Table of contents for November 2022 in Songlines

This issue’s cover star, multi-instrumentalist and scholar Jake Blount, accomplishes something quite extraordinary on his new album, The New Faith; he takes a profound trip through time, drawing on silenced Black voices from American history to tell a cautionary tale of our future. Imagined as a field recording of a church service from a future in which civilisation has broken down after a climate catastrophe, the album reaffirms the importance of spirituals in creating a sense of community and draws comparisons between the painful history of Black Americans and the eco-horrors we may have already doomed ourselves to. The album, he says on p28, was “about following the trends in our world to their logical conclusions. I didn’t try to push anything to an extreme. In fact, I would argue…

The kids are alright I turned to James Catchpole’s Soapbox [October 2022, #181] with interest, wondering why he felt that influencing his children’s musical taste was part of his role as a parent. Th roughout my life I have often wondered why anyone has the need to persuade others to like the same as they do, whether it be music, books or other arts. My passionate love of music of many genres, including some examples mentioned by Mr C, has largely resulted from the actual experience of discovering it myself. I have spent a lifetime researching heard tunes, tracing artists’ histories, translating lyrics, comparing melodies and finding enormous satisfaction in doing so. Sure, I have had mentors (such as Charlie Gillett) and shared music with others, but I have also…

The last 100 years has seen, and heard, a flowering of music like never before, as communications – physical and virtual – allowed hitherto local traditions to reach new audiences. From the 1920s, radio and record-pressing technologies provided artists in cities across Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America with millions of listeners. The arrival of the jet age allowed musicians to tour distant countries. From international collaborations, new hybrids were born. Music lovers today have access to a diverse array of genres, sub-genres, dance sty les and experimental fusions, as well as retro and roots-focused artists and scenes that endeavour to conserve cultural forms threatened by globalisation. The seedbed of many of the best-known music genres – from tango to fado, guoyue to Gypsy music – was almost always local.…

Sara Correia is one of the rising stars of the fado scene in Portugal. She asks me to meet her at a fado school where she learned when she was young and started performing. It’s nowhere near the famous fado districts of Alfama, Mouraria or Bairro Alto. The Clube Lisboa Amigos do Fado is in Chelas, a Lisbon neighbourhood of high-rise blocks that grew up near the airport after the revolution that overthrew the right-wing dictatorship in 1974. “It’s a racially mixed neighbourhood,” she says, “and fado is very big here, as well as hip-hop.” Correia was born just a couple of streets away and still lives nearby. Fado was part of her life from the beginning, her aunt was a fado singer. Correia came and knocked on the door…

https://content.markallengroup.com/songlines/2022/09/05-Non-Conveta-Qua.mp3 https://geo.music.apple.com/gb/album/recordar-é-viver-antologia-vol-1/1623357989?at=10lwtw Pedro Lima Recordar é Viver: Antologia Vol 1 Bongo Joe Records (76 mins) High-energy puxas from a São Tomé star This anthology provides an excellent opportunity to expand any record collection that’s light on the music of São Tomé and Príncipe, a small island nation that lies in the Gulf of Guinea, also close to the coasts of Gabon and Cameroon. Pedro Lima would rise above most artists even if he was born in those much larger countries. His songs primarily feature a Congolese soukous feel with a sprinkling of Ghanaian highlife, and Lima sings sweetly in Portuguese Creole. His blended style is termed puxa. Lima also worked in Angola and Gabon with his family band, Os Leonenses, recording solo works in the early 1980s. Lima died in…

LIRAZ: Roya The award-winning Israeli-Persian singer returns with "Roya" (fantasy In Farsi) an exhilarating blend of tradl-modern rhythms and retroPersian sonics. A musical portal to a place of peace, Joy and unfettered freedom. AL-QASAR: Who Are We? "An Intoxicating, highly torqued vision of a psychedelic Arab culture Its protagonists dub "Arabian Fuzz"." - Financial Times VANNA MOMINA: Afar Ways "Afar Ways documents the extraordinary voice and songs of Vanna Momlna, a septuagenarian singer who came to local fame late In life. - The Wire www.glitterbeat.com distributed In the UK by Proper…

