Inhaltsverzeichnis für April 2022 in Songlines

Music is a universal language. This oft-repeated adage is a lovely thought – that no matter the linguistic, cultural or political barriers between us, we humans can connect via a vocabulary of beats, bass and melodies. This issue’s cover stars Ibibio Sound Machine not only embody this idea – their upbeat Afro-funk gigs get audiences dancing, whether they understand the lyrics or not – but they also follow this thought through to its next logical progression. Aft er making a name for themselves singing mostly in the Ibibio language of south-eastern Nigeria, their latest album Electricity sees them adding more English into the mix, but English that is heavily influenced by Ibibio. Allowing the tonal characteristics of the African language to dictate the pitch and rhythm of their English lyrics,…

Following the first volume in the November 2020 issue (#162), this is the second selection of artists participating in the MOST project, a scheme established to support new music from the Balkans. The region is bursting with music, but the infrastructure for promoting the music needs development. That’s where MOST steps in, bringing this music of high energy and deep emotions, spiritual roots and contemporary vision, to a wider audience. The 12 artists featured on this CD were selected from nearly 110 applications for the MOST Balkan Music Export Programme. Applications from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo*, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia were eligible. Last time there were no artists from Albania, Croatia and North Macedonia, but this year there’s a total of five. The scene is…

Manchester’s Band on the Wall reopens this March aft er spending the pandemic years making extensive developments to the venue. This includes increasing the capacity of their main space, as well as opening a bar for smaller performances, which can also be used as a community space. They have also made both venue spaces accessibly step-free and are now devoting a whole floor to their World of Music learning programmes, which includes choirs and music workshops, as well as some very good essays on world music and video tutorials available via a devoted website (guidetotheworldofmusic.com). And it seems like they were deliberately looking at us with some of the gigs they’ve announced: The Breath (pictured), the duo of guitarist Stuart McCallum and stop-you-in-your-tracks singer Ríoghnach Connolly, will perform on March…

The speed of the gamelan suddenly changes and there’s a surge of chimes, soft and hard mallets on bronze, and flutes interacting with the metallophone melodies. The puppeteer sends mythical garuda birds moving in and out of focus as they flit across the shadow puppet screen. It’s a swift change of scene from the more sedate Javanese sty le to the shimmery Balinese sty le to reflect the fluttering of the birds. This is part of a huge gamelan performance featuring 100 players organised by Indonesia’s great dalang (shadow puppeteer) Purbo Asmoro. It was a special event in Surakarta on January 22 to celebrate Indonesian gamelan getting UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status in December last year. Given that gamelan music, played mostly on gongs and bronze metallophones, is one of…

HOW DID YOU FIRST DISCOVER SONGLINES? I discovered Songlines at WOMAD in the early 2000s and have been a loyal subscriber ever since. WHAT’S ON YOUR STEREO? Kora player Seckou Keita’s One Giant Leap and Béla Fleck’s Throw Down Your Heart: Tales From the Acoustic Planet, Vol 3, African Sessions. FAVOURITE ALBUMS? Seckou Keita’s Miro, JuJu’s In Trance and the live compilation album Midnight in Mali for starters! It’s so hard to choose. FAVOURITE NEW ARTIST? Les Berges de Semmama from Tunisia, featuring Adnen Helali FAVOURITE GIG? Seckou Keita (pictured with me, above), in a garden somewhere in England. WORST MUSICAL EXPERIENCE? Courtney Pine at the Barbican – a guest pianist’s rendition of ‘Escalator Song’ – I have no words… it was toe curling. If you would like to be…

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Aguamadera Las Historias Que Han Dejado Quart de Lune/UVM Distribution (44 mins) Powerful set of South American folk songs Latin America’s folk fusion traditions share common roots in Spain, West Africa, Poland, France and other Old World cultures, often carrying an indigenous signature – an instrument, a rhythm, a timbre – that denotes the local milieu. On their third album, French-based Argentinian duo Aguamadera (María Cabral and Marco Grancelli) sound equally at home performing a Venezuelan joropo or Peruvian waltz as they do the chacareras, huaynos and zambas of their homeland. On songs about a flower-seller, motherhood, sadness, an exile’s perilous journey and death, they intone in a beguilingly meandering, cascading style against the basic trot of a strummed acoustic or the trill of a cuatro. Crisp enunciation reminds us…

