Table of contents for December 2022 in Songlines

While I am a huge fan of Halloween – I’m American, I can’t help it – this time of year, full as it is with dodgy costume choices, carries as much a whiff of cultural appropriation about it as it does pumpkin spiced lattes. For the whole month of October, the internet seems to be littered with pictures of women in outfits that are small on coverage and big on harmful stereotypes. And certainly Haitian vodou is among the victims, with countless cheap ‘voodoo man’ kits that come complete with top hats, scary skull masks and shrunken heads. It feels important then to be highlighting an artist like Erol Josué, who’s life’s work has been to change these negative misconceptions. “The Catholic church is always trying to convert [people who…

Coming from Belarus, but living in Prague since 2011, Aliaksandr Yasinski is a formidable accordion player dedicated to developing the instrument’s range. “The accordion is always underrated,” he complains. “Professional musicians – violinists and pianists – won’t let you into their elite club. For them you are someone playing old-fart polkas on an instrument with a piercing sound. We accordion players need to establish our instrument and show it can be used in serious music, to experiment with it and be among them, whether it’s in classical or nonclassical music.” Yasinski was born into a family of doctors, but his father played accordion and encouraged his musical interests. Though he left Belarus for political reasons, Yasinski has nothing but praise for the musical education he received there, first in Baranavichy…

HOW DID YOU FIRST DISCOVER SONGLINES? I’ve been a reader from the first issue. WHAT’S ON YOUR STEREO? France: Une Anthologie des Musiques Traditionnelles. FAVOURITE ALBUMS? Peter O’Loughlin, A Musical Life; The Furrow Collective, At Our Next Meeting; It Was Mighty: Early Days of Irish Music in London; Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde; Tim Eriksen’s self-titled album; Danny Diamond, Fiddle Music. And too many others to fit here. FAVOURITE NEW ARTISTS? Folk singer Nick Hart. BEST MUSICAL EXPERIENCE? Séamus Ennis at the King’s Head Folk Club. WORST MUSICAL EXPERIENCE? Sitting on my older sister’s 78 record of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. If you would like to be our next Reader Profile, please email us your answers and a picture to letters@songlines.co.uk…

The voice of Hildá Länsman is soft and intimate, halfway between a breath and a whisper. The melody oscillates around just a few notes over piano chords and glistening metal percussion. The voice is like a snowflake buffeted in the wind, circling round and round before finally settling. The song is ‘Oassi Mus’ (A Part of Me) with words in the Northern Sámi language: ‘A part of me always longs for the snow-silvered expanses / Where ice gems, rime-clad mountain birches / Gentle brush, light embrace.’ Then another voice enters, louder and more confident, with a powerful rhythmic phrase. This is Länsman’s mother, Ulla Pirttijärvi, one of Finland’s most celebrated joik singers. The joik she’s singing has just syllables, no words, but is inspired by the landscape, weather and emotions…

Okaidja Afroso Jaku Mumor (Ancestral Spirit) Chechekule Records (39 mins) Translating the traditions of the Gãdangmé fisherman Born into a family of musicians and storytellers on Ghana’s Atlantic coast, Okaidja Afroso learned to sing seafaring songs as a boy while working on the local fishing boats but at 19 he became a dancer with the Ghana Dance Ensemble. Eventually he returned to music and moved to the US where he joined Okropong, a traditional Ghanaian music and dance group directed by Obo Addy. This is his second solo album following 2017’s The Palm Wine Sea and the follow-up delves felicitously into his maritime roots and the songs, chants and rituals of the indigenous Gãdangmé fishermen. Singing gently in his native language, he translates ancient traditions into contemporary idioms with acoustic guitar…

A Moving Sound Starshine ARC Music (56 mins) Taiwanese folk goes global Taiwan sadly remains an afterthought in the world music community so having another A Moving Sound album arrive in 2022, their third in three years, is welcome news. The instrumental line-up of zhong ruan (Chinese lute), satar (bowed lute found in the Xinjiang region) and erhu (two-stringed fiddle found in China and Taiwan) with acoustic guitar and percussion balance perfectly with vocalist Mia Hsieh, but as with their previous albums this is not an album of traditional music, but rather a contemporary group absorbing folk/local sounds and playing in an almost global setting. As can be heard on the stunning track ‘Dynasty’, which starts out sounding very ‘Chinese’ but quickly heads into what sounds like the wild steppes of…

