'82' by 'Just a Band'- Ethereal Soulful Hip Hop Trance?

It was bound to happen... and it IS happening... little by little. The new cultural democracy fostered by the likes of MySpace, FaceBook, and YouTube is slowly bearing fruit... which is no surprise. When record companies crumble, after all, something will rise in its place, likely something very similar to what precipitated the crash in the first place. Flowers love ashes. What IS surprising, though, is that that democracy is crossing borders, to the unmediated delight of all of us who care about successful cultural syntheses. Maybe there IS some hope for our fragile planet of excitable primates after all.

So forget the band's lame name (btw I do offer a band-naming service at very reasonable rates). Forget the Shaft-like tough guy 'Makmende' ('make my day') viral video bad-acting mock-movie-trailer showcase for their song 'Ha He' that rocketed off the U-tube charts... consider the short-attention-span source. Forget the PR rap about how these guys deserve a scoring handicap since Kenya has power blackouts three days a week. That's pure, uh... exaggeration. Sure the power goes out once in a while, but nothing compared to Ethiopia... or even Tanzania. Kenya's pretty civilized... by sub-Sahara African standards at least.

Let's just consider the music. The pop music world is currently 'populated' (pun intended) by many diverse genres that seem to have little to do with one another, with even the best of it somehow lacking in something... something important... something unexplainable. But taken as a whole pop music is incredibly rich and diverse, an incredible story of cultural evolution over the last fifty years, if not longer. The history of the music by American blacks is more clear and concise, from gospel to blues to soul to hiphop, a tale of cultural self-discovery that has yet to reach its final chapter. And now a quantum leap has occurred, a leap across borders.

If combination is the essence of creativity, then that is exactly what 'Just a Band' has accomplished with '82'- the year band members Blinky, Dan and Jim were all born btw. The album opens with “Save My Soul”, an ethereal trance-like chant with its roots in pure gospel- 'you're gonna save my soul...I've been inside too long... you're gonna take me home'. Many Westerners might be surprised at the influence of gospel music in Africa and especially the African diaspora in the Caribbean, such it usually rates no street cred behind such trendy catchwords like Afro-Pop, Afro-Beat, etc., but the influence is there and strong. “Ha-He” is the funky epic rocker that inspired the 'Makmende' story, a killer tune, though the lyrics are incomprehensible except for a few references to 'defying gravity', no big deal for a Clint Eastwood-inspired superhero. “Extra” completes the killer trilogy, a playful childlike hip-hop that shows a wonderful sarcastic edge to their streetwise intellect- 'I wanna' be darker... thinner... better... cooler... wiser...'. These guys are wise beyond their circumstances, and their English is good, giving us a rare insightful look into the mindset of young modern- and most importantly intelligent- Africans.

“Kaa Ridho” is a song sung in Swahili, a kind of afro-rap, with some nice piano, while “Migingo Express”, also in Swahili, is more Afro-pop, with some Dylanesque harp, but the album is bogging down a bit at this point. “Usinibore” brings it right back with some trancey 'tronic existential chanting- 'Just because I'm an African with black skin... don't tell me what I can and can't do... I can change the world'. “Sunrise” continues in the same vein – yes, THAT vein- hypnotic, conga-laced afro-trance- 'all I want is to see your face changing... sun rising', but that's as close as the band gets to a love song. “Huff + Puff” is a bouncy electronic number with a catchy disco beat, and “Uko Mbele” plays for some commercial cache with lyrics like 'can I walk in the rain with you?', but the album has pretty much shot its wad by this point. The black-eyed phea-male vocals on the next two songs- “Forever People(Do It So Delicious)” and “Stay”- are good enough, but don 't really move the album forward, just philler. Ditto “BoogieDeeBweet”, an an electronic instrumental afterthought. That's the beauty of laptop listening- delete buttons.

This band's meat-and-potatoes (or chicken masala maybe?) is their successful combination of electronica and hiphop. The icing on the cake is their street-wise intellectuality that goes way beyond the boring pidgin poop that's become the norm for foreign bands... or hiphop, either, for that matter. Electronica needs an edge. Hiphop needs some smarts. Neither needs so much 'tude. These guys pull it off. That's '82' by JAB ('Just a Band'). Hardie K says check it out.

ROCKY DAWUNI’s` ‘Hymns for the Rebel Soul’- THE FUTURE OF REGGAE?

Okay, so I’m wrong sometimes. Not good enough? Okay, so I’m wrong lots of times. Still not good enough? Mea culpa mea culpa mea culpa mea culpa hari Krishna hari Krishna hari rama hari hari… just kidding. But what happened is that Rocky Dawuni played at the California Plaza water court in LA last year, and- not being familiar with his music beforehand- I was put off by his flying locks and macho strut, like God’s self-appointed peacock come to give form and color (and pheromones) to an otherwise murky muddy black-and-white world. We the lockless ones can be like that sometimes. We’ve got pheromones, too (in all fairness, I can be even harsher on beautiful women pretending to be accomplished artists). So, unimpressed with the first song or two, I left in a huff, assuming the man was more strut than strum. I then proceeded to skewer the man in this little musical blog I do. Fortunately I listened to his MySpace offerings before publishing, which- especially the song ‘In Ghana’- were pretty damn good. I stood corrected.