Isabelle Courroy Confluence #2: Le Chant des Sources Buda Musique (53 mins) Kaval virtuoso ventures through the Near East and Balkans Usually made of hard wood, the kaval is an end-blown pastoral flute found in Turkey, Armenia, Greece, Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria and Romania. It long ago escaped solo origins to lodge in folk ensembles. French performer Courroy has spent three decades mastering this instrument. However, an entire solo kaval CD could be monotonous, so Courroy has chosen material from the described geographical area, assembled an ensemble of vocalists plus talented instrumentalists to interpret songs and dances, and made all musical arrangements. Patrice Gabet’s bowed bass introduces ‘O Skaros’, before kaval is heard. ‘En Descendant de la Mer Noire’ proves strongly rhythmic with flourishes on tombak and tapan drums. ‘Toudoru’…

Classical Brought to you by Jakob Lindberg Bach on the Rauwolf Lute BIS BIS2552 Lute with character With time, a musical work takes on the character of a character. It’s played by players who, often aided by equally characterful instruments, as is the case here, imbue it with unique qualities that are in essence embellishments. From that perspective, Lindberg’s arrangement for lute of Bach’s D minor ‘Chaconne’, with which this recital ends, is one of the loveliest on record. Profound yet unpretentious, exquisitely limned yet shot through with darkness, it feels like a summation not just of Bach’s science but of Lindberg’s: craft for craft’s sake. The preceding works – also (mostly) arrangements from Bach’s solo violin and cello sonatas, partitas and suites, are equally satisfying. Yet more for being…

“I just think we need to get free from self. We need to get free of being so impressed with our own continuity and music,” says Elvis Costello heatedly. With Costello, this was a necessary evolution after being marked as part of a nascent UK punk scene following his debut album in 1977. “I was actually touring England in 1977 and people couldn’t give a fuck about punk music in most places. That was just something made up by journalists in London. I’ve got pictures of the audience in 1977 in the smaller towns in England and it looks like an audience of Status Quo fans.” Costello quickly shook the punk tag, and the New Wave tag that followed it, his curiosity and need to wrangle free from his own…

We’ve reached the end of a tarmacked road and my dad, the driver, doubts my directions. I look down at my phone and read back the instructions. “He says,” I repeat, “to keep going.” We look doubtfully at the potholed mud-track. “Th is one, I guess. He just says to follow the road until you can’t go much further.” We’re hardly exploring the undiscovered fringes of Outer Mongolia, but considering we are confined to the UK by a certain virus, the Hebridean island of Islay is about as far-flung a holiday as this Southern soft ie family could come up with. And it’s beautiful. Even lurching uncomfortably around in a van that wasn’t designed for this rough-and-ready trail, I can’t help but be awestruck by the mountains, mottled with yellows…

Songlines picks… New Regency Orchestra (pictured) (London, March 15) The hard-hitting big band out on an Afro-Cuban jazz mission. Amadou & Mariam + Blind Boys of Alabama (North & South, March 15-16) Two world music titans together on tour. Martin & Eliza Carthy (South & North, March 18-20) Folk legends span the generations to keep it in the family. Mànran (Scotland, March 26 & April 9) Fiery multi-awardwinning Scottish folkrockers go native with Alba brace. Park Jiha (London, March 28-29) Cafe OTO residency featuring the acclaimed Korean composer and multi-instrumentalist. LONDON 4 MAR Oum Grand Junction; Blazin’ Fiddles Kings Place; 5 MAR Ravi Shankar Centenary Royal Festival Hall; NAARI The Bhavan bhavan.net; Afro Tala Woolwich Works; Nancy Kerr & James Fagan Cecil Sharp House; Bukky Leo & Black Egypt: The…

01 Ibibio Sound Machine Ibibio Sound Machine (Soundway Records, 2014) Ibibio Sound Machine’s debut is infused with the West African folktales that British-Nigerian singer Eno Williams learned from her grandmother. With stories about cunning tortoises and talking fish woven around Afrobeat grooves, highlife guitar lines, a funky horn section and dance beats, this offers a fresh take on Ibibio folklore. Reviewed in the April/May 2014 issue (#99). 02 Seth Lakeman Kitty Jay (iScream, 2004) All of Lakeman’s albums delve into English folklore, but none more deeply than his second solo album. All 11 songs here are inspired by the legends and stories of Devon and Dartmoor, including the dark and dramatic title-track recounting the legend of a servant girl who hung herself in a barn. Reviewed in the Nov/Dec 2004…

Charlie Cawood Charlie is a composer and multiinstrumentalist who performs with cult psychedelic octet Knifeworld and classical/choral ensemble Mediaeval Baebes. He catches up with tonkori player OKI (p81). Lucy Hallam Lucy is a Paris-based writer and musician, with a particular interest in participatory music and music in advocacy. This issue she speaks to cover stars Ibibio Sound Machine about their new album (p24). James Catchpole James is a freelance music writer who has been based in Japan for 24 years. He currently hosts the all-genre OK Jazz Podcast on KOL Radio. This issue he dives into the history of Congolese rumba (p40). 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…

