“… HIP-HOP CHILDREN OF BE-BOP PARENTS…”, LA GETS HIP WITH DAAOOD, TRIBLE, AND THE WHOLE INDUS VALLEY

I haven’t heard anything like it since listening to Jack Kerouac over Steve Allen’s piano (on tape, a**hole, I’m not THAT old)… okay, so maybe not since McClure and Manzarek anyway… the power of poetry- GOOD poetry- being spoken over music- GOOD music. That’s what we lucky ones got Friday night at Cal Plaza’s Grand Performance, in this case by Kamau Daaood- legendary Watts Writer- and a band that included such jazz luminaries as Otmaro Ruiz on keyboards and Justo Almario on reeds. Add to that the vocal stylings of Dwight Trible, and you’ve got an evening to remember. If for Trible the voice is every bit as much an instrument as a saxophone is, then for Daaood the spoken word is every bit as much an instrument as thought itself. Daaood stir-fries words like peppers and onions and meaty healthy tofu on a hot Chinese wok and then tosses them onto your plate over a bed of hot rice percussion to wash down with copious quantities of jazz mead wine. “I do not fit into form; I create form,” Daaood says in his ‘I’m not for Sale’ ode to master Horace Tapscott. You can say that again.

Dwight Trible is something else again, but meshes really nicely with Daaood in a kind of back-and-forth sing-song antiphony. He simply must be seen to be appreciated. Know how blind people ‘let themselves go’ in a way that sighted people can’t? While the short take might be that ‘they don’t know how silly they look,’ I suspect the reason is more one of balance. Close your eyes and see how quickly you lose yours. Dwight Trible resembles a hyper-balanced organism defining the relationship between earth and space/space and time, and his voice reflects this ethereal balancing act, constantly in motion, constantly re-positioning itself with what came before and what is yet still in mind, a mathematical variable seeking resolution.

Frankly Daaood and Trible could suffice with no backing at all, the two aspects of voice- as word and music, then harmony and melody- complete between the two of them. But the percussion gives it rhythm, and the jazz is the icing on the cake. It’s a shame nothing more has been done with the format, but then not much has even been done with the much vaster- and easier- concept of putting together moving pictures and music OR words. Look how MTV made a mockery of that without even really trying. Any body who thinks ‘it’s all been done’ lacks imagination. If it takes a trip down to Leimart Park to see these guys, I’d heartily recommend it… though downtown LA certainly makes it easy. The amount of jazz talent in LA that’s willing to come out and share itself on any given night is simply incredible and a resource not to be taken for granted.

So after a short break most of the opening band’s key members just changed jackets and came back out to back Badal Roy and his ‘Indus Valley Civilization.’ An off-shoot of the ‘Miles in India’ project of a couple years ago, this band is all about music- heavy on the percussion- not vocals. Interestingly enough Latinos Ruiz and Almario are very familiar with the Latin side of percussion, so this is something completely different. Do the two complete the two sides of the jazz percussion psyche? May be. They played a brilliant set anyway, all members taking turns at lead. The use of drum and percussion AS LEAD INSTRUMENT- not just solo rhythm- is something that should be explored much more extensively.

The Mexican band Troker played the third set of the evening, but I cut out early. I get bored on breaks. So I went down to Pershing Square and never made it back up. They sound pretty good on MySpace, though. I’d go back. Other than that there’s not much to report on last week’s offerings. Fishbone at Pershing Square sounded good on the last couple songs I caught, so I’d like to see more of them. Razia Said at McArthur Park was competent enough, but failed to excite me. This week’s looking really good, though. The chill deal looks like Friday evening at Cal Plaza once again, with Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba opening and LA’s much-beloved Dengue Fever coming out later. DON’T MISS!

Other than Dengue Fever, Tabou Combo next night at Cal Plaza sounds good, real island stuff out of Haiti! Besides that The Budos Band and Charanga Cakewalk at Mcarthur Park on Thursday and Friday nights, respectively, look like good bets. Jose Rizo is doing his take on Mongo Santamaria at LACMA’s Latin night, too, so there’s no shortage of tunes this week… and then there’s the clubs. Me, I’ll wait til it gets cold for that. See you at the water court, livest acoustics in town. Just don’t get caught in a dead zone…