Classical Brought to you by Bjarte Eike & Barokksolistene The Playhouse Sessions Rubicon RCD1096 History boys’ Cromwellian gem Violinist Bjarte Eike’s Alehouse Sessions have become a classical shibboleth – an after-hours musical secret inspiring a cult following and evangelical enthusiasm. Here, Eike and his musicians swap alehouse for playhouse – almost. Taking inspiration from Cromwell’s England, when the closure of the theatre drove music underground, they imagine an evening in the tavern in which London’s out-of-work court musicians mingle with locals, creating a spontaneous recital of everything from Purcell to sea-shanties, jigs and folk songs, and even some spoken drama. The natural affinities between Purcell’s circling basses and jazz riffs, between Baroque rasp and folk music’s undone, informal tone have been thoroughly explored by other groups. The success of these…

ABOUT SIMON Simon Broughton is editor-in-chief of Songlines and has been guiding the magazine since it launched in 1999. He has spent a career writing about traditional musics and musicians and championing new generations of folk artists.A A couple of years ago I bought a bottle of Macedonian wine. This was in a specialist wine shop, as Macedonian wine isn’t easily available here in the UK. I was attracted by the label, which was in a naive folkloric style with an accordionist, a tapan (drum) player and a singer. In the background there were rolling hills, stylised vineyards and a distant figure in traditional costume with a donkey heading up towards a wooden house. Seeing these lively images, I could hear the music and imagine myself deep in Macedonia hearing…

Tim Cumming Tim is a music writer, poet and artist, whose latest book, Adventures Among the Living, is published by Blueprint Poetry Press. This issue he talks to The Unthanks about their life and music (p74). Seth Jordan An Australian-based music journalist, Seth is a festival consultant and radio broadcaster who presents Tiki Lounge Remix. He travels to Arnhem Land to speak to the next generation of songmen (p34). Francesco Martinelli After discovering traditional musics through free jazz revolutionaries, Francesco began a long love affair with Oriental music. He catches up with the Turkish legend Zülfü Livaneli on p19. Songlines was launched in 1999 and is the definitive magazine for world music – music that has its roots in all parts of the globe, from Mali to Mexico, India to…

Taiwan’s National Center for Traditional Arts (NCFTA) is a park with a few historic houses and temples relocated from nearby locations plus newly erected structures for concerts, galleries and workshops for crafts people. The place aims to promote and develop the country’s traditional arts. It’s in the Wujie Township, about 90 minutes by train from Taipei. In October it is the venue for the 20th Asia-Pacific Traditional Arts Festival. I manage to catch one of the concerts there featuring an American-style big band, the TPO Collective, with three local soloists: one on suona (shawm), another on erhu (Chinese fiddle) and Indigenous singer Sauljaljui. The suona, with its piercing sound, is traditionally used for funerals and street parades. The brilliant soloist Huang Po-Yu kicks off the first piece with a screaming…

Virgilio Armas Trio De Repente We Are Busy Bodies (46 mins) VINYL & DIGITAL ONLY Virgilio Armas y Su Grupo Espejismo We Are Busy Bodies (35 mins) VINYL & DIGITAL ONLY Double reissue offers a taste of mid-century Caracas Canadian label We Are Busy Bodies have unearthed a pair of rare Latin jazz albums by a Venezuelan pianist, part of a thriving nightlife in mid-20th century Caracas. Originally released in 1970 on the tiny Discos A&B label, De Repente is a piano-trio album, mixing self-penned numbers and interpretations of other compositions. The way he plays ‘Misty’, in the same florid style as its creator, Erroll Garner, suggests that the album was aimed at a small but dedicated local following. There are interesting takes on Wes Montgomery’s ‘Bumpin’ On Sunset’ and Duke…