There is a point to be made, though- music with a message risks losing that message if it becomes too obscured behind flashy showmanship. And reggae is nothing if not music with a message, whether religion, politics, marijuana, or... some combination. Too often since Bob Marley’s death this all gets packaged up into some sort of self-styled smoke-enlightened messiah complex which pretends to know answers to all life’s mysteries- including questions not even asked yet- that bends dangerously close to conspiracy theory’s know-it-all younger brother. The themes get too heavy sometimes, and the music gets lost. The trick is to wrap up heavy themes in small sweet packages, like the proverbial spoonful of sugar. Musicians should stick to what they know best, also. We’re all in trouble when we start getting our politics from celebrities like singers and actors and comedians and… hey, wait a minute…

So now I’m thoroughly chastised, because rocky Dawuni’s new album- ‘Hymns for the Rebel Soul’- is killer. Dawuni stakes out his turf right away with ‘Download the Revolution,’ a slightly ‘tron number that updates Gil Scott-Heron’s observation/dictate ‘the revolution will be televised.’ With lyrics like ‘conscious music revolution… to wipe away musical pollution’ you get the idea. Next, ‘African Reggae Fever’ is a self-congratulatory little dittie, with a nice gospel-like opening, that serves to advance Dawuni’s mission to unite Africa in some sort of reggae-inspired cosmic consciousness. ‘Extraordinary Woman’ then gets into the heart of the album, literally, pure love song, pure hit material. ‘When I first saw you in that crowd, sweet emotion swept throught my soul’… sounds like love to me. Maybe the album’s best song- ‘Walls Tumbling Down’- sits right in clean-up position in the batting order. Here Dawuni accomplishes the difficult task of sliding a political message in with irresistible licks, and does it with a master’s touch- “me again… knocking on your door… till all your walls come tumbling down… me again, like Jericho before.. Babylon walls come tumbling down”, speaking for all the little people who’ve demanded justice and had to wait in line until ‘the time is right.’ After that ‘Master Plan’ is a nice change of pace, complete with bird calls and some really nice brass, albeit with a message slightly muddy.

At this point the album’s a hit regardless of what Dawuni wants to do. He could hum nursery rhymes for the next fifteen minutes, and it’d still be a great album. But he keeps laying down more grooves as if it were effortless. ‘Road to Destiny’- “never give up hope… on the road to destiny”… this is good stuff. Dawuni shows maturity and social responsibility with ‘Take It Slow (Love Love Love)’- “listen to my music before you go”, notable in a continent where AIDS is the leading cause of death and machismo is slow to tolerate affronts to its dignity. ‘Jerusalem’ even pays tribute to the Jewish culture’s massive contributions to our modern world with a melody that sounds a lot like Manu Chao (clan destino, maybe?) and echoes Bob’s ‘Lion in Zion’, even going so far as to hypothesize that Israel’s problems are due largely to jealousy: ‘though you sit in isolation… you are the whole world’s inspiration.’ It’s a sign of political maturity to stake out an unpopular position, especially in an Africa that is increasingly Muslim… and for good reason.

Reggae is an important moral force in the African diaspora, and that means a lot here on the ground in Ghana (I like to travel to the countries I’m reviewing to get a better feel of it). It’s no accident that it emerged from the trenchtowns of Kingston, the one city in the Caribbean that can easily rival Africa’s biggest and baddest. In a continent where the most developed country- South Africa- is arguably the most socially horrific, answers don’t come easy. Street crime is out of control at almost unimaginable levels in the very countries where AIDS runs rampant concurrently with political corruption. With the exception of Islam, there are few moral compasses to be had… except for Rastafarianism… and reggae music. Rocky Dawuni does not shirk from his social duties here, and he does it with licks and chops that rival the best of them. The album indeed is more about social responsibility than rebelliousness, which is overrated anyway IMHO. If there’s any justice in the world, this will be Rocky’s breakthrough album. Simply said, it’s probably the best reggae album I’ve heard since you-know-who. Hardie K says check it out.

DALAI LAMA RENAISSANCE- RELIGION HAS A ROCK STAR (WITH SOUNDTRACK)

Okay, so the Dalai Lama may not be the prophet Jesus was, but he plays on a much wider stage, and in real time, and he speaks English. So he’s about the best we’ve got, the one person in the world who can be looked up to for moral authority, in a world that needs nothing so much as moral authority. While Roman Catholics and Thai Buddhists are embroiled in sex scandals that can no longer be explained away with a shrug of the shoulders and a “comes with the turf” attitude… and fundamentalist Muslim mullahs and imams tempt the gullible to travel heavenward by a shortcut that includes self-annihilation… and equally fundamentalist US Southern Baptists and Mormons mix their religion and politics instead of mixing their drinks… and Jewish leaders give the nod to Israeli aggression… it’s nice to know that someone- at least one major religious leader in the world- is quietly concentrating on the business at hand… individual happiness.

For those religious skeptics out there, the process by which the Dalai Lama is chosen/non-chosen must be as exasperating as religion itself. After all, how is a Dalai Lama simply reincarnated/reborn/manifested out there in the countryside somewhere, only later to be confirmed by testing and rigorous examination of details about which only the One would know? Such things defy reason… but that’s the point. Now maybe they just got lucky, and happened to choose someone who turned out to become a religious master, or maybe he’s just a very adept student… but that’s a win/win situation, not a victory of nurture over nature. Or maybe he really IS the reincarnation of something/someone who is more spiritual than material. It’s no accident that Jesus came along right as we were losing our instinctual spirituality and trading it for a philosophical one. And it’s no accident that the Dalai Lama is on the world stage at the same time that China completes its dialectically materialistic rebirth/return to prominence after a long self-imposed detour into self-doubt.