PETE E TOPS MUSICAL WEEK IN LA

Well, this week in free outdoor entertainment- particularly of the world music variety- got off to a bit of a slow start this week. First there was Palenke Soultribe at McArthur Park. Now they’re not half-bad, mind you, and I’ve got an ever-expanding appreciation of electronica, but I’m not sure that an outdoor stage with tia y abuela y mijo is really the place for it. I mean, isn’t electronic groove, trance, whatever, custom-made for four black walls, spinning lights, mindless butt-twitching, and a healthy dose of ‘E’? Just as I was starting to think, ‘at least Nortec Collective has an accordion player,’ well right at that moment, who walks out but Mr. Vallenato himself, adding some Colombian country soul to Palenke’s techno grooves. There IS a God. I have a little bit of a problem watching people play with their computers on stage to begin with, but I can be flexible. Just try to keep it below the fifty percent threshold.

Adonis Puentes at noon in California Plaza was more my speed. Now I’m a great fan of his brother Alex (Cuba) Puentes, but this is something totally different, maybe the reason the two went their separate ways after an earlier collaboration. While Alex moved toward some impeccable pop instincts, while maintaining a Cuban rhythm base, Adonis remained closer to home, staying close to the Cuban son tradition. Interestingly, home for these guys is not actually Cuba, but British Columbia, Canada. But Cuba is the spiritual home, and the last century is the classical era, an era that Adonis recreates as surely as did the Buena Vista Social Club.

Later the same day, on the advice of numerous of my better-heeled contemporaries, I ventured out to see Cecilia Noel at McArthur Park. Once again, there seemed to be a problem of ‘place’. Is a public park really the place to see a Las Vegas-style act, especially one that features at its head a Latina ‘firecracker’? Isn’t that act a little out-of-date anyway? I mean, Charro may or may not still be alive (I’d need a doctor’s opionion to be sure), but surely with all the Madonnas and Gagas that have have come and gone in the last fifty years, you’d think we’d’ve moved on to another phase by now… not that her show’s no good, mind you. Her band’s killer, in fact, would have to be for Jimmie Kimmel to steal half of it for his own purposes, don’t you reckon? And Cecilia can still do a high-kick with the best of the Las Vegas chorus line… but still…

By all logic, Saturday should have been the payoff- given the law of large numbers and all- but… well… I was really looking forward to the show down at the Cal Plaza water court, to be divided between Nonstop Bhangra and Pacha Massive, but figured I might as well stop off at McArthur Park alolng the way, since it’s on the same Metro red line, so I can use the same ticket. I’ll only have a half hour there at most, so if the cops tell me that’s ‘two rides/two tickets’ I’ll just tell them I got off at the wrong stop, so need to continue on. Hey, I know it’s only a buck and a half, but there’s a principle involved here! The group playing was ‘Monte Negro’, variously credited with ‘rock/reggae/new wave/ska’ but which in reality is just some pretty decent ‘indie en espanol’ (mostly). I only had a few minutes if I wanted to make the start of the Cal Plaza show…

I probably should have stayed, but I’d been wanting to hear Bhangra music ever since I lived in Hounslow west of London (me and a lot of ex-pat sub-continentals) and saw it on all the flyers there every weekend, but… never got around to actually going to any shows. I was disappointed… but of course I really didn’t know what to expect. I’m still not sure if I got the ‘real thing’ or not, but somehow I don’t think a rapper should be coming out every other song to talk that shit... but you never know… The dance numbers were nice, though, even though there were vocals with no singers, i.e. pre-recorded. I left early, figuring to catch the Tubes down at Pershing Square between sets. I finally gave up after 15-20 minutes of waiting, figuring they’d only finally come up and do a quick run-through of their big hits, most of which I wouldn’t even know… So I rushed back to the water court, so’s not to miss Pacha Massive, who I’d heard OF… but never really heard… ho hum… maybe I should keep as a joke my little play on their name, Macha Passive. They make Aterciopelados look- and sound- like Nirvana, sleeeepyyyyyy… good rainy day stuff, pour a little brandy… maybe call up Michael Jackson’s doctor…

Then there’s Pete E, Escovedo that is, and a family that seems to know no bounds. Those guys not only rocked Hollywood & Highland last night, but made it memorable, including a visit by daughter Sheila E sitting in, plus numerous other members of the extended family. Pete and his brother Coke were as much a part of the original Santana sound as was Sr. Carlos himself, and Pete has gone on to become one of the grand masters of Latin jazz, an emerging genre that seems to have energized and stabilized the larger genre of jazz itself, saving it from the icky thump of too much white-boy ‘fusion’, to which jazz over-corrected after the excesses of be-bop. Jazz audiences are the best, too, the most complete mix of black white Latin Asian you’ll ever find. It saved the week for me.

