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.

EVIE LADIN- BREAKING BARRIERS WITH THE BANJO ON ‘FLOAT DOWNSTREAM’

So, since when did banjo music become world music- no foreign languages, no Africans, no salseros, nada? I don’t know. What year did girls from New Jersey start picking up the instrument? But unlike other innovators like Bela Fleck who deviated totally in his new jazzy direction, Evie Ladin stays squarely within the traditional confines of the instrument, concentrating on songs with a good lyrical base, and doing them up right with sweet harmonies and spot-on phrasing. It becomes world music when divorced from its original farm-system Opry roots and all the cultural baggage that goes with that. Thus bluegrass and country now have another option besides slick country-pop or ‘hillbilly music’ and blues and R&B are no longer ‘race music’ but a medium open to all those who choose it as most appropriate to their sensibilities. Of course the fusions don’t always work. I have yet to hear an Afro-beat band that jukes and jives like Fela, and there’s many an alt-country up-and-comer who’d do well to listen to a few Merle albums before that SXSW showcase.

“Free at last,” someone once exclaimed at seeing barriers fall, but don’t forget to pay respects to your forebears who labored long and hard to give you your licks. Evie Ladin does. She goes way back in her nods to the greats, before bluegrass even, back when they were still ‘string bands.’ And that’s the way she plays her banjo, too, not strummed- she doesn’t go THAT far back- but picked in a claw-hammer style that is at once expressive and percussive. If you’re looking for ‘Orange Blosson Special’ you might have to wait a while. More modern influences might include Emmylou and Marcia Ball, not to mention her producers and virtuoso musicians Mike Marshall on guitars and mandolin and husband Keith Terry on drums and percussion. A stellar line-up like that pretty much justifies the cost of admission straight off.

The album starts off fairly predictably, with ‘I Love My Honey’ – “love my honey I do…love till the sea runs dry,” a quick-picking number that re-assures you right away that at least you did choose from the right Amazon rack. Song #2 ‘Romeo’ is a nice change-up, more folk-style, with some nice organ and drum, that lets you know that you better put down you Sudoku and listen to this album, or you might just miss something- "you wanted me to be your wife… what changed your mind?" Song #3 ‘Float Downstream’ drills the point home even further with its slow lugubrious “my baby left me.” So THAT’s what’s bothering Evie, and millions of women- and men- like her. Love is transitory, going by like a speeding train in one of Einstein’s famous ‘thought experiments’ if you can’t get into the same frame of reference… BEFORE the opportunity passes. Fortunately you can, at least some of the time, as in ‘How Did You Know’- “I didn’t want it to get nasty… after all these years I’m still here,” a slow soulful lament with an ultimately happy ending of willed… not resignation, but adaptation.

By now Evie’s made her points on love- okay, one more point on #5 ‘Dance Me’ – “waited my lifetime for just such a man… who can dance me the way that my baby can,” and NOW we can proceed to kick out the jams a little. ‘One of These Days’ is Las Vegas bluegrass a la Emmylou- “a long time ago, life was so slow… win or lose, have another round,” and ‘Mardi Gras’ is a jazzy Cajun fiddle tune, Marcia Ballsy and rollicking- “Mardi gras is a grand party.” She’d probably do better to wait a month for Festival Internationale Louisiane. Still feelings of hurt and loss creep in, no matter how effective music’s ability to allay them, as in ‘Maybe An Angel’ – “can it be I’ll never see you again? Where you flying now?” with some nice organ, or ‘Precious Days’ with its sparse banjo and guitar, introspective- “well all my years have gone before me, and the race is almost run… I know my journey’s just begun.” Finally there emerges a re-assertion of core values, common to all string bands of whatever stripe, home and family, in ‘Home From Airy’- “this old house is run-down, but it’s mine… it’s home and I know where I stand,” fiddle and banjo now in service to the greater good. The circle is complete, and that’s good. Give ‘Float Downstream’ by Evie Ladin a listen. You might just be surprised. I was.

BIGBANG- Last Call for ‘Edendale’

For a foreign band to ‘make it’ in the US, or even the UK, is a tough proposition. It it doesn’t matter whether they’re singing in their native language or singing in English as a second language, though it could be argued that you haven’t really ‘made it’ until you’ve done it in English- it’s tough. Aside from a few Spanish-speakers- mostly bilingual- with a built-in fan base of native US Hispanics, I don’t think you’d need more than five fingers to count the ones who HAVE made it. There’s ABBA… and their clones Ace of Base… and… and… Nina Hagen? Scorpions? I guess it depends on definitions. It’s hard and takes a great deal of luck in addition to hot licks. Would ABBA have been so successful if they hadn’t popped on to the scene in the glam-rock/kitsch era doing naturally what others had to work and study hard to self-consciously create and emulate? Most that do make it, of course, make it first ‘over there’ and import themselves here as stars for hire fait accompli.

