JOURNEY TO OCOTLAN W/ ‘COCONUT ROCK’ BY OCOTE SOUL SOUNDS/ADRIAN QUESADA

Which came first, Afro-beat or Cuban music (hold the salsa)? That’s obvious, maybe you say, since so many Cubans came from Africa originally. Not so obvious, someone else might say, since Cuba comprises many groups, in fact one of the whitest of Caribbean countries, despite its santeria traditions and Aunt Jemima (yay-MEE-mah)-like traditional dress. And salsa music probably originated in NYC anyway, so I’ll leave it for the academics to duke it out amongst themselves. It’s like asking, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” Once again I confess to not knowing, but I DO know that I can mix both in with some instant noodles and mixed veggies and survive quite nicely until it’s time for rice. Now add the funk genre to the equation and you’ve got the equivalent of a pop-music three-body problem.

Fela listened to James who listened to Louis who inspired Tito who inspired Miles who inspired Carlos who listened to B.B. who listened to T-Bone and Frank in some never-ending double-helix of twentieth century popular music cross-pollinating itself across oceans but centered on an emerging America with enough time and space and energy and guts to just do it for the sake of entertainment and let the academics back-fill the logic at some later date. Politics should be so easy. If politicians could get along as easily as musicians of different genres and persuasions, the world would be a nicer place, n’est-ce pas? I bet Martin Perna, baritone sax player for Antibalas, and Adrian Quesada, guitarist for Grupo Fantasma, would probably think so. In addition to musical chops they share a forward-looking political consciousness that emphasizes action over theory, and… they share a band, sometimes at least… called ‘Ocote Soul Sounds/Adrian Quesada’. They’ve even got a new album out called “Coconut Rock.” It takes more than politics to make a good album of course. Does it work?

Certainly Afro-Beat and Latin-Funk have plenty in common, probably more than their differences, so what do you get when you cross them? In this case, you get something slower and dreamier than what either of them is probably used to. ‘Funk’ is the operative concept for both Antibalas’ brand of Afro-Beat and Grupo Fantasma’s brand of Latin Funk, music you digest on the dance floor, not in the sort of front-porch contemplation that ‘Coconut Rock’ inspires. But apparently Brooklynites need some downtime, too, because Martin Perna makes regular pilgrimages to the continent’s interior regions for some soul-searching or communion or whatever other benefits accrue from such directed travels and deliberate detours. Good for him! Every musician should be so grounded and reality-based and hungry for experience! As I like to say, “I don’t wander, I’m driven…” And so is Martin, though sometimes the bio-deisel beast breaks down, and you need some help. Necessity, not Frank Zappa, is the original mother of invention. In this case, while waiting for car repairs, a new musical entity was born, something not so funky, more psychedelic… almost like Peruvian ‘chicha’, a long-overlooked minor genre finally gaining some adherents and fans with the success of ‘Chicha Libre’, another Brooklyn-based group.

The coincidence may be more than coincidental. Latino music is always looking for new directions, just like its Anglo counterparts, and this is not a bad way to go. The ‘chicha’ (given its upper Amazon origins and psychedelic overtones, maybe it should be rechristened ‘yage’ or ‘ayahuasca’ music for a new generation?) influence is probably most notable on “Tu Fin Mi Comienzo” (Your End My Beginning), and on one hand confirms its emergence as a genre, and on the other hand fires a warning shot that competition is at hand. As with Antibalas, the instrumentals dominate ‘Coconut Rock’, though that’s maybe a shame, because there are some bizarrely compelling titles like “Revolt of the Cockroach People” and “El Diablo y el NauNau” (sorry, I’ve got no ‘enye’ on this keyboard), just not much in the way of lyrics to expound on the themes. One of the ones that does is arguably the album’s ‘hit’, a song called ‘Vampires’ (“red, white, and blue” ones), an indictment of runaway capitalism that leaves nothing but heartache- and higher rents (and presumably some infected converts, too)- in its wake.

But the song that steals the show for me is “Vendendo Saude E Fe” (Selling Health and Faith), a Brazilian song sung in Portuguese by guest vocalist Tita Lima (a filha dum dos legendarios Mutantes nao menos). Now as a writer maybe I’m just too hungry for lyrics and as a poet just love a good metaphor or euphemism which the title obviously is, since neither health nor faith can literally be bought or sold, or… maybe I’m just a sucker for any cute little Brasileira cooing bossa nova like she means it, probably some combination of the two… or three. But this brings up another point maybe worth mentioning. ‘Chicha’ is not the only dreamily abstract Latin genre. Samba has lain dormant for a long time awaiting its renaissance on the international scene. Beef it up and funk it out a little and you might just have something quite compelling. Quesada’s guitar on the one samba track here does just that. Unfortunately that’s the only song Tita Lima appears on, so we’re left hanging and wondering what else a Latin-Funk/Afro-Beat/Samba fusion might produce.

Latin-Funk and Afro-Beat don’t need much lyrics or vocals to carry them- the music and the rhythm do. Slow that down and let it linger in your mind, and you’ve still got something good, something VERY good, but it may be best for a rainy day… or until the next new releases by the parent companies Antibalas and Grupo Fantasma. If you’re one of their fans, though, you’ll probably find a lot to like in ‘Coconut Rock.’ Listen and judge for yourself.

JUSTIN ADAMS AND JULDEH CAMARA- ‘TELL NO LIES’

This collaboration may not be first Anglo/African supergroup- Ali Farka Toure and Ry cooder did that long ago, not to mention Paul Simon and Ladysmith. Nor is it the first such longer–term collaboration to bear fruit and prove itself repeatedly on tour- Afrissippi has been playing and touring together for at least several years now. But they may very well be the first Anglo/African group to create an entirely new sound in the process. Now I’m not talking about Africans playing in US/UK bands or vice-versa; I’m talking about true collaborations, musicians meeting on equal terms. So what do you get when you cross West African griot music with white boy blues/rock? Think about that one for a minute. But whereas Ry Cooder respectfully stayed within his host’s West African folk idiom, so does Afrissippi stay well within the boundaries of Delta blues, albeit sung in Fulani, same as Juldeh Camara (Ali Farka also sang in Fulani, in addition to his native Sonrai). Justin Adams’ and Juldeh Camara’s music is not so easy to define. That’s good, for while the influences are many and varied, the result is unique and special. Look out, Tinariwen. You’ve got competition.

