Afro Celt Sound System "The Source"

There are discoveries being made in the care of people with Alzheimer's which involve cherished music from a person's past being used to unlock memories. The faces of dementia sufferers often light up with an almost ecstatic recognition and re-remembering of places, faces, events and emotions when they don headphones and hear sounds which bring a long-lost past back to life for them.

When I heard about this, I headed to Spotify to create a playlist of sounds that resonate with redolence for each era of my own life, in case I should ever lose my marbles. The Afro Celt Sound System feature very heavily around the mid Nineties. My partner and I and our two kids had moved to Bello, and finally managed a deposit on a block of land here in town on which to put down roots, grow a permaculture garden and build the house we'd dreamt of building for so long.

In the videos of that period, made to capture our growing young family, home and garden for grandparents in the UK, as the wild afternoon storms roll through the Valley, it is often the sounds of the Afro Celts that ring out. We were so enamoured of their music that we drove half way across Australia on a whim one long weekend to see them play at Womadelaide.

Thus there is much anticipation in the air as this new Afro Celt Sound System CD "The Source" wings its way by snail mail from England. Their first studio recording in ten years, it's also a 20th Anniversary release, and the core members of this ACSS incarnation have revisited many of the magical musical connections made in that time. First impression, the cover art is stunning. The colourful mandala-like designs by Jamie Reid go full circle back to their debut, "Volume One: Sound Magic".

The opener is "Calling In The Horses": The sound of an ocean lapping, the West African call and response, Moussa Sissokho's talking drum, Simon Emmerson's feedback guitar and Davy Spillane's wistful Uillean Pipes and Irish whistles. Over a rumbling, earthen bass, N'faly Kouyate's voice reaches the heavens.and before we know it we are into "Beware Soul Brother", with the soulful sweet spot being reached by Rioghnach Connolly's ethereal vocals and flute. She's from Ireland but here sounds almost Indian in the phrasing. By track three, "The Magnificent Seven", Johnny Kalsi's Dhol Foundation rejoin the clan and big, emphatic, celebratory noises are being made.

When the Afro Celtic cross-over experiment was first being formulated at one of Peter Gabriel's Real World gatherings twenty years ago, Shooglenifty were recording next door. Their master musicianship featured on that first release and here they are again in the thick of it on "The Source". The novel Gaellic rap, Highland pipes and whistles of new band member Griogair are a revelation. His jazz bagpipes on "Where Two Rivers Meet" are something else altogether. Female vocal groups from both Scotland (Urar) and West Africa (Les Griottes) and some gorgeous singing by Griogair's fellow Highland Crofter Lucy Doogan add a certain serenity to the proceedings.

On "Child of Wonder" there is some intriguing spoken Scottish word by the young writer Pal, and on several of the thirteen tracks there's some great production / programming / beats by long-time collaborator Mass, who brings a touch of dubstep to the proceedings and has his funky Kick Horns brass section in tow to add to the mix.

 This epic eighty minute album finishes with "Kalsi Breakbeat" - a supercharged Shooglenifty/Afro Celt/Dhol Foundation jam session that will go down a storm with Northern Hemisphere festivals this summer. "The Source" brings us the ACSS sound we've known for twenty years, but the fresh additions take things to a whole new level. As it says on the tin: "A Time for Magic"

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Zulya & The Children of The Underground "On Love & Science"

At one of the early Bellingen Global Carnivals I was one of many to be awestruck and enchanted by the crystal clarity of Zulya Kamalova's voice. Fronting big crowds with solo voice and accoustic guitar, she was a very assured performer with a winning sense of humour and self-effacing nature. She was freshly arrived in Australia, migrating from her Tatar homeland in the recently broken-up USSR and she told us she felt very much at home here in appreciative Bellingen.

Our six year old son, ever the artfully discerning and unpredictable Chrysalis kid that he was, resolved to spend his Global Carnival pocket money on Zulya's debut CD "Journey of Voice". Like her show it took us on a journey from the deserts of Rajasthan to the Gypsy Jazz and Chanson bars of Paris, via the folk traditions of the Central Eurasian Steppes. Like the rest of us in the audience, he was transported by Zulya's voice.

Since then, Zulya has settled in Melbourne, returned once more to the Global with a group of seriously talented musicians in tow, released several CDs, toured Australia, Russia and Europe to great acclaim and won several prestigious awards. 2016 sees the release of her most adventurous project thus far. As well as her band, she has teamed up with the talented Tatar artist Dilka Bear to release a sumptuous hard-cover book with a CD inside. Dilka's gorgeous drawings accompany Zulya's songs and her sparse and pithy poetic prose to perfection.