TOP OF THE WORLD https://content.markallengroup.com/songlines/2022/09/08-Troisieme-Z.mp3 https://geo.music.apple.com/gb/album/instant/1612319059?at=10lwtw Ablaye Cissoko & Cyrille Brotto Instant Ma Case (43 mins) Masterful collaborations of kora and accordion Given that for centuries in griot culture it was considered a solo instrument, the kora has in recent decades proved remarkably versatile in partnership with other instruments, from Seckou Keita’s continuing collaborations with Catrin Finch’s Welsh harp to Ballake Sissoko’s albums with the cellist Vincent Segal, via Toumani Diabate’s multiple cross-cultural adventures, not to mention its incorporation into rock’n’roll mayhem via the Afro Celt Sound System. In recent years the Senegalese griot Ablaye Cissoko has taken his kora into a variety of imaginative and unexpected contexts, including a trio of albums with the trumpeter Volker Goetze and playing with the Constantinople Ensemble. Here he comes up with a…

Chris Watson listens for a living. As the BAFTA award-winning sound recordist on TV wildlife programmes such as David Attenborough’s Frozen Planet and Life series, he’s chronicled the soundscapes of the most incredible, as well as the most dangerous, places on Earth. From filming chimpanzees frolicking in the Congo, to inserting microphones in the rib cages of dead zebras on the Masai Mara so he can record the sound of vultures tearing their carcasses apart, Chris Watson has done, and heard, it all. Back in the 1970s and 80s Watson was a founding member of the Sheffield-based experimental music group Cabaret Voltaire. Inspired by early musique concrete composers from the Arab world, such as Halim Abdul Messieh El-Dabh, and Western ones like Frenchman Pierre Schaeffer, Watson manipulated electronic sounds on…

With unique neighbourhoods stretching alongside Lake Ontario far beyond its gleaming high-rises, for decades Toronto has been a welcome beacon for immigrants, who now make up 46.1% of its population – the highest of any Canadian metropolitan area. It’s also the most linguistically diverse city in the land – more than 200 languages and dialects are spoken in its neighbourhoods, each bearing witness beautifully to the peoples that have shaped a city the 2016 census’ Fact Sheet calls ‘Canada’s Major Immigrant Gateway.’ Toronto is therefore an ideal city to host a gathering of global music industry professionals and artists, as happens early this June when renowned cultural organisation Small World Music Centre produces and hosts the annual Global Toronto (with both a live and a virtual component). For its fourth…

01 Nora Brown Long Time to Be Gone (Jalopy Records, 2022) Recorded in a historic church in Brooklyn, this gorgeous set of 16 traditional tunes and songs combines virtuosity and emotional depth, played by the brightest young star in old-time music on a variety of banjos, including a 134-year-old instrument once owned by her great-great-grandfather. Reviewed this issue on p56. 02 Wu Fei and Abigail Washburn Wu Fei and Abigail Washburn (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 2020) Washburn performs and records regularly as a duo with her husband and fellow banjo picker Bela Fleck, but this disc uniquely teams her with Wu Fei and the guzheng (Chinese zither). The combination dazzles with stringed magic on folk songs drawn from North America and China. A work full of unexpected sonorities and surprisingly natural-sounding…

Russell Higham Russell is a freelance journalist and travel writer based out of London and Brighton who enjoys music from Africa and the Middle East. This issue he talks to sound-recording specialist Chris Watson (p80). Diane Coetzer Diane has been writing about South African music for 25 years and is still amazed at the creativity and diversity of sounds emerging from there. This issue she appraises the career of the Soweto Gospel Choir on p82. Robin Denselow Robin is a journalist, writer and broadcaster, specialising in music and politics. He has travelled extensively and for this issue he interviews the French-Algerian singer Souad Massi (p44). Songlines was launched in 1999 and is the definitive magazine for world music – music that has its roots in all parts of the globe,…

Glasgow-based Indian artist Kapil Seshasayee has always described himself as a ‘protest musician.’ This was evident on his first album, A Sacred Bore, which took aim at India’s caste system, and remains the case on its follow-up, Laal. “It’s an album about Bollywood and how Bollywood is often used as a tool for nationalism and censorship,” he tells us. His song ‘The Gharial’, decries Bollywood for profiteering from nationalism, while ‘The Pink Mirror’, is an essay on a film of the same name – the story of two transsexuals and a gay teenager that was banned in India. Bollywood’s influence is also present on his recent single, ‘370’. The song is about how India’s revoking of Article 370 in 2019, which stripped the state of Jammu and Kashmir of autonomy,…

after the success of our first special edition, which focused on the music of West Africa, we are very happy to announce Songlines Presents… The Music of Latin America, a new 100-page publication featuring country-by-country guides to the music and traditions of Latin America. Our team of crack contributors have gone in-depth on the region’s big fish – Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, etc – as well as those countries that deserve further attention – El Salvador, Paraguay, Martinique, the Guyanas, and many more. The articles put the contributions of major stars like Susana Baca, Calypso Rose, Bob Marley, Victor Jara, Gilberto Gil and Lila Downs into context, and provide insight into the many musical sty les and cultural influences that have defined the area. With an additional opinion piece, Essential…