The album ‘Tell No Lies’ is a wonder in more ways than one, not the least of which is the thematic progression from start to finish. Listening to any one individual song doesn’t quite give the full picture. The album starts with the kick-ass blues rocker ‘Sahara’ which is basically a pre-flight warning to “buckle your seat belts.” Don’t be fooled by the title. This is Justin’s song, with Juldeh providing vocals, screaming wailing cut-me-loose vocals. Juldeh is not Saharan anyway. Fulanis are traditionally from the Sahel, that broad grassy plain just south of the Sahara that seamlessly segues into sand to the north, and into woodlands to the south, including Juldeh Camara’s home in the Gambia. And just as Tuaregs symbolize the Sahara, Fulanis symbolize the Sahel, traditionally ranging far and wide across borders, wherever there is enough grass to support their cows. Not infrequently do they cross paths with Tuaregs at the desert’s borders, sharing salt and trading southern goods for northern ones.

Just as the desert gradually becomes grassland before becoming forest, so does the music of Adams and Camara pass through many and varied landscapes to get where it’s going, essentially from north to south. If the opening song references Adams’ chief employer Robert Plant and Led Zeppelin, subsequent offerings run the gamut of influences from Muddy Waters’ muddy vocals in ‘Fulani Coochie Man’ to Papa John Creach’s screaching fiddle in ‘Madame Mariana’ to Duane Allman’s soul-full slide guitar in ‘Nangu Sobeh’ to Ali Farka Toure’s folk chants in ‘Chukaloy Daloy’. Finally Camara returns home, literally, with the albums’s closing song ‘Futa Jalo’, sung in full griot style, and expressing a longing for Futa Jalo (Fouta Djallon), the homeland for Fulanis from which most emigration originally took place. This is griot music to make any Diabate brother proud. For those of you who don’t know, griot is a hereditary caste of musicians unique to West Africa. For those of you who DO know, “Big deal,” maybe you say. “Everybody and his freakin’ brother from West Africa is a griot. There are more griots on the world music scene than there are Tuaregs.” Labels are meaningless, true; the proof is in the listening.

Juldeh Camara is more than a mild-mannered balladeering griot humbly carrying on the tradition. He is one kick-ass player of the riti, a one-string ‘spike fiddle’ indigenous to the region. How he can get so much sound out of a single string is beyond my knowledge, but I know I haven’t heard such git/fiddle arrangements since Papa John Creach and Jorma Kaukonen traded licks way back when. So what do you get when you cross West African traditional music with white boy blues anyway? Would you believe Bo Diddley? That’s definitely the sound being channeled for what is arguably ‘the hit’ from this album, ‘Kele Kele (No Passport, No Visa)’, a song about the frustrations and joyful homecomings of illegal immigration. One more sampling, maybe you’re thinking, so where’s this unique hybrid sound that I talked about? Listen to ‘Banjul Girl’. These are pop hooks that defy categorization, maybe some hint of Amadou and Mariam, a little Tinariwen, a little Toumani Diabate, but with something else, some undefinable something.

That undefinable something is Justin Adams’ scorching guitar, setting a new standard for Afro-Pop that is not likely to be matched any time soon. As somebody realized long ago, that if you took Latino-pop and added virtuoso guitar, you’d really have something, i.e. Santana, so you can extrapolate the case to Africa. Justin Adams and Juldeh Camara have just raised the bar for African music. This is more than just a fusion of African and Anglo folk/roots/rock music, this is a fusion of the Saharan desert and Nigerian jungle meeting somewhere in the grassy Sahel. This is a fusion of electric and acoustic, deciding to join together instead of maintaining an icy distance. This is a fusion of Africa, both homeboy and émigré, re-uniting in time if not space, in concept and concert. The only thing better than listening to this album would have been to see parts of it performed live at Dubai WOMAD a few months ago with guest Robert Plant stalking the stage and adding his significant two bits (and I wasn’t even a Robert Plant fan until his collaborations with Adams and Allison, so there you go). Now I guess I’ll have to go back and re-listen to Justin and Juldeh’s first collaboration, and see what I missed. I can’t wait. I’ll confess, though- I have no idea what the title ‘Tell No Lies’ refers to. You’re on your own there.

‘MARIACHI CLASSICS’ FROM MARIACHI REAL DE SAN DIEGO- IT’S ALL ABOUT LOVE… AND RESPECT

Mariachi music is like the Rodney Dangerfield (remember him?) of music genres- they don’t get much respect. Maybe that’s what happens when you sell yourself too easily, as mariachi music does every night of the week in numerous towns around La Republica Mexicana, playing for pesos. If it all looks romantic in Guadalajara’s Plaza de los Mariachis or Mexico City’s Plaza Garibaldi, musicians strutting their stuff while tourists line up for the privilege, the reality elsewhere is another story, competing with grown-up girls in under-age school uniforms in Tijuana’s red-light district or competing with themselves in Ensenada, where the mariachis almost outnumber the drinkers, at least the parts of town that haven’t been Hussong’d out of business by the new ear-pounding discos. It gives new meaning to the term ‘border blaster’.