Kamalova's recent involvement in several theatrical projects shows through with this new release. From the "Mise-En-Scene" featuring not just a bass clarinet but a thumping contra-bass and assorted sounds from piano, jew's harp and found objects, to the equally quirky and brooding "Epilogue", we are in Bertolt Brechtian / Kurt Weilian / Tom Waitsian territory. There is a beautifully illustrated story going on here with several clever dramatic twists and turns.

Our heroine is a singer called Alma ("Her name simply means apple in Turkic languages, loving one in Latin, girl with beautiful lips in Arabic.") and she is adored by "The Chemist". His love is unrequited, as is her own adoration of an Astro-Physicist, "The Stargazer", whose "dreams were focussed upon unravelling the riddles of the universe using numbers and logic".

I don't think I'm giving too much away when I tell you that there are alternate endings in parallel universes. Along the way, we are treated to some highly intricate, nuanced jazz. The Children Of The Underground have never sounded better. The addition of clarinettist Aviva Endean is a revelation and the many years that these musicians have now been playing together is apparent in the tautness of their sound, and the grace with which they allow each other space, and allow Zulya's crystalline vocals to shine through.

I can't recommend this one highly enough - you can download the music and a pdf of the book from Zulya's bandcamp page, but better still, hassle your local bookshop and / or record store to order some copies in. If I gave stars for reviews, this one would be as stellar as could be.

Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood & The Rajasthan Express "Junun"

In the early eighties,  I purposefully got myself lost one evening in the back streets of Kathmandu and came across the sounds of harmonium, tabla and a chorus of chanting voices. I was beckoned up a narrow staircase and squeezed into the back of an attic room, crammed with a dozen or so ecstatic, devotional Sufi singers reaching to the heavens with their voices - and a bunch of rapt, smiling onlookers like myself.  The soaring spirituality of the Qawwali music I encountered in that attic room was something completely new to me. I came across it again when Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan became one of the first big "world music" stars of the nineties. And now, here it is again through The Rajasthan Express and this exciting new "Junun" project.

Shye Ben Tzur is an Israeli musician who has for many years been living in India and immersing himself in its musical traditions. He composes and performs Qawwali songs in Hindi, Urdu and Hebrew, thus transcending ethnic and religious boundaries through the unifying force of music. For this collaboration he has brought in Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead fame on guitar, bass guitar, drum machine & computers, keyboard and the ancient French electronic instrument Ondes Martenot, along with Nigel Godrich as producer (also of Radiohead fame). They were hosted by the Maharaja of Jodhpur in his 15th Century Mehrangarh Fort, and they lined the wooden walls with mattresses and brought together an amazing array of Indian musicians. First, a Rajasthani Brass Ensemble with trombone, trumpets and three tubas to create the biggest, fattest brass sound when required. Next a Qawwali Chorus lead by Zaki and Zakir Ali and extended family, with obligatory Harmonium, Saranghi, Khartal and Dholak as accompaniments. 
"Junun" translates as "madness of love", and Ben Tzur takes the romantic poetry of the Sufis, which often portrays an intimate relationship with God through language normally reserved for lovers. He and the whole group of musicians and singers reach for - and most definitely attain - something entirely new. Several of the tracks are raucous, rambunctious and celebratory. Others are more pared back, introspective and experimental. To give you an idea, in English the track titles are "Dance", "He", "Let's Go To That Land", "Ascetic", "Beloved", "Let Go" and "Grateful". Then there is the short, left-field ambient piece "There Are Birds in the Echo Chamber" which captures the birds that insisted on flying in through open windows and participating in the recording. The ecstatic, three week-long party in the old Rajasthani Hill Fort was beautifully captured by film-maker Paul Thomas Anderson in the film of the same name "Junun - the madness of love", trailers and excerpts of which are available on youtube. This is as exhilarating as music gets.   

Fatoumata Diawara & Roberto Fonseca "At Home"

The musical and cultural ties that bind Cuba to Mali have been explored by quite a few projects over the years. The original concept for Buena Vista Social Club was to take a group of Malian musicians to Cuba to see what wonders of cross fertilisation might result. Unobtainable visas proved to be the downfall of that project at the time but it was revisited eventually with the fabulous 2010 release AfroCubism.