While on holiday in June, I walk past vineyards between a couple of villages in south-west France – from Cournanel to Magrie – and stumble across an event called Cabanes en Fete, the cabanes being little stone cabins in the vineyards for storing equipment and so on. Local producers have stands among the vineyards where you can try their products – mainly wine, but also local foods and tasty specialities. Intriguingly, this also includes music. Our first encounter is with a 79-year-old accordionist Christian Brugere. He wears pointy leather clogs, a neck scarf and on his head a beret with the cross of Languedoc and the word ‘Occitan’ – the dialect spoken in the region. He’s playing a lovely-looking button accordion made by Hohner. He says he started when he…

The New Faith starts with a prayer. ‘We gather here today to confess and be cleansed in the eyes of our creator,’ American musician Jake Blount speaks in soothing tones over a bed of humming. It’s a conventional prayer, speaking on the sins of humanity. It is timeless and could have been lift ed from a Black church service at any point in US history. But when the background humming shifts into a more aggressive, rhythmic chant – ‘judgement, judgement bar’ – that timelessness falls away and we are cast into a future that we may already have doomed ourselves to. ‘Our forefathers took without giving, took without need – took things that they had neither desire nor use for, and threw them away. They covered the face of the…

“The Taliban wouldn’t let you live for a second if you were here, they would take your breath straight away. You are very lucky that you are not here.” This is Elaha Soroor’s mother talking from Kabul to her daughter in London after the Taliban had re-taken Kabul last year. Soroor is a singer, who participated in the TV show Afghan Star and tried to make a career as a singer in Kabul before she fled to the UK where she’s now a dynamic voice for Afghan women. There have been powerful performances at WOMAD UK and Forde Festival, Norway in July this year. The irony is that Soroor’s mother doesn’t approve of her musical career at all. Her mother describes her as khefat, a shame to the family, for…

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Berklee Indian Ensemble Shuruaat Berklee College of Music (69 mins) Virtuosic Indo-jazz fusion – but is it too slick? This was always going to be slick, the Berklee Indian Ensemble is a collective of musicians with amazing technical skills. If you really want to hear them show off their chops, then have a listen to the jazz-fusion ‘5 Peace Band’, all the more impressive for being live. There’s not a dropped note nor bit of grit anywhere on this album, and this is both its strength and weakness. If you are looking for some relatively easy-listening filmi-type Indian pop, then there is a lot here to please – check out ‘Arz-e-Niyaz’, which could have come straight from a contemporary Bollywood tear-jerker, or ‘Pinha’, which is pretty much the same. If,…

Musicals magazine is the new publication from the Mark Allen Group celebrating the world of Musical Theatre, from the West End to Broadway and beyond. Our launch issue will include: • West End and Broadway sensation Marisha Wallace discusses her starring roles in Dreamgirls, Waitress and Oklahoma! with Edward Seckerson • Official biographer David Benedict explores Stephen Sondheim’s lasting legacy, focusing on three of his hit musicals: Company, Sweeney Todd and Assassins • Live show and recording reviews including Bugsy Malone, South Pacific, A Strange Loop, 42nd Street, 13 and MJ The Musical • Live show listings for West End, Broadway, regional, touring and international Order your copy for just £9.99 Visit: magsubscriptions.com/musicals-magazine Call: 0800 137201 (UK) or +44 (0)1722 716997 (Overseas) The launch issue of Musicals will be published…

London Film Festival October 5-16 This year’s London Film Festival boasts the by now expected mixture of exclusives (Matthew Warchus’s film of Matilda: The Musical), European premieres (the new Sam Mendes, Empire of Light) and festival highlights from Cannes and elsewhere (including The Banshees of Inisherin, Decision to Leave and Triangle of Sadness, all reviewed here). It’s a slightly but noticeably slimmer festival than of late, but it is expanding its reach across London and beyond – many of the films will be screened simultaneously at regional film theatres across the UK. As ever, there will be a lot of speculation as to the identity of the Surprise Film on October 13. Your guess is as good as mine, but I note that The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical love letter…