This week is full of a bunch of unknowns- for me at least- so that’s good, as I like to keep it fresh. Adonis Puentes and Pistolera- both great- will be at LACMA and McArthur Park respectively, but I’ve seen both, so will likely be elsewhere. Since Madagascar is one of my favorite places in the world (watch your pockets!), I’ll definitely go check out Razia Said, one of its rising stars. Other than that, it’s pot luck and homework… that’s what MySpace is for. Some people like to rib it because of its second-ran status as a social network, but it’s maybe the single largest database of popular music in the world. There’s at least SOMETHING by almost everyone there. So maybe I’ll see you... somewhere in the golden triangle?

JAZZ, SUPER STRINGS, & LA SEMANA PERUANA

Well, things got off to a shaky start last Thursday when I found out that the group I was expecting to see and hear- ‘Palenke Soultribe’- is not scheduled until next week, so I got ‘Inca’ instead, an Andean folklore group. Chalk it up to dim lighting in my kitchen, jet lag, and the vicissitudes of fate. Anyway, that’s probably good, since I can probably think of plenty of things to say about Andean music, given my philosophy degree and many moons spent in Peru and Bolivia. Andean music, in fact, is maybe one of the few groups that can lay claim to a pre-reggae presence as a recognized world music genre, given Paul Simon’s adoption of ‘El Condor Pasa’ as his own, an event that pre-dated ‘Mother and Child Reunion’ by a shot and ‘Diamonds on the Soles’ by a mile. He couldn’t get it away with it now… now that Andean music has long been available in almost any Manhattan subway station- playing for tips- and the poor beggars are now reduced to dressing up in buckskin and beads and Sioux war bonnets, playing New Age music on the streets of Barcelona and Prague and… Ljubljana, any place where a there might be a tourist to buy the act, and the CD. And to think that not so long ago many good Andean groups could fill a decent-size arena in even modest-sized towns in the US. Maybe it’s time for their second wind. Though traditional penas may be on the decline in South America itself, Andean musicians have long been finding places in modern fusion-style jazz bands, with generally good results. Much of the the traditional stuff is musically not so challenging, after all, and plenty repetitious. They don’t create new traditions every day.

The LA-based band ‘Inca’ is maintaining traditions, though, but doing it right, mixing traditional dance in, and not limiting their offerings to the highland traditions. Anything ‘Afro’ is a good bet on the world music charts these days, and that includes Afro-Peruvian, whose contributions always outweighed their numbers. Ciro Hurtado, at LACMA Saturday evening, is more my speed, though. This is some of the best modern jazz on anybody’s favorite ‘triple-z’ station, and with a pronounced Andean twist, it goes down real nicely. This is one of the world’s best guitarists on nylon strings, and understatement IS his statement. Sr. Hurtado defines the modern ‘Latino sound’ almost as much as Carlos Santana once did, but he accomplishes it in negative space, a reverse applique’ tapestry. Imagine one of Santana’s rare quiet moments and that’s where Hurtado punches it up, most of the time laboring away unobtrusively in the background, weaving a rich sonic landscape.

Grant Geissman was there at LACMA the night before as part of their Fri-Sat 1-2 jazz-Latino punch (I’ll have a cup of that, please) in what is fast becoming one of the city’s best free offerings. It’s a chill scene, too, families and picnics on the grass. Grand Performances downtown may have just as good a selection of DIY food, but LACMA has more dogs, if you’re a closet dog-whisperer or even just a casual dog-watcher (and kids are welcome and plentiful in the early eves). MacArthur Park has got the best pupusas, though, and some good music, too. In addition to the aforementioned ‘Inca’, and Ricardo Lemvo’s ‘Makina Loca’- which I’d already foregone- ‘String Theory’ was there Saturday evening, with some of the week’s more interesting sounds. Imagine steel strings stretched 100 feet across the Park’s lawn radiating from a harp-like point on stage. Add some guitar and bass and cello and plenty of percussion and you’ve got some novel frequencies, albeit mostly of the minor key, twangy-bent-string variety.