It seldom works, of course, so BIGBANG is doing it the hard way, the honest way, by moving to LA and playing clubs, slowly building up a fan base on the West Coast to add to that already established in home Norway and Europe… AND THEY’RE DOING IT IN THE AMERICAN MUSICAL IDIOM! Russia’s Mumiy Troll is also working hard at it right now, and doing well, but they’re something of a novelty group and may always remain so, and there’s no question but that ABBA scored as many points for novelty as for their cheesy lyrics in that export-quality Simplified English. BIGBANG is operating on American turf singing English-language lyric-driven songs. What are they thinking? Don’t they know how many American bands move to LA to ‘make it’ and then go home a year later, wallets and egos significantly deflated? Apparently not, for, little by little, BIGBANG is clawing their way up the ladder of success, one step- one club- at the time.

It’s not that we don’t like foreign accents- just look at Penelope Cruz’s phenomenal success. It’s just that lyric-driven songs require a certain amount of nuance that TOEFL-taught English just can’t seem to come up with. Despite most songwriters’ best efforts, the results are generally shallow two-dimensional clichéd… and, dare I say it, redundant? Even ABBA could barely avoid being cardboard-cutout-caricatures of themselves in concert, wooden as the boreal forests from which they came. I guess that’s why BIGBANG moved to LA to effect their metamorphosis- they want to be more than Norwegian wood. They want to achieve their success by actually mastering the masala idiom of good ol’ alt/indie/Americana. Do they succeed? Maybe.

I’ll confess that my first brief listen to 'Edendale' seemed to confirm my worst suspicions and prejudices, so I didn’t listen any further for a while. That’s what prejudices are for, after all. The problem was that my laptop is set to play everything ‘random,’ i.e. not in the order originally intended. Well, that system spit out the Steely Dan-like song #7 ‘To the Max’ first… only I didn’t realize it was Steely Dan-like, tongue-in-groovy-cheek and all that self-conscious feed-back from billboards and childhoods long past by on the road to redemption. I assumed they were playing it straight. Fortunately, if I’ve learned nothing else in my fifty some-odd years, I’ve learned to second-guess myself… so I listened to it again- still random mind you- but all the way through. Aaahhh, that’s better…

For the most part, BIGBANG plays it straight, little self-conscious kitsch to sort through in the search for ultimate meaning. Their songs may be influenced by FaceBook and television and other various assorted ephemera of existence, but mostly it’s about the core equation, albeit in reverse order- I AM, therefore I think… and love… and hurt… like Hell sometimes. It’s no accident that their album cover is in chiaroscuro- so are their songs. Thus they seem sometimes as if they want to be for pop music what fellow Nord Ingmar Bergman was for film- or maybe Woody Allen’s take on Bergman- weird moods that can function in real time… and with a sense of humor.

Edendale is an obsolete name for Echo Park, the rocker/artist enclave in LA, and ‘Play Louder’ leads off the album evoking that theme forthwith, in something of a time-travel apocalyptic sci-fi scenario- “Somewhere in Edendale… the whole world’s coming down… I’m not around,” making up in pure sympathetic energy whatever it lacks in factual accuracy. ‘Call Me’ ups the emotional tempo a notch, rocking hard and spitting out lyrics like, “Call me.. you don’t need me… but I like you and I wouldn’t mind… all I need is a bit of your precious time.” Song three ‘Swedish Television’ slows things down a bit, moving into the weird-but-all-too-familiar psychological space of love and life gone wrong, “You should see me now… trying to remember the warmth from a father’s hand… feelings still grow here without you.” Song #4 ‘Isabel’ is an even slower more brooding ballad, “Isabel… coming to the end of the road… be sure to put your jacket on… time to send your soul back to the ground… a part of you is already dead.” I hope she’s okay.

The remaining studio songs on the album are mostly variations on the themes of life and love, culminating in the ballad ‘One Step at a Time,’ “one step at a time… I’ll move to another town and find someone else,” a solitary guitar painting a landscape of guilt and rejection and longing… for something. In addition the US version of the already Euro-released album contains three bonus tracks, including ‘Something Special,’ an up-tempo jazzy number featuring a really nice drum track and enigmatic lyrics like, “you got me running… late at night trying to find you… I started thinking, ‘what could I do?’… I had something for you, must be something for me… something to give you, something special…” A live version of ‘Wild Bird’ wraps things up nicely, proving if nothing else that the three bonus tracks may very well be worth the cost of admission. A foreign band that can back up their studio stuff with effective live versions deserves suspension of disbelief prima facie. The proof comes with repeated listens. These guys are no cardboard cut-outs. They rock… in English. That’s ‘Edendale’ by Norway’s BIGBANG. Check it out.

