etnobofin

Extra Golden – Anyango
From Thank You Very Quickly: Thrill Jockey [Released March 2009]

Download free 320kbps mp3 of “Anyango” from Thrill Jockey Records

Extra Golden is a band that, on paper, displays all the hallmarks of an experiment: “A unique blend of Kenyan Benga music with American Rock and other, assorted African guitar stylings“. And yet on headphones it all sounds like the most natural thing in the world.

Perhaps these two musical streams sit together so well because both rock and benga are primarily guitar-based genres. The band is made up of American D.C.-based guitarists Alex Minoff and Ian Eagleson (whose experience doing doctoral research into benga was the ursprung of the band); alongside monster drummer Onyango Wuod Omari and guitarist Onyango Jagwasi.

If anything, Extra Golden leans further towards East Africa than the Eastern Seaboard – most lyrics are sung in Luo, and the only time (to my ears) when the music sounds somewhat dépaysé is when the odd verse is sung in English.

The music is Kenyan in focus, so are the bands’s politics and lyrical interest. Ukimwi deals with the scourge of AIDS sweeping through the country, and Thank You Very Quickly is an acknowledgement of the friends and fans who helped protect band members during the post-election violence in Kenya last year.

Thank You Very Quickly is Extra Golden’s third album, and it sounds like the band has solidified through touring. While their previous effort Hera Ma Nono, revelled in reverb and melody, (including a tribute to then-candidate Obama), TYVQ seems to groove more. The track Gimakiny Akia is effortlessly funky, its insistent and relentless bass guitar recalling Michael Henderson on Miles’s early 70s albums.

When talking about current indie bands that gain sustenance from the great sinkholes of African pop, perhaps some comparison to Vampire Weekend is inevitable. But Vampire Weekend’s whole schtick is that they’re gawky white college kids appropriating somebody elses’ music – ironic artifice is part of that band’s appeal.

By contrast, Extra Golden is rooted firmly in a single tradition and sounds like a more honest musical effort. The band are touring the UK in March with Senegal’s Baaba Maal and Zimbabwe’s Oliver Mtukudzi. But I’m thinking that some scintillating benga guitar would got down well in the heat of the 2009 festival circuit in Europe…

Cheikha Rimitti – Dabri
From N’ta Goudami [Buy]

I’ll never forget the first time I heard Cheikha Rimitti. Our first year ethnomusicology professor chose an 1960s recording of Rimitti’s Dabri as core source material.  I’m sure we were supposed to learn a lot about variegated status of women in society and the liminal role of raï music in 20th Century Algeria. But Cheikha Rimitti’s voice was the one thing that stuck with me from that university course.

Her music almost swung, the gaspa flute whispering an insistent ostinato beneath the powerful voice of a woman who had obviously lived.  One day they’ll make a film of Cheikha Rimitti’s life, and it’ll be just as compelling as the stories of Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf or Judy Garland.

From the 1940s onwards Cheikha Rimitti scandalised conservatives in her native Algeria with songs about war, alcohol and sex. “Remettez-moi ça!” is what you might say to a waiter if you want another drink.  Apparently it’s from this oft-repeated phrase that Rimitti  gained her stage name:  she liked a drink or three.

After Algeria gained independence in 1962, Rimitti lived in effective exile in Paris because the new government banned her music. Here’s a video of her playing with a traditional ensemble at the Institut du Monde Arabe in 1994:

Cheikha Rimitti’s music is easier to find in France than in the UK. I’ve just picked up her final album, N’ta Goudami, recorded in 2005 when Rimitti was 83, a year before her death.  The disc features an updated version of Dabri, the song that first turned me on to her music in the late 1990s.

Rimitti embraced new musical influences as the years passed. The dance-oriented arrangements and modern instrumentation on N’ta Goudami are provided by contemporary Algerian musicians, but the essential power of Rimitti’s voice is undisturbed.  Despite the programmed beats and occasional vocoder, it’s still soul music, make no mistake about that.

It seems that recent thoughts have been tape-recordings going around on a loop. For the past few weeks, my Twitter feed has pretty much been variations on two messages:

@etnobofin “Holy crap my French sucks. Gee it’s really hard getting back into the language again.”
@etnobofin “Wow, I’m living in France again. I’m going off to do [insert apparently- typically-French-activity here] just because I bloody can.”

So yeah, apologies for that. But while we’re repeating ourselves, lets say again that Lewis Taylor is a genius and why do so few people know of his music? His fan page on Facebook has just 153 members. Lilly Allen has freaking 1,000, and she’s not even any good. (Of course it could be that most Lewis Taylor fans have too much good sense and taste to be signed up to Facebook.)

Lewis Taylor fandom is marked by gushing, verbose enthusiasm and simmering rage that nobody else “gets” Taylor’s music. Ernest Hardy’s article on Taylor from LA Weekly in March 2007 is a good example. Here’s his typically ebullient description of the song Leader of the Band.