Yoni Avi Battat Fragments Yoni Avi Battat (47 mins) Exploring Iraqi-Jewish identity through music American multi-instrumentalist Yoni Avi Battat has undergone a journey of discovery to reconnect with his Iraqi-Jewish roots through the medium of poetry and music. An accomplished classically-trained violinist, Battat sings on this record as well as playing violin, viola and oud. Sonically, this album is rooted in the soundworld of the Middle East; in addition to Battat’s contributions, we have ney (flute), qanun (zither), darbuka (goblet drum) etc. And all with stunning execution of microtonal maqam-based melodies, not least in Battat’s vocals. His deep connection to his heritage is audible both in the way he performs, and in the voices of members of his community who feature, either singing – like his great uncle Razi – or,…

Dal:um & ReMidas and PAKK + EERU K-Music Festival, London, October 5 & 13 The K-Music Festival has become one of London’s great autumn fixtures with its reminder that South Korean music involves not just K-pop but a flourishing experimental scene in which traditional instruments are used in unexpected and adventurous ways. And it specialises in presenting bold new collaborations. Granted, given the success of Jambinai, one might have expected that the band would return to promote their new album, Apparition, but their leader Lee Il-woo had different ideas. Now calling himself EERU he appeared alongside the hardcore rock trio PAKK, who had the standard guitar-bass-drums line-up and played at deafening volume. What made them special was EERU, standing at the edge of the stage in front of a computer…

The Bairns (Rabble Rouser Music, 2007) Fiddle player Niopha Keegan replaced Jackie Oates on this 2007 album. For the first time, McNally introduced a string section, on ‘Felton Lonnin’, a harbinger of the orchestrations to come. A version of Robert Wyatt’s ‘Sea Song’ is a lingering highlight. Here’s the Tender Coming (Rabble Rouser Music, 2009) Rarely has a press-gang song sounded so lulling. This superb 2009 set, with McNally now a group member and with a long trail of string and brass players in support. It features covers of Anne Briggs, Nic Jones and Ewan MacColl. A Top of the World in November/December 2009 (#64). Mount the Air (Rabble Rouser Music, 2015) Their fifth release, discounting side projects, was hailed as their most ambitious and drew comparisons to The Gloaming.…

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Get in touch – we’d love to hear from you! Write to: Email: letters@songlines.co.uk Songlines, Mark Allen Group, St Jude’s Church, Dulwich Road London, SE24 0PB, UK We reserve the right to edit correspondence WEBSITE www.songlines.co.uk GIG GUIDE www.songlines.co.uk/gigs TWITTER @SonglinesMag FACEBOOK www.facebook.com/songlines INSTAGRAM @SonglinesMag All together now… I come in praise of Julian May’s Soapbox [November 2022, #182]. This column often causes me to bristle, and I thought, ‘here we go again’ as he dismissed shanties as being of historical interest only. While I accept there are more stylish genres within the tradition (there are only so many times you can question what can be done with an inebriated matelot), they do create a singalong camaraderie, either locally – mine was the very landlocked Barnet Hill Lifeboat Crew led…

Erol Josué knows how to call down and speak to the lwa (spirits) that visit the ceremonies he conducts in Haiti and with Haitians around the world. A houngan (vodou priest) since his teens, he speaks langaj, a liturgical vocabulary of words once spoken in Benin and Congo and by Haiti’s Indigenous Taíno. The lwa, flattered by langaj, are channelled through trance: Erzulie, the goddess of love and beauty; Chango, the blacksmith with the purifying fire; and the psychopomp Papa Gede, the dancing spirit of life and death, the lwa with the galaxy in his hips. “Langaj is the secret language of vodou,” says Josué, a 21st-century renaissance man who is a singer, songwriter, dancer, actor, lecturer and director general of the National Bureau of Ethnology in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital.…