So what’s a mariachi band to do to gain a little respect in this world? Mariachi Vargas- the genre’s most famous act- plays large arenas. Other prominent mariachi groups have adopted permanent associations with Mexican food restaurants (two enchiladas and a cucaracha to go, please?). With ‘Mariachi Classics’, Mariachi Real de San Diego take another strategy in their attempt to reach a wider whiter audience. They’re sticking to the classics, not necessarily the most popular mariachi songs of history mind you, but the classics. They even claim to have rummaged old record bins in Tijuana looking for material that might otherwise have been lost (so THAT explains why the antique stores in TJ are always such a mess). This is old-school mariachi, pure and simple. There is no ‘Guadalajara’ here, no ‘Cielito Lindo’ (the “ay yay yay yay” song), nor God forbid ‘La Cucaracha’ (would somebody please put that crippled cockroach out of its misery?). No, some of the songs here have been out of rotation for many years but include such chestnuts as ‘Las Mananitas’/‘Little Mornings’, a rumination on birth and awakenings, ‘Las Golondrinas’/‘The Swallows’, a rumination on death, ‘Mexico Lindo’/ ‘Beautiful Mexico’, and the spooky ‘La Malaguena’/‘Lady from Malaga’ (‘es hechicera’- ‘she’s a witch’).

There is nothing by Antonio Banderas here either, though he and film director Robert Rodriguez have certainly done much to popularize the genre with the popular ‘El Mariachi’ film trilogy, and whose one big Lobos-backed hit- ironically in non-Mariachi style- gets more plays than many long-suffering journeymen. Though there are plenty of instrumentals here- e.g.‘Las Chiapanecas’/’The Chiapans’, ‘Jugueteando’/’Just Playing Around’, and ‘San Diego’ (actually ‘San Diego’ has two words- guess which two?), lyrically these songs, and mariachi music in general, tend to revolve around the theme of love- love of country, love of nature, and the love of a woman. For all its machismo posturing, esthetically at least, Mexico’s imagery and inspirations tend to be largely female. Whether it’s the Virgen of Guadalupe or poster-girl Frida herself, the rich vibrant colors, exaggerated sentimentality, and the mish-mash of emotion tend to predominate. Mariachi music is no different. Even a song as patriotic as ‘Mexico Lindo’ just barely stops short of getting down and dirty on the dance floor- ‘yo le canto a sus volcanes, a sus praderas y flores, que son como talismans del amor de mis amores’ (I sing to the volcanoes, to the meadows and flowers, that are like talismans of the love of my loves’). Oooohhh… I like it.

They say mariachi music can be traced to one particular village in the state of Jalisco, specifically the village of Cocula, though Texcalitlan- the home of Mariachi Vargas- is equally legendary. ‘They’ say a lot of things, of course. In their attempts to Mexicanize and autochtonize the national tradition, some academics have attempted to prove indigenous roots for mariachi music, even going so far as to say the word itself comes from the Aztec language Nahuatl, meaning something like ‘song and merriment’. This is probably going too far. For one thing the Nahuatl word for ‘song’ is cuicatl- everybody knows that (and I don’t remember a word ‘mariachatl’). For another thing la raza Mexicana is truly a hybrid, probably more than any other place in the Americas, with the possible exception of Brazil, including major influences from native American, Spanish, and even Arab (la reconquista was only completed in 1492, remember) traditions. From there comes the cowboy culture that Mexico came to excel at and even teach the anglosajones in Texas. The American vocabulary is full of it- lazo/lasso, vaquero/buckaroo, la reata/lariat, juzgado/hoosegow, etc. This is the tradition that modern mariachi culture owes most to, Mexican charreadas- highly stylized rodeos- and the Mexican revolution as conducted on horseback by Pancho Villa. So it’s no accident that the Mariachi tradition originates in Jalisco, a state that looks north and west, even if it does owe much to village-based son.

But I’m sure it’s also no accident that ‘Mariachi Classics’ closes with ‘Noche de Ronda’/ ‘Night Rounds’, a song better known for its version by crooner Luis Miguel- ‘Dile que la quiero, Dile que me muero de tanto esperar, Que vuelva ya;/ ‘Tell her that I love her, That I’m dying from so much waiting, That she come back now’. This is not a bad place to be, commercially or esthetically. It’s a win-win situation- LM fans might give mariachi music a more serious listen, and people like me, who’d likely never listen to someone who looks like a model for men’s cologne… will gladly listen to the mariachi version. It also gives weight to the theory of hybrid origins in French-era bandas marriages. Though they may have deep roots in native and busker traditions and modern affectations that owe much to La Revolucion and charreadas, their raison d’etre lies with celebrating love and celebrating its fruition. For best results, listen to ‘Mariachi Classics’ with someone you love… preferably in Mexico… on a beach… along a coastline… that will zigzag halfway around the world… just to come right back to you.

MEETING THE MASTER DUDUK MAKERS OF ARMENIA

We Westerners tend to have this romantic notion of village arts and crafts as something handed down through generations, father to son, mother to daughter, in an unbroken chain. Once disrupted, the thread can never be picked up again, and the traditions will die out. The reality is not always like that of course. Sometimes a person adopts an art or craft as his life’s calling simply because he fancies it, and he’s blessed with the spare time to pursue it, and he’s got the talent to carry it through to fruition. Such is the case of Kolya Torosyan of Byuruka, Armenia, about an hour’s drive from Yerevan. When he decided over a half century ago to devote himself to the crafting of Armenia’s native duduk, zurna, and siring (a shepherd’s flute), he had nothing but a burning desire, a woodworker’s chops, and plenty of apricot trees for the raw material. Almost everyone in Byurukan does, and when they’re too old to bear fruit anymore, they’re perfect for woodwork, all heart (wood) and hardness.