‘Dalai Lama Renaissance’ is the award-winning documentary- produced and directed by Kasyar Darvich and narrated by Harrison Ford- that resulted from the Dalai Lama’s meeting a decade ago with the so-called ‘Synthesis Group’ of forty Western ‘renaissance’ thinkers, and some of the thought that resulted. But even more than their thought, it documents the simple direct yet thorough religious thought of the Dalai Lama himself, vast yet disciplined… like the sea (‘Dalai’) itself. The Western thinkers, after all, came with their own viewpoints and prejudices, and though certainly well-intentioned, also full of opinions not always without controversy, and not always accepted by their peers in their respected sciences. These are, for example, some of the same physicists featured in What the Bleep Do We Know?, a documentary similar in message, that caused much controversy by its misrepresentation of scientific opinion, especially the continuing efforts by some to postulate a ‘quantum religion’ that dates back at least to The Tao of Physics. Despite harsh denials by physics’ best minds, this is an effort that somehow tries to elevate physics’ Uncertainty Principle into a metaphysical category. The distinction is simple, if often missed. Religion is about certainties, and the belief systems that are both cause and effect of that. Science is about theory, and the testing that produces it and results from it. The two activities are not the same thing. To ‘believe’ in science is a contradiction in terms.

Fortunately the Dalai Lama is disciplined enough to stay within his field and domain, which is the place of the individual- and his happiness… or not- in the world. His social message is fairly simple, similar to the Four Noble Truths themselves, and can be summarized as such: 1) change is constant, 2) man’s nature is essentially good, 3) bad things happen, 4) society can become corrupt, 5) change it.

Best of all, you can dance to it, or just listen in contented bliss. What Kasyar Darvich has accomplished cinematically, Michael Tyabji has seconded musically, pulling together a group as diverse as it is accomplished. This includes guitarist Larry Mitchell, composer Medicine Bear, The Yoginis, Heyraneh, and… the list goes on. Though incorporating many different instruments and sounds of Nature, too, the soundtrack leans heavily on classical sitar and the voice of the Dalai Lama himself, offering choice helpings of Buddhist wisdom mixed with good ol’ common sense. When the music starts to drift off into trance, the Dalai Lama’s voice brings it right back down to Earth. And if that’s not enough, you can hear Harrison Ford apparently teaching William Shatner how to rap in ‘Drops of Gold’: “words, words, words are mere bubbles of water… but deeds are drops of gold… you, yourself, must make the effort… the Buddhas are only teachers.” Cost of the soundtrack album: not so much; value of hearing Harrison Ford do Buddhist spoken word with the Dalai Lama: priceless. The release is timed to coincide with the Dalai Lama’s speaking tour of the US May 12-23. Is there Tibetan politics behind all this? Probably so, and that’s where it’ll stay. Hardie K says check it out.

LEVAME AOS FADOS by Ana Moura- Portuguese Soul Music

Fado has been one of the big musical disappointments of my life- until now that is. It’s not like they played it on the AM radio back when and where I was growing up, so the knowledge of it came slowly and packaged with a certain amount of mystery and mysticism attached. It seemed to be way cool, and I looked forward to the day when I could sit and listen to it, preferably in the flesh, the real thing, in a real fado house in Portugal. It’s not like I could just open up MySpace and do a search on Amalia Rodrigues and take it from there, or even go down to Amoeba Records or Bleecker Street and rummage through the racks. We didn’t have anything like that. So naturally one of the first things I wanted to do when I finally got the opportunity to visit Portugal was to sit down and listen to some down-home fado- simple, right? Well, considering that my train came in to Lisbon on a Sunday overnight from Madrid, and when I got off in the old port and one of the first things I saw was a sign written on a notice-board at the community center reading, “FADO HOJE!”, I’d say the odds were looking pretty good. So I booked a hotel close by, took a shower, and resolved to go listen to fado my first afternoon in Lisbon. I’ll need some help, of course, and that means some strong coffee.

So I got there at the time indicated and I was the first one there- not good. But eventually people came trickling in one by one, until the place filled up. Then I spilled my espresso all over my notebook- not good. Finally the music started. There was only one problem- it wasn’t very good. Now maybe that’s because of the lack of a big star or the fact that it was afternoon- not evening- fado, but the result was the same- disappointment. One by one self-styled crooners got up on stage and… proceeded to butcher the music, much more concerned with the high drama of the moment than the careful execution of the songs’ intricacies. It was more like bad karaoke than good fado. I left early, in something of a huff if I remember correctly.

Then Mariza came along a few years ago and made a big splash in world music circles, but I’m still not getting it. The high drama just seems all out of proportion to any kind of emotion that seems real to me. If fado is something typically a bit sad and mournful, then why belt it to the skies with flash and flourish? I’d more likely be crying alone in my beer. That doesn’t sell records, of course, but you get my point. When a speed guitarist plays the blues, no matter how much influence he derived from it, it’s no longer blues.

