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.

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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.