Bounaly - Dimanche à Bamako

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 194, January/February 2024.

Bounaly
Dimanche à Bamako
Sahel Sounds (47 mins)

If that title sounds familiar, it probably is: this album shares its name with Amadou & Mariam’s 2005 masterwork – both albums honour the Malian capital’s famous Sunday displays where weddings, street parties and other celebrations blanket the city with colour, food, extravagant dress and, of course, music.

This is Songhai guitarist Ali ‘Bounaly’ Traoré’s first full-length release, and it was recorded live, right in the middle of a Bamako Sunday. But he isn’t from Bamako; he hails from the north of Mali, from Niafunké, where so many guitar greats have come before him. He is one of the capital’s many internally-displaced northerners, whose numbers have grown dramatically since the outbreak of civil war in 2012. Those people need to party – that’s Bounaly’s job.

His rocked-up, cosmopolitan takamba sends the crowds wild. The group here consists of two vocalists, drum kit and calabash, but it’s that raw and roaring guitar that carries it. Extended, effects-soaked solos, blasted out of a distorted PA and competing with the sounds of cheering fans and playing children – it’s electric in every sense of the word. Hendrix once again casts his long shadow, as does Ali Farka Touré and Bounaly’s uncle Afel Bocoum, ending up with something akin to Songhoy Blues at their most rough and ready.

Assiko Golden Band de Grand Yoff - Magg Tekki

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 193, December 2023.

Assiko Golden Band de Grand Yoff
Magg Tekki
Mississippi Records (34 mins)

Assiko Golden Band have been a fixture on the Dakar music scene for the past 20 years, representing the Senegalese capital’s most populous – and crowded – neighbourhood of Grand Yoff. In its current form, the group is a 17-strong collective of drums, percussion and voices spanning three generations, let by poet, singer and flute player Djiby Ly. Amid the dense rhythmic tapestry, lyrics in Wolof and French give positive messages of power, hope and encouragement to stand up for those who have less, with spiritual references to Sufi Islam and Christianity throughout.

Although the band have been going for decades at this point, Magg Tekki is their debut album, and its sound has been very much crafted by Swedish producer Karl-Jonas Winqvist (also the architect behind the Wau Wau Collectif). Assiko Golden Band themselves were recorded in Dakar, but saxophones, accordion, kora, additional percussion and production effects were added later on in Stockholm. While these additions work well and supplement the Senegalese sound with references from Afrobeat, jazz and European folk, it would have been nice to hear the band in their unadulterated, direct-from-Grand Yoff form that has made them so popular in their own scene.

BCUC - WOMEX 23 Artist Award

First published in the WOMEX – World Music Expo 2023 delegate guide.



Based in Soweto, Johannesburg, Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness (BCUC for short) don’t limit themselves to the music of any single culture group. They epitomise the plurality of South Africa: their music reflects all the people around them, and they sing in all eleven of the country’s official languages. And from that, they make a big, big sound. Drums, percussion, bass guitar, whistles, horns and vocals – it all combines into a powerful driving force that becomes unstoppable. Their explosive live energy takes influence from hip-hop, rock, funk, gospel and Afrobeat, but also indigenous spiritual practices and magic. It’s no wonder they’re firm festival favourites across the globe.

With their all-embracing musical philosophy, BCUC are inherently political. Their songs are shot through with political messages and lessons. They hold high their values and social responsibilities, while being unafraid to criticise the wrongs around them. Like their music, their political perspective is uniquely South African while sharing a solidarity that encompasses the African continent and world as a whole. Even their organisation is utopian – the seven-piece collective is leaderless, each member contributing equally to the passion of the music.

BCUC represent the roots, trunk and branches of South African traditional music. This is cultural preservation in a way that isn’t frozen in time like a museum, but in a way that is living and breathing and growing and dancing. For their dedication to their music, their people and their country; for embodying the strength, unity and progress of their band name; and for their sheer ability to raise any roof, it is with pleasure that BCUC are the recipients of the WOMEX 23 Artist Award.


Photo: BCUC perform at WOMEX 23, by Jacob Crawfurd

On The Move - WOMEX 23 Professional Excellence Award

First published in the WOMEX – World Music Expo 2023 delegate guide.



The world music scene is built on a foundation of international cultural and artistic mobility. Our industry simply could not exist without thousands of artists and arts professionals navigating the channels of international travel and expansion, but those channels are many, complex, confusing and ever-changing. On The Move has spent the last 21 years helping artists along those channels, and opening up the artistic world in the process.

On The Move is a network and online platform that connects cultural workers of all disciplines with support, information and avenues to international mobility. This takes many forms: extensive guides to institutions and opportunities in territories across the world; global listings of open project calls; mentoring schemes; data-driven research and analysis; and events, including their annual forum. No single way of working is appropriate for all, and the key is in the recognition that mobility exists in many forms – including funding, fellowships, residencies, training and more.

Importantly, all of these resources are free to access and regularly updated to keep atop the latest developments. The heart of On The Move’s mission is the democratisation of international art: by sharing knowledge and tools, it ensures that arts do not become the sole reserve of the powerful and privileged. By giving more artists access to international mobility, the global arts community becomes fairer, more transparent and more sustainable. It also allows for specific help for artists who are disadvantaged within wider cultural spheres, such as disabled, minority ethnic or refugee artists.

For the world music scene and the wider arts ecosystem, mobility is not a luxury, but a necessity. In their commitment to providing this invaluable resource for artists and cultural professionals, On The Move opens the world to artists of all stripes. For this reason, we are delighted that On The Move is the recipient of the WOMEX 23 Award for Professional Excellence.

Nihiloxica - Source of Denial

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 192, November 2023.

Nihiloxica
Source of Denial
Crammed Discs (40 mins)

Nihiloxica were one of the highlights of this year’s WOMAD festival, after their scheduled appearance in 2022 was stymied by visa problems. The life of a band isn’t the simplest when half of you are based in Uganda and the other half are based in the UK. These experiences have fed directly into the overarching theme of the group’s second full-length album: it is a stinging critique of the UK’s draconian visa and immigration process.

The pounding Bugandan polyrhythms of the engalabi, namunjoloba and empuunyi drums meet the abrasive, overdriven synths of industrial trance. Extreme metal influence is heard throughout, from harsh noisescapes to doom-laden detuned bass-synth chugs. Across the whole album, computer-generated voices stand in for the monolithic state machine. It all serves to communicate the evil banality of bureaucracy, not just impersonal but anti-personal, reducing people’s rich lives and complex stories to a phone-tree, where injustices are in-baked as part of a system meticulously rigged to avoid even the merest suggestion of accountability. It sounds oppressive, because it is; it feels dystopian because it is – the reality of anyone without a powerful passport.

It’s heavy stuff, and rightly so. It is political protest, yes, but make no mistake, this is dance music. And you will dance: movement is forced from you by the sheer power of aggressive musical passion. Source of Denial is an impactful album, and its music is absolutely brilliant.

Chief Adjuah - Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 192, November 2023.

Chief Adjuah
Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning
Ropeadope (56 mins)

Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah (formerly Christian Scott) has foregone his usual jazz trumpet, relying instead on his amazing voice and invented instruments to explore his heritage as an Afro-New Orleanian, back through the Afro-Indigenous Maroons and to the ultimate roots, in Africa.