Now there’s Ana Moura and her new album Leva-me Aos Fados (‘Take Me to the Fados’)- aaaahhhhh. Now this is what I wanted all along, sad and mournful, deep and searching, but without all the dramatic affectation, just simple…. Como se diz?... soul. This is not only the real thing, but it goes down smoothe… like fine wine. She and her primary collaborator and songwriter Jorge Fernando have created a real gem here. The title track is one of Fernando’s and sets the tone for the album well- sad and mournful, yet at the same time yearning and hopeful. Fernando’s other songs- A Penumbra (At Twilight), Rumo Ao Sul (Heading South), and Que Dizer de Nos (What to Say of Us) continue in that same vein. Rumo Ao Sul is in fact of the album’s nicest songs, a change-of-rhythmic-pace that works nicely, pure balladry in the final good-bye of a lover’s parting.

The album has many other great moments also, and they’re not all sad and slow, either, though they do tend to be limited to acoustic guitar, by definition I suppose. Como Uma Nuvem No Ceu (‘Like a Cloud in the Sky’) is light and bouncy, as is Fado Vestido De Fado (‘Fado Dressed in Fado’) a nice little play on the meaning of fado as ‘fate” and a nice little tune to boot, with some really good playful guitar. Then there’s Critica Da Razao Pura (‘Critique of Pure Reason’), a nice little tongue-in-cheek number that asks the big questions. No, you won’t have to re-study Immanuel Kant to enjoy this. Emotion is the ultimate critique of pure reason, and it triumphs handily here, and in the album as a whole. The final song says it all, Nao E Um Fado Normal (‘It’s not Normal Fado’). No, it’s not. It’s pretty… spectacular? No, that’s not the word. It’s deep, yet simple… penetrating and soothing, like medicine for the soul. It’s Leva-me Aos Fados by Ana Moura. Hardie K says check it out.

AUSTIN'S SXSW FESTIVAL AND THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS

You can’t see and hear everything (so get your money’s worth). This is an important lesson of life in the world also, of course, that since it can’t all be seen and done, then one must define one’s self and situation for maximum enjoyment. In the case of SXSW, that meant for me to see the big names, including Ray Davies, John Hiatt, Smokey Robinson. I paid over $100 for my locals’ wrist-band and I want my money’s worth (I can pass for ‘local’ in 42 cities in 18 countries… without lying… much). Until Big Star at least (more later), Ray Davies was the highlight of the show, playing an excellent set both with and without LA’s ‘88’ backing him up. I had a high-priced badge last time but have since learned my lesson. Why pay to hear self-appointed experts ruminate over the future of the music industry? Hell, I can do that.

It can get extremely cold extremely fast. This is another of life’s lessons. Thursday and Friday were so beautiful that it’s easy to take such for granted. But when a cold front moved in, Saturday was absolutely brutal. That’s no problem when you’re inside, of course, but that’s not what a festival is all about. I had planned to get serious about seeing groups I’d missed on the previous two days, but all that is useless speculation when you have to walk eight blocks with a wind chill factor approaching 0 degrees F.

All music is local. Austin has taken a rap on the knuckles, if not the speakers, for being so white, i.e. no hip-hop. What next, do they have to apologize for being so happy and well-adjusted, so liberal and so successful? For one thing, Austin is only ten percent black, and the show reflects that. It IS maybe thirty-forty percent Hispanic, and the show reflects that. For another thing, the level of musicianship is high in Austin. That’s not always the case with hip-hop music- OR ‘world music’ OR ‘indie’ either- for that matter. I know world music groups that dress in ‘traditional’ costume- fit to kill- but who can barely play their instruments. That doesn’t cut it. Likewise with the typical hip-hop ‘tude- it’s the tunes, Homie, not the ‘tude, that counts. Trash-talking doesn’t cut it with me. Neither does bashing your bitch.

People die. In this case, the death in question is that of Alex Chilton, former Box Top (“The Letter”) and Big Star, arguably the first ‘indie band’ and huge influence to REM, the Replacements, and everything that came after. Just last week I caught myself thinking, “I wonder whatever happened to Alex Chilton?” Now maybe that’s not so strange until you consider that I’d never heard the man’s music until yesterday. Flashback to 1985, and I’m living in Berkeley, selling items on Telegraph Ave. and contemplating the future of rock & roll over lunch of pesto pizza. The classic era is long gone of course, ditto psychedelia, blues-rock, folk-rock, country-rock, punk-rock and many other hyphen-ated, apostrophe’d concoctions of music including some that I really- I mean REALLY- didn’t like, e.g. glam and glitter, bubblegum and disco, etc. until now there’s only… nothing… all R&R returned to the commercial pop schlock from which it originally emerged and to which it finally succumbed, to an industry emboldened and fortified by the massive export success of the Eagles, the Bee Gees, John Denver, and other such ‘cross-overs’. ‘New Wave’ held great promise, but that only, it too the victim of its own pretensions and excesses.

There was only one hope left, ‘college radio’, an undefined but apparently thriving underground entity that celebrated the process of creation and discovery itself, real R & R, ‘teen spirit’ if you will… more than album sales. Though the groups all differed and were hardly a genre, they all said the same thing- it started with Alex Chilton. Now he’s dead. He was supposed to play SXSW with a revived Big Star, but died three days before the gig. Cause of death- too much life, maybe? I like the death certificates in Thailand, ‘heart stopped beating’. No sheet, Somchai, just open the casket one last time before you torch it. I want to see the skid marks.