In what has to be one of the music season’s more bizarre coincidences, Saturday was also ‘string night’ at Cal Plaza downtown, but it took on a totally different dimension. Starting off with ‘Hiroshima’s June Kuramoto giving a virtuoso performance on the Japanese koto- accompanied by piano- the show went to Veracruz for the next set, with Conjunto Hueyapan and one of the best version’s of ‘La Bamba’ you’d ever want to hear, even if they DID leave out the ‘para subir al cielo’ verse (I won’t mention para ser secretaria). But the real treat came when the troupe’s youngest member, the lovely Ixya Herrera came in to take over vocal chores. That woman has got some pipes! And as the name suggests, she and they celebrate la raza’s indigenous background- in addition to the Spanish. Depending on how she decides to market herself at this point, I feel like I’ve just had a sneak preview of Lila Down’s successor. Prince Diabate’ closed out the evening on his griot’s African kora, but as the evening was already long, and I'd already seen and heard him, I decide to forego and go before. That’s three venues and five bands in as many hours in the Hollywood/mid-Wilshire/downtown circuit that I call my ‘Golden Triangle.’

Actually first- but not least- was ‘Bad Haggis’ (don’t ask what ‘haggis’ is) at the LA Farmer’s Market, a kind of Irish-folk-fusion group (no, U2 does not count as Irish folk). As always it’s novelty that sells (ask any businessman) and music is no different. Of course ‘Salsa Celtica’ has already been done- by a group of that very name, but whereas that’s mostly salsa with Celtic elements, this is just the opposite, i.e if you want to hear bagpipes, this is a better bet. Idon’t know how it’d play in the bars and pubs of Kilkenny, but it sounds pretty good at the LA Farmers Market… and that’s not the greatest venue for acoustics.

This week best bets are looking like the aforementioned Palenke Soultribe at MacArthur on Thursday, Natacha Atlas the same night out in the hills at Skirball, and Adonis Puentes and Pacha Massive (NOT ‘Macha Passive’, no) at Cal Plaza Friday noon and Saturday evening respectively. Of course that same evening not only will Nonstop Bhangra be playing the second set at the water court, but the Tubes (yes, THOSE Tubes!) will be right down the street at Pershing Square. Of course this is a world music blog, so I might just have to, you know… sneak over and catch a quick listen during break. Yes, I’m a closet punk/hippie/folkie/emo, guilty as charged. So sue me.

WORLD MUSIC HEATS UP LA- Beat the Donkey, Wil-Dog, and Tommy Castro

Ahhh! It’s that time of year again, like it or not. Last week the temps were up to almost three figures Fahrenheit and the blood so thin that I could barely get a quorum. The windows stay open and blankets go unused. The fan follows me around the apartment- which involves frequent trips to the fridge- and I have air-conditioned dreams, if I can sleep at all. Fast forward a few days and that’s all changed, reminding me of what I like most about LA- the weather. If it’s too hot one day, it just might be too cool the next, averaging out really nicely, nothing normal mind you, ‘average’. If it’s too hot for me today, it’ll probably be too cold for my wife- she’s Thai- tomorrow. But I was lying. That’s not my favorite thing about LA. My favorite thing is the music- and lots of it- outdoors and free all summer. It’s that time of year again. The weather’s better at Lake Atitlan in Guatemala anyway BTW.

I went to Brazil a few years ago- to travel, see Carnaval… and listen to music. “Well, you must’ve heard some pretty good stuff,” a friend surmised upon my return. “Well, you know, it’s funny…,” and I’m not sure if I ever completed the sentence or not. Because, well, to be honest, Brazilian music CAN be funny. That’s part of the package, and part of the personality. The idea promoted by bossa nova and Ipanema and a Jobim or two that Brazil is all about sex, show, and suavedade is a bit misleading, or specific to maybe only a part of Rio, but hardly the whole package, or even the real package, as if Brazil were but Cannes or Nice projected in Sensurround® upon the Atlantic coast of South America as a whole. Now that might be nice, but it’s just not accurate. In Recife, they don’t even do samba, much less bossa nova. In Recife, they dance frevo, which is something like a jitterbug cucaracha. And the music, well… I was disappointed at the time, but I think I’m starting to ‘get it’…