Ten centuries ago, at the height of the Viking Age, Norsemen would gather at a mighty golden temple in Uppsala, eastern Sweden to celebrate the gods Odin, Thor and Freyr (twin to Freya), their statues displayed on a triple throne. Each was attended to by dedicated priests, with Thor being singled out for ritual sacrifices to ward off the threat of plague. You are entitled to wonder, in 2022, if it might not have been wiser to have kept up that practice. However, if your immediate reaction is “oh, but none of that Norse folklore has any relevance today,” ask yourself, are you reading this on Odin’s Day? Thor’s Day? Freya’s Day? On screens big and small, Vikings rampage ferociously in the 21st century – choose from the History Channel’s…

Ævestaden Ingen Mere Gråter Ævestaden (40 mins) Scandinavian dream folk; songs of life and death There’s a subgenre called ‘dream pop’ that covers bands from Cocteau Twins to Beach House. Ævestaden’s music could be described as ‘dream folk.’ This Norwegian/Swedish trio’s debut album, Ingen Mere Grater, is a little enigmatic gem – and I’m completely captivated. Ævestaden are Eir Vatn Strøm, Levina Storåkern and Kenneth Lien, all fine multi-instrumentalists and singers. They describe their songs as being about the conscious and the subconscious, the secular and the sacred, life and death. They combine traditional instrumentation – lyre, fiddle, mouth harp, langeleik and kantele (zithers) – with a subtle use of electronics, creating an enchanting sonic backdrop to their melodically adventurous vocals. It’s hard to find comparisons but, at times, Ævestaden’s…

Blue Mantra Rhymes Hour of Solitude The Slow Music Movement (37 mins) DIGITAL ONLY Thai-informed psych folk Blue Mantra Rhymes is the brainchild of Ed Cooke, an English ex-pat living and working in Th ailand. A number of influences from the country have crept into previous releases issued under his birth name but Hour of Solitude, his latest project, sees him delve deeper both thematically and musically. A tropical air seems invested in the very essence of the psychedelic folk on offer here: the languid pace of Cooke’s acoustic guitar rhythms on the sublime ‘Alison’s Anthem’ seem ready-made for humid conditions. But it’s the addition of Thai instruments throughout that make this such a unique enterprise. Synthesised ehru (bowed, two-stringed fiddle) and Asiatic strings add a markedly South-East Asian flavour…

March is Women’s History Month and to celebrate, some of the Songlines team have selected some key artists, works and shows to check out to inspire some girl power. Alexandra Petropoulos: Spirit Rising: My Life, My Music by Angelique Kidjo The excellent memoir of one of the most inspiring women in music, who has long advocated for education for all girls in Africa. Olivia Cheves: Kampire’s monthly NTS show The Ugandan DJ and Nyege Nyege Tapes affiliate has her finger firmly on the pulse of East Africa’s (and more often the wider continent’s) underground electronic scene Jo Frost: Senegal’s Def Maa Maa Def This is a brand new Senegalese female rap duo who were the much-talked about, explosive opening act at the latest Dakar Music Expo this February Lucy Hallam:…

The story of the universe, from Big Bang to the present day, will come to life at various sites around the UK from March until May this year. The project, About Us, will have as its centrepiece a 25-minute projection that will use local landmarks, such as Paisley Abbey and Luton Town Hall, as its canvas. The UK’s young people are central to the project, as it is them that will be supplying the poems and animations, created around a theme of ‘connectivity and the universe,’ that will fill the LED screens, and they will also provide the voices in the youth choirs that will be singing live each evening, to an original score created by Nitin Sawhney CBE. The ambitious project will visit Paisley Abbey (March 1-6), Guildhall Square…

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 Now That’s What I Call Songlines? I have a suggestion as a regular feature or the back page feature. I have got to know the top albums each year in the last five to ten years, but do not know much before that. Would it be possible to do a top 10 or 20 albums for each year from when world music became a specific genre from the mid-1980s onwards? It would be great to know the top albums for each year. Russell Patterson, Newry, NI…

Adê Hello Cabo Verde Adê (38 mins) Joyous tunes from a young Cape Verdean talent ‘Fazê Gat’, the opening track on this rather lovely album, finds Adê singing gently in a duet with fellow Cape Verdean singer Jenifer Solidade over finger-picked Spanish guitar, mournful accordion from the Brazilian maestro Mestrinho and supple African percussion. It sums up all that’s good about this second album by a young singer who grew up listening to Cesaria Evora but picked up the guitar due to his love of Brazilian music. Now resident in Barcelona, he qualified as a pharmacist and only decided to pursue a career in music in 2017, when he released his first album, Branku na Pretu. All the promise of that record and more is realised here in a glorious…