Bottom line: Austin is the star of SXSW, and so are their musicians. After hearing some disappointing ‘world music’ and ‘indie’ stuff… and popping into shows at random and popping right back out after being subjected to head-banging ‘metal’ (give me some hip-hop, please!), I finally started concentrating on the local shows. That’s what this festival is all about, after all. They need us once a year to help support some hundred entertainment venues, but that’s about all. They’ve got a home-grown music scene second to none. Next time I’m not even sure I’ll bother with the wrist band. They don’t count for much down on South Congress. That’s where Alejandro had his post-show show last night. And with people like Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Band) and Chuck Prophet on that bill, you don’t have to worry too much about being guillotined by a cowboy hat. Just call it ‘Americana’ music; this, after all, is America.

What’s that? You don’t like my four noble truths? Okay, how about this then? 1) LIFE IS FUN, 2) DESIRE IS THE CAUSE OF FUN, 3) THE FUN ENDS WHEN DESIRE ENDS, 4) THERE IS ANOTHER WAY TO MAINTAIN THE FUN- THE EIGHTFOLD PATH. Buddhism and I get along just fine. It’s just a ‘glass half-empty/glass half-full’ thing.

SWEET ELECTRA- BLACKER TERCIOPELO… SINCE THEY ABANDONED MEXICO

Mexican music is hopping. While half-breed Lila Downs runs with the Frida Tehuana mantle and makes music more Mexican than the Mexican itself; and Brooklyn transplants Pistolera make better conjunto music than the Texicans themselves; and Mexican wanna-be Dan Zanes from Del Fuego (Ushuaia I think) makes the cutest music to satisfy the inner Mexican child in all of us… meanwhile real Mexicans ex-TJ No!/Mexpop superstar Julieta Venegas gets recast as an American indie and does duets with Nelly; and border-blasting bilingues Kinky and Nortec Collective play to large crossover audiences at festivals in LA; and Santana-buddy classicos Mana’ fill venues larger than the rest put together for hispanicos norteamericanos that the English-only audience in another US dimension neither knows about or apparently cares.

Then there’s Sweet Electra from Mexico City, now transplanted to New York City, and releasing their third album ‘The Day We Abandoned Earth’. Now there have always been cultural affinities between NYC and DF, though I’m not sure anyone noticed or cared except me and maybe the Spanish master filmmaker Luis Bunuel (Los Olvidados- ‘The Young and the Damned’- was made a full 4-5 years before ‘Rebel without a Cause’), but it’s there nonetheless- the density, the darkness, the death wish… and the artistry. Now I don’t really know what Sweet Electra did on their first two albums- neither the website nor MySpace are giving it up freely, and I can’t find anything on the shelves here in Antananarivo- but they came to the right place. This album is pure NYC, as NYC as Lou Reed or Laurie Anderson put together (yeah, I know), albeit without the hype or any other H’s… Lila may have the huipil Tehuana, but vocalist and co-composer Nardiz Cooke has the Mona Lisa smile (at least I think that’s a smile) and ‘programmer’ Giovanni Escalera has the multi-track feedback sensibility. The only question is: is it sustainable?

The album leads off with the ambiental ditty ‘Ignition’, and then moves right into their single ‘A Feeling’… ‘inside of me… forget about everything’ which pretty much sets the tone for the album, sparse but evocative lyrics and drum kit-driven ambience. ‘Love You More’ ups the emotional ante without really coming to any conclusion- ‘Every time I look at your empty face… I know I love you more… I didn’t mean to be this way, but I never thought I’d feel so empty…’, leaving us in a swirl of ethereal ambience and disembodied voices. ‘Backyard’ then leads us to the graveyard, crashing into chaos with strings- ‘I just wanna’ see the world from my backyard… see your face one more time. Is anybody out there…?’ ‘The Killer Silence’ is one of the album’s best tracks, with succinct lyrics- ‘the killing silence, the killing time, the killing loneliness, the killing words’- and a succinct melody… with good ol’ guitar. ‘I Am’ is a bit of an enigma, reintroducing the album and re-establishing the ambience with vocal wails over drum and keyboard-driven instrumentals, but then ‘It's Over’ returns to lyrical top dead center, the pain of love and the pain of just being- ‘I was wondering what would come next… I realized we’re together pretending… it’s all over, my love’.

The two parts of ‘Give Up’ then paint a beautiful, if stark, vision of life in the city, the first a percussion-driven version with guitars grating, the second a more orchestral version of the same thing. ‘Te Fuiste’ (‘You left’) seems to be thrown in almost as an afterthought- as if we gueros might not appreciate anything sung in espanol, but in fact is one of the albums better tracks, and if nothing else serves to prove that the sparseness of the English lyrics is not due to scarceness of English chops. The Spanish lyrics are sparse, too, not much more than road-signs to suggest something to meditate upon while you swim in the ambiance. After the spacey instrumental title track, another ‘DJ re-mix’ version of it and ‘It’s Over’ close the album… no comment. I’ve already expressed my feelings towards duplicative, if not duplicitous, ‘re-mixes’, AND THIS FROM AN ‘ELECTRONICA’ ALBUM! Fer Chrissakes, it’s all re-mix! Make up your m-f mind already! Maybe someday someone will come up with a musical ‘auteur’ theory to decide who gets the final ‘director’s cut.’ Maybe I’ll do that over lunch. ‘Re-mix’ tracks at the end of an album are starting to seem about as relevant as bloopers during a movie’s credits. How’s that for ‘no comment’?