This is an album of two shades, and two complementary vibes. Some of the songs are sounded with voice and percussion only, the most reflective of the traditional Afro-New Orleanian music. These songs resonate with Adjuah’s pride in heritage and lineage, filled with remembrance and joyous reverence of the strength of the elders who came before. Other songs are darker and funkier, their sound based around Chief Adjuah’s Bow, an instrument of his own design that resembles a minimalist electric kora or kamalengoni. These tracks are heavier, channelling centuries of righteous anger against still on-going subjugation. The epitome of these is the title track and centrepiece of the album, a 15-minute Gil Scott-Heron-like poetic meditation on Black liberation and white supremacy.

Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning is a powerful album of African music, culture, language and religion, filtered through generations of ancestral memory, obscured and revived over and over into something that could only come from 21st century New Orleans.

Sawa Sawa - Sawa Sawa

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 192, November 2023.

Sawa Sawa
Sawa Sawa
Jinn Records (33 mins)

Sawa Sawa (‘All Together’ in Sudanese Arabic) is a project that unites artists from across Sudan to make a statement for peace and togetherness within the country. This debut release spreads that message as a multi-discipline, multimedia concept album made up of eight artworks, eight short stories and eight pieces of music, all specially commissioned from a diverse range of artists.

The musical side of things takes in almost as many stylistic influences as performers – of whom there are 19. The main sounds are Afro soul, reggae and lightly funky rock, with Sudanese and pan-African scales, rhythms and timbres sprinkled throughout. Unfortunately, it’s all a bit thin. The reggae is bland, the soul feels obvious and the rock guitar solos are often cheesy. Perhaps it’s a symptom of over-fusion. Sudanese music can be so exciting and spicy! It’s a shame that this album doesn’t showcase that to its fullest.

But really, that’s all less important than the project’s noble goal of unity and celebration, made all the more poignant by the recent conflict in Sudan. Millions of civilians have been displaced by the war, including members of the Sawa Sawa family. All credit to those involved in this worthy endeavour – the positive, human impact of art should always be celebrated.

Unlocking Our Hidden Collections: Sue Steward and Edmundo Ros

First published on the British Library Sound and Vision blog.



The Unlocking Our Hidden Collections initiative is the British Library challenging itself. With over 170 million items in the Library’s collections and an average of over 8,000 new items added every day, it is impossible to keep up – processing and cataloguing backlogs mean that there are so many treasures that are ‘hidden’ from view and unable to be searched in any of the Library’s catalogues. Unlocking Our Hidden Collections is a concerted effort to bring some of these to light, by targeting specific collections across the Library’s many curatorial areas for detailed cataloguing where previously there was none at all. Collections in this initiative include manuscripts from the medieval to contemporary periods, charters, censuses, photographs, correspondences and music manuscripts. They also include recordings from the British Library sound archive. The project that I work on within Unlocking Our Hidden Collections is entitled ‘Rare and Unpublished World and Traditional Music’, which catalogues and ultimately makes publically available collections of sound recordings that would otherwise remain obscure.

As a cataloguer in this process, I have the absolute pleasure of listening to wonderful recordings of some of the most interesting musical cultures in the world, researching their context and diving into the recordists’ own experiences through their documentation and other material. So far, I’ve worked with collections of recorded music from Thailand, Malaysia, India, Nepal and Kenya from the 1960s to the 2000s, but today I want to highlight one specific collection, the Sue Steward Collection (C1984 in our catalogues).

To read the full blog post and to read more about Sue Steward's wonderful collection and her recordings of Edmundo Ros (that him in the photo up at the top), head over to the British Library Sound and Vision blog.


Photo: Edmundo Ros in Amsterdam, 1957, by Harry Pot.

Jazz Fusion Review Round-Up

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 191, October 2023.

Nowadays, the line separating jazz from instrumental hip-hop can be incredibly fine, given the amount of influence that has passed back and forth over the past 50 years. Budapest-based trio Jazzbois embrace this permeability with their third album, Higher Dimension Waiting Room (Blunt Shelter Records, 34 mins). Here, the hip-hop and jazz are completely entwined, from the dreamy, lo-fi synths and fluttery piano to the broken beats and funky bass. It’s light and fun with a sci-fi edge, chilled-out but with enough groove to keep you dancing. Special props to Tamás Czirják, whose drumming consistently brings the fireworks.

Production duo Abderraouf B. Grissa & Dan Drohan also sail the jazz-hip-hop continuum with their first collaboration RBGxDD (Uno Loop, 41 mins). Together they make a dance-oriented jazz that isn’t afraid of venturing ‘out there’. Live instruments and samples merge seamlessly, guiding us through different zones – from rolling blues grooves to dubwise spacescapes to Latin psychedelia to a sound effects record – without ever losing the carefully-curated unifying vibe based on those two home styles. This musical journey hits more like an exploratory mixtape than your usual jazz album, and is none the worse for it.

Another album that hops between genres at will is the reissue of Ambiance II Fusion’s 1985 record Come Touch Tomorrow (Freestyle Records, 39 mins). The ensemble revolves around Nigerian-born saxophonist Daoud Abubakar Balewa, whose classic instrumental soul-funk absolutely oozes 80s production, with its heavy reverb, gated snares and ultra-smooth sax. Strangely enough, this album sounds like tracks from several different albums stitched together. Some tracks are live (or live-sounding) and others are studio recordings; some tracks seem to bear little stylistic resemblance to those around them – sometimes there’s reggae, or bossa, or even pure synthwave with no saxophone to be heard. It’s as if the album itself is a little unsure of what it wants to be.

New York-based Greek vibraphonist, electronicist and drummer Christos Rafalides makes an ode to lockdown in Home (Emarel Music, 50 mins), recorded in improvised home studios across the world in the spring of 2021. Each of the seven tracks features a guest musician, and each bring their own slant on Rafalides’ malleable jazz, whether that’s Middle Eastern from outi (Greek oud) player Thomas Konstantinou, light Latin from pianist Giovanni Mirabassi or space-age Caribbean from steelpan player Victor Provost. The latter is a particular highlight, providing a real complement to the vibraphone. Not all the collaborations work as well as that, but Rafalides’ musicianship shines throughout.

But if you only have enough space in your ears for one jazz fusion album this month, make it Peter Somuah’s Letter to the Universe (ACT Music, 41 mins). The young Ghanaian trumpeter’s second album takes a celestial, spiritual approach, creating a cosmic jazz with elements of bebop and post-bop, big band, jazz-rock, highlife and, of course, hip-hop. Miles Davis is an ever-present reference, and there are guest turns from Ghanaian stars such as highlife legend Gyedu-Bley Ambolley and up-and-coming Frafra kologo player and singer Stevo Atambire of Alostmen. From the superb trumpet playing to the intelligent compositions and arrangements, this is a brilliant album – there’s surely more great things to come from Peter Somuah.

Nils Økland & Sigbjørn Apeland - Glimmer

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 191, October 2023.

Nils Økland & Sigbjørn Apeland
Glimmer
ECM Records (48 mins)

Hardanger fiddle player and violinist Nils Økland and harmonium player Sigbjørn Apeland have been making music together for 30 years, but Glimmer is only their second album of duets – and their first since 2011. It was worth the wait.

Økland and Apeland channel their homes of Nord-Rogaland and Sunnhordland in western Norway, using the traditional music of those regions as a basis for controlled, thoughtful improvisations, with occasional influence from medieval, baroque and atonal 20th century art music. The results are breathtaking. The amount of sound created from just two instruments is epic, but it never feels overwhelming. Instead, the tones echo as if from across the fjord, reflecting a natural, spacious beauty. The effect is calm and haunting, poignant and bittersweet, even a little unsettling, with its deep, heavy drones and subtle clashes of tuning between the Hardanger fiddle and harmonium.

