Groupe RTD - The Dancing Devils of Djibouti

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 160, August/September 2020.

Groupe RTD
The Dancing Devils of Djibouti
Ostinato Records (48 mins)

The ‘world music’ scene has woken up to the wondrous delights of Somali music over the past few years through reissues of classic ensembles from the 70s and 80s. This time, Ostinato Records brings the sound of live Somali music today with the premiere group of Djibouti.

The music of the Somali-majority port country on the mouth of the Red Sea is little known outside the Horn of Africa, and this is actually the very first album of Djiboutian music ever released by a foreign label. So, for a big first release, why not go to the very best?

Groupe RTD are the house band for Djibouti’s national broadcasting company and the one called upon to perform at any official ceremonies in the country. They are part of the great legacy of Somali pop music, with elements from traditional music shining through among retro dance-band arrangements while keeping an open ear to the synth-dominated modern styles. Theirs is a real Red Sea sound, a musical midpoint between African and Arabic. Add in Bollywood influences, lots of reggae and disco funk with a heavy swagger, and you have some serious party music. Good vibes only.

Gnawa Youmala - Dounya

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 160, August/September 2020.

Gnawa Youmala
Dounya
Global Sonics (50 mins)

Gnawa Youmala are a multinational, multigenerational Paris-based six-piece, and with this debut album, they reshape Moroccan Gnawa music with their own refreshing twist.

Where the Sufi ceremony of the Gnawa is often loud and intense, Gnawa Youmala turn it into something light and airy, without actually changing all that much. Alongside the traditional guimbri (bass lute) and qaraqab (metal castinets), the group add violin and banjo, which fill the upper register of the music and add a uplifting element, helped along by colourful percussion and the ensemble’s all-acoustic nature. Across ten tracks, the group also bring in influences from Berber and Arabic music and further afield into reggae and jazz, but it never strays too far from the source to raise any confusion of what is most important here. For all their innovation, Gnawa Youmala lose none of the enchanting depth that makes Gnawa so powerful.

Featuring alumni from Global Gnawa and legendary Moroccan outfit Nass El Ghiwane, Gnawa Youmala have pedigree when it comes to creating feel-good, lightly poppy music from traditional sources. This is an impressive debut, respectful of the roots while being an easy, breezy listen.

Touki - Right of Passage

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 160, August/September 2020.

Touki (Amadou Diagne & Cory Seznec)
Right of Passage
Captain Pouch Records (47 mins)

Franco-American guitar and banjo player Cory Seznec and Senegalese guitarist-turned-kora player Amadou Diagne first met while busking on the streets of Bath – a musical rapport came easily and, over the next decade or so, blossomed into a fully-fledged collaboration and now a debut album recorded at the renowned Real World Studios.

This set is full of easy Americana and Wolof vibes, taking blues from both sides of the Atlantic as starting points for extended tours around the music of both regions. Layers of strings build up rippling, twinkling patterns, out of which blossom forth Diagne’s light, high-pitched voice, or maybe Seznec’s throaty fretless gourd banjo or palmwine guitar. Guests including Ethiopian masenko player Endris Hassen and accordionist Michael Ward-Bergeman broaden the scope further and add different textures without sounding out-of-place.

It is clear that Diagne and Seznec click musically, but it also feels as though their repertoire lacks risks and the fireworks that can happen as a result. Right of Passage goes along smoothly with several cool moments, but it stops short of having a ‘wow’ factor that would put it above the rest.

The Beginner's Guide to April Verch

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 159, July 2020.



Somewhat paradoxically, April Verch has long been seen as a bright new talent of Canadian folk music. However, with 13 albums stretching all the way back to 1992 and the April Verch Band celebrating their 20th anniversary this year, her position at the forefront of her craft is undeniable.

As it flows forth through her fiddle, her feet or her mouth, Verch’s music is anchored in the folk tradition of the Ottawa Valley, with a style that reflects the region’s diverse roots. European settlers arrived from Ireland, Scotland, Germany, France and Poland to work in the area’s lumber camps, and brought with them the jigs, reels, polkas and waltzes of their home countries. In that small corner of Canada blossomed a pan-European folk music with an unmistakable North American flair.

That connection to her region’s own traditions has been with Verch basically since birth. Growing up in a small township in rural Ontario, it was full immersion: her father’s band played at all the local dances and her mother was a keen attendee. Surroundings like that leave their mark. “I grew up around it, and wanted to be a part of it, and honestly I figured that everybody was a part of it,” says Verch, “It didn’t occur to me that not everyone learns to dance and fiddle! It’s just something you do when you live there.” The induction into that world came early, as she began step-dancing at the age of three and fiddling at six.

As natural curiosity developed into natural talent, the drive to make music her life’s work struck quickly. “I decided around the age of ten that it was something I wanted to do for a living, which seems odd now that I’m grown up and looking back!” As well as learning the music and dance, her place in the world opened her eyes to the wider realities of music making. Her teacher would bring his pupils to perform at fairs and conventions, passing on the bug for live performance while introducing Verch to some of the biggest names in their field who were more than happy to advise a young star.

