Table of contents for August/September 2022 in Songlines

There’s not much I love more than watching an artist break through the barriers that confine too many amazing global artists within the ghetto of ‘world music,’ especially when they don’t lose sight of the traditions that birthed them. And if there’s one artist posed to do just that, it’s Cimafunk. His grooves mine the fruitful space between genres – taking in everything from trova to funk – but, “you must never forget where you come from,” the cool says. On p20, our cover star tells us about the music of his roots and how he’s ended up working with legends like Chucho Valdés and George Clinton. He might have been slowed by the pandemic but with a recent hit set at Glastonbury under his belt and upcoming shows…

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 Orwell or woke? I feel compelled to write to you after reading the dreadful musical snobbery and elitism put forward by Chris Moss [Soapbox, July 2022, #179]. He blathers on about ‘more spaces for music otherwise under-represented in the mass media.’ His ‘more spaces’ is, and always has been, a valid point, but not just within the context of ‘Moss music.’ It is true for the throng of unsigned but gifted singers, musicians and songwriters looking to make a mark, but could also be just as valid for a Rotherham punk band. He then shows his snobbery again by…

There seems to have been a spate of ‘dark folk’ releases from Poland in recent issues of Songlines: Daj Ognia’s Wykrot, celebrating long-vanished rites (May 2021, #167); Devil’s Fiddle from Cezary Duchnowski & Radical Polish Ansambl (August/September 2021, #170) and Wicher’s Czary i Czarty (Witchcraft and Devils), which opens with ‘a mad dance with devils and demons’ (October 2021, #171). There is definitely a revival of interest in dark and devilish things and Poland’s pre-Christian inheritance – and it’s been there for some years already. There’s one band that can be seen as the genre’s precursor. In March this year, I see a performance of Robert Jaworski’s band Żywiołak (Elemental). Starting his music career as a teenager in a local brass orchestra in his hometown of Turek in central Poland,…

A Panda do Sol Homenagem Sungroove Records (37 mins) Samba de raiz from the German capital Samba from Berlin? Why not? There has been plenty of choro coming from unexpected places recently, but not so much it seems of its generic successor. Specifically, this mixed-sex international ensemble based in the German capital take on the sub-genre of samba de raiz, or roots samba. After a debut album of their own compositions, Homenagem constitutes a homage in eight songs to eight different composers linked with a musical tradition that was the catalyst for the outfit’s formation in 2016. Musically and lyrically, they remain true to the originals apart from a little inventive inversion, turning major key tunes into minor and vice versa. The instrumentation is samba-classic, but with an emphasis on brass…

Ferkat Al Ard Oghneya Habibi Funk Records (33 mins) Lebanese folk collides with Brazilian bossa Berlin-based Arabic-retro label Habibi Funk have given the kiss of life to another lost legend in the form of 1978’s glorious Lebanese-Brazilian folk-jazz fusion Oghneya. Originally released on cassette, the vinyl version followed a year later, with both formats rare and highly sought after (good examples, where they do exist, fetch up to $5,000 a copy). Led by Issam Hajali, who now runs a small electronics shop in Beirut, Ferkat Al Ard melded classical Arabic melodic structures with joyously laid-back Brazilian styles such as bossa nova that had been brought back by returning emigrants and integrated into Beirut’s already-cosmopolitan music scene. Even now, Brazil is home to the largest Lebanese diaspora in the world –…

Classical Brought to you by Johnny Gandelsman This is America: An Anthology 2020-2021 In a Circle Records ICR023 Vital anthology work This is potentially one of the important recordings of our time. Violinist Johnny Gandelsman presents 24 new works by American and US-based composers. This is America is described as an anthology that documents the tumultuous years of 2020-21 (though three of the works are from 2018, they resonate with the larger themes). In this anthology of riches, the best I can do for you is a whistle-stop tour of its standout moments. Comprehending this album’s significance is a job for the much longer term. First, there are works in which Gandelsman is so uniquely at home in embodying the musical language. Kinan Azmeh’s ‘Sahra Be Wyckoff’ is the first…

“We’ve long thought Western culture was the most important, looking down on other cultures just as valuable,” Jordi Savall says. “Today, we can discover these other cultures and that’s how I think the future of music will be built: on dialogue, on respect for other cultures, uniting great musicians from different traditions.” Born in 1941 in Catalonia, a stronghold of Republicanism that had suffered heavily under Franco’s fascist troops in the civil war, Savall learned to sing in a choir and, inspired by another great Catalan, Pablo Casals, took up the cello, graduating from the Barcelona Conservatory in 1965. From there he traced the cello’s roots back to the viola da gamba, which for 300 years was the most important stringed instrument in Europe, but which has been all but…