In the early days, everything had to be done by hand with old-fashioned hand-made tools, the drilling, the lathing, everything. Even a brace-and-bit would have been considered high-tech back then, as his first drill resembles nothing so much as a primitive fire-making tool (yes, he keeps these relics as conversation pieces). The instrument is tuned by hollowing out just the right amount of wood to create the perfect pitch. Kolya may not be a master musician himself, but many of his friends are, and he knows he must meet their technical specs precisely or all his work is in vain. That he does, of course, and his fame has spread far beyond the local ‘hood, first into Yerevan, where he not only sells his work through music stores, but is also featured as an ‘honorary master’ in the government’s folk art museum. When Armenia was part of the USSR he made a trip to Moscow in the same role. Now his work is even sold in the USA under the good auspices of Refugee Arts in Massachusetts. At age 81 he may have slowed down a bit, but his son Vaclik takes up the slack.

Still there’s always time to relax… and chat… and eat… and drink vodka, the homemade kind, made with local apples. That’s the Armenian way. Everybody in the countryside makes their own vodka, just like they make own yogurt and cheese and lavash see-through bread. They all have bee-hives and gardens and animals and fruit trees in what offers a telescope to the past of one of the Western world’s ancient cultures, likely spun off from the Indo-European core about the same time as the Greeks and known to the ancient texts as Urartians, the people of Ararat. It also offers insight into our own Western European tradition, and all the other relations, too. Armenia was the first nation to adopt Christiantity as the official religion, even before Rome (especially before Rome, the America of antiquity!), and has never looked back.

“I was feeling lousy when you all drove up, so I decided to hang back and let Vaclik do the talking… I feel better now,” the old master glows as a shot of apple vodka produces the desired effect.

What follows could only be described as a riot of social intercourse between the two masters, the local-boy-turned-guide, a visiting America-based Persian-Armenian… and me, getting exuberant translations at random intervals. The celebration is prolonged and the re-visit will likely be never, for me at least, given the distances involved and Kolya’s advancing age. Still something of Armenia stays with me, and not just the writing on the wall on the section of Hollywood that Little Armenia shares with Thai Town. No, it has something to do with resilience and determination in the face of the almost insurmountable difficulties that Armenia has faced as a nation throughout history and their attachment to place while surfing the tides of Time… and the importance placed on social relationships within and without the group. There’s a lesson for us all there.

So the next time you see a New Age or World Music master playing his duduk or his zurna in front of thousands of people in the large cities of the West, remember that equally adept masters are hard at work back in the villages of the Caucasus… making it all possible.

SANTERO RETURNS REGGAETON TO ITS ROOTS

It’s time to re-think urban music- rap, hip-hop, and especially reggaeton. Despite its huge popularity, and its sociological acceptance as the voice of frustration emanating from its most honest protagonists, it’s never really been socially acceptable. The rap against rap, just like reggaeton, has always been its perceived misogyny, its glorification of violence and crime, its obscenity, and its adolescent posturing, i.e. more attitude than music. Reggaeton has always had more music than hip-hop of course, which is essentially a spoken-word genre which almost no one would dare call poetry. Yet despite its adoption and adaptation by almost every culture and language in the world as a voice of the oppressed, the old charges still stick. It’s the lyrics, dummy. You can’t undo them. You can hire Ice-T to play a cop on TV, but you can’t change the lyrics to ‘Cop Killer’. In Puerto Rico the police and National Guard were even called out to confiscate reggaeton music wherever they could find it in an attempt to stamp out the cause of the island’s moral decay at the source. Then ‘Gasolina’, the hit by Daddy Yankee in 2005, went platinum and all that changed. All of a sudden reggaeton was okay, a true crossover success, transformed overnight by a cute little novelty song, fought over by politicians instead of being fought against.

But on 'El Hijo de Obatala' Santero goes beyond all the hype, on the one hand returning reggaeton to its musical Caribbean roots, and on the other taking it in a new direction as a potent moral force for those same people for whom it was once a cry of anguish and hate, and little more. As the name suggests, reggaeton has its origins as an adaptation of reggae music into the Spanish language and its derived culture in the Americas, particularly Panama and Puerto Rico. If it got its start with the Jamaican laborers on the Panama Canal, it got its real push with Bob Marley’s surge to mass popularity and poster-boy acceptance as a hero to downtrodden third-world peoples everywhere. Many reggaeton lyrics at first were English-language reggae simply translated to espanol and sung right over the original melodies. It’s no accident that this would occur in the Hispanic countries most closely associated with America and the English language. As time passed and reggaeton evolved it adopted Jamaican dancehall and especially American hip-hop as its primary influences, gradually moving away from the optimism and philosophical balancing act of Bob Marley into something more materialistic and sometimes sinister.

Santero puts the spirituality back into reggaeton, all the while never losing the edge that makes it reggaeton in the first place. Thus a path that started with his birthplace in Guatemala comes full circle. With its traditional Maya culture and spectacular landscape, Guatemala may be one of the most beautiful countries in the world, but underneath it’s also one of the ugliest. I used to think that Lake Atitlan was the coolest place imaginable- until they found a dead body in the ravine next to our house- and the war was on. Everybody knows about the political violence of the 80’s, but may not know about the traffic in babies and body parts that continues to this day. Traditional Mayas may worship the old gods carved on stones on isolated hilltops, but evangelical Christians are the primary religious force in a country still nominally Catholic. A traditional Maya woman may still wear the huipil that identifies her place of birth and binds her to a lineage stretching backward into a remote infinity, but that doesn’t help the Guat City street urchin scrounging for scraps and for whom glue is the drug of choice. That’s the social and cultural milieu into which Santero was born. He left with his family when things got so bad in the 80’s that anything would be better.