CEDRIC WATSON AND BIJOU CREOLE- ‘L’esprit Creole’: Zydeco’s Next Wave?

Though zydeco was one of the first ‘world music’ sub-genres out of the gates, its history has been a bit uneven. On the one hand it has the unique distinction of being one of the few styles of ethnic music from the lower 48 US states, complete with non-English lyrics and all. That’s both blessing and curse, of course, because on the other hand their natural ethnic fan base is limited, and the tastes of hipsters and intellectuals is both fickle and short-attention-span. A small genre like zydeco needs a star, too, and it’s been a long time since Clifton Chenier has lead the pack with his almost-Marley-like status within music circles. Sure, there’s been Buckwheat Zydeco and Queen Ida, but mass cross-over appeal is still lacking there. In a way zydeco has almost been a victim of its own success, since once a new genre gains exposure it’s then subject to a syndrome somewhat analogous to ‘produce or perish.’ Fortunately it gained recognition as a separate genre for Grammy Award purposes, so that’s an important recognition of its unique accomplishments.

For years now rural Cajun and zydeco music in southern Louisiana have been cross-fertilizing not only with urban New Orleans jazz and funk, but also with the music scene in southern Texas, including the always quirky alt-country scene in Austin and the Tex-Mex scene in San Antonio. This has been a creative milieu for all parties involved, offering links to polka, salsa, blues, and folk Americana in addition to the more obvious connections. Enter Cedric Watson on to the zydeco scene based in Lafayette, Louisiana, a country boy from Texas intent on re-inventing himself along the lines of his Creole ancestry and re-inventing zydeco music in whatever way works best, acknowledging its traditions while stretching its boundaries. His newest album L’Esprit Creole (‘Creole Spirit’) with his band Bijou Creole goes a long way to doing just that. The eponymous opening song ‘Bijou Creole’ sets the tone for the album, a rocker in classic zydeco style, with lots of accordion and lilting melody dutifully listing their qualifications- ‘c’est la belle musique… bon musique’… etc. You get the idea.

‘Le Sud de la Louisiane’ continues along the same lines while adding a significant blues-rock-jazz groove to the mix, complete with lead guitar, brass, and various dramatic flourishes. ‘Mais La’ returns to traditional Cajun forms, with lots of accordion and funky folksy rhythm. ‘J'suis parti au Texas’ lets Cedric show off his Cajun fiddle, almost ‘Orange-Blossom-Special’-like imitating the sound of an old car trying to make it across the state line. With the next song ‘Zydeco Paradise’ they hit their creative stride, opening with a spacey abstract intro and segueing into a zydeco style with a distinct Memphis feel. ‘Lafayette Lala’ and ‘J'suis Gone à La Blue Moon’ return to classic accordion-driven zydeco musical and story-telling form, lettin’ the good times roll and hanging with ‘mes amis’, but by then, the secret is out- these guys are capable of more than just your typical boogie-woogie. Of course what would a French Creole-language album be without a song called ‘C'est La Vie’? Not much I reckon, and they do the concept justice with their slow introspective ballad evoking the values of reflection and perseverance. The rest of the album keeps up the good work, mostly rocking, but also with real country licks on ‘Cher 'Tit Coeur’, and finally terminating in a purely fiddle-based instrumental number ‘Blue Runner’ that rocks just for the Hell of it, reminding us that we’re here to dance, not think too much.

So what has Cedric Watson got that any other zydeco fiddle-slinger doesn’t? Listen to the thirty-second opening to ‘Zydeco Paradise’ with its poly-rhythms and jazz-space and you tell me. Those thirty seconds alone could be the birth of an entire new genre, where country-boy zydeco meets sassy miss New Orleans and gives birth to a savant son who can view Heaven in a glimpse, and lay down the soundtrack to it in a flash. Is the country boy with the floppy straw hat the guy to take zydeco into the next orbit? He just might be. There is musical vision there the surface of which has only been scratched. Why else would he choose to be marketing himself through world music channels? There’s a big world out there, and I think Mr. Watson is looking beyond the next crawfish festival to put the ice cream on his apple pie. I just want to know one thing- when are they going to erect a memorial at Jay’s Lounge and Cock Pit in Cankton? While I wax nostalgic over a Saturday night long ago, y’all can check out ‘L’esprit Creole’ by Cedric Watson and Bijou Creole. It’s good.