Korean flautist Hyelim Kim is one of the most dramatic players I’ve ever seen. The bamboo instrument she plays is like an extension of her body and she moves expressively as she performs. It adds an extra element of drama to the music and she’s been involved in several theatrical presentations where movement and music are equally integral. The sound is piercing, intense and full of overtones. The traditional Korean flutes is called daegeum, which literally means ‘large flutes,’ and it’s made from bamboo. Hyelim’s father was a keen amateur player, so she was introduced to it at an early age. “My father oft en took me to the bamboo forest because he was obsessed with making his own instruments. When I was little, I was surrounded by bamboo –…

On June 29 2020, the much-loved Ethiopian singer and activist Haacaaluu Hundeessaa was shot at his home in Addis Ababa, and later died in hospital. The event caused instant uproar among the country’s Oromo population, who protested throughout the country over the following days, where they were met by police resistance and brutality during the protests, which resulted in 239 people dead hundreds of injuries according to local police figures. Hundeessaa was vocal in raising awareness about the historic and continued subjugation of the Oromos, and his death was described as “a spear through the heart of the Oromo nation.” This quote has now been used for a new documentary on Hundeessaa’s life and legacy. Spear through the Heart is directed by Bruno Sorrentino and will be screened in Berlin…

The enigmatic and sometimes-elusive Bulgarian clarinettist Ivo Papasov is due to receive the Artist Award at this year’s edition of WOMEX. Papasov formed his first band in 1973 and is considered the leading exponent of Bulgarian wedding music, playing his clarinet in a fiery fusion of traditional Bulgarian dance tunes with elements of jazz. He released two albums for Joe Boyd’s Hannibal imprint in 1989 and 1991 and then disappeared from international view, re-emerging in 2005 to win the Audience Award at the BBC’s Radio 3 World Music Awards and to perform at WOMAD. He has since scarcely played international shows, the last known being a series in France and Germany in 2015. On giving Papasov their award, WOMEX write, ‘it is for his dedication to the advancement of Bulgarian…

Nyati Mayi is a singer and lulanga (trough zither) player with roots in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His band, the Astral Synth Transmitters, is actually just one man – DJ soFa, aka Christophe Hammes, a producer, synthesist and crate-digger. They’re both members of the Brussels music scene, but their musical adventure together started out of the blue. “Nyati always sends spontaneous recordings of himself to his friends over text messages,” says Hammes. “During lockdown one morning, I turned on my phone and the recording he’d sent did me a lot of good. I walked directly from my bed to the studio next door, cut up the stuff and added synths and rhythm and sent it back. Three days later he came to my place and we started jamming.”…

On sale November 11 Erol Josué (pictured) – We catch up with the Haitian singer, dancer and voodoo priest who takes a pilgrimage back to his home country VRï – The chamber folk trio and audio archaeologists mine their Welsh history Karaim music – Simon Broughton travels to Lithuania to discover the music of Europe’s smallest minority, the Karaim Solju – The Sámi mother-daughter duo of Ulla Pirttijärvi and Hildá Länsman return with a new album, Uvjamuohta / Powder Snow The Unthanks – A Beginner’s Guide to the Northumbrian folkies Introducing – Spafford & Campbell and Belarusian accordionist Aliaksandr Yasinski Spotlight on the Turkish legend Zülfü Livaneli…

ON SALE OCTOBER 28 PRE-ORDER NOW • 100 pages of stunning content exploring the region’s history, musical styles and traditions• Profiles on the countries of Latin America, from Mexico to Argentina• Over 120 recommended album reviews• Exclusive opinion piece on the role of music in Latin American politics The Music of Latin America + The Music of West Africa available as a bundle for the special price of £19.99 Available from October 28 from all good newsagents Pre-order online at magsubscriptions.com/songlines or call +44 (0)1722 716997 Orders will be dispatched after October 28. *Free P&P for UK orders. P&P postage will be added to international orders.…