Fortunately Santero always had music in his life, his father being the leader of a regionally popular cumbia and salsa band in Guatemala, a vocation he continued with at least some belated success in the US. This made a huge impression on the young Santero, he quickly absorbing current American musical influences, but maybe slightly less than the impression ultimately made on him by Santeria, a misnomer for the Yoruba-derived religion especially popular in Cuba and even quietly immortalized by Desi Arnaz in ‘Babalu’. Even in the back streets of Communist-to-the-death Havana, to this day you can still find shops stacked head to foot with items of adoration to the Orishas. But Santero went farther than that; he was initiated as a priest, disciple of the deity Obatala. The rest is history. His music from that point onward became a manifestation of that discipline and that spiritual presence. It’s served him well apparently. It even works for me, and I’m hardly what you would’ve called a reggaeton fan, at least not until recently…

El Hijo de Obatala (Son of Obatala) is the culmination of that spiritual infusion into Santero’s music, and the lyrics are full of it. From the opening song ‘Abre Camino’ (‘Open a Path’) to the final tribute to the warrior-saint ‘Ochosi’, Santero sings of inner city frustrations- “los que caen son los innocentes… ando buscando la justicia” (“the innocent are the ones who fall… I go looking for justice”), but without being defeated by it. His religion is his savior, just as it was for his hero Bob Marley. In ‘Baba Ade’ the divine Obatala himself “siempre me perdone sin reproche… alivia mi pena… accompaneme siempre” (“always pardons me without reproach… relieving my pain… always accompanying me”). He evens deals with environmental issues in ‘Agua del Mar’- “el calentamiento… parece suicidio” (“global warming… seems like suicide”), but the issues are mostly personal. A true ‘spirit walker’, as Santero calls himself, must even deal with death, and that he does, in ‘Madre de Nueve’- “el dia que me muere no me van a enterrar… nadie va llorar… recibeme” (the day that I die they won’t bury me… nobody will cry… receive me’). If he had omitted that pesky little detail of life- its opposite, its denial- I might have been skeptical about his spiritual enlightenment. He’s the real thing.

If you think you’ll need to brush up on your high-school Spanish to enjoy Santero, don’t worry- the music will carry you through. The surprising thing is its diversity, hardly a song repeating another’s licks in a genre I’d long given up as a one-off. The cumbia and salsa background serve Santero well here, and he dips liberally into both to keep the beat hopping. That means congas, brass, and flute, the works. The Marley influence is still there, in both words and music, lilting and optimistic. But maybe what’s most surprising is another voice from the grave, being properly coaxed and channeled- Marvin Gaye, complete with female back-up in English, to help re-align the focus. These days, after all, what better describes our dilemmas better than a phrase from another chaotic era- “What’s goin’ on?” Give DJ Santero’s ‘El Hijo de Obatala’ a listen- you just might be pleasantly surprised. I was.

INBAR BAKAL’S MUSIC TRANSCENDS POLITICS

The debut album by Inbar Bakal, ‘Song of Songs’, is a wonder and a revelation, with its lush harmonics and rich melodies. This also fills a much-needed niche within the field of Semitic-language music for those for whom Tinariwen is too raw, Algerian rai too slick, Rachid Taha too French, and Ethiopian music too… weird (comparisons to Niyaz are obvious, but they are mostly sung in Farsi, so non-Semitic… more later). The irony is that Inbar Bakal is neither Arab nor Tuareg nor Berber nor Ethiopian. She’s Jewish, an Israeli by birth, via Yemen and Iraq parentage. For those of you who don’t know, there is a pre-Diaspora scattering of ‘oriental’ Jewish people that is the result not necessarily of emigration, but of conversion. Ethiopia was a Jewish nation before its conversion to Christianity, as was Yemen before Islam. This is an important point to remember, since at that time, the similarities between them outweighed their differences and monotheism itself was the powerful belief (and economic benefit?) that defeated a plethora of lesser gods and their demands for tribute. Until the foundation of the Israeli state, Judaism not only survived but even thrived in enclaves within the Islamic world, far better than they fared in Europe in fact.

So Inbar Bakal helps bring Israel and its musical heritage full circle, back to its origins in the Middle East. She does this by looking for modern clues in ancient texts, adapting Yemeni melodies to Torah-inspired lyrics. Her songs are of ascendance, meditation, and worship, the struggles for Yerushalayim and the struggles of an unwilling bride in an arranged marriage. If photos of her at first seem oddly ultra-sexy, given the subject matter and background, notice that they also are extremely enigmatic, of a soul half-divided, an innate tension that plays itself out in song, half-crying and half-laughing. She one-ups Mona Lisa in walking an emotional fence with a combination of resignation and resilience, faith and humor, all lying just slightly below the surface, close enough to sense if not touch.

If Bakal has a talented band of diverse musicians, her chief collaborator on ‘Song of Songs’ is Grammy-nominated producer Carmen Rizzo, himself a co-founder of the Persian/Sufi/Indian-inspired group Niyaz. Thus the question arises as to whether we’re listening primarily to Carmen or to Inbar. This is the same situation as with other artist/producers such as Daniel Lanois or T-Bone Burnett. It doesn’t matter of course, certainly not on a studio album, as long as the music is good. And it is. Ms. Bakal’s voice matches the music perfectly. If this typically takes the form of a melancholy lament, I see no reason why it should always be so. It would be interesting to see how she would interpret more up-beat material. You probably don’t want to play her song ‘The Bride’ at your wedding. Somebody might change his or her mind.

There is another story here of course, one of politics. Ms. Bakal proudly served in the Israeli military, as all citizens must, but she even attained the rank of officer in the Israeli air force. The fact that she advertises this fact rather than obscuring it, all the while playing with musicians of other faiths, including Islam, is commendable. Maybe it’s naïve to think that music might accomplish what negotiations can’t, but then again, maybe it’s not. When you have movies like ‘Heavy Metal in Baghdad’ making the circuits and people in Zagreb camping overnight to be the first in line to buy tickets for U2, there’s obviously a power there that’s more than just muddy metaphor and silly simile. The new album by Inbar Bakal adds an important new dimension to the extant library of modern Middle Eastern music. I want more, and I want it live, but for now the album will suffice for a few more listens. That’s the ultimate test, which she passes with flying colors.