Glimmer is a triumph of emotion and restraint, an album imbued with a trust and an understanding that can only come from three decades of collaboration between two of Norway’s most respected musicians.

Maalem Mahmoud Gania - Colours of the Night

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 191, October 2023.

Maalem Mahmoud Gania
Colours of the Night
Hive Mind Records (71 mins)

The sacred Sufi trance music of the Moroccan Gnawa people is one of the great traditions of the African continent. Before his death in 2015, maalem (ceremonial master) Mahmoud Gania brought Gnawa music to new heights and new audiences, including collaborations with jazz and rock musicians. Colours of the Night was his final recording, made in 2013, and here he goes back to the roots.

The performances are, unsurprisingly, top-notch. Accompanied by the unmistakable bluesy sounds of his gimbri (bass lute) and the polyrhythmic krakeb (metal castanets) of his chorus, Gania’s aged but powerful voice reaches high to call down the spirits of the West African Fulbe, Bamana and Hausa from whom the Gnawa descend. With simple and effective production, Gania and his troupe give listeners a glimpse of the heady energy of a lila (ceremony).

Although this album represents the last hurrah of a master, it is also a herald of the new generation, featuring a then-17-year-old Asmâa Hamzaoui, who is now making waves as Gnawa’s first professional female gimbri player. Colours of the Night is, above all, a fitting swansong for Gania, a musician who did so much for the preservation and advancement of his art and his people.

Naïssam Jalal - Healing Rituals

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 190, August/September 2023.

Naïssam Jalal
Healing Rituals
Les Couleurs du Son (48 mins)

Syrian-French flautist Naïssam Jalal has been somewhat overlooked as a composer and bandleader, but with this album – her ninth! – hopefully that will change. Healing Rituals is Jalal’s paean to the therapeutic and healing abilities of music, with each of its eight pieces a ‘ritual’ dedicated to a power of nature – wind, sun, hills, rivers, ground, forests, moon and mist. It’s a gem.

Flutes and voice lead a quartet with cello, double bass and drum kit, a classy chamber ensemble that allows for beautiful harmonies while avoiding dense chords. The compositions occupy the worlds of jazz and classical without sitting fully in either, and Jalal uses that inbetweenness to introduce many other soundworlds. She is clearly a passionate scholar of many flute traditions, and their influence seeps through the whole album as she channels the Fula tambin, Hindustani bansuri, Ethiopian washint and Irish low-whistle as well as the European classical concert flute and the Arabic ney of her own formal education. It’s all given a thoughtful, sensitive and playful treatment where energy flows freely without ever boiling over.

This is music that defies categories, instead breathing free like the nature of its inspiration – Naïssam Jalal’s skills as a musician and composer are hard to ignore.

Qwalia - Sound and Reason

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 190, August/September 2023.

Qwalia
Sound and Reason
Alberts Favourites (41 mins)

Four of London’s most dynamic musicians enter the studio in April 2021. Then follows a two-day voyage of non-stop, all-improvised sonic exploration, rooted in contemporary funk- and hip-hop-informed jazz, with elements of downtempo and trip-hop, an 80s synth aesthetic, hints of dub, ambient and Afrobeat and nods to Afrofuturism. They emerge with 13 hours of music on record. Two years later, and that material has been boiled down and massaged into a lovely 41-minute debut album.

The quartet is Tal Janes on guitar, Ben Reed on bass, Joseph Costi on keys and bandleader Yusuf Ahmed on drums – each member provides a vital role, and their layers of melody and atmosphere reward repeated listening: maybe this time a bassline will jump out at you, or some inspired guitar vamps, or a particularly pleasing synth pad. The most striking track is ‘Vagherah’, which is built around a sample of the great qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan speaking at a London concert. Placed in front of a super draggy beat, it gives an interesting effect of Khan rapping – it’s very strange but it works really well.

What a way for Qwalia to make their mark. Definitely one to keep an ear on.

Captain Planet - Sounds Like Home

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 190, August/September 2023.

Captain Planet
Sounds Like Home
Bastard Jazz Recordings (57 mins)

Building on the stylistic journey of his 2020 album NO VISA, American DJ and producer Captain Planet brings retro styles to the fore within a world of electronica. The previous album was a well-rounded, intelligent fusion while still providing a fun dance soundtrack – Sounds Like Home falls flat in comparison.

That’s not to say it’s not technically and musically accomplished. It has Captain Planet’s usual globetrotting, with a large number of guest artists and an even wider array of international (mainly pan-American) influences that are handled competently alongside styles such as light funk, disco, acid jazz, synth pop and synthwave. The problem is, with so much going on, it all starts to blend together into fairly cliché tropical pop. The retro influences are polished to an unnatural shine, and any potentially quirky or challenging edges are sanded smooth. Occasional solos provide the highlights, but these are disappointingly few and far between.

It’s light, loungey dance music. Unfortunately it feels less like the sounds of home and more like the sounds of a hotel bar: pleasant and enjoyable for its vibes as background mood music, but ultimately lacking in nutritional value.

Press release: Chouk Bwa & The Ångströmers - Somanti

First written as a press release for the album for Ballantyne Communications.

Chouk Bwa & The Ångströmers
Somanti
Bongo Joe Records (38 mins)

Following on from their successful first collaborative album Vodou Alé (2020), Chouk Bwa and The Ångströmers release their second full-length LP, Somanti, with Bongo Joe Records on 6th October 2023. This mature but celebratory reunion mixes the powerful Vodou rituals of Haiti with compelling avant-garde electronic music and dub, born amid the creative whirlwind of a live tour.

The two groups come from very different traditions. Chouk Bwa hail from Gonaïves, the heartland of Haitian Vodou and the birthplace of the country’s independence; their mizik rasin (roots music) is steeped in the profound spirituality of the lakou temples, the revolutionary history of their hometown, and the African heritage of its people. Brussels-based duo The Ångströmers channel their passion for musique concrète, dub, hardcore and industrial and their expert knowledge of all manner of analogue electronics into a sympathetic but all-encompassing production. Both groups are connected by their ability to whip their listeners into ecstatic trance.

Together, their music ebbs and flows. Sometimes it smoulders like crackling embers, sometimes it explodes; sometimes it is a cappella, sometimes a wall of distorted drumscapes; sometimes uplifting, sometimes disturbing. It is always both deeply traditional and deeply contemporary, a union of America, Africa and Europe. In every direction, it is dance, trance music – equally at home at a rave or in a temple.

⁂

First crossing paths in 2016, the two groups began to formulate a joint project that led to their first performance together in 2018, and then quickly onto recording sessions. After a year of production, their debut album made it into the world. A lot has happened since then. A globally-enforced international separation meant that a tour planned for May 2020 was cancelled. The groups wouldn’t meet again for two-and-a-half years.

But the collaboration lived on, with two dubwise 12” EPs, Ayiti Kongo Dub #1 and #2, both released in 2022. When Chouk Bwa and The Ångströmers were finally reunited in May 2022, it was for an intense European tour. 32 concerts were interspersed with near-constant rehearsals, discussions, experiments, intercultural dialogue, and meticulous musical negotiations. It was during this time that the material for Somanti grew, organically.