With a made-up mind, why wait? Verch made her first album, Springtime Fiddle, when she was just 13. Those bright early years got the ball rolling, and a steady stream of albums, instructional books and DVDs has continued ever since, charting her path via the prestigious Berklee School of Music and on through JUNO nominations, Canadian fiddle championships and even an appearance on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion.

In Verch’s hands, folk music gets a spring in its step. Her nimble fingerwork is often balletic and mischievous, with swoops and leaps that put dance in your feet and a grin on your face, and when that means venturing out of the Valley into the realms of bluegrass, hot jazz, Eastern European and even Brazilian music, it all gets added to the pot. The quality of her musicianship make it clear that this is serious business, but it’s all made with a wholesome heart and a winsome wink.

Even with an impressive and acclaimed discography, Verch’s first love remains playing live: “Recording happens once every couple of years and it’s great because it’s a snapshot of where you’re at, but I love sharing the music in person. I wouldn’t be happy staying home and releasing music from afar. I feel like that’s where I should be – on stage!” It’s there that every aspect of Verch’s art gets to shine. As with many choreo-musical traditions, no album can ever fully recreate her astonishing step-dancing, which is just as important as her fiddle. The pièce de résistance is when she does them both simultaneously, a breathtaking and complex display of rhythm and swinging melody amid jumps, twirls and flourishes of feet that leaves one open-mouthed for a long time afterwards. Her live performances also led to her personal career highlight in 2010, when she was featured in the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Kitted-out like a Celtic goth, she took centre-stage and let rip in front of 60,000 people in the stadium and up to a billion worldwide.

Celebrating two decades with the April Verch Band gives a good opportunity to look back over the years. The ranks and make-up of the band have changed significantly since 2000, reflecting and influencing Verch’s musical evolutions with its ebbs and flows, but when it comes to her main aim, things have stayed just the same: “I have always played what I like,” she says, “that hasn’t changed. If it speaks to me and I get super passionate about it, and it happens to be not from my tradition, I’m willing to try it. That’s the one thing that has remained consistent, if I love playing it, that’s going to come across.” Thus explains the success of her latest album, where she takes on a very different beast to equally splendid results.

2019’s Once a Day is a fully-fledged country album, a loving and authentic homage to the 50s and 60s Nashville sound that brings her uniquely bright and girlish voice to the fore. Those funny, sad and schmaltzy country songs had been with her from the very beginning, and were always as much a part of her heritage as Canadian roots. “The two went hand-in-hand. If there was a country band playing a dance, maybe the fiddler would let loose and there’d be a square dance, and they’d be playing Ottawa Valley dance tunes.” Elements of country had crept into Verch’s music for a long time, and it was always the plan to let that aspect flourish eventually: “It’s something that I would have done sooner if I thought I could pull it off, but I wasn’t ready as an artist. It was so important to me to get it right. I’m so connected to that music and I love it so much so that’s why I waited.” The wait paid off – she more than does the style the justice it deserves.

No longer the gregarious young upstart on the Canadian scene, April Verch is now the experienced and respected master. Country-tinged folk dance music or folk-tinged country music; fiddle, step-dancing or singing; solo, with her band or with a growing number of collaborators, Verch and her music can always bring a sunshine and a smile to every occasion.


Best albums

April Verch
Verchuosity (Rounder Records, 2001)
The first album after the formation of the April Verch Band, this stunning instrumental release announced Verch to the world and earned her first JUNO nomination for Best Roots & Traditional Album in 2002.

April Verch
From Where I Stand (Rounder Records, 2003)
This album features stately, sweet and fun sets that visit styles from across Canada and further afield together with Verch’s own compositions.

April Verch
Bright Like Gold (Slab Town Records, 2013)
Verch starts to stretch her fingers into bluegrass while never leaving the music of the Ottawa Valley far behind, with lovely contributions from bandmates Cody Walters and Hayes Griffin and a handful of guests.

Joe Newberry & April Verch
Going Home (Slab Town Records, 2018)
In this collaboration with clawhammer banjoist Joe Newberry, from the Missoura Ozarks, the duo explore folk music from their respective homes and the thousand-odd miles in between.

April Verch
Once a Day (Slab Town Records, 2019)
Verch takes off in a different direction for her most recent album, finding full voice among a repertoire of classic 50s and 60s country songs by the likes of Loretta Lynn and the Louvin Brothers.



If you like April Verch, try…

Vishtèn
Horizons (Les Productions Takashoun, 2018)
From the French-speaking community of Canada’s Prince Edward Island, Vishtèn play Acadian music that reflects influences from France and the UK and well as from across the southern US, with bonus electronics and step-dancing.



Photo: The April Verch Band, by Parker J. Pfister.

Spotlight: Kerekes Band

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 159, July 2020.