OLIVER ‘TUKU’ MTUKUDZI ROCKS ADDIS ABABA

There was supposed to be a ‘festival’ two weekends ago in Addis Ababa called Selam Music Festival sponsored by a group whose initials are SEANM, some Swedish-Ethiopian musical something or other promising conferences and workshops and live music in clubs around town, which apparently degenerated into a few shows at ONE club called Club Alize’. Now while I didn’t come here specifically for that, and I’ve experienced other such dubious ‘festivals’ which are frequently little more than mutual admiration societies for egocentric cliques, I’m still disappointed, more as a promoter and supporter of the arts than personally, that such opportunities for communion amongst diverse groups are missed. So when I found out that Oliver ‘Tuku’ Mtukudzi was playing in a show sponsored by the African Union I didn’t hesitate to grab a ticket. I’ve got habits to feed, too, and they’re always hungry.

‘Tuku’ is apparently a pretty big star in his native Zimbabwe, though I’m not sure how often he gets back to check, given the situation there and his star status on the world music circuit. He’s been featured several times on Putumayo compilations and has appeared in numerous world music festivals. The only time I saw him before was in Globalquerque! in New Mexico a couple years ago, so it was nice to hear him again without multiple stages competing for my attention. He was in good form even if the sound system wasn’t, frequently backfiring and even causing a fifteen minute disruption at one point. Tuku persevered with his smooth breezy Caribbean-like sounds. This is Reggae without the Rasta, ear candy without all the quasi-philosophical baggage which a non-adept may or may not be able to ‘overstand’ or even tolerate. It suits me just fine; I want more. Tuku is a showman also, with his own ‘moon-walk’ which he’ll gladly take to the bleachers if that’s what it takes to move butts. Too bad there weren’t more there to move, with the Africa Union’s ticket prices a bit steep for local budgets. Don’t let that stop you.

SEATTLE’S GOT RHYTHM! (IT’S IN THE WATER)…

Two weekends ago Seattle was the scene of the World Rhythm Festival, sponsored by the Seattle World Percussion Society (SWPS or ‘swoops’). And what a scene it was, too, with the sound of drumming absolutely taking over Seattle Center, home of the famous Space Needle, in case you didn’t know. On the surface Seattle might be the last place you’d expect to see a percussion festival. I mean, it’s hardly a great center of salsa or Afro-beat. But that’s not the most important thing when you’re talking about drum circles and such. The most important thing is hipness, and Seattle is nothing if not hip, perhaps rivaled only by its little brother and little sister cities Portland and Vancouver. This is an area after all where local public radio still has a Grateful Dead hour (what year is this? 14AD?) and RatDog is heavy on the marquees with ‘The Dead’ not far behind. Apparently this is Ground Zero for drum circles and while I’m not sure what the connection is between hipness and drumming, Mickey Hart maybe, but most likely ‘the late great’ Babatunde Olatunje, I DO remember them at least as far back as the one Oregon Country Fair that I went to back in 1983 or so, and this is the sixteenth year for the SWPS event.

I don’t pretend to know all the ins and outs of the world of drum circles, but I do know they’re a lot of fun, and probably quite therapeutic for those of you stuck behind your desks all day every day, bless your hearts. Mine goes out to you, when I’m not jealous of you with your ‘real’ jobs and your kids and your lives. Arthur Hull is apparently the godfather of the official ‘movement’, complete with facilitator/practitioners, and he was there in full force, cutting up and hamming it up when he wasn’t actually mustering the troops into rhythm with drums and shakers and whatever instruments happened to be at hand. It seemed like everyone was carrying a drum, typically swathed in African cloth and slung over the shoulder for toting. Of course there were real live Africans there, too, in addition to other ethnicities, and this was the true value of the event, at least for me. These included Manimou Camara, Mapathe Diop and Modibo Traore (and that’s just the ‘M’ listings) representing most of the countries of Western Africa, which just so happens to be the most populous region of Africa and the mustering yard for the diaspora, of both forced slavery and Bantu expansion.

After Africa and African-style drumming, the other ethnicities and drumming styles represented included Latino (including Brazilian), Arab, Asian and good ol’ American. The levels of professionalism varied but in general were good, though in an open field like this there will always be some pretenders to thrones who do more invoking (of various spirits and gods) than evoking (of rhythm and movement), and some dancers more than willing to seize the opportunity to show off some pecs and ‘ceps just in case the moon is right and the mood is willing. But in general it was all good and fun, with highlights including didgeridoo playing, Japanese Taiko, and possibly my favorite, Egyptian dumbek featuring Raquy (pronounced ‘Rockie’) Danziger and her Cavemen. They get my Golden Finger award for sheer talent AND mixed origins. That lady has got some fingernails that mean business, and I don’t mean retail, and a no–nonsense approach that put some other flashier performers to shame.

Though broad swathes of the globe were represented, there was at least one glaring ethnic omission and a surprising one at that considering the Northwest’s political correctness- Native American, with some very respectable drumming of its own and chanting that not only carries a message with its medium but highlights the voice as a percussion instrument in a way rarely matched. In fact Native American drumming may be THE origin of the drum circle concept and is actually the first one I saw way back when in Portland, though I don’t think it was called that. There were also some gaps in the musical spectrum at both ends, percussive art and the most popular percussion instrument of all, the trap set used by every rock band from Seattle to Shanghai. As I found out last year in Buenos Aires and Montevideo respectively, not only can the traditional drum trap set can be a lead instrument in the right hands and the right jazz band, but there is a category of percussion that could hardly be considered drumming at all, and is best described as art. Marimba music falls somewhere between the two, music but not drumming, and was well represented by a group of kids known as the Shumba Youth Marimba Ensemble. You haven’t heard marimba until you’ve heard a half dozen of them together.

Yes, the festival was heavy on drum circle enthusiasm and enthusiasts and another side of that world was eventually revealed to me, drumming as a motivational technique. Arthur Hill himself doubles as a motivational speaker and others radiate the same self-centered glow. Maybe if everybody played drums, TOGETHER, then there would be no more war? It’s worth a try.