On a sweltering hot afternoon in Paris, Souad Massi sits in the corner of a café, talking about pain, despair, hope and the intriguing, slightly spooky cover of her bravely original new album Sequana. It shows the most successful female singer-songwriter in the Arabic-speaking world facing the camera with each of her eyes covered by a daisy, their long stems dangling down her cheeks. “I put those flowers [on] because I believe in nature and the force of nature,” she says. “It’s hard to find good things now. I have had a bad time in my life, and it was hard for me.” I know that she has been divorced, so was the album a reaction to that? “It was more than just my divorce… I don’t want to explain.…

boci We Are Each Other, This Will Set Us Free boci music (52 mins) Alt-folk from Bristol The debut album from Bristol-based singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist boci covers a lot of ground musically, yet is rooted in contemporary alt-folk. A mix of instrumentals and songs, We Are Each Other… carries very welcome messages of unity and healing, and does truly feel restorative as well as contemplative and, at times, transcendental. boci’s voice is generally soft but this is not to say inexpressive. On tracks such as ‘(I Feel Like a Bird)’ there is a beautiful intimacy to her articulation and on others like ‘Getting High’ she explores more jazzy aesthetics. Her violin playing is dexterous and groovy, as we hear right from the beginning with ‘Stories’, and shows a smattering…

Al-Qasar Who Are We? Glitterbeat Records (45 mins) Noise-trance, rock drums and ‘Arabian fuzz’ Born in the largely Algerian neighbourhood of Barbes in Paris, the quintet Al-Qasar mixes hypnotic North African trance grooves and brooding noise-rock production to create a glowering 21st-century psychedelia they call ‘Arabian fuzz.’ A heavy rhythmic imperative sits at its heart, melding booming bass and rock drums with the capricious clop of sundry Arabic hand drums including bendir and darbuka. Over this, leader and composer Thomas Attar Bellier unfurls barbed electric saz and choppy electric guitar while Jaouad El Garouge intones spiky Arabic vocals. It’s an angry-sounding brew, global in its reach and compelling in its urgency. This debut album also features various international guests who raise the bar even higher. Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo adds…

Brought to you by Classical Sean Shibe Lost & Found Pentatone PTC5186 988 Eclectic and electric There’s the temptation to geek out in regard to the superb instruments Sean Shibe performs on his latest release: a Fender Mexican Stratocaster and a PRS Custom 24-08 35th Anniversary (drool drool), not to mention the array of pedals used. Such observations may or may not be relevant to the matter at hand, which is the total effect of listening to what, in Shibe’s words, is an ‘overflowing toybox, some kind of emporium of curiosities.’ The album’s title is from William Blake and it is his illustrations that illuminate the accompanying booklet, along with Hildegard of Bingen’s The Cosmic Tree, strange pictorial scores and a photograph of Moondog. Intrigued yet? Despite the surface eclecticism,…

Blessed (Shanachie Entertainment, 2006) There’s so much to love on this extensive release, but an unquestionable highlight is Soweto Gospel Choir’s moving version of ‘Weeping’, written in the 1980s by Bright Blue as an anti-apartheid song that incorporated strands of the banned pan-African anthem ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’. Reviewed in March/April 2006 (#35). African Spirit (Shanachie Entertainment, 2007) At the core of the Soweto Gospel Choir’s repertoire are a cappella traditional songs that encourage stillness and reflection and African Spirit is overflowing with them, starting with the gorgeous opener ‘Seteng Sediba’. Freedom (Shanachie Entertainment, 2007) Released to mark the centenary of Nelson Mandela’s birth, the vocal prowess of the choir is effortlessly able to convey reminders of the true toll of the anti-apartheid struggle (exile, separation of families and loved ones)…

Making some waves, Julian May launches a broadside against the recent artistic resurrection of the sea shanty The soapbox, firm beneath their feet, raises the speaker above contradiction. I’ve only one foot on mine, and it’s a bit wobbly… I enjoy the music written about in Songlines: the kora, Basque trikitixa, Sámi joiks, Argentinian – and Finnish – tango. Songlines introduced me to these, enriching my musical life, broadening my knowledge. I know more about, and love, the traditional music of Britain and Ireland: the various forms of bagpipe music, squeezebox tunes from all over, the Shetland and English fiddle traditions, morris dance music. ‘Shepherd’s Hey’, ‘Princess Royal’ and ‘The Nutting Girl’ – these lovely tunes move and delight me. Many traditional songs enthral me: the sweeping narrative of ‘The…