“Being reunited again meant that we played with those tracks, we arranged them in many ways, and they became something totally different,” says Frederic Alstadt of The Ångströmers. “We had toured for about two months and we set up three days of recording sessions at a studio in Brussels, and basically we recorded everything in one day. There was one day of set-up, one day of recording and one day of fine tuning. We were playing live in the studio, and then we spent about two weeks producing it. It was done pretty fast, actually. It really came from the live energy.”

Although the process was much quicker, it has resulted in a more mature sound based on the closeness of the collaboration itself, the mutual respect and a deeper understanding of each other’s traditions, methods, and tastes.

Where Vodou Ale focussed on new compositions and narrative songs, Somanti is an album of ritual. Most of the pieces are based on ceremonial music with traditional lyrics disclosing wise proverbs. It is important to the musicians that the complexity and solemnity of the religious aspect is retained. Michael Wolteche, manager of Chouk Bwa, explains: “In Vodou, all of the rites have different rhythms. We could choose the ones that would most please Western ears, but we will not do that, we keep all of the different aspects. This is our way to respect a very complex, subtle culture. It is not just entertainment music. It is meant to bring the people to trance, but for people in Europe or the US, to bring a spiritual connection to the party.”

Chouk Bwa’s music is all-acoustic: it is the sound of wood, skin, metal, horn, and the human voice singing in Haitian Creole. There are strong cultural memories and rhythms within this music, in its invocations of the ancestral lands – the African kingdoms of Oyo, Kongo and Dahomey – and the shouted proclamations of the transcontinental Vodou spirit-deities of Legba, Ogou and Inan. There is a joyfulness in the songs, in their beautiful, relaxed harmony and dance-demanding rhythms, but there is also a darker side, an empathetic rage, bearing witness to injustice and advocating for the world’s poor.

The addition of The Ångströmers changes none of that, yet together they create a truly unique style. The cultures and their musics are combined carefully. The electronics are analogue, and vintage. No click-track, no sequencers, nothing that constricts music’s humanity in favour of rigidity and exactness: this is not a collaboration that can be restrained by the tyranny of computers. These rhythms, textures and tempos undulate like liquid, an effect only possible when each musician reacts to every other around them. As the Haitian and Belgian musicians are connected, the synthesised is linked directly with the organic, creating a seamless, cross-cultural, electro-acoustic percussive barrage. Musicians, instruments, electronics, audience, spirits: all are joined as one on Somanti.


Photo: Chouk Bwa & The Ångströmers, by Davide Belotti.

Jantra - Synthesized Sudan: Astro-Nubian Electronic Jaglara Dance Sounds from the Fashaga Underground

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 189, July 2023.

Jantra
Synthesized Sudan: Astro-Nubian Electronic Jaglara Dance Sounds from the Fashaga Underground
Ostinato Records (36 mins)

Jaglara is the sound of one man and one keyboard, emanating from the rural al-Fashaga region near the tripoint of Sudan-Ethiopia-Eritrea. The man is Jantra, and with his trusty Yamaha keyboard (hacked to produce distinctive Sudanese tunings and rhythms), he is known for hosting raucous street parties where he improvises, invents and innovates his music on the spot for hours on end.

This is Jantra’s first-ever release, and it’s a unique creation: a combination of his old cassette recordings and new performances from those legendary parties recorded live and directly from the keyboard, literally re-mixed together by producer Janto Koité. It’s a masterpiece of sympathetic production wizardry – and necessary to boil down Jantra’s non-stop improvisations into a ten-track album.

Each track starts as if it’s going to be fairly simple synth-powered reggae-influenced pop, but then slowly evolves into complex layers of melody, chords, rhythms and effects that expand until they fill the aural space. The slightly-loping beats push constantly forwards, compelling you to dance with your chest and shoulders, while the melodies reflect the musical cultures of Afro-Arabic Sudan in the West and the Horn of Africa in the East, and the universe beyond. Jantra and his jaglara sound are revelations of intergalactic retrofuturism from the Sudanese countryside.

Hey Joe: Dispatch from Geneva, Switzerland

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 189, July 2023.



The centre of Geneva is the seat of some of the world’s most influential political and economic mechanisms. Amid the hundreds of international organisations, UN departments and NGOs, overlooked by the high-powered banks and next to the five-star hotels and purveyors of luxury goods, there is a small island surrounded by the crystal-blue waters of the Rhône. Here, in a converted 19th century abattoir, is the somewhat unexpected location of the unofficial headquarters of the city’s exciting underground global music scene: Bongo Joe Records.

Bongo Joe is a lot of things: a music shop of breathtaking scope, a hip record label, a café-bar, a performance space, and – perhaps most importantly – a meeting place for any and all with a passion for music. It acts as a beacon for the scene, a starting point and a shibboleth for creatives with enquiring minds and eclectic tastes. With a clientele of musicians and producers discovering and sharing ideas and influences over record racks and drinks, this relaxed atmosphere of artistic exploration gives the place a frisson of inspiration. It’s hardly a surprise that Bongo Joe is an epicentre for many exciting projects in Geneva. Cyril Yeterian – musician, music lover and founder of Bongo Joe – explains the philosophy of it all: “Bongo Joe is open to everyone, the goal is to mix different social scales. On the terrace you can have some open-minded bankers and a punk with a dog and some young broke students, everyone mixes. We are fighting to keep our lives and others people’s lives interesting, sharing ideas and sharing our feelings and emotions and being surrounded by culture and art. It’s crazy because we’re surrounded by what rules the world: private banking, the biggest luxury brands… and we are here with our cultural project.” In a time where the arts – especially independent and radical arts – are being pushed further and further outside of city centres, it’s refreshing that an association such as Bongo Joe can not only exist right in the heart of Geneva, but thrive there. It helps that their landlords are the city itself, which keeps rents at a manageable rate – how heartening to see city governance giving support to musical endeavours aside from the most prestigious concert halls and money-focused ventures.

Today’s Genevese underground arose from the city’s squatting movement of the 1980s and 90s, when political and economic factors combined to create radical occupied community and arts spaces. At that time, there were more squats in Geneva than anywhere else in Europe. “For almost 20 years, it was a golden age, a laboratory of cultural directions,” explains Yeterian, who grew up immersed in the squat movement. “You could eat for cheap, sleep for cheap and obviously refugees would come and be welcomed. It brought a lot of people to Geneva. In the early 2000s it all changed. Police and politics tore down everything in about two years. But there are still some very important things left, and this is in the DNA of the scene – there is still a very active underground scene to which we belong, we still have places to express ourselves.” The musical legacy of the squats remains in the stages housed in reclaimed factories and the all-embracing, always-moving attitude of its players.

Geneva is small – it has less than 200,000 people, but they represent 180 nationalities; 40% of the population are not Swiss nationals and there are significant communities from the Latin American, North African and Eastern European diasporas. And those people are making music, finding an exciting and welcoming home within the underground scene. There are few bands that embody global Geneva as clearly as Yalla Miku. They are a septet that features four of the city’s veteran musical alchemists (including Yeterian himself) as well as three musicians who joined the scene more recently as political refugees: Eritrean krar player Samuel Ades, Moroccan gimbri player Anouar Baouna and Algerian percussionist Ali Bouchaki. Together they mix the iconic sounds of Gnawa, Arabic and Tigrinya music with Krautrock, electronica, synth-pop, punk and jazz fusion. For Yeterian, the band is a distillation of all that Bongo Joe stands for, a city in microcosm: “Yalla Miku is a blend of the experimenters of Geneva, and for me, this is the real Geneva. The international Geneva that I cherish the most is the one from the underground and the communities of people that came here for other reasons.”