WARSAW VILLAGE BAND’S REINCARNATION TO INFINITY

I’m not always kind to musicians wanting to ‘get all philosophical’ or even intellectual, depending on how well they do it of course, but more typically it plays out in direct proportion to the quality and quantity of the month’s stash. I’m especially reminded of one singer’s self-deprecating reminder to herself last summer at a show in LA to ‘shut up and play’. I’ll have to admit, though, I find Warsaw Village Band’s notes to ‘Infinity’ especially timely and endearing. Maybe for me it has to do with global climate change or nuclear blackmail or water-boarding to flush out terror (!?) or whatever, not to mention over-population (which is apparently taboo to speak about), but for them it’s simply the birth of a child, which I hear can put you through some changes- “you start to think about the countless, nameless generations that preceded us… have accumulated their every trace in music, art, language – in a word – CULTURE.” As the external linear time-line measured by calendars looks increasingly challenged, the internal one measured by generations and shared memories takes on increasing importance. This is the psychological landscape that Warsaw Village Band tries to evoke in various ways on ‘Infinity’. But can you dance to it?

You can. Sometimes Warsaw Village Band, especially in previous work, sounds like nothing so much as Irish folk music… played with a double-time vengeance and supernatural intensity. The best example of this on the new album is the opening song, ‘Wise Kid Song’. This naturally ignites the chicken-egg controversy of which came first and who influenced whom, the Celts leaving music behind to be taken up by successive immigrants or borrowing it themselves from across the continent at a later date; it’s probably more the latter, but unimportant really. Other songs contain an ethereal chanting that extends that metaphor, evoking the Lindisfarne Gospels and a time when the solution to a crumbling Roman world’s chaos was best found internally, in sanctuaries and private meditation. To this day Poland and Ireland are the most devoutly Catholic of European countries, and that influence gets internalized into the music.

On ‘Infinity’ that sound gets broadened, with the help of other musicians and traditions, into something at times more abstract and Oriental as on ‘Circle #1’, at times more moody and dramatic as on the klezmer-inspired ‘1.5 hours’. Overall, though, the album seems to veer away from ethereal chants toward more down-to-earth blues, maybe not necessarily the Delta or Chicago kind so much, as on ‘Little Baby Blues’, but some sort of meta-blues that appears in the minor keys and plaintive cries of all musical traditions. There are songs here that evoke church gospel choirs and others that remind one of plantation field hollers. But the closest thing to good old-fashioned pop hooks comes on ‘Skip Funk’, which is pretty self-explanatory, just straight-ahead infectious boogie that sticks to your ribs. For my money they could explore that groove further.

Be forewarned- Warsaw Village Band uses a lot of violin(s), so if that’s your pleasure, then you’re in for a real treat, some soaring and screaming licks not often found on studio albums. If that’s a problem then start with small doses; it grows on you, and that’s probably the best test of any album, the repeat listen. I’d be very curious to see what these guys (and girls) can do live. The potential is there to go incendiary. I hope to find out soon (just leave the kid with a sitter, please; that’s all I ask. He’s cute as a bug, and I love kids, but work’s work. The last time somebody brought their kid onstage I was outta’ there and on the Metro before everbody else got finished going, “AAWWwwww (falling tone)…”). One thing interesting this band does is give most of their songs English titles, though sung in Polish. This is an interesting solution to world music’s ‘language problem’. I don’t know how well they actually match the content of the song, but still it’s nice to have some kind of verbal handle to attach to a song, a catchy refrain, even if the music IS the most important thing (90% of the time it is).

One more thing- this band LOOKS GREAT. I’ve got some exes who’d go ape-shit for these guys based on looks alone. Etran Finatawa’s got nothing on them there, except for the spooky eye movements at a distance. They could be the poster parents for anybody’s retro/vintage wear boutique. ‘Infinity’ by Warsaw Village Band is infinitely (pun intended) worth a listen. Check ‘em out.

‘SLEEPWALKING’ DVD DOCUMENTS MULTI-KULTI FANTASY

So maybe you’re a college student who listens to ‘indie’ music and you’ve heard a novelty song or two recently that you liked from the Cambo-American rock-a-delic ‘world music’ band Dengue Fever. And maybe you figured this is another case of some foreign model-cum-singer-cum-actress raised on English language and white bread working with some American musicians to provide her some backup and some LA street cred while she tries to parlay her good looks and sweet voice into some sort of Hollywood E-tainment career? Once she’s got some press, then maybe she’ll revert to the standard Celine solution of middle-road mainstream generic English-language pop mixed with an exotic foreign accent, maybe become an Anggun for America? Think again. For one thing, the band found her, not the other way around. For another thing, Ms. Nimol doesn’t model or act, so far as I know. She’s the real thing, niang srey Kampuchea jahk Battambang who’s seen her share of reality, and I don’t mean ‘American Idol’. Finally, and most importantly, this band is first and foremost about the music, not any hype that might rise and fall with the tides. Hopefully you listened to more than the one or two songs that made the college radio circuit and found in the larger oeuvre something that made you want to know more… and listen again…

Or maybe you’re like me, and you’ve been wanting to see this documentary film ever since you showed up at the Bangkok International Film Festival almost two years ago, scanned the schedules and saw a title from a song you knew and realized that this documentary you’d heard of was screening… yesterday! ­*&^%$#! Being a world music fan, you’d heard the rumors and legends, knew it had been documented on film, but not that it had already had its premier at the Silver Lake Film Festival in LA earlier in that year and now was in the other ‘City of Angels’ (Krung Thep). Since then it’s been playing the festival circuit and universities and museums (never coinciding with my schedule btw), wherever there might be interest in an off-beat documentary that’s stylistically straight-forward, but about a real-life story that’s the stuff of multi-kulti musical fantasy. I mean, come on now- musician and friend wander through the Cambodian outback, then friend gets sick, whereupon they stumble on to an incredible long-lost musical genre? Musician and musician brother then search for a Khmer karaoke queen who unknowingly carries the musical gene, find her, and finally convince her to sing for an American public who have no idea what to expect when this band of freaks hits the stage? Yeah, right, and it’s coming soon to a theatre near me, starring both Harrison Ford AND Brendan Fraser, yada yada blah blah. Cut to chase scene. Cut to happy ending. FADE TO BLACK. Great log line yeah, but who’s gonna’ buy that script?