OKI Tonkori in the Moonlight Mais Um (46 mins) Charting the iconic Ainu musician’s early releases This writer interviewed OKI, the famed Ainu musician and producer from the Japanese island of Hokkaido, for this magazine some 20 years ago. I had been mesmerised by a live performance centred around the ancient tonkori, a five-string Ainu harp, and his blending of contemporary influences including, most notably, bass-heavy dub-reggae. A one-time New York video director who discovered his roots and his purpose along with his biological father – Ainu wood sculptor Bikki Sunazawa – on returning to Hokkaido in 1992, OKI is as much an activist as musician, using his tonkori as a weapon with which to decolonise Ainu culture and inspire a new generation. This 11-track précis of music made between…

Hungarian Folk Dance Music of Transylvania István Pávai Hungarian Heritage House/MMA Kiadó (440 pages) History and practice of Hungarian dance house The Hungarians have been active in researching their folk music since Béla Vikár, Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók started using the phonograph at the turn of the 20th century. Much of their writing has been translated into English, but more recent work around the Hungarian tanchaz (dance house) movement since the 1970s hasn’t. The landmark book is Béla Jávorsky’s The Story of Hungarian Folk (published in 2015), the best general introduction to the subject. This new book is more specialised, but very welcome as the music of Transylvania is central to the dance house revival. Bartók feared the traditional music of the Carpathian Basin was fast disappearing, as Michael…

La Part du Feu (Borealis Records, 2009) This album, their fifth, won them a Juno Award in 2011. The opening track ‘Lanlaire’ showcases the band’s trademark call-and-response singing, scratchy hurdy-gurdy and Olivier Demers’ rapid and rhythmic podorythmie. A Top of the World review in the March 2010 issue (#66). Tromper Le Temps (Borealis Records, 2012) This marked their tenth anniversary and saw the quartet of Nicolas Boulerice, Olivier Demers, Simon Beaudry and Réjean Brunet in fine form. Highlights include ‘Lettre à Durham’, named after a 19th-century British general loathed by French-Canadians after the 1837 rebellion. A Top of the World in the October 2012 issue (#87). Têtu (Borealis Records, 2015) This album cements LVDN’s reputation as ambassadors of Québécois culture. Top tracks include ‘Confédération’, about the formation of the nation of…

During a recent interview for Thai television, Thai K-pop rapper and dancer Lalisa ‘Lisa’ Manoban was asked what she missed most about her hometown, Buri Ram, a small provincial town. She said she missed going to the train station to eat grilled and deep-fried meatballs – called luk-chin yuen kin or ‘eat while you stand meatballs’ – covered in a secret recipe hot chilli sauce. Overnight, sales of meatballs at the station, which had dwindled due to COVID-19, skyrocketed. Lisa, the first non-ethnic Korean to sign with South Korean entertainment giant YG Entertainment, and the only non-Korean in the K-pop group BLACKPINK, released her first solo single album Lalisa in September 2021. The music video for the title-track was the most-viewed video by a solo artist in 24 hours with…

The tonkori is a board lyre traditionally played by the Ainu, a minority group native to Hokkaido, northern Japan, and Sakhalin Island. An extremely rare instrument even in Japan, the lineage and history of the tonkori doesn’t exist in any official form, given the Ainu’s reliance on oral tradition and lack of written language. The earliest written documentation dates to the 1850s, at which time every Ainu household had a tonkori, with the instrument being played by most people. With the increasing industrialisation of the Japanese fishing trade, the instrument was slowly abandoned as the Ainu were exploited for their labour. The Ainu’s enthusiasm for their own culture began to wane, and by the middle of the 20th century the tonkori was practically extinct. Born in Hokkaido, Oki Kano, known…

Musical gripes, rants and raves… At the age of 14 I turned from rock’n’roll to Bulgarian choirs. Th ose Bulgarian harmonies and dissonances, and then the Nonesuch Explorer Series, set me on a path I still tread today. This was back in 1969, when we’d surf shops rather than search engines. I’d explore the dozens of immigrant neighbourhoods of New York to find music, sometimes just a bin tucked away in the back of a hardware store in Queens. I’d even hound taxi drivers: “No, really I do want to hear your cassettes.” And so I went from Grand Funk to Grand Kallé, from chamber music to gamelan, from The Stones to Sweeney’s Men. What was I looking for? Music that baffled me, stimulated me, made me pause, music I…