Yalla Miku, Bongo Joe and underground Geneva as a whole – they’re about joining people who have gravitated to the city through whatever chance or circumstance, all exploring their own heritage while experimenting wildly together through music – and that is as true for the audiences as it is for the artists. And they’re proof that real, down-to-earth art can flourish even at the heart of most expensive, gentrified cities.


Photo: Bongo Joe Records in Geneva.

Fred Davis - Cleveland Blues

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 189, July 2023.

Fred Davis
Cleveland Blues
Colemine / Remined Records (32 mins)

Fred ‘Dave’ Davis was a musician in Kansas City, Missouri, but by the late 1960s, hard luck and prison had led him to factory work in Cleveland, Ohio. His colleagues encouraged Davis to get a band together and make some recordings in their boss’s living room, but those demos sat in an attic for more than half a century. Now they’re finally out in the world.

Davis’ music is raw rhythm and blues. He jams out the jump-up urban style with a down-to-earth grit from his harsh, lo-fi electric guitar – but there are also piano boogies and more reflective acoustic blues here too. These are real rough and ready recordings. Davis’ voice is sometimes drowned out by the guitar or drums, there are bum notes and times when the band fall out-of-sync before finding their groove again. But the vibe is perfect: the energy in the room is electric, the musicians are cooking, and Davis’ quality as a singer and guitarist shine through. It’s dirty and chaotic, but it’s the real deal and it’ll make you move in the right way.

Davis was shot and killed in 1988. He never got the limelight in his lifetime, but these rediscovered recordings give the chance for Davis and his rocking blues to get some of the appreciation they deserved.

Fendika & K-Sanchis - Gojo

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 189, July 2023.

Fendika & K-Sanchis
Gojo
121234.records (53 mins)

For 14 years, the Fendika ensemble have represented the Addis Ababa azmaribet (traditional Ethiopian music-house) of the same name, serving as its house band, touring internationally and collaborating with experimental collectives such as the Ex and Large Unit. And they’re collaborating again, this time with members of Swiss-based Trio Kazanchis (here renamed K-Sanchis) led by saxophonist Jeroen Visser. The concept is less experimental this time, though, with the intent to channel the spirit of classic Ethio-jazz using mostly traditional instruments in addition to a small horn section.

The arrangements are clean if not particularly earth-shattering, but this album really shines in its frequent solos: instead of short spotlights, the solos here are long, giving the improviser time and space to create and develop ideas into narrative shapes over the rolling accompaniment. There are many great solos throughout Gojo, but the standouts come from Habtamu Yeshambel and his electric masenqo (one-string fiddle) who always brings the heat, whether in a smoulder or in fireworks. Highlights also come where the influences lean slightly further afield – the track ‘Adage’ has a jump blues feel; ‘Restraint’ takes cues from Afrobeat.

While this project isn’t the most original in its scope, the quality of the musicians ensures a playful, classy and enjoyable album.

Bored Drummers - Songlines Soapbox

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 188, June 2023.



Drummers: we love ‘em. They are – quite literally – the heartbeat of much of the world's music, whether they’re holding down an ensemble in a groove or whipping up the audience with a frenzied battery. There are few more intoxicating experiences than those led by polyrhythms blasted from drum-skins, and for that, drummers, we humbly thank you. But over the past decade or so, I’ve slowly become aware of an on-going epidemic that is sweeping the rhythmic community with frightening effect… I'm talking of course about the plight of Bored Drummers in Quiet Sections of Concerts. It really is a worrying trend. The most easily infected are kit drummers who play in bands, but players of single drums and percussion sets are definitely not immune.

You may have noticed some of the symptoms yourself. They manifest whenever the tempo slows and the ensemble quietens to a hush; maybe it’s during a subdued solo, an introductory a cappella section, or perhaps a stripped back mid-piece breakdown that renders a drummer's usual soundcraft unsuitable. Without a strong pulse to solidify, the drummer starts to get bored and, in an effort to keep their attention on the job at hand, they start to make vague, indistinct noises with their kit or whatever they have close to hand. The first indications of the Bored Drummer are fairly basic and innocuous: rumbling on the tom-toms, using soft beaters to create a wash of cymbals (the more bored the drummer, the more cymbals are involved; bonus points if they’ve managed to sneak a gong onto the stage), or tinkling on a strategically placed set of chimes.

But from those initial inklings of the condition, the possibilities are endless. It can take many eclectic and eccentric forms. Anything that can make an interesting yet still essentially non-descript sound is fair game: cowrie shells are rattled, spring-based contraptions are used to imitate thunder, cymbals are sounded with violin bows, all manner of rainsticks, maracas and home-made bell trees are shaken… I’ve even encountered musicians picking up and dropping heavy chains just to have something to do. The really out-there go so far as to entertain themselves with unpitched wind instruments such as conches, bullroarers and whirly-tubes. Maybe you haven’t noticed this habit yet, but you will now I’ve mentioned it. And you’ll notice it every single time it happens.

Where does this strange phenomenon come from? I guess it’s rooted in the big Late Romantic orchestras with their huge percussion sections – the composers needed to entertain their musicians through multi-hour works, and so littered them with frequent timpani rolls and cymbal crashes. But I think this current strain dates back to small-band jazz. In the early days, jazz drummers could get away with shuffling on a snare with brushes in the quiet bits, but eventually the long ballads and unmetered solo sections of more progressive styles rendered the drummers’ keen technical abilities temporarily surplus to requirements. From there, the boredom only increased, and the phenomenon of random percussive twiddling started to spread.

“It adds atmosphere!” the drummers will no doubt be quick to plead, from all the way back there on their little platforms. And sometimes it does, if their contributions are subtle enough, employed sparingly and judiciously by thoughtful and skilled musicians. But that’s not usually the case, is it? More often than not, it offers little more than vague, contextless white noise that – if anything – gets in the way of whatever atmosphere is being created, especially if the audience’s attention is diverted from that atmosphere towards the ostentatious percussion the drummer is now brandishing.

I’m sure you’ll agree, the problem of Bored Drummers is clearly a worrying trend. So how can we fix it? Well, some solutions have already begun making their way onto the stage. Lately, some drummers have been given a little keyboard or Kaoss pad, with the task of adding a drone, ostinato or other synthesised atmosphere to these quieter moments. It won’t work in every scenario, but it’s much more welcome than the current state – although it does come with the added danger of allowing a drummer the dangerous capability of full scales. Can you imagine the carnage? God forbid.

Maybe the solution could be to offset the quieter moments with more loud ones. Let’s hear more drum solos! We don’t seem to get as much of these nowadays, and a tasty solo is always fun. If we have more of them, maybe we’ll tire the drummers out so that they won’t need to use their bottled-up Animal-esque energy during the quiet bits. Or maybe we can all chip in and give them all a small handheld games console that they can whip out during more subdued moments to entertain themselves (ideally with headphones attached)? I don’t know.

To any drummers reading – we care about you, we need you and we appreciate your contributions to music all over the world for the past 7,500 years. We want you to be safe, and we don’t want you to be bored. Keep doing what you do best: creating thick topiaries of thumping bombast and crashing cymbal, or else an intricate filigree of complex polyrhythm. And when things slow down and take an introspective turn, put down that extravagant home-made noisemaker or whatever other doohickey you’re reaching for. Let the music breathe and the atmospheric mists rise unmolested by crinkles, rattles or chimes. Don’t get struck down by the Bored Drummers in Quiet Sections of Concerts illness – we’re all here to support you and protect you and keep you doing the Music Gods’ work. Now, we’ll see you next time you’re on stage, and we look forward to hearing your art. Stay well, stay healthy. And maybe you can keep a shaky egg, for very special occasions only.