What’s that, you say? You’re not a college student who listens to indie music? And you’re not like me, some half-crazed hack with a laptop and a passport full of visas? Why not? So what in the holy Hell am I talking about? Perhaps a word or two of explanation is in order. Here’s the Reader’s Digest™ condensed version: musician DID discover an incredible long lost musical genre in Kampuchea, though it’s definitely a polished urban style, not rural gantreum. Now there are a lot of foreign musical genres out there that have yet to be properly documented, much less marketed, and many have come and gone with little notice. What makes 60’s Cambodian pop so unusual is: 1) this is from the early 60’s. Most Western pop music didn’t get heavily exported until the 70’s when R&R became Big Business; 2) 60’s Cambodian pop disappeared because most of its proponents themselves disappeared in Pol Pot’s myopic sui-genocidal attempt to remake Cambodian society in his own perverted image; and 3) the music is GOOD; I mean really really GOOD.

Dengue Fever’s early remakes only give you a glimpse into that era and a hint of the breadth of that genre. Fortunately the old videotapes still exist, can be ordered, and you can watch the Cambodian equivalent of American Bandstand for hours on end, the Cambodian counterparts to Paul Anka, Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, Lesley Gore, Neil Sedaka, etc. singing some of the best pop music ever produced, apparently without a clue that what they were doing was something special in the cultural history of the world. Apparently they kept playing right up to the moment when Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge/K’mai Grahorm mustered their forces on the city’s outskirts, without a clue as to what was about to happen. The rest is history; it wasn’t pretty. People had a hard time smiling the first time I visited in 1998.

Or you can go to Sihanoukville like me and instead of hanging out on the beach or in bars, you can watch it all on Cambodian TV nonstop. But you said you’re not like me, didn’t you? Then you might want to cut to the happy ending and get a copy of Sleepwalking Through the Mekong. To continue: After becoming hooked on the music, musician and brother musician DID look for a Cambodian singer and finally found one right in Long Beach’s own Khmer neighborhood. She’s Ch’hom Nimol. The rest is history, this time prettier. Not only did the band find a groove, but also a common cause in wanting almost immediately to take the music back to its source in Kampuchea, almost as if to ask for its blessing. By 2005 after all, Kampuchean people finally had something to smile about, what with beaucoup Chinese investment money and memories that had finally laid down their weapons after Pol Pot’s death.

This is the story that Sleepwalking Through the Mekong documents. Soon after forming, soon after finding a place on the soundtrack to Matt Dillon’s City of Ghosts about a foreigner’s misadventures in Kampuchea, but long before finding a real audience for their eclectic brand of music, Dengue Fever went to Phnom Penh to play for the locals during the Bon Om Dteuk water festival. Director John Pirozzi’s experience with music videos and as a cinematographer in feature-length films, including City of Ghosts, serves him well here, mostly in focusing on the esthetic potentials of both the music and the landscape, and letting the story tell itself. In the best documentaries after all a script emerges only after the shooting has taken place and available footage is diced and spliced. This usually involves reams of footage to be culled through, resulting in a very high footage-to-final cut ratio, vis a vis narratives. Here I suspect that ratio is much slimmer and may account for the rather unusual 67 minute length, too long for a short film and too short for a full-length one. If this is a problem for presenters, it’s certainly not for viewers. Why add filler to a story that tells itself in its own good time, or worse still, cut-to-fit? This is the MySpace era after all, the new musical democracy. Can a film democracy be far behind? Give YouTube some time.

This whole project must have come out of some late-night conspiracies during down time on location for City of Ghosts, and the aspect of ‘winging it’ is one of the endearing qualitites of the film, the killing fields becoming a field of dreams, gods willing. The tossed mixed salad of locations is a treat, too, from live Cambodian TV to dark dingy night clubs to remote production stages. The story of a country’s search for a future and a past intertwine with the story of a band’s search for its own voice and its audience. They’re planting new seeds where they found old roots in hopes that the tree will grow proud and strong and bear much fruit. They’ve got some help from the locals, kids and grannies too, and eventually another story emerges, our own universal love affair with pop music and the warm rich feelings that not only emerge upon listening, but can re-emerge to some extent with each successive listening. Thus the living library of pop music becomes a guided tour and an ever-expanding catalog of our own collective emotional lives and the complex psychologies that arise to explain and enhance it. While this may usually involve the typical boy/girl dynamic and the added extras that make everything so frustratingly triangular and inconclusive, still this is the best clue we have as to how our nervous systems actually operate and the basis for much subsequent philosophy. More importantly these same frustrations that threaten to tear us apart also bind us together as humans with common experience.

At least now you don’t have to learn Khmer language to listen to Dengue Fever in the original so much anymore, as they’ve added more songs in English to their latest album Venus on Earth. Still, if the number of plays is the final measure of an album’s worth to me, then Escape from Dragon House still remains the magnum opus. How they can create such hauntingly beautiful songs composed back-and-forth between English and Khmer is a mystery to me and no small feat I assure you. It’ll be interesting to see what they do on their next album. They’ve come a long way from their first album of Khmer-language covers. Me, I’m just looking for a lobotomist who can remove the title song from Escape from my own internal play list, not that I don’t like it, but just the opposite. I want to get on with my life. But on second thought, naaah… I like that feeling. Sleepwalking Through the Mekong is available now on DVD in all the usual places. Enjoy.