Nobody better personifies the wackiness that Brazilian popular music is capable of than ‘Cyro Baptista and Beat the Donkey’, who played last Saturday night at California Plaza in downtown LA. They don’t beat around the bush… or maybe they do. Better described as a troupe than a group, they take the stage wearing tophats and Indian headdresses and Russian ushankas and proceed to play flip-flops and PVC pipes- in addition to the usual guitars and drums- while tap-dancing and Balinese-dancing… and prancing about the stage in general. Sound like a bit much, maybe? That’s what I was thinking, too… and then they broke into a version of ‘Immigrant Song’ by Led Zeppelin. Hmmm… I’m thinking… that’s different… still thinking… ‘Immigrant Song’? Now that’s radical! I never particularly even liked that song… until now, that is. And they played it well, too, note-perfect (lead guitarist kicks ass btw). Oh, now I get it! Cyro Baptista… beats your ass (with tongue planted firmly in cheek)! I’d listen again…

Compare and contrast with Wil-Dog (Abers, Ozomatli bassist) y su banda. Like Cyro and the ass-beaters, these guys can play, too. But once again, there’s an element of kitsch that clings to it all, too. I’m just not sure if they intend it that way. This is a large band, full of brass- including tuba- and balls, and cutting-up Ozomatli-style while playing music that I could only describe as… ‘Mexican’? True, they run around the stage less than OZO, and their music stays more within a single genre, whatever genre that is. Maraiachi, maybe? Polka? I give up. Wil-Dog himself seems to be having mucho fun, though, prancing around the stage all dressed up muy Pachuco, and his voice isn’t half-bad, but… you might want to keep that day job, Wil-Dog. It ain’t bad, either…

The other act I saw this past week was Tommy Castro’s band last night (Tues.) at Hollywood & Highland’s Wine & Jazz series. This music isn’t exactly jazz, of course, but I guess blues ‘passes’ like black for white. I’ve heard of this band for years in the Bay Area, so it’s nice to finally see- and hear- them. They’re pretty good, too, about as good as blues can be, really, considering that nothing new has been done with it for at least several decades, since Stevie Ray, if not Duane A. Blues just isn’t as revolutionary as it used to be in the 60’s, like going to the other side of town and entering a new dimension, and one that rocked, to boot. Even Cajun music has re-invented itself, fer Chrissaskes, and traditional Andean music is now Andes ‘fusion’. I’ll be the first to line up for the ‘new blues’. Bring it on!

So by now I should have launched into a bit on KCRW’s ‘World Festival’, right? Wrong, for whatever the ‘world festival’ IS, it’s NOT- in any reliable dependable way- world music, i.e. music from other countries, cultures and languages, two out of three wears the badge. Now while we intellectual cognescenti intelligentsia all know- nod nod wink wink- that ALL music is ‘world music’, that doesn’t help the poor bloke who might seriously be interested if he knew what it was. I’ll tell you what it’s NOT. It’s NOT ‘She & Him’ (or He & Her, I can’t remember, only that it was mixed nominative/accusative). Now Zooey Deschanel is not bad… pretty good, actually, so I’ll be interested to see if she is the one actor/actress who can actually accomplish something as a musician. As of yet, it’s only been the other way around, musicians finding success as actors. Money’s probably better that way.

Three gigs a week, you think that’s a lotta listening? When I’m up and running at full speed, I can do that in one evening. I’m still only half-counscious, recovering from eighty countries and two years of jet-lag! Top picks for this week include jazz greats Bill Watrous at the Farmer’s Market Thursday night and Grant Geissman at LACMA on Friday. Ciro Hurtado also shows up at LACMA on Saturday. Then there’s Colombian vallenato with VBC at Pasadena Levitt Pavillion on Friday after a night of Afro-Colombian with Palenke Soultribe at Levitt MacArthur on Thursday. Then there’s my favorite venue, the California water court downtown with shows Friday noon and Friday and Saturday evening. It doesn’t matter who’s playing. They’re always good; it comes with the turf. They’ve even got the funicular ‘Angels Flight’ up and running for the first time in years, whisk you right up to the music from Pershing Square metro station for a quarter. Try and beat that. See you there.

MAGNIFICATION by MAGNIFICO- Hawaiian Surfing Spaghetti Western Balkan Music

Most Americans had probably never heard of Slovenia until the US soccer team came up against them head to head in recent World Cup play. And while most probably could identify it as one of the now-divorced Balkan states of the former Yugoslavia, any more info than that would probably require some serious head-scratching. Slovenia was in fact the first Balkan country out of the gate, long heavily influenced by Austria and especially Italy, which all converge in and around the now-Italian city of Trieste. When the Iron Curtain started showing some serious rusty spots, Slovenia wasted no time in declaring its intentions. Outside the main Serbo-Croatian core of the southern Slav region, Belgrade didn’t even protest. Since then Slovenia has moved into close alliance with Western Europe, and is firmly on the main tourist trail as an easy inclusion on any Italian or Austrian itinerary, something like post-communist ‘lite’. In fact Ljubljana is one of the coolest and most beautiful cities of the region, no exaggeration necessary.