But I like this album, even with its flaws, it settling in my mind somewhere at the crossroads of sub-conscious earth-bound pain and escapist ethereal ambiance. I can relate. Sometimes the only way to tolerate a world of human cruelty and incompetence is to create a parallel world of non-human perfection, whether it be mathematical precision or hyper-emotional ‘happy ending’ caricature. The crossroads and border areas are always fertile ground for creation and heterotic survival. To say that there’s a lot of repetition on this album would be to repeat the obvious (pun intended), but that’s not a criticism, just a ‘heads-up’. Repetition is one of the programmer’s tools, but if it all starts sounding like one never-ending song, then it’s time to go back to songwriting fundamentals of chorus and verse. Need another ‘H’ for New York? Consider ‘hooks.’ I ask again, “Is it sustainable?”

Of course there are other questions, too, like… does ‘electronica-twinged pop’ have to be sung in English, and… does it have to eschew all regional and historical influences? I doubt it. ‘Indie’ music certainly doesn’t. Café Tacuba has been doing that for years (but that voice!), and you’ve got to see ‘Maneja Beto’, an Austin group. And while you’re there, check out Del Castillo, who re-infuses ‘rock en espanol’ with classical Spanish guitar. Austin, that’s where I’ll be in a couple of weeks. See you at SXSW. Till then, check out Sweet Electra and ‘The Day We Abandoned Earth.” Because I said so, that’s why.

SAUTI ZA BUSARA- SOUNDS OF WISDOM IN A CITY OF DARKNESS

It sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it, to hold a festival of African- mostly East African- music in one of the world’s most exotic locales, Zanzibar? Land of spice and Islam, these island nations were the mix-and-mingle point for Africans, Arabs, Persians, Portuguese and maybe even Zheng He. There are only a few problems with the brilliant idea. The first is one of power- not political or economic or religious- but simple electricity, or lack thereof. Zanzibar doesn’t have any, except that generated by thousands of generators converting petrol into 220 volts of electricity. It sounds wasteful, doesn’t it? Since the main need is light, why not just burn petrol as the Brits did until the 1930’s?

The second problem is site location, the cramped and dangerously congested Old Arab Fort. It’s beautiful, but a disaster waiting to happen, what with vendors in makeshift booths using open flames to light their unstable tables. Meanwhile a contiguous amphitheater lies empty. DUH. Considering that problem number three is the annoying down time between single-stage sets and the resulting short set-times, it seems like someone might come up with the brilliant idea to alternate between the two stages, thus spreading out the crowd and moving things right along, too. Considering that video screens are already there and in use, such a plan is easily conceivable. What it takes in extra lights and equipment could easily be saved in recovered down-time. I’d hate to see what might happen if a fire broke out in the over-packed space, IN DARKNESS, crowd scrambling for only two narrow hard-to-find exits. But the show must go on, of course.

Ah, the show, now that’s the good part. Disgusted by the logistical snafus of both show and city- power off all day is wasted time all day, after one day at least, and power off at night is downright dangerous, I decided that I just couldn’t sacrifice more than one full day and two evenings of my life to this project… but what I saw was eminently enjoyable, and I don’t mean just the stars, either. I saw five acts each of the first two evenings, and I think that those would be representative of the talent available. The first evening started for me with Ikwani Safaa Musical Club from Zanzibar itself, a classic (if not ‘classical’) Swahili group that featured Tamalyn Dallal belly-dancing exquisitely. Kenyans Maia von Lekow with a very nice and focused jazz touch and Makadem with a broader modern eclectic sound going in a lot of lyrical and musical directions- not unlike the US’s Ozomatli- also made for some fine listening. Now I missed a couple of acts at the opening of the evening and one at the end featuring the local ‘jumbe’ dance music, but I’d say that my favorite act the first evening would have to be Jimmy Omonga from DR Congo. Now anything creative coming out of the DR Congo these days is to be heavily congratulated, because the DRC is NOT in good shape politically and socially. But these guys don’t need a handicap. Four guys played drums and sang while five dancers danced nonstop their entire almost-hour-long set. Now if that sounds boring, it’s not. The drummers may have been wearing what looked like their wives feather dusters turned upside down, but the dancers were scarily exotic in flowing robes, bare midriffs, ethnic pancake makeup, and one was even wearing a lightbulb- wishful thinking? You had to be there.

The next evening I resolved to arrive a bit earlier to catch the opening act, and was well rewarded. The very first act was a group of disabled performers, including two dancers up front that kept me fighting back tears. These two guys, who’ve probably spent their whole lives hearing names like “Flipper” and “Tuna Boy” directed at them from cruel buddies, not only danced their hearts out with gymnastics and acrobatics, but were… SO… HAPPY… doing it. How could I have ever bemoaned my own fate of such comparatively minor handicaps? The band itself I didn’t even realize was disabled until the set was over, so that says something. The music was that good, that I wasn’t compensating for their disabilities in my mind, ‘handicapping’ them, so to speak. They may not be the next Benda Billi, but then again they just may. A group called ‘Swahili Encounters’ was next and did a really nice job of offering a balanced palette of music from a variety of African countries, reflecting the origins of their members, and including the Swahili coast. Maureen Lupo Lilanda of Zambia then delivered some nice enough Afro-pop, but which seems to be depending on her star-power-which she may or may not have- to deliver the knock-out punch. For me African music is not at its best in that star-based context, but rather in a broader music-based one, but that may just be me.