“[Taylor's music] turns you into art, freeing your imagination to fly. “The Leader of the Band” … is an air-swept melody, full of breezy harmonies with drawn-out oohs and ahhs and sideways bah-bah-bahs. It’s on an unapologetic ’60s tip. It trips the trigger between sound and memory, allowing one’s private reserve of mental imagery to tumble forth, rather than some choreographed music-video shit. For me, it conjures that smiling, sated morning-after feeling of watching an underwear-clad lover eat a bowl of cereal, morning sunlight fracturing through a naked window.”

Well, yes, exactly.

Also in Lewis Taylor news, Markleslie99 has made a nice new video for Everybody Here Wants You – a mashup using copyright-free Betty Boop cartoons, which is a really nice idea. Unfortunately embedding has been disabled on the vid, so you have to follow this link.

So there. I’ve repeated myself again about Lewis Taylor’s genius, so now I’m off to eat couscous, because I’m in France and I can.

A Maki Catta lemur at Parc de Lunaret

A weekend with a mysteriously non-operational internet connection was both frustrating and liberating.  An excuse to read another book and do some extra homework. On Sunday I even went to the zoo and took photos of lemurs.

But it is a relief to get the DSL working again, and to celebrate it seems a good moment to indulge in one of those mindless  internet memes that makes cyberspace a joyful, if occasionally vacuous, place to hang out.

———————-

Stolen from Benjaminbrum:

1. Put your iPod or iTunes on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the “next” button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!!
4. Tag 10 friends who might enjoy doing the meme as well as the person you got the note from.

IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY” YOU SAY?
Drums of Death (DJ Shadow)

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Daystar Nightlight (Dewey Redman)

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Rising Falling Rising (SJD)

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
Crucifixo (Jose and Moises Kafala)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
Catsongs III (Tom Milsom)

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Your Man, My Man (Betty Davis)

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
How Beautiful are the Feet of Them That Preach the Gospel of Peace (G.F. Handel – New College Choir)

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Antiphon (William Walton)

WHAT IS 2+2?
Come on Eileen (Dexy’s Midnight Runners)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Manhattan Island (Herbie Hancock)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
So Amazin’ (GTA)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
In Paradisum (G. Fauré)

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Chet Bhogassa (Tinariwen)

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Shala Shala Twist (Dark City Sisters)

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Squiglies (Kenny Wheeler/John Taylor)

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
A Change is Going to Come (Baby Huey)

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing (Minutemen)

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Too Young to Die (Jamiroquai)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Harlem River Drive Theme (Eddie Palmieri & Harlem River Drive)

WHAT’S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
You Don’t Know What You Mean To a Lover Like Me (Lee Fields)

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
Lambs (The Phoenix Foundation)

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
Trench Town Rock (Bob Marley & the Wailers)

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on my Shoulder) (The Beach Boys)

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
Bamabaraka Tunga (Ray Barretto)

WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
Illusion (Andrew Hill)

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
Ether Sings (Laura Veirs)

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
Baby Don’t Go Home (OdESSA)

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
Right on for the Darkness (Curtis Mayfield)

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
Time is on Your Side (Recloose)

WHAT WILL YOU CALL THIS POST?
1972.1.21 Alto 1 (Kaoru Abe)

I’ve blacked out the blog’s banner images for the week as part of the “Black Out” protest at the mad new Copyright Act amendments being introduced in New Zealand.

Juha at Techsploder has a good summary of the law’s implications.  It’s a stupid law that effectively threatens NZ Internet users with cutting off their connection if they are merely accused (accused – not convicted!) of copyright violation. As Juha explains:

“I’m a “content creator” and a rights holder due to my work as a writer, but the new law won’t help me one iota. It’s there for the large entertainment organisations to terrorise Internet users. This is an important point to bear in mind, that the new law isn’t going to help artists and others rights holders.”

Cricket at Van Cortland Park in the Bronx (Image: kptyson)

Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland has been described as a ‘great American novel’.  I’m not quite sure Netherland carries the  thematic weight to grant it such immortality. But in its essential retelling of the story of an outsider’s insider whose pursuit of a Manhattan Dream is rendered hollow by corruption, Joseph O’Neill’s novel bears comparison to The Great Gatsby (I’m pretty chuffed I spotted the parallels before I read James Wood’s review in The New Yorker).

O’Neill’s Gatsby is Chuck Ramsikoon, a lyrically gifted Trinidadian-Indian whose grand scheme is to build a cricket stadium – “Bald Eagle Field” – in New York.  It is his friendship with the narrator, Dutch-born oil industry analyst Hans van den Broek, that drives the novel.  Instead of jazz-age Long Island, we find ourselves in a present day New York of immigrants – peopled by Indian bankers, Ukrainian real estate agents, Pakistani restauranteurs and Turkish angels.