Musically I’ve never been too strongly attracted to Balkan music, perhaps because of a lack of exposure to tuba bands in my childhood. I keep listening, though, figuring that sooner or later something would strike my fancy. Magnifico may just be it. Something of a mix between Manu Chao, surf music, spaghetti Westerns, and traditional Balkan brass, Magnifico is probably best understood as something of a South Slavic answer to Mumiy Troll or Gogol Bordello. It wasn’t easy being a young Communist growing up in the grips of the Kremlin, you know, and even though Yugoslavia was independent, the psychology is common to all of them, and even to Cubans and North Koreans to this day. You learn to adapt. You learn to suppress your emotions. You learn to do end runs around your own imagination. You go a little bit crazy. The internal security police exist like a gray pall over your entire life, and Las Vegas looms like a dream from heaven all out of proportion to the reality. When you finally break loose, you hardly know where to start in making up for lost time. This is the world into which Robert Pesut, aka ‘Magnifico’, emerged, full of iron and irony, both music and words, tongue planted firmly in cheek.

He’s got a new album out, too, called ‘Magnification.’ ‘Zum Zum’ starts off like a raucous Balkan gypsy rag, doing a parody of ‘Ten Little Indians’ al la Europe with gypsies giving the lie to modern Europe liberalism. ‘iThink’ ups the intellectual ante a notch- albeit in similar musical fashion- “iThink and I got an idea that, there is too much, too much nation, too much nation for liberation and too much nation, for one railway station.” ‘Bosangero Nero’ slows things down a bit and goes into ‘spaghettti western’ mode to great effect as our poor hero tries to explain to police that ‘I don’t know much about no globalization, I’m just a Bosangero.’ The effect is completed with cha-cha-cha ending. ‘Ubicu Te’ goes into full-scale Balkan brass and is the first song to be sung entirely in Slovenian… and with electronic flourishes. The parody and paradox continue unabated regardless of language, “There is no place where you can hide, someday you will be my bride. And if I got to kill, kill baby I will, if I got to kill you honey trust on me I will.” Yes, Magnifico has a strong psycho-sexual side to his tongue-in-cheek, which ‘Emily’ explores further, “Emily, Emily after midnight come to me, I wanna see you dancing just for me Emily.” ‘Pismu Kumu (Rambo Rambo)’, also sung in Slovenian, adds some Hawaiian-style guitar and some reggae–style beat to the musical mix and some serious religious doubt to the philosophical mix, “Oh, Rambo, Rambo,… I thought there was a heavenly God, to tell me some things I know nothing about, But neither has he spoken to me, nor he knows to tell me anything, it seems to me he’s just a big hoax.” Hmm, maybe Communism wasn’t so bad, after all.

‘Avanti Popolo’ is the only song to be sung in Italian, though hardly an ‘Italian’ song, and ‘Giv Mi Mani 2’ shows the influence of English language- and hiphop- on modern Slovenian music, though neither song is much more than mid-album filler. “I’m clever I’m not a fool, I got TV and I know what is cool, Sex and drugs and rock’n’roll, Satisfy my body and soul” may be a genuine expression of existential dilemma, but ends up sounding more contrived than inspired. ‘Did You (Did U)’ fares better. Self-deprecating and ironic, the lyrics actually manage to explore some little-discussed territory of the human psyche, and does it with horns and electronica in the background, “I don’t care if you look at my lady, no problem it’s ok with me.” That takes guts. ‘Ljuba’ adds another wonderful ‘spaghetti western’ feel overlaid by Slovenian lyrics, while ‘Amore’ carries the Italian feel to its locial conclusion. “There is something up above, some people call it love, some people call it love, and I feel amore, yes I feel amore.” ‘Hidee Hi Hidee Ho’ is something of a Balkan war march, compelling enough, but ‘The Land Of Champions’ alone is worth the price of admission. This is no less than a Balkan ‘House of the Rising Sun’, boogie-woogie surf style, ‘Oh mother, tell your children not to do what I have done, I've lost my soul, oh glory hallelujah, down in Yugoslavia.’ Who’d’ve though to rhyme hallelujah with Yugoslavia? He’s Robert Persut and he calls himself ‘Magnico’. The album is ‘Magnification.’ Cute, ey? Check it out.