One of the ace musicians who played with BVSC over the years - Cuban pianist Roberto Fonseca - traced his own musical heritage back to West Africa with his last solo release, "Yo". The standout track on that album, "Bibisa", featured the up and coming Malian talent Fatoumata Diawara as guest vocalist and higlighted just how well Cuban and Malian musicians meld together. She has one of those often soft, occasionally abrasive African voices that soars. He plays the most audacious Cuban Jazz piano chops that leave audiences - and fellow musicians - in awe.

The two have now started combining their respective bands and playing together on a regular basis at Festivals and Halls all over the world, to massive acclaim. This new CD was recorded Live at Marciac Jazz Festival in France in 2014. The YouTube video to promote the pair features the opening track "Sowa" (a Diawara original) and the looks they exchange on stage tell a story. As Fonseca has explained, they are "in love, musically" and it's plain to see. The Cuban rhythm section is as tight as can be and they and the Malians, with guitars, ngoni and kora, fit together perfectly, like fingers in a glove.  Fonseca, alternates between his Steinway and a Stevie Wonder-style synth (sometimes playing both at once) really taking things to a whole new, funky level. Fatou's delight is apparent as her music becomes truly transcendental.

The songs on this CD are all quite long pieces, with lots of improvised meandering down musical alleyways to allow each of the perfomers to shine - one of Fonseca's songs, the epic "Connection", clocks in at fourteen minutes - but none of the songs become dull. The Jazzness of some of the tunes can be quite dense at times but, hey, music that requires repeated listens to fully unpick always seems to give the most long-term joy.

Even on the audio recording, it is Diawara and Fonseca smiling beatifically at each other that shines through, as they revel in what each brings to the other's music. The band leave the pair on stage for a sensitive, plaintive piano and vocal rendition of their new co-written song "Real Family" before the ensemble returns for rousing versions of Fatou's songs "Neboufo" and "Clandestin" - dedicated to clandestino refugees the world over.

I really can't wait to hear what musical progeny might result when this lot spend a bit of time in a recording studio, and I do hope they make it down here sometime soon! I know I'm dreaming, but wouldn't that be a great Mem Hall show?

Jayme Stone's Lomax Project

Canadian Banjo player Jayme Stone read a biography called "Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded The World" (by John Szwed) and, realising that the centenary of Lomax's birth was approaching, had a light bulb moment in which he envisaged a centenary project to pay tribute to Lomax's many and varied field recordings.

At various folk festivals and musical gatherings he began to workshop re-imaginings of some of the vast array of music that Lomax recorded in the latter two-thirds of the Twentieth Century across the North American continent, the Caribbean and the UK. A Kickstarter project ensued and enthusiastic fans helped Stone's fabulous vision to take shape.

Starting in 1933 with a Model A Ford, an Edison acetate disc-cutter, a stylus made of cactus needles and a microphone, Alan Lomax began a life's work (continuing that of his father) of creating an aural record of the Folk traditions of America for the Library of Congress and The Smithsonian. As he wrote in the official record of his 1937 trip around the rutted, unmade back roads of Kentucky "A collector of folk song lives and works by the kindness of the people in the localities to which he goes." This kindness still shines through in these performances by Jayne Stone and his accomplished collaborators.

Margaret Glaspy and Tim O'Brien contribute a vocal tenderness, and the instrumentation throughout (banjo, accordion, fiddle, guitar, bass, drums, mandolin) is in sympathy with the original Lomax recordings. The virtuosic improvisations of the modern day musicians take these songs or tunes to new places but stay very true to the originals. The Lomax Project manages to find the perfect balance between inheritance and invention.

There are some jaunty instrumentals here, and some soulful accapella ("The Devil's Nine Questions is outstanding). There are some sea shanties (I never knew that "Shenandoah" came from French-Canadian voyageurs and tells the story of a Missouri river trader who courted the daughter of Native American Chief Shenandoah for seven years). There is some truly magnificent Appalachian Bluegrass playing, some Southern Blues inspired by Lomax's recordings of Leadbelly, Fats Domino and Muddy Waters and some African-infused working songs from the days of Slavery. There is a Travellers' Song from Scotland and even a Calypso, "Bury Boula for Me", from Trinidad given perfect voice by fellow Canadian Drew Gonsalves of Kobo Town.

Many folk ballads that one hears in the "New World" travelled from Britain to the lumber camps of Nova Scotia or the Appalachian Mountains providing something of a time capsule. One of the songs in this collection can be traced back to Child Ballad No. 1 from Francis James Child’s collection. The earliest version can be found in a handwritten manuscript from 1450 housed at the Bodelian Library in Oxford. As Stone points out in the sleeve notes, "The songs come from sea captains, cowhands, fishermen, homemakers, prisoners and farmers: extraordinary, everyday folks making homemade, handmade music."