Wales may be tiny in size (population three million), but it has a mighty singing tradition. Whether it’s rugby fans belting out ‘Bread of Heaven’, hymn singing, choirs, the National Eisteddfod or Tom Jones, singing is an integral part of the national identity and the Welsh take great pride in being known as the Land of Song. But what is less well-known is its traditional music, and this is something that the trio VRï are intent on changing. It’s no small coincidence that one of the titans of Welsh song, Sir Bryn Terfel, was instrumental in bringing the trio together in 2014. Viola and violin player Patrick Rimes was working as musical director on Terfel’s Christmas show; this particular one had a special folk focus. Rimes recruited the double-bassist and…

Breabach Fàs Breabach Records (44 mins) Scottish folk group make their studio comeback Popular Scottish band Breabach return with their first album in four years having used the enforced periods of gigging inactivity during the pandemic to reflect on the world around us and develop the group’s tonal palette. New arrival, Conal McDonagh adds a new voice and a new sound, the uilleann pipes, as well as playing Highland pipes and whistles. Elsewhere, synths, programming and percussion add complex extra textures to the familiar pipes, fiddle, guitar and double bass-driven ensemble. Most of the tracks come from within the group or its extended family. Singer-fiddler Megan Henderson’s brother, Ewen, has written ‘Eadar an Dà Bhràigh’, a fine contemporary Gaelic song sung by Henderson, in praise of a Lochaber nature reserve…

The Ayoub Sisters Arabesque The Ayoub Sisters (37 mins) Scottish-Egyptian siblings Spotted a few years ago by producer Mark Ronson to record a cover of ‘Uptown Funk’ at Abbey Road, the Scottish-Egyptian sisters returned to those studios to record their 2017 debut album for Decca, with a full symphony orchestra and a tracklist including Michael Jackson, ‘Greensleeves’, Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Johann Strauss. It went to No 1, won them awards and concerts worldwide. This second album is more focused, an exploration of their Arabic-Celtic heritage, melding Western classical with Arabic strings and a Celtic feel across a repertoire that includes versions of songs by Sayed Darwish – opening track and lead single ‘El Helwa Di’ – as well as the spare brilliance of ‘Aatiny Al Naya Wa Ghani’ from the…

The debut novel by Colombian author Julián de la Chica, God’s Punishment, can sometimes be hard to follow. I kept getting confused about who was speaking and when. Was it past or present? The scenes jump back and forward and it was hard to tell which characters perspective was being presented. “Ah, that’s good,” says the author, when I confess my problem. “I feel proud of that because I wanted it to read more like a script for a movie or a visual thing. I understand it’s confusing, but that’s what I want.” If you’re prepared to stick with it, the story comes up with revelations and surprises as it develops and is unsettlingly memorable at the end. Set in Colombia and Spain in the mid-20th century, is about a…

Around midnight I am accompanied by my fellow musician friends to a local neighbourhood in Tumaco, a humble place, with wooden houses raised on stilts over the river. It is desolate and quiet. We are escorted by a local community member throughh the neighbourhood to the house that will be hosting the event we have been invited to, a chigualo. As we near the house, community members are gathered outside, passing around the local, home-brewed alcoholic beverage, viche. I enter the main room of the house where the ceremony’s activities will be taking place. Even at midnight, it hasn’t truly started yet. The room is filled with family members and peoplee from the neighbourhood come to pay their respects, all sitting in a large circle. It is dark, with the…

01 Toto Bissainthe Toto Bissainthe Rétrospective (Chanson Française et Haitienne) (Créon, 2006) Despite having spent much of her life exiled from Haiti during the Duvalier dynasty, actress and singer Toto Bissainthe is one of the most famous voices to come out of the nation. With a gentler sound than most on this list, she blended ballads with (at the time forbidden) vodou rhythms, defying the oppressive regimes and offering a voice of hope to her people. 02 Boukman Eksperyans Vodou Adjae (Mango, 1991) With their name, Boukman Eksperyans, one of Haiti’s favourite mizik rasin (a mix of Haitian roots music and rock) bands, pay homage to Dutty Boukman, the vodou priest whose ceremony is said to have ignited the Haitian revolution in 1791. This album follows in the footsteps of…