LAYA PROJECT- SIX COUNTRIES, THREE RELIGIONS, ONE OCEAN + ONE DISASTER = WHOLE LOTTA MUSIC

Even before the Boxing Day Tsunami hit the Indian Ocean in 2004 I knew something was wrong. I was lying in bed enjoying the moment in my house up near the Golden Triangle in Thailand. We had just moved into a larger house, you see, and so our bedroom was now on the second floor, balcony and all, ‘room with a view’ you might say. Suddenly a rumbling below shook me out of my reverie.

“That was an earthquake,” I told my wife.
“That’s not possible. Thailand doesn’t have earthquakes.”

‘They do now, either that or this house is falling down,” not an impossibility given the shoddy construction techniques that are commonplace in the Kingdom.

Assuming that people down South also felt the same quake- much stronger there than the measly 2.2 Richter rumble where I was- they should have been running for their lives… uphill. Because at that point there was still time to save oneself from the tsunami. No percussion wave can outrun the speed of sound, you see, but a fast jet can. I bet they will do just that next time, run for their lives.

By the time I turned on my TV an hour later it was too late. The wave had hit hard and the first reports were coming in. Phuket got blasted. Of course at that point even THEN there was still time for southern Indians to get out of harm’s way, since it would take several hours for a wave to travel that distance. Aceh on Sumatra in Indonesia was already history, of course, they Indonesia’s strictest of Muslims- and not coincidentally most westerly community- the first to go under the wave, something from which they have yet to fully recover. And the aftermath was brutal, some 230,000 killed, the worst affected countries being Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand, in that order. Stronger earthquakes have been recorded, and stronger tsunamis, too, but none have wreaked more havoc on human populations. Though Thailand received much of the associated press (and aid), its death toll was relatively minor. But here’s the difference: its death toll was largely tourist, i.e. rich foreigners.

Fresh flowers love fresh ashes, of course, and good things can come out of the worst disasters. One of these was the Laya Project by EarthSync, a production company based in South India. Originally conceived as a world music ‘documentary’ of the disaster and the response to it, what resulted was a Baraka-like work of filmic art that tells stories with pictures, and consciously omits tear-jerking tabloid shots in favor of life-affirming images that refer to an open-ended future rather than a painfully punctured past. And it not only comes with soundtrack, in fact the soundtrack IS the film, or at least central to it. What better way to affirm life than through music? And ‘re-mixers’ have finally found their calling here, too. Thanks to Yotam Agam and Patrick Sebag, the original music has been respectfully enhanced for a quality listening experience, not butchered for the ‘mash-up’ tastes of surfers and tubers who spend more time interacting with a screen than they do with real life.

If these songs of six countries seem to evoke the Indian tradition over all others, there’s a reason for that, too. The Indian tradition pre-dates all other civilized and civilizing traditions in the region. Sanskrit is to the Thai language- and others- what Latin is to western languages. To this day the Indo-Malay ‘bahasas’ owe more of their vocabulary to ancient Sanskrit than they do to the Arabic of the Arabs to whom they owe their religion and cultural existence. But in spite of this common ancestral base, modern countries of the region are largely fragmented and even hostile to one another, religious fundamentals lost in the rush to fundamentalism, all in response to the overwhelming sweep of history.

And while the genetic roots of the region may be as diverse as East and West can be, the cultural nexus is similar, and these are the systems by which we operate. Both sides of the Indian ocean are a microcosm of this subconscious divide, Indo-Aryans on the sub-continent divided into Hindus and Muslims, Austro-Asians in the Southeast divided into Buddhists and Muslims, the result of historical and religious forces at work, social caste and godhead, one or many, face or faceless. When disaster strikes, many of these artificial divisions and unanswerable questions fade away. The Muslim scholars and the Buddhist priest chant together, and all parents are looking for their sons and daughters, and a return to a better life.

This is an area largely overlooked by Putumayo’s ‘groove & chill’ approach to world music. It’s not up to local traditions to adapt to our modern Western tastes; it’s up to us to adapt to theirs, or at least accept and appreciate them. If ethnomusicologists and ‘re-mixers’ can help this process along, then more power to them. What Earth Sync has accomplished here is no better or worse than what other unsung heroes have done elsewhere, not the least of which include companies like Sublime Frequencies and people like Laurent Jeanneau, scrounging the world’s outback for scraps of music that are as important as mitochondrial DNA in deciphering who we are and where we came from.