The evening’s big star, though, was the next performer Malick Pathe’ Sow, currently a hot item on the world-music circuit, who delivered an exquisite performance, but did something which I feel deserves mention, if not an explanation. After an excruciatingly long time for set-up and sound-check- mostly due to Zanzibar’s power problems, Malick FINALLY started his set, played one song, and then walked off stage with his band for a 10-15 minute ‘prayer’ break. HUH? Am I hallucinating? Now I respect a man’s religion whatever it might be, but I also respect the rights of the audience. If a Muslim can’t miss his evening prayers, then he should book his set around it. I didn’t see anyone else praying… IN MUSLIM ZANZIBAR! That’s what mosques are for. The set was brilliant, though. Malick promoters, beware- read the rider carefully! Since the next performer, Mari Boine from Norway, wasn’t really exciting me; and the evening’s other big name, Ba Cissoko from Guinea, I’ve already seen; and the evening was hopelessly behind schedule by now, I decided to call it an evening and go back to my hotel. Fortunately they have escorts for you through the darkness for a buck or two, which I probably wouldn’t want to wait until the last minute for. Let me know when you get your power problems solved, Zanzibar, and maybe I’ll be back- and recommend it to others. Until then, I’ll just listen to the MP3’s. You’re pressing your luck. Beware the law of large numbers.

‘GENTE’ BY SAMBA DA- Indie em Portugues

Bossa nova is the worst thing that ever happened to Brazilian popular music. In that one unique rise to the pinnacle of world music some fifty years ago, Brazilian popular music became frozen in time, at least in the minds of its foreign audience, but not without significant repercussions for the progenitors back home also. THAT was ‘the Brazilian sound’ and that’s what we wanted… over and over and over. Now don’t get me wrong. It’s good, and I like it, but it’s as if French pop music were to be forever defined by Brigitte Bardot cooing ‘je t’aime’ instead of moving on and letting Charlotte Gainsbourg coo ‘five fifty-five’ (Bac Ho’s favorite brand of fags- if I remember correctly from my Hanoi days- in addition to any other meaning it might have for Serge’s daughter).

Meanwhile musically tiny little Cabo Verde has been one-upping the rest of the Portuguese-speaking world with superb work by the ‘barefoot diva’ Cesaria Evora and plenty of help from Lura and others making big waves in the world music genre. That’s even where samba originated in the first place, according to the cognoscenti, though I’d be hesitant to attribute too many origins to a place uninhabited a scarce few decades before a ship got blown off course and wound up in Brazil. Of course samba has always been at its best as a Carnaval dance form, and always will be, regardless of how the music evolves. Even Mozambique has some good things happening musically, while Portugal itself languishes even farther behind, resigned to its own self-imposed fado. Meanwhile back home in Brazil, while cariocas may still be frolicking on the beach and waxing rhapsodic over a well-heeled female form, down in Sao Paolo drug gangs occupy whole sections of the city and flaunt it for public TV, just daring the police to challenge them. When a fight breaks out there, I bet they don’t wait for the band to show up and choreograph the capoeira for them. In short, life is more than just a beach, and you don’t have to walk far into a favela to realize that.

So Brazilian popular music artists have for years been trying to discover and re-discover their national musical voice without much luck. Brazilian pop music had more than just bossa nova in the ‘60’s of course, not the least of which was the legendary Os Mutantes, Brazil’s contribution to psychedelia and arguably a better guide to the country’s quirky sun-and-spiritualism psyche than the more jazz-and-Euro-infused bossa nova. Then there was Caetano… and Tropicalismo. Some of these genres and sub-genres provide more fertile soil for new seeds than bossa nova, which was never much more than a GMO hybrid that got lucky somewhere along the food chain. This is the thread that Samba Da follows and ‘Gente’ is a highly listenable piece of work, full of references to salsa and cumbia in addition to the more obvious Brazilian precursors. The fact that they are from Santa Cruz, CA, US- not Brazil- says everything… and nothing.

The opening song ‘Iguana’ is a quirky number that sounds appropriately something like a cross between Julieta Venegas and Nortec Collective, bright and perky. ‘Balancou’ follows right on its heels like a nice salsa/reggae mix while lyrically extolling the African contributions to Brazilian culture. Song #3 ‘Dende’ goes a couple new directions simultaneously- free-form jazz and a heavier percussion (topped with an almost Native American style flute). ‘Rabo de Arraia’ is a cumbia-like number that wanders a bit much for my tastes, but ‘Sangue Africano’ then defines what this album is all about- AfroBrazilian roots given over to Indie spirit. It works beautifully. ‘Nao Va Embora’ tries hard but fails to excite, while ‘Mare’ does just the opposite, succeeds beautifully without really trying. This is pure Julieta, a la brasileira, fully arrived and fully formed, unselfconscious and unpretentious. This just may be the album’s sleeper hit, complete with that nice flute that weaves in and out throughout the album, teasing our sensibilities, nicely balancing out a sometimes murky percussion. Unfortunately the album is running out of steam at this point. When you include songs about both Mom and Pop on the same album, you’re definitely getting on thematically thin ice. Likewise DJ-style ‘remixes’ are dubious enough conceptually without being included on the same album as the original, all this to get the ten-song minimum to consider it a full-length CD.

