff’s autobiography that it was based on. What’s remarkable about him is, who knows what he did? Was he part-explorer, part-charlatan, part-mystic teacher?” As a composer, Gurdjieff’s work was no more ordinary than his teachings. “He wandered around and grabbed bits of the world’s music and put them together. He’d have these ideas and then Thomas de Hartmann wrote them down as Gurdjieff improvised them at the piano. With de Hartmann playing, it’s this beautiful historic sound. This music cuts through towards something really deep. You do not want to play it in the car, you’ll start to space out! There’s something special going on in this music. You can’t quite say what it is, and that’s why I keep coming back to it.”



Just as he undertakes his research with humour and joy, Rothenberg’s playlist isn’t solely populated by the cerebral or ethereal. “I’m not such a serious person, you know!” Which takes us to the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest entry for Israel, Teapacks’ ‘Push the Button’. An unusual pick for an American, perhaps? “This was from the first few years after I met my wife, who’s from Estonia. She’s really excited about the Eurovision Song Contest, which of course I’d never heard of. We were in Estonia when it was on, and this one song really stood out. It didn’t win, but it was by far the best. It doesn’t sound like Eurovision – that’s why it’s good! These guys are rapping in different languages, Arabic, Hebrew, French, and it’s all about nuclear war coming. If you find the video, this guy’s playing a double-necked oud, which I think is pretty funny. It’s just making fun of everything, it’s a very fun song.” Holding space for both the serious and the silly seems like an important quality for Rothenberg, but they don’t necessarily have to be polar opposites. “I guess there is something that holds this in common even with Gurdjieff, in this way of finding what’s most universal about the world’s music and putting it together. Not turning it all into this global pop mush where everyone really wants to sound the same, but something authentic, something that can grab you.”

And when music grabs you, it grabs you – and it can come from some of the most unexpected places, as it did with Chilean rapper Ana Tijoux’s ‘1977’. “I first heard this song on Breaking Bad, probably the only long-running TV show where it’s actually worth watching all the episodes. It’s brilliantly done. It was this scene where they use sped-up time-lapse photography and this weird song comes on. It’s not music I know too much about, but I like the whole mixture of things, cutting and pasting different fragments of all these different styles.” Rothenberg even uses Tijoux’s Spanish-language rap as a teaching aid. “I often teach music classes for undergraduates who don’t specialise in music, and a lot of them want to write papers on how hip-hop has conquered the world and how it brings everyone together, but many of them have no idea that anyone raps in any language but English. It doesn’t even occur to them that it could happen. I’m kind of astonished as to why that is; this dominance of English is not a good thing.”

One thing that English is near-perfect for, though, is telling stories about England. Simon Emmerson’s Imagined Village project updated the meaning of English folk music to represent the country as it exists today, and Billy Bragg’s reworking of the traditional ‘Hard Times of Old England’ sums up that goal for Rothenberg. “That’s just a really great song. It takes a classic old song but turned into what’s going on in modern-day England. What I like about it that is the spirit of it and how it’s put together, and how it gets to an optimistic possibility in the future, like there’s going to be a different England someday. I’m sure that’s a message you definitely need to hear now!

Although this optimism reflects Rothenberg’s own work and music, for an artist primarily known for his connection with nature, I expected his playlist to feature more tracks of an animalian bent. But, of course, they all are – the unavoidable fact is that we are but animals ourselves. By helping us to remember and embrace this, Rothenberg says that music can help us make a difference: “Every musician should listen to the sounds of nature and all things around us. There’s so much awe and beauty, and the more we value this stuff the more we’ll work to save this natural world that is under siege. I have no illusions that music is going to save the world, but it can do its own little part. Sound is an incredible part of the world around us, and we’re just one of many creatures. That’s why I make music with nightingales.”


Photo: Still from the film Nightingales in Berlin (2019, dir. Ville Tanttu).

Introducing Afro Cluster

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 157, May 2020.



An Afro Cluster gig is like the best jam session you’ve ever been to. All the musicians are top-notch, no-one is trying to out-do each other or show off (well, not too much) and all of the aimless noodling is filtered out well before it gets to your ears. It makes sense when you consider that that’s exactly how the band started out: meeting each other periodically during Cardiff jam nights and then meeting up regularly, accreting members along the way. Now they’re a horn-heavy eight-piece, and each musician brings something else to the table – hip-hop, Afrobeat, funk and jazz are the main culprits, but there’s a whole exciting world to be found in there.

Their connection to jam sessions extends past their origin story. The way they keep that energy in their live shows and studio recordings is by embodying that same spirit through the full journey of creation. Bassist Andrew Brown explained how their tracks come about: “We have these long jam sessions, we don’t put any restrictions on anything. We record it, and then we start to put that under the microscope and say ‘alright, this section is actually really good, let’s develop that.’” The passion and free-form creativity is preserved, while rounding-off the jagged edges and solidifying it into a cohesive whole.

It’s hip-hop that really provides an entry-point to the music, in many different ways even past the obvious musical markers. Turntablist DJ Veto reckons that it is a hip-hop state-of-mind that drives the band, and even provides the catalyst for their musical eclecticism. “To a large extent, the hip-hop element is the way that we take influences, the way that hip-hop would sample any type of music and create something different out of it,” he explains. “That’s essentially where we’re at with the band.”