I’ve been to WOMADS and WOMEXES and music festivals all over the world, but nothing surpasses the night at the Sapa ‘love market’ in north Vietnam some fifteen years ago when I listened to two tribal Red Dzao lovers singing their hearts out- literally and antiphonally- getting the words and the rhythm just right… before the big plunge, before the tides of history make them forget. Speaking of tides, check out the Laya Project when you can, both film and music. It’ll do you good.

FEUFOLLET’s En Couleurs- Cajun Indie? Mais oui…

Anybody who thinks that zydeco is what Cajun music is all about is missing the boat, literally, the boats that brought settlers expelled by jolly ol’ Brits down south to the lower Mississippi River delta a couple centuries ago, where they mixed with Natives and Africans and whoever else decided to jump ship before anyone else either noticed or cared. Zydeco may indeed be the beans of southern Louisiana music, but Cajun folk music is the rice. Situated at the crossroads of New Orleans funk and Austin country, Delta blues and Tex-Mex, uh… tex-mex, you might expect a variety of influences from the mix of influences in southern Louisiana, especially in a cool town like Lafayette. You got it...

So where does this group of young kids with a band called ‘Feufollet’ fit into the mix of hard-drinking and hard-partying bon temps gumbo musique? I’d say somewhere between the heart and the head. This ain’t zydeco. This music is closer to French ballads- themselves not too far removed from English ballads- with heavy doses of other influences, all subsumed to treatment by the traditional Cajun instruments of fiddle and accordion. Thus it’s more lyric-based with less boogie… but you can still dance to it, though maybe a bit slower sometimes.

‘Au Fond du Lac’ is a slow haunting gypsy-like number that leads off the album, with Scarlet Rivera-like fiddle and female vocals to match. ‘Des Promesses’, with its guitar and organ grand orchestral introduction quickly advises us to not get complacent yet; even greater things are yet in store. It then breaks into a rollicking rocker- complete with male vocals and traditional fiddle and accordion- that doesn’t slow down until the final note is played. ‘La Berceuse du Vieux Voyageur (The Old Traveler’s Lullabye)’ is just that, with slow soulful female vocals to match. ‘Si T'as Fini’ adds some kick-ass guitar to the mix as male and female alternate songs and viewpooints, the female-vocal songs slower and sadder, the male-vocal songs more lively and danceable, as if these roles had been handed down and honed as such for generations.

After a brief ‘Do Wah Interlude’, male and female finally join forces in a duet, in what may be the album’s finest moment, ‘Ouvre la Porte (Open the Door)’ is a tearful ballad ‘about a woman dying of an illness as her faithful lover calls for the doctor and bids a sorrowful farewell.’ ‘Assis Dans la Fenetre Interlude’ follows with an almost Celtic-like chant with female vocals only, a long ‘good-bye forever’. ‘Les Jours Sont Longs (The Days are Long)’ is the first song to add a pronounced country feel to the album, almost country-pop, with pedal steel guitar solo breaking up the twangy male vocals and traditional fiddle, complete with stinger on the end. ‘Cowboy Waltz’ is the female counterpart, with banjo and accordion- and bells- as they continue the male-female back-and-forth in an almost-too-perfect symmetry. ‘Jean Billaudeaux’ is an instrumental doodle that serves as little more than another interlude- in an album full of them- before continuing with the male-side boogie of ‘Je M'en Va’ and ‘Mon Tour’ , followed by ‘Ouvre la Porte Interlude’, another instrumental- this one acoustic- something of a ‘Cajun remix’ of the earlier duet I suppose.

‘En Movement’ is another light-rocker in a string of them that has little by little come to define the album, and the ‘Lomax Interlude’- with ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax pontificating over the debris of last night’s fais do-do- doing little to change that. This music may have indeed derived from the generations of what came before, but with a difference. While all the best-known Louisiana groups have converted to almost-English-only lyrics as fast as they can, Feufollet sings only in Cajun French, even though neither of the vocalists has a French surname. This is Cajun music for a new generation, better educated and open to new influences, expanding ever outward while refining and defining the central core… the still-beating heart. That’s what’s been handed down over the years. It’s called En Couleurs by Feufollet. Hardie K says… you know what.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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