The honesty and generosity of these extraordinary people were captured so well for posterity by Lomax's recordings, and Stone makes me want to track down Szwed's biography to find out more about the life and adventures of Alan Lomax and the people he encountered along the way.

XAOS "Chaos"

Rarely has a musical release been so sweetly timed. Billed as "Post-Troika Hellenic Trance Music", this latest collaboration by Nick "Dubulah" Page (of Transglobal Underground, Natasha Atlas, Dub Colossus and Syriana renown) called "Xaos" (the Greek word for Chaos) is one that has been gestating for about ten years.

 

Being half-Greek, Dubulah has long wanted to celebrate the musical traditions of his mother's homeland and, to that end, has been working on "Xaos" with Greek (but Australian-born) electronic musician, artist and composer Ahetas. The project has taken shape in fits and starts, as and when circumstances have allowed some of the finest Greek players of traditional instruments and the two main protagonists to be in the same place at the same time.

There are some common misconceptions around Greek musical culture. Most people outside of Greece would think of Bouzoukis, Nana Mouskouri, Zorba - and perhaps at a pinch Rebetiko. But Greek music has a rich five thousand year history. The instrumentation of "Xaos" reflects this perfectly with a Nay (Nose flute), Bul Bul (double flute), a Clarino (Greek clarinet), haunting Gaida (Greek bagpipes) and the exquisite Pontic Lyra. All of this is topped off with traditional Greek and modern-day Junk percussion,  a Double Bass, Dubulah's guitars, Ahetas' old-school ARP keyboards and both of their digital wizardy.

As one might expect from a piece of work that's taken ten years to come to fruition, the nature of the music is that it is not in a hurry to go anywhere. The lapping of the Mediterranean and some extraordinary chanted scales start us on our way on "Pontos Blues", with cameos by some of the aforementioned traditional instruments. This feeds beautifully into "Poreia Processional" which takes us on a slow march through ancient streets, the hypnotic music taking us to another place by virtue of an ever-evolving theme with minute microtonal changes along the way.

By the time we get to the dramatic "Antigone stin plateia syntagma" ("Antigone in Constitution Square") one can start to feel the tension in the air of the inevitable, imminent popular unrest at the crazy, punitive counter-productive austerity measures insisted upon by the Troika. How refreshing that this masterpiece of a CD arrives at a time when Greek society is under so much pressure to re-evaluate its relationship with Europe.

There is a peace and a confident beauty in this music. By the last three somewhat more ambient tracks it is anything but Chaotic, rather it achieves a certain serenity. The seemingly effortless fusion of ancient and modern Balkan ideas, tones, melodies and instruments echoes none other than the work of Mercan Dede on the other side of the Bosphorus. Maybe it is time for Greece to turn its back on Europe and re-discover its true cultural strengths and identity elsewhere?

Mbongwana Star "From Kinshasa"

Every now and then, an act emerges that blows away any preconceived ideas of "genre" and creates something bold and shockingly new.

Mbongwana Star from the Democratic Republic of Congo is one such act and their debut CD "From Kinshasa..." is blowing away critics and audiences alike as they leave the poverty of their shanty-town homes in Kinshasa and begin their extensive world travels to promote it.

There are distorted amplification and repetitive beats here that are redolent of earlier exciting Congotronics projects, with thumb pianos and electric guitars put through all manner of electronic effects boxes made from old car parts and other junk. Indeed Congotronics' Konono#1 feature on the irresistable standout track "Malukayi".

Here are also the heart and soul of Congolese rhumba and soukous: Beatific, heavenly harmonies which give way to insistent, hypnotic, brooding rhythms and a bass that is sometimes bubbly and bouncy and sometimes so distorted it sounds like it's emanating from the very core of the Earth itself.

This mob emerged from the wreckage of Staff Benda Bilili: 60-odd year old Coco and 50-odd year old Theo plus three young and energetic Kinshasa neighbours have joined up with Irish Paris-based producer Liam Farrell aka Doctor L to create what the website blurb describes as "a trans-global barrier-busting sound machine".

The video for "Malukayi" is up on YouTube and well worth a watch - it features the one-kid walking art installation "Congo Astronaut" in his spacesuit of found objects, amid grainy black and white footage of the part disabled, part able-bodied band's manic neighbourhood musical "happenings". The resulting footage is like something from a David Lynch movie - unsettling, intriguing, insistent.....images and sounds that most certainly look to the future rather than dwell in the past.