Evoking vibes of A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul and Jurassic 5, it’s an approach that harks back to the classics of alternative hip-hop, not least for their dedication to keeping their sound solidly in the political realm. Frontman and MC Skunkadelic brings in crucial topics from the real life of the UK today – racial inequality, mental health, money problems, living in a digital world with all of the bizarre, often poisonous, boundaries and borders that it facilitates – but the music is never po-faced. Afro Cluster’s parties are made with a perspective that could only have come from Cardiff, but which makes sense on a much wider scale. In many ways, they reflect a sort of South Walian Ozomatli, a band whose LA-centric sound resonates with ears and limbs around the world through an international consciousness. Where Ozomatli reinforce their sound with Mexican and Cuban rhythms, however, Afro Cluster’s finds its spice in Afrobeat, highlife and even Ethio-jazz.

They’ve been slowly gaining their reputation as an incredible live band over the past few years, and with a debut album, The Reach, on the verge of release, they’re poised to make a powerful statement for the head, the heart and the feet. Live or through speakers, they’re coming at you one way or another – make sure you’re ready.

Siti Muharam - Siti of Unguja: Romance Revolution on Zanzibar

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 157, May 2020.

Siti Muharam
Siti of Unguja: Romance Revolution on Zanzibar
OnTheCorner (36 mins)

Siti Muharam is the great-granddaughter of Siti binti Saad, the woman who turned taarab from the inaccessible music of the Sultan’s palace into the people’s sound of Zanzibar. It’s a great legacy to shoulder, and with this debut album, Muharam more than rises to the occasion.

Her voice occupies the same territory as a Bollywood diva, or Billie Holiday, or her great-grandmother; with that same easy but powerful grace. The rest of the ensemble is just as intoxicating, and together they take taarab to another level. They look back to its origins and maintain a real vintage feel while lighting a path for potential new directions for the style. The addition of bass clarinet and double bass lend a noir-jazz slinkiness, and alongside the subtlest of electronics, the feeling is of traditional music finding a comfortable home in the year 2020, rather than any self-conscious ‘fusion.’

Siti Muharam and her group are in command of a music that’s both stately and spicy, and in continuing a great taarab lineage, they’ve made something very special. Once I’d listened to Siti of Unguja, I was already excited to get to listen to it again. I just wish there was a little more of it!

Danyèl Waro - Tinn Tout

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 157, May 2020.

Danyèl Waro
Tinn Tout
Buda Musique (73 mins)

Danyèl Waro has spent the past 45 years becoming the international ambassador of maloya, the revolutionary roots music of the Indian Ocean island La Réunion. He also possesses one of the most outstanding voices in African music today, sounding somehow both fragile and powerful in equal measure. On Tinn Tout, he continues to do what he does best: a sparing, traditional version of maloya, with occasional small innovations – a Gnawa rhythm here, a Jaco Pastorius-like melodic bass there – that serve only to heighten the music’s emotional range.

One of those innovations comes on ‘Daniel Singaïny’, which explores maloya's often hidden connection to South Asian music. It starts with a short section of morlon narslon music, a shawm-and-drum style of La Réunion’s Tamil-descended Malbar community. The rest of the song is in Waro’s usual style, but that introduction changes the context in which it is heard; South Asian colours blossom forth. It’s not hard to conceive the massed vocals of maloya as distant cousins of qawwali.

Waro’s voice has a way of hitting the ear that directly touches the soul, and his respect for the past and future of maloya and La Réunion is just as clear and just as earnest – to listen to Tinn Tout is a pleasure and a privilege.

Katawa Singers - Ufulu 1991-1997

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 157, May 2020.

Katawa Singers
Ufulu 1991-1997
1000HZ (54 mins)

In urgent need of a bucketful of wholesome joy with none of the risks of eternal damnation? Katawa Singers have you covered.

The group, from Mzuzu in Malawi, changed the face of gospel in their country. Their tight harmonies are based in the tradition of the East African church choir, but they stand out for two reasons: their use of sounds from the region’s three main cultural groups (the Tonga, the Ngoni and the Tumbuka); and the all-pervading Yamaha keyboards which provide cheap-and-cheerful synth backdrops to it all.

Although the songs speak of piety, prayer, self-control and asceticism, the musical settings exude an unbridled happiness with a minimal amount of schmaltz. Even their take on ‘Kum-ba-yah’ raises the song from its usual dread-inducing campfire dirge into an earnestly cheerful and hallelujah-filled grin-along.

This compilation spans Katawa Singers’ first seven albums and from the sounds of it, the tracks have been taken from copies of copies of cassette tapes. The sound quality is therefore rather poor, even cutting out abruptly on the last track, and the distortion and fuzziness across all the tracks toe the line between endearing and frustrating. If you can get over that though, there’s a lot to love in this music, be that God or otherwise.

Large Unit Fendika - Ethiobraz

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 157, May 2020.

Large Unit Fendika
Ethiobraz
PNL Records (65 mins)

The traditional Ethiopian musicians of Addis Ababa’s Fendika azmaribet have joined forces with Paal Nilssen-Love’s pan-Scandinavian group Large Unit and members of Dutch punks The Ex to create one almighty 22-piece avant garde Ethio-trad-punk, free jazz, big band noisefest. Now there’s a collection of adjectives that will either get you salivating or reaching for the ear-plugs.

I was all up for it – which is why I was a bit stumped at the quiet opening. It’s not until the middle of the third track that it really kicks up a gear, and even then, it feels as though there is something lacking. Musically, the group works really well. The Zappa-like jazz rock freak-outs and Ethiopian vibes complement each other as well as contrasting, and the best moments come when chaos threatens – but never quite manages – to take over completely. All the elements are there to make it an exciting musical explosion, but the end result falls a bit flat. Even though the album is a live recording from 2018, it lacks that passionate live energy – an important factor when the noise becomes challenging.

Ethiobraz is a successful proof-of-concept and the group tour Europe in June (COVID-19 depending) – maybe two years of percolating will have imbued Large Unit Fendika with that extra added spark.