01 Agrupación Changó Berejú (Discos Pacífico, 2020) Directed by Wisman Tenorio, Agrupación Changó fuse together ancestral knowledge with contemporary musical elements, and this vibrant album intoxicates with its virtuoso marimba, complex percussive rhythms and haunting vocals. 02 Bejuco Batea (Discos Pacífico/Llorona Records, 2021) From Tumaco, this group are at the forefront of Pacific fusion music today, pushing it into fresh and exciting directions. This, their first studio album, combines Afrobeat with traditional Afro-Pacific rhythms, and is symbolic of the creativity, resistance and ancestral importance of African music on the modern-day Colombian Pacific coast. 03 Canalón de Timbiquí Arrullando (Canalón de Timbiquí, 2016) Led by the acclaimed Nidia Góngora, this all-female vocal troupe have carried the sounds of the Pacific to the wider world for many years. Though the group have…

Jane Cornwell Jane is a Songlines contributing editor, a writer on music, arts and travel and a compere at festivals including WOMAD. This issue she catches up with our cool cover star Cimafunk (p20) David Katz David is an author of several books and produced documentaries for PRI on the music and culture of the Caribbean and Brazil. This issue, he explores 60 years of Jamaica’s musical innovation (p40). Jenna Mackle Jenna is an ethnomusicologist, music journalist and Colombian music specialist. Originally from Ireland, she now resides in Bogotá, Colombia. She travels to Tumaco for the Festival de la Marimba (p74). 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,…

On the back of Planeta Polar’s debut album, Puro Carnaval (reviewed in July 2022, #179), I catch up with Adomas Koreniukas the frontman of Lithuania’s leading cosmic pop band on a Vilnius rooftop. Yes, there is something otherworldly about Planeta Polar, and I wanted to know more about where it all started. Koreniukas explains: “There were many beginnings. My love for music was always there from an early age, but it was through my study of economics that took me to Peru where new musical doors opened.” Koreniukas’ curiosity led him to pick up an accordion and start playing the rhythms that surrounded him in Peru. Koreniukas is clearly culturally curious with a desire to understand the soul of the country. “And so I started to learn Peruvian huaynos. The…

Cimafunk wasn’t born with the funk. For the longest time a career in music wasn’t even on his mind. But his family home on Luis Lazo street in the suburbs of Pinar del Rio, the centre of tobacco production in western Cuba, pulsed with the sounds of the area. There was traditional son, danzón and rumba rhythms on the radio; Afro-American soul records that his uncle, a neighbour, loved to play and there was reggaeton, of course. If you were a kid in Cuba in the 90s and 2000s, there had to be reggaeton. Then there were songs sung at the local nueva trova club by such esteemed troubadours as Pablo Milanés and Ray Fernandez, whose stuff he adored. “Every single day there was music coming from somewhere,” says Cimafunk…

Jarek Adamów & Marcin Kozak In Search of Sources Folken Music (54 mins) Polish folk duets Unlike the Jarek Adamów album that follows this one, In Search of Sources features two Polish musicians interested in the tradition creating new music from the various sources they’ve heard. Jarek Adamów plays clarinet, hurdy-gurdy, pipes and bass drum, while Marcin Kozak, who played in the early days with Warsaw Village Band, plays pipes, jaw harp and frame drum. It sounds like there are some electronics too. ‘Klabejar’, featuring clarinet and percussion, is super lively and although I’m sure it’s not a traditional tune, the energy of folk music permeates it. But with just two players, the music is inevitably very stripped down and mostly there’s not really enough going on. ‘Lirdru’, with nearly…

Bush Gothic Beyond the Pale Fydle Records (43 mins) Campfire tales from Australia’s dark past Gather around the campfire… Bush Gothic have 12 tracks’ worth of tales to tell. Of convicts and cattle wranglers, miners and bushrangers, country towns with empty streets. Of Jim Jones, an incarcerated Brit whose mission to bust out and join the fight against the British military is detailed liltingly, melodically, by singer, bandleader and multi-instrumentalist Jenny M Thomas (whose knack of singing and playing fiddle at the same time is antipodean legend) with sumptuous backing by bassist Dan Witton and Chris Lewis (drums, banjo). Bush Gothic are acclaimed for their darkly inventive reworkings of Australian folk songs. ‘Pub With No Beer’, a ditty made famous by country singer Slim Dusty, is rendered tense, drum-heavy, riven…

São Paulo is South America’s most exciting city – where Portuguese America migrates to and meets itself, and I have been away for too long. As the plane dips towards its landing, I feel a tingle of adrenaline. But it isn’t just eager anticipation this time. I am nervous of what I’ll find. Samba and capoeira, maracatu and Carnaval, mangue beat and Marielle Franco – all were born from Afro-Indigenous Brazil. But since Jair Bolsonaro came to power they have been under constant attack. Black people, he said, are “not even good for procreation.” Cultural institutions are starved of funds, paramilitary groups and loggers murder with impunity: Marielle Franco and now Bruno Pereira are gone, together with one of the international journalists who championed them – Dom Phillips. But as…