Photo: Drum kit, by Ewan Topping. Used under licence CC BY 2.0.

Obituary: Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru (1923-2023)

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 188, June 2023.



It’s a rare and beautiful thing to experience an artist whose work is utterly their own, that defies easy comparison or categorisation; to listen to music that one can only meaningfully describe using abstract, effusive terms. That is the music that Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru made when she sat down at her piano.

Her music is a unique style of Ethiopian pianism. It contains depths. The elegant cascades of her piano’s keys call forth memories, histories, influences: Beethoven, Debussy, Art Tatum, Satie, Chopin, Scott Joplin, courtly waltzes, Ethiopian Orthodox chants and folk melodies, the dignified hymns of the giant begena lyre, life’s hardships and joys, her beloved family members, her deep spirituality, her compassion. Her pieces don’t flourish in virtuosity, but precision; masterworks of chiaroscuro, they offer comfort, suspense and surprise. Languid rubato and unexpected turnarounds of tonality make her music drift and flow like heavy frankincense smoke, or a tide, or a waterfall. There is no separating composition from performance, as they are both hers alone.

Emahoy Tsege-Mariam’s life story is just as astonishing. Born Yewubdar Gebru into an important political family in Addis Ababa in 1923, she had a whirlwind of an early life, with time as a schoolgirl in Switzerland, a prisoner-of-war in Italy, and a scholar of European classical violin and piano in Egypt. A promising career beckoned, but Yewubdar’s musical life was abruptly halted when Emperor Selassie refused her permission to continue her studies in England. After falling into depression and illness, faith guided her to sneak away to a monastery in the countryside. By the time she was 25, Yewubdar had become a nun of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, taking the title of Emahoy and changing her name to Tsege-Mariam.



It was after taking the veil that she created her singular musical style and composed most of her 150-plus works. But the music has always been just one thread in her life’s work of charity. Upon witnessing the homelessness of young people studying at her church, she dedicated herself to the poor and needy. Whenever she recorded her compositions and released albums, she made sure that all the proceeds went directly to orphanages. After several years of working for the Orthodox church in Jerusalem, Tsege-Mariam eventually moved to the Holy City for good in 1984. Living a semi-hermetic life in a monastery, she continued to help the poor in Israel and Ethiopia, continuing to practice piano daily.

It was in these later years that her music started to get the reach and attention it deserved, spearheaded by a compilation of her older recordings as Éthiopiques, Vol. 21 in 2006. The album was a revelation, and gained her fans around the world. Her compositions have been used in various film soundtracks, a documentary about her own life is currently in production, and two more albums of her work are set to be released in 2023 – with all proceeds, as ever, to those in need.

Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru died months short of her 100th birthday. In a review of her latest album, Jerusalem, I wrote that ‘Emahoy Tsege-Mariam is a living musical treasure.’ She may no longer be with us, but the treasure of her music will live for a long time to come.


Photo by kind permission of the Emahoy Tsege Mariam Music Foundation.

Ahl Nana - L'Orchestre National Mauritanien

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 188, June 2023.

Ahl Nana
L'Orchestre National Mauritanien
Radio Martiko (68 mins)

A never-before-released record of a once-famous, almost-forgotten group who were the progenitors of their very own style: this album is a crate-digger’s dream. It’s also a record that might even rewrite music history – label Radio Martiko announces that it ‘mark[s] the birth of the genre that is known in the West as Desert Blues.’

Ahl Nana were some of the first stars of modern music in Mauritania in the 1960s and 70s – a family band from the country’s Arab-Berber population, their music combined traditional Berber styles with modern sensibilities and cosmopolitan influences from across the trans-Saharan trade route. To add to the novelty, they substituted traditional instruments for Western ones: the one-string rababa fiddle became a violin, and the tidinit lute sat alongside electric guitar, with a conga-type drum and tambourine standing in for the tbal (kettle drum) and daghumma (rattle). The songs composed by the group’s violinist, leader and matriarch Debya mint Soueid Bouh became known across the Sahara.

Despite the group’s success, their performances remained the domain of concerts and radio sessions, rather than commercial records. A royal invitation to Morocco finally persuaded the group into the studio in Casablanca in 1971; they had fun, but that was the last they heard of the recordings. Records were pressed but never sold, and the Nana family never even saw a copy until Radio Martiko found some in a Moroccan backroom and arranged this reissue – it’s lucky for us that these recordings are finally reaching ears.

It might be cliché, but this music really does echo the Saharan environment: the guitar is distorted as if its amp is covered in grit, and the heterophonic melodies of the voices, violin and guitar jangle like howling winds. The performances sound informal, as if occurring in a family living room, which gives everything an enjoyable looseness and allows the songs to be expanded up to the ten-minute mark. And yes, sometimes it does sound really bluesy – some of the tracks could definitely host a harmonica solo without anything sounding out of place – but there are surprises, too: the album’s opener is a version of the Bollywood classic ‘Aajkal Tere Mere Pyar Ke Charche’, sung in the original Hindi with a distinctive Saharan edge to its rhythms. The broad international influences, the combination of traditional and contemporary, the radiant cool of it all and the high-quality recording all add up to an album that sounds much more modern than its 1971 creation.

So what about the claim that this is the birth of the ‘desert blues’? Well, that awkward term is always an imposition from a Western perspective – it’s a label that encompasses many different styles from many different cultures, only linked by a passing similarity to the American-born blues. Asking whether something is or is not desert blues is usually the wrong question. Nevertheless, Ahl Nana’s music does seem to have deep resonations throughout Saharan culture. In a fascinating interview included in the album’s sleeve notes, singer Mouna mint Nana mentions that her family’s success influenced other groups to make music that was not only modern and international, but indelibly Mauritanian as well, an aesthetic that spread out across the Sahara. Important and hugely popular musicians such as Tinariwen and Youssou N’Dour took Ahl Nana’s songs into their repertoire, and their own impact has reached around the world.

In the end, issues of rarity and questions of historical impact are all secondary to the music itself. And this music is lovely, made at a crossroads between cultures and between tradition and modernity, and throwing up a unique and sometimes surprising sound that is deeply Saharan. This reissue is an honour to the legacy of Debya mint Soueid Bouh and her family.

Entoto Band - Entoto Band

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 188, June 2023.

Entoto Band
Entoto Band
Guitar Globetrotter Recordings (37 mins)

Entoto Band are a Netherlands-based group directed by guitarist Joep Pelt and fronted by Ethiopian singer Helen Mengistu and Eritrean saxophonist and singer Amanyal ‘Million’ Tewelde. Like so many modern Ethio-jazz groups, they are clearly heavily inspired by the classic, timeless Swinging Addis-era sounds, the distinctive pentatonic melody lines and gently loping rhythms. But Entoto Band make those styles their own with thick layers of heavy, dirty funk (powered by Hammond organ and a meaty synth bass) and more subtle references to Cuban music, soul, dub, Afrobeat and even house music, as well as modern Habesha pop.

The use of instrumentation is particularly impressive here. The six-piece group make deft use of multitracking (multiple synth parts at once; Amanyal’s saxophone and synth-aerophone lines becoming a whole horn section) without taking away from any individual’s effort – everyone gets a chance to shine. The rhythm section of synths-drums-percussion is always tight, and always grooves hard, with enough space for the fireworks of whoever is stepping to the plate next.