A lot can change in 25 years. For Kerekes Band, that means turning a tradition entirely on its head.

Back in 1995, they were Kerekes Ensemble, a true died-in-the-wool folkloric group from Eger in northern Hungary. Their music was of the táncház, the dance houses of the country’s rural villages. Completely acoustic, their set-up was built around shepherd’s flute player Zsombor Fehér’s journey to the deepest roots of the culture. “I learnt the music exactly as it was played by the village musicians. I was soaking everything up, not just the music, but the lifestyle. We tended the soil and cut the grass and harvested together. We wanted to get the whole vibe, how it all fits together.” And so it went, learning the old ways and playing the old music. But eventually the táncház started to grow suffocating. So they invented. Maybe Csaba Námor would play an unexpected chord on the koboz lute, or Zsombor would add a bluesy lick on his flute – and then all bets were off.

Kerekes Ensemble were now Kerekes Band, and they went wild. The traditional gardon (a cello-like percussion instrument) became a drum kit, a bass guitar joined the viola and the koboz, and Zsombor took his shepherd’s flute to the next level, creating a one-of-a-kind chromatic version and adding any electronic effects he could – distortion, delay, wah-wah, chorus. They kept the repertoire the same, but their sound was now as much inspired by Jimi Hendrix, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Kool & the Gang as by the fields and folk of Hungary. It wasn’t actually too much of a leap. Drummer (and Zsombor’s brother) Vikor Fehér felt the connections come naturally: “We realised that the energy in táncház is exactly the same as rock music. The way they beat the drum is the same way we beat the gardon, how we blow the flute has exactly the same strong energy. It has to be loud, and you have to dance!”

Like when Dylan went electric in ’66, people took some persuading. “Everyone was looking at us suspiciously,” says Zsombor. “The folk musicians said ‘what are you doing with our music?’ and on the other hand, the rockers were unsure too. We created a genre between genres. It gave our music a sort of outlaw feeling that we’re doing something very new and very different.” The gamble paid off: their first album as Kerekes Band, 2006’s Pimasz, was an explosion of funk, punk, disco and folk – and still a classic today. That spirit never left them. Now with 25 years and nine albums under their belts, Kerekes Band are one of Hungary’s most popular folk groups, and kings of their own flavour of ‘Ethno-funk.’

2020 was going to be an extravaganza year for the group. It started strong with a sold-out, career-spanning barnstormer in Budapest in January, and there were shows booked from Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Isle of Wight and a converted mill in the Hungarian countryside, before COVID-19 put paid to those best laid plans. No matter, though. Kerekes Band’s music is a colourful riot full of fun, flute and funk. After 25 years, there’s no slowing down; the celebrations will continue for a long time to come.


Photo: (l-r) Ákos Csarnó, Viktor Fehér and Zsombor Fehér of Kerekes Band live at Müpa Palace of Arts, Budapest, 2020, by Kotschy Gábor.

Coronavirus Comforts: Grim Fandango

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 159, July 2020 as my contribution to the article 'Coronavirus Comforts.'

During lockdown, I’ve been replaying one of my favourite video games, Grim Fandango. It’s originally from 1998 but it was remastered to look and sound all shiny in 2015. That’s ancient in terms of video games, but as a work of art, it’s not aged a bit. It’s an adventure game set in the Mexican Land of the Dead as seen through the lens of film noir and bebop. You play as Manuel Calavera, a low-level grim reaper, as he uncovers a vast conspiracy of organised crime and corruption at every level. The visual style is equal parts Mesoamerican folk art, art deco and golden age Hollywood, and the soundtrack by Peter McConnell is a fantastic mix of huge, late Romantic orchestras, jazz of all sorts, Mexican sones, Andean music, tango, surf rock and even Karnatic violin. Along with ingenious puzzles and a sharp wit throughout, it’s basically perfect. Deservedly regarded as a classic.

Chouk Bwa & The Ångströmers - Vodou Alé

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 159, July 2020.

Chouk Bwa & The Ångströmers
Vodou Alé
Bongo Joe (38 mins)

Chouk Bwa were a revelation upon their debut album, 2015’s Se Nou Ki La!, a wonderful set of simple but hard-hitting Haitian Vodou religious roots made up of thumping drums and joyous harmonised vocals. Their follow-up takes things in a different direction as they team up with Belgian production duo The Ångströmers.

The result is dark, dirty and dubby. Although impactful, the production work leaves ample space for the Haitians to breathe without threatening to submerge their sound completely. It may be as subtle as the addition of a bubbling, droning underbelly to a song; the best moments come when the focus is rhythmic, the heavy synth beats mixing alongside the Vodou drums.

However, this musical meeting feels less like a hands-on collaboration than a sort of remix project, as if Chouk Bwa did their thing separately before the Ångströmers came in to chop and change and add their electronic flourishes later. As such, there’s a slight distance between performance and production that stops the project short of achieving that sublime cross-cultural connection I’d hoped it would be. Vodou Alé is a little less than the sum of its parts.