The excellent OFFest world music festival took place in Skopje, North Macedonia this June. It’s mainly a feast of top musicians from overseas, but the first day is usually devoted to local artists where I was delighted to see Perija. I knew of this four-piece band as I was one of the jury selecting them for round two of the MOST Bridge for Balkan Music – an ongoing campaign to promote Balkan music in Europe. Songlines is one of the partners and Perija were featured on our bonus covermount CD in April 2022 (#176). I’d enjoyed their music online, but it’s a very different thing seeing them live and getting a chance to talk to them. On stage their music is quite intense and dominated by string instruments of Turkey…

Kibrom Birhane Here and There Flying Carpet Records (71 mins) LA’s best Ethio-jazzer Since its (then) undiscovered flowering in the 1970s, Ethio-jazz has spread around the musical world like an exotic plant. Before winning a scholarship that took him to the US, this LA-based Ethiopian keyboards player assimilated the jazz legends of his homeland, having absorbed ancient Orthodox chanting as a child. As part of the esteemed Ethio Cali outfit, which included future saxophone star, Kamasi Washington, Birhane digested some of the other influences at play on his riveting third solo album, Here and There. Recorded direct to tape with a group of top LA session players, it’s a deep, meditative affair made up of 11 of Birhane’s long trance-like compositions. Birhane often plays a heavily electrified piano – over…

Don Ellis The Hindustani Jazz Sextet Live at the UCLA Sleepy Night Records (76 mins) Early experiments in Indian classical and jazz This live record is a charming time capsule, taking us back to the swinging 60s and the first fumblings of theWestern love affair with Indian classical music. The album is part of a series rediscovering American trumpeter Don Ellis, who played with diverse jazz legends from Glenn Miller to Charles Mingus, before transitioning into film composition. We find Ellis in 1966 in California, part of the West Coast scene synonymous with Dave Brubeck’s ‘cool jazz.’ Brubeck gave us five and seven-beat grooves, but Ellis and his collaborator Harihar Rao up the ante with pieces based on ten-and-a-half and 19-beat cycles. An inter-song tutorial from Rao about rhythmic subdivisions…

The Northern Silence: Journeys in Nordic Music & Culture Andrew Mellor Yale University Press (303 pages) From Sámi joiking to Viking doom metal ‘From the glass walls of Helsinki Airport…’ the book begins. I’m hooked. Having flown in and out of so many Nordic airports myself I cherish each one’s character, each breathtaking approach, gateways to sounds and friendships. This magical part of the world is Mellor’s home and this book is a journey in his company, basking in his knowledge and passion for music and people. Silence, he says, ‘can exist internally as well as externally.’ He’s just been talking about Sibelius’ tone poem Tapiola where silence is ‘like the inaudible breathing of the forest.’ True to the book’s title, silences weave their way throughout, companionable silences, the silence…

Druga Godba Various venues, Ljubljana, Slovenia, May 24-30 In keeping with its name (Druga Godba translates as ‘That Other Music’), the programme for the 38th edition of the Slovenian festival was as eclectic as ever, ranging from self-proclaimed Spanish ‘folk agitator’ Rodrigo Cuevas to Buryatian-Lithuanian collaboration UDU and the Moroccan-French rock of Bab L’ Bluz. The festival has built its reputation on innovative programming, often showcasing debut performances, and this was clearly evident this year on a bill that featured several homegrown acts. The three Slovenian groups who showcased at Klub CD in the city’s main cultural centre illustrated a breadth of musical styles. Pianist Rudi Pančur led a ten-piece called Mala Mestna Muzika, featuring Vlado Žabot’s poetry inspired by the Mura river in the north-east of the country. Grateful…

When I was ten I lived in a sonic universe dominated by the UK hit parade: ‘Kung Fu Fighting’, ABBA, Hot Chocolate, the Coca-Cola song, ‘Stayin’ Alive’, fairground music. And mum’s records, mainly. I loved them all, even Engelbert Humperdinck (the crooner, not the 19thcentury German composer). When I was 16 I mosh-dived into indie music. Growing up in the north-west of England it made sense. I’d passed through the convulsions of punk and new wave and found – in the songs of Joy Division, The Smiths, The Fall – music that reflected back (sometimes warped, caricatured) my reality. I never gave up mum’s music, but this was ‘my’ music. When I was 25 I went to live in Argentina. The rock nacional was mostly second-rate, so I got into…