Entoto Band’s debut record really serves to underline just how epochal original Ethio-jazz scene was, and just how flexible that style can be, that it can still sound so fresh and exciting in so many different contexts while remaining immediately recognisable.

Dur-Dur Band International - The Berlin Session

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 188, June 2023.

Dur-Dur Band International
The Berlin Session
Outhere Records (37 mins)

In the 1980s, Dur-Dur Band were one of Somalia’s biggest groups, in high demand and performing their uniquely Somali disco in nightclubs and hotels all over the country. But the 90s brought civil war and an oppressive regime, and Dur-Dur’s members scattered across the globe.

Reissues of the band’s classic albums have gained acclaim, but The Berlin Sessions marks their first original release since their split. Sort of. Dur-Dur Band International aren’t the Dur-Dur Band but a Dur-Dur Band, one of multiple rival formations continuing the group’s legacy. This is the UK-based faction, headed by bassist (and the only original member) Cabdillahi Cujeeri. But really, that’s all politics. What do they sound like? Well, not great.

The group’s signature groove is still there – a mix of disco, funk, reggae, soul and Somali styles such as dhaanto and heelo – but the performances feel too loose, missing the crispness of a band playing as one. The spacious and reverb-laden production doesn’t help here, instead making the separate sounds blurry and hard to distinguish. And up at the front, none of the group’s three singers really give a stand-out performance either.

It’s great that live Somali music is back in the studio and on the stage, but this isn’t the triumphant return that Dur-Dur Band deserves.

A Brief History of Ethiojazz for the Musically Curious

First published by Selamta, the Ethiopian Airlines online magazine.



Ethiopia’s music is a deep ocean, full of as many different types of folk, religious, classical and pop music as you can think of, representing more than 80 culture groups. There’s so much beautiful, intriguing and special Ethiopian music to hear… but over the past 25 years, there’s one particular style that has become a global phenomenon: Ethiojazz.

In the mid-1960s, a new musical scene was bubbling up in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. After working in state-owned institutional bands during the day, musicians would take their instruments to the nightclubs and bars and play what people really wanted to hear. This was a style that mixed soul, funk, rock ‘n’ roll, gospel and jazz with something unmistakably Ethiopian: it was all based on the qeñet, a system of five-note scales from Ethiopia’s highlands, where each scale has its own personality and emotion. With unique inflections influenced by traditional instruments, melodies using the qeñet have an indefinable Ethiopianness that makes them immediately recognisable.

And so the city grooved to this new pop, full of funky horns, solid rhythms, Amharic lyrics and a distinctive urban-folk tinge. It was fresh, exciting and – importantly – Ethiopian. This was Swinging Addis.

To read the rest of this potted history, head over to the original article at the Selamta website.


Photo: Walias Band.

From the Horse's Mouth: Postcard from Antrobus, Cheshire

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 187, May 2023.



Outside the front entrance of a village pub in mid-Cheshire, an autumnal drizzle just about starting, a motley gang has assembled with all manner of strange costumes and disguises. An ambassador has already run ahead to warn the bar staff and order in a round. Then, as one, the group opens their mouths and start singing: “Here come one, two, three jolly good hearty lads, and we’re all in one mind / For this night we come a-souling, good nature to find / for this night we come a-souling as it does appear / and it’s all that we are souling for is your ale and strong beer.” Inside, some unsuspecting patrons look around quizzically, wondering what the fuss is about. Once the singing has finished, there is a loud knock on the front door and all hell breaks loose.

This is a typical visit of the Antrobus Soul-Cakers, who come together every year to continue mid-Cheshire’s most iconic folk tradition. Soul-Caking is a real hodgepodge of a custom – part-play, part-visitation, part-fertility ritual of unknown ancient origin – performed on October 31 (and for a couple of weeks afterwards) at pubs throughout the region, usually four per night. Once, every village had its own Soul-Caking gang, but nowadays Antrobus is the only one with an unbroken lineage stretching back centuries.

Officially, I’m here to record the performances for the British Library sound archive, adding to the recordings of the same group from the 1950s and 1970s. We met up at the gang’s base at the Antrobus Arms to chat and listen to the old recordings, and then it’s off to delight the patrons of pubs in nearby Stretton, Rudheath, Davenham and Moulton with my recording equipment in tow. But I’m actually here for a more personal reason.

I’m from Cheshire – I grew up in a village only four miles away from Antrobus – yet I’d never even heard of Soul-Caking until after I’d left home, moved to the city and gained a belated interest in folk music and traditions in earnest. That such an important, old and well-known custom had existed just down the road from me without ever entering my consciousness left me in wonder, and with a tinge of shame. I’ve returned to finally witness a living part of my home culture for the first time.

So I find myself in a pub, surrounded by madness. The play is a whirlwind of sword-fights, madcap characters, shrieking, bellowing, poetry, jokes, braggadocio, heckling, light-hearted pint theft and a star turn by Dick the Horse, a real horse’s skull painted black, white and red, with a jaw that snaps at the command of its puppeteer hidden under a sackcloth body. After 20-or-so minutes, and with a final song and a quick drink afterwards, the gang are away to their next stop.



For the punters in the pub, it can all be a bit baffling. Some people know it’s happening and have come down especially. Others are completely bemused: pleasant family meals and girls’-nights-out are interrupted by the completely unexplained chaos. Some take it well, gazing with perplexed wonderment and getting into the spirit of things by the end; others ignore the weirdness with bored indifference, and a few – always men – seem to take its existence in their space as an insult or challenge and get a bit aggressive.

Each pub has its own distinctive atmosphere and audience, and a different performance because of it. Some pubs are electric, everyone gets into it and the Soul-Cakers adlib all over the place; in others, the crowd is dead and the play is rushed through as quickly as possible, with a bunch of material skipped and much grumbling from the players. Every performance is a new experience – it also helps that everyone becomes successively more lubricated as the night wears on. In true folk fashion, things stay the same while changing constantly.

I leave the last pub at gone midnight, knackered, tipsy and slightly stung by a few errant whips of a riding crop, but absolutely buzzing. My official duties are fulfilled, and my soul feels nourished too. Not only have I experienced an important part of my own cultural heritage for the very first time, but I’m back speaking in a broad Cheshire accent I hadn’t even noticed I’d lost. What an honour.

At the end of each play, to cheers from the pub-goers and a frying-pan passed around to collect for charity, the Antrobus Soul-Cakers strike up for a final verse: “And now our play is ended, and we can no longer stay / But with your kind permission we will come another day / But before we go, we’ll have you to know, we'll have you to understand / We’re a credit to old England, we’re the boys of the Antrobus gang!”


Photos: (top) The Antrobus Soul-Cakers in their natural habitat (the pub); (middle) Dick the Horse and his driver. Both photos by Nigel Farr.

Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru - Jerusalem

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 187, May 2023.

Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru
Jerusalem
Mississippi Records (35 mins)

Tsege-Mariam Gebru is an emahoy (sister) of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, living a hermetic life in Jerusalem at 99 years old. She is also the originator of a singular style of piano music. This collection – a set of home tapes and tracks from a long-lost 1972 LP – is the first release of her recordings since Éthiopiques 21 in 2006.