Though the album is a bit uneven, this band’s got real potential. Band leader Papiba Godinho runs a pretty tight show and they may have just gotten the ‘Fergie’ they needed with their newest member, vocalist Dandha da Hora (simulated beef-eating for the video not required). There may be scarcely few Brazilians in a mostly-American band playing Brazilian music, true, but still they’re as Brazilian as Dengue Fever is Cambodian or Chicha Libre is Peruvian. That’s what ‘world music’ is all about, breaking sound barriers, not obsessing over authenticity. Nobody worries about whether Seu Jorge or Curumin does a song in English. Bebel does lots of them. Bottom line- some halfway point between salsa and reggae is Brazil at its best, faster than a reggae that almost refuses to wake up, but slower than a salsa that won’t sleep, more spiritual than dance-till-dawn Latino hedonism but less messianic complexity than a sometimes overly pretentious reggae. And Copacabana- or Santa Cruz- doesn’t have to pretend to be Nice or Cannes any more than Brazilian pop has to pretend to be French pop. Winner takes all, and this band’s got a real shot, what with Dandha da Hora now sharing vocals with Papiba Godinho. She’s good, and more than just the new girl from Eponyma. That’s ‘Gente’ by Samba Da. Check it out.

Tito Gonzalez, ‘Al Doblar la Esquina’- Ship’s In

Nobody was more surprised at the phenomenal success of ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ than the hard-line Communist Cuban government, which for years had surpressed all forms of popular music as vestiges of a recidivist bourgeois love affair with capitalism and all its inherent evils. They promoted classical music instead. Go figure. Well, that was before the USSR’s last gasp, and in the 1990’s ‘revisionism’ was not the dirty word it once was. Not only was pragmatism the new operative concept, but there was also a realization that a generation had been sacrificed in the the cultural evolution of the country, and that time was of the essence if the thread was not to be lost entirely. Well, it could have been worse. Havana fared better than Phnom Penh, after all. So the call went out for talent to come forward and show itself. One of those who turned up was Heriberto ‘Tito’ Gonzalez, as part of a group of musical taxi drivers. The rest is history, and Tito’s belated career was finally on its way after many years of fits and starts.

If Communism accomplished nothing else, it did manage to stop clocks all over the Communist-speaking world, so that much of the Cuban music in Cuba itself is something of a snapshot of the way things were BEFORE the proliferation of ‘Afro-Cuban’ music overseas, BEFORE the emergence of a plethora of new Spanish-language ‘Latin’ genres that would rival that of the English-speaking world, and maybe most of all… BEFORE Carlos Santana. I will tell you now, and I’ll tell you on my death bed, that no one single person is more responsible for putting that well-known sabor in modern Latin music than Don Carlos. He is the hot chile in that south-of the-border musical cuisine. He gave Latin music a new direction with a sharp edge, not just guitar-drenched, but rhythm-infused… and mind-penetrating. What he didn’t do himself directly, he did through his indirect influence, as simple comparisons before and after will attest.

The music of Tito Gonzalez comes from a simpler era, and his new album ‘Al Doblar la Esquina’ reflects that. This is an era when the brass in big bands ruled, the drums stayed respectfully on the sideline if not the background, and romancing the opposite sex was how you ‘got off.’ While Tito himself is a consummate player of the three-stringed tres (not to be confused with the cuatro), that pretty much stays in the background on this album and Tito mostly lets his rich baritone do the talking for him. Whatever it lacks in easy comprehensibility of intricate lyrics it makes up for with a rich melodic texture that wears well. The brass rule the harmonic airwaves on this album and that’s testament to Tito’s choice of a bandleader, too, in this case Jose Dumen, and a superb line-up of ex-pat Cuban musicians in the US.

This is one of those albums that only gets better as you go along. While most albums load their best stuff on the front-end of the batting order, Tito seems to be connecting first with the Buena Vista son expectations, and then moving into his own as the album proceeds, nothing short of a kick-ass salsero he is by the end, spiritual son of another Tito. Things get off to a rollicking start with ‘Busco a Alguien’ (I’m Looking for Someone’)- “no tengo compromisos… busco alguien que me queda” (“I’m not committed yet… I’m just looking for someone to stick with me”), an up-beat number that rolls out the brass in full force, especially a trumpet that soars over the top of it all. Song number two keeps it up, ‘Para Componer un Son’- “hace falta una razon, sentimento, y corazon” (to build a son… all you need is a reason, a feeling, and some heart) that tones things down enough to let some really good piano shine through, but not enough to lose momentum. Song number three does that for us, intentionally, ‘Aquel Viejo Amor’ (That Old Love), in keeping with the theme of loves and lives gone by, slow and syrupy and sentimental, as memories tend to be, almost too sticky to handle.

Love is the predominant lyrical theme of the album, not surprising for a man who’s lived his life on the seas, overseas, and always somewhere in between where he’s ultimately going. With ‘Cuando Tu Te Fuistes’ (‘When You Left’) a serenade wtih brass, the pain is almost too much to bear, ‘todo cambio para mi, un profundo dolor que me atravesaba’ (‘everything changed, with the deep pain I was going through’). La Despedida’ (‘The Goodbye’) waxes philosophical, ‘yo soy tu amigo y te ayudara’ (‘I’m your friend and I’ll be there to help’), but ‘Cancion para Bonnie’ reflects his new life in the US and the new love that cements it, romantic and hopeful. When the theme is not one of love lost and love found, it’s about the enjoyment of life regardless, the parties and the dances and the music. Soounds like a pretty good attitude to me. This man’s been around and single-handedly proves that if you stick to your dreams you’ll ultimately get… somewhere. As someone noted long ago, there is really no ‘there’ there… because there’s always a halfway point that must first be reached… always… and usually a corner or two to be turned. That’s ‘Al Doblar la Esquina’ by Tito Gonzales. Check it out.