The headliner of the album is the song ’Quand La Mer Furieuse’, which marks the first time that Tsege-Mariam’s singing has been heard on record. While this is a fascinating novelty, it is her solo piano compositions that remain the real showcase of her genius. The impressionisms of Debussy and Satie are obvious parallels; there are connections to Gurdjieffian spiritual pianism, Viennese waltzes and even ragtime. But all comparisons fall short – this music is simply incomparable. The best description is in broad strokes: emotional, simple with deep complexities, gentle with great power like lapping waves and tides. Her compositions cascade and flow through European classical, Orthodox church music and Ethiopian folk, while remaining apart from them all. They are captivating, breathtaking and often tear-inspiring – nowhere moreso than in the newly-recovered pieces ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘The Home of Beethoven’.

Emahoy Tsege-Mariam is a living musical treasure, and these recordings are more precious artefacts in her unique trove.

Yalla Miku - Yalla Miku

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 187, May 2023.

Yalla Miku
Yalla Miku
Bongo Joe Records (32 mins)

Bongo Joe is a Geneva-based record label, music shop, café-bar, mission statement and musical philosophy. The new project Yalla Miku is what Bongo Joe would look like if it were also a seven-piece band. With members from Switzerland, Algeria, Morocco and Eritrea, this is the sound of multicultural Geneva.

Influences from rai, Gnawa, Tuareg music and Turkish psychedelia combine inside a cocoon of hip, energetic krautrock and synth pop; Red Sea scales are topped with Maghrebi beats; synths, distorted guitars and theremin conspire with digitally-altered krar, oud, gimbri, bendir and darbuka. Through a tangle of instruments, origins and moving parts, Yalla Miku create a transcontinental sound that coheres well, finding the commonalities in each style and remaining tight in their aims and arrangements.

It’s a successful debut. It absolutely explodes out of the gates with an opening track that demands dance (‘Premier du Matin’), and ends with a gloriously intense near-chaos (‘Suiise’). At its best it is exploratory, engaging and fun. It isn’t always at its best, but it’s usually not far off, and at the end I was sad there wasn’t more – always a good sign. Bongo Joe are a force for good in Geneva and in international music, and Yalla Miku are a great poster child.

Mze Shina - Elesa

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 186, April 2023.

Mze Shina
Elesa
Buda Musique (50 mins)

A quintet of American, Peruvian, French and Iranian origin, based in Rennes, Brittany, is a pretty odd collective of musicians to perform Georgian music, but with more than 25 years of study behind them, Mze Shina’s songs are almost enough to transport the listener directly to the Caucasus Mountains.

Now on their fifth album, and their first since 2018’s Odoïa, the group continue their quest to explore the depths of Georgia’s polyphonic vocal tradition while adding their own modern, international twist. Although the group’s repertoire is traditional, their arrangements are innovative and exciting, and seem to emphasise global polyphonic traditions, with subtle harkings to Occitania, Bulgaria, Albania and more throughout.

The group’s four voices – three male and one female – are in a near-constant tumble, with voices cropping up in various combinations, harmonies and different styles of polyphony throughout – there’s even some impressive rapid-fire yodelling. With just voice and percussion, each intertwining vocal part rings clear within the weaving, and this album’s new addition of Milad Pasta’s Persian percussion (daf, zarb and riqq) provides more intriguing connections both east and west.

Mze Shina’s music is modern, traditional, global and inescapably Georgian – no matter where they call home.

Ebo Krdum - Revolt for Change

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 186, April 2023.

Ebo Krdum
Revolt for Change
Epidemic Sound (27 min)

After his 2021 Top of the World album Diversity, Ebo Krdum has followed up with two albums for the royalty-free music platform Epidemic Sound in 2022: Love and Struggle in May and the latest Revolt for Change in December.

Originally from the Darfur region in western Sudan, Krdum is now based in Sweden. He’s worked with many Swedish musicians in the past, but for this album he’s mostly on his own, singing and playing guitar, ngoni and fiddle among others, occasionally helped out by a bassist or percussionist. Although he describes his music as ‘Afroblues and Afrobeat,’ his sound is very much anchored in West Africa. The way he constructs his songs and shapes his guitar lines shows a clear lineage to the Songhai style of Ali Farka Touré, from whose records Krdum learnt guitar as a child. In fact, apart from the languages used – mostly Sudani Arabic, with some Darfuri Masara and Daju – there are places where this could easily be mistaken for the latest album by a Touré or Traoré from Mali.

This album doesn’t have the same scope as Diversity in terms of style, but Krdum gives solid performances throughout, along with impassioned lyrics on war, corruption and hope.

Hermon Mehari - Asmara

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 185, March 2023.

Hermon Mehari
Asmara
Kosmos (35 mins)

Jazz trumpeter Hermon Mehari is a Kansas City native based in Paris, but his third album is a reflection of his father’s land of Eritrea. Mehari has only visited the country once when he was five years old, but the memories of that time, and the music and culture of his childhood home, infuse this personal and touching work.

The overwhelming vibe of Asmara is one of freshness. It has something of a spring morning to it. Mehari’s trumpet has such an airy tone that I wouldn’t be surprised if it was actually a flugelhorn, and his ensemble specialises in beautifully light washes of sound without forfeiting any passion or musicality – piano and vibraphone player Peter Schlamb gives a particularly superlative performance.

The Eritrean influences can be felt throughout, but they’re subtle, like hazy memories conjured from a pentatonic passage within a flowing solo or a slightly staggered Red Sea rhythm guiding a composition. It’s only during the two guest turns by Eritrean singer Faytinga that those vapours coalesce into sweet raindrops of nostalgia. Don’t be mistaken, Asmara is a jazz record to its core, and a very solid one at that: a thoughtful exploration of roots and diaspora identity.

Ten Ethiopian Musicians You Need to Listen to Right Now

First published by Selamta, the Ethiopian Airlines online magazine.



If you’ve never listened to Ethiopian music before, you’re in for a treat! Ethiopia has a huge musical culture, with styles spanning traditional music, song and dance from the country’s 80-plus culture groups; achingly beautiful liturgical song of the Orthodox Church dating back to the 6th century; and popular music from retro jazz grooves to the cheesiest pop singers and the hippest underground scenes. But what sets them apart is a unique musical system – a set of distinctive pentatonic (five-note) scales that makes Ethiopian music absolutely unmistakable. Here are ten must-hear artists to kick-start your journey into the wonderful world of Ethiopian music.

…and to read the full list, including Mahmoud Ahmed (pictured above), head over to the original article at the Selamta website.


Photo: Mahmoud Ahmed performing with Badume´s Band at TFF.Rudolstadt 2010, by Schorle. Used under licence CC BY-SA 2.0.

Debashish Bhattacharya - The Sound of the Soul

First published on The Quietus.

Debashish Bhattacharya
The Sound of the Soul
Abstract Logix (76 mins)

Debashish Bhattacharya was not the first to bring Hindustani classical music to the slide guitar, but he has certainly brought the field its most recent international recognition – helped by successful collaborations with musicians such as John McLaughlin. The Sound of the Soul is Bhattacharya’s first solo release since his 2017 tribute to Hawaiian guitar master Tau Moe; this time he moves back to the classical frame to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of his gurus, sarod pioneer Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. Here, Bhattacharya plays the chaturangui, an instrument of his own design that looks as beautiful as it sounds. A sort-of mix between a hollow-neck lap steel guitar and a hollow-body Gibson, it has a bunch of sympathetic strings that makes it distinctively Indian in its appearance and in the way each note rings out into the ether.

Read the full review over at The Quietus.