Among this population of expatriated characters, cricket is a perfect metaphor for the lives of outsiders in America, played out on the boundaries of society. As Chuck says early in the novel: “You want a tast of how it feels to be a black man in this country? Put on the white clothes of a cricketer. Put on white to feel black.“

Image: caribb

The book is a skilfully written travelogue of linked memories, leaping from pre-Credit Crunch London to post-9/11 New York; from beach holidays in Kerala to childhood in well-ordered suburbs of The Hague. Jumps of place and time occur suddenly inside chapters and within paragraphs and sentences, and yet not once does the reader get lost. Everything hangs together.

The thing that prevents Netherland being a great novel is the numb self-obsession of the first person narrator. Although you see everything through his eyes and recollections, Hans as a person remains (for me) too cold and distant to feel real.  (Although O’Neill’s depiction of the often limpid life of the bachelor abroad is accurate enough !)

Netherland is undoubtedly a novel of its time: the touchstone moments of the pre-Obama age (the fall of the twin towers, the invasion of Iraq and the Indian Ocean tsunami)  are all present, exerting influence without ever being overplayed.  If humanity survives in good enough shape to produce literary critics in 50 years time, it may well be to Netherland that these critics turn to work out what the heck we were all thinking in the first decade of the 21st century.

Image: catface3

Credit: Kal (The Economist)

There’s nothing like a big old financial crisis to re-ignite an interest in economics. I can’t pretend to fully comprehend the detail of what all the analysts say, but the implications are fascinating and frightening. First of all, it’s increasingly clear that the situation we face is indeed the deepest and most  fundamental economic crisis since the Second World War.  It’s global, and it’s a gazillion times more complex than any of us understand.

Much of what I’ve been hearing over the past few days has focused on the thesis that the United States may be in a better situation to handle the crisis than Europe.  James K. Galbraith (son of another J.K. Galbraith) argues convincingly that, at the very least, the United States is a single federal entity, and thanks to FDR 70 years ago, some of the key delivery mechanisms required for Obama’s big-spending reignition package are already in position.

By contrast, Europe is a loose collection of nation-states, only some of whom share a common currency.  If the EU is to cooperate more closely on economic policy (as even Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the IMF is now advocating), it will likely have to break many of the clauses of the Maastricht Treaty, and perhaps even devolve some executive decisions to Brussels and the European Central Bank: something that EU leaders may find difficult to sell to increasingly anxious populations.

Even in terms of sentiment, it seems America is more optimistic at the moment than Europe. Loïc Le Meur, speaking to France Inter after Davos, senses that Americans are more confident than Europeans about their ability to ride out the storm.  Perhaps this confidence is the temporary afterglow of Obama’s inauguration, or it could be that America is genuinely more ready than Europe to pull together and make some hard decisions.

But regardless of who is better prepared to deal with crisis, the goal can no longer be the reestablishment of “normality”.  The current crisis has proved that the status quo ante (light regulation that favours special interests and pure-play Friedmanism) does not delivered sustainable wealth to more than a favoured few.

Capitalism per se is not going to disappear, because there is no better system to replace it.  But the post-WW2 version of capitalism has failed in addressing two issues that are vital to the survival of the human race – environmental protection and equitable distribution of resources.

Everyone is talking about a moral, as well as a systemic realignment, and I wonder if we are capable of achieving it.  There’s a strong impression that our generation is going to be judged by the way we behave in the next few years.  The words of Lula da Silva from his 2004 speech to the UN seem remarkably appropriate:

“A generation is remembered not only for what it accomplished, but also for what it failed to accomplish. If resources are so much greater than our achievements, how can we explain to the generations to come why we did so little, when so much was within our reach? ”

I took this photo while walking through the Ecusson (the local name for Montpellier‘s old town) a couple of weeks ago. It’s actually two photos, stitched together vertically. I like how the image gives a sense of the narrowness of the streets (there are definitely no cars in this part of the town!), and I managed to clean up the light so you can see some of the stonework.

The little square is called Place Saint Ravy, and apparently in summer it’s full of restaurant tables, but on a quiet Sunday afternoon at the end of January, it was silent and deserted.

In France it’s long been acceptable to take advantage of “le weekend” to undertake “un relooking” (either house renovation or a  fashion makeover, depending on context).

I’m in no position to complain about any French person who chooses to borrow English words whenever it suits them. After a few weeks back in France, I’m still just getting to grips again with the passé composé of reflexive verbs and abusing the subjonctif at every opportunity.

But it seems to be in business that the vocabulary of le management anglo-saxon has gained particular prominence. I’ve started keeping a list of business Franglais. Here are a few I heard this week:

• le pipe-line = sales pipeline (Jean-Marc, t’as combien de prospects dans ton pipe-line ce mois-ci?)
• le boss = the person who asked Jean-Marc the probing question above
• un brainstorming = brainstorming (an opportunity for a frank and passionate exchange of opinions on why Jean-Marc doesn’t have enough sales dans son pipe-line)
• le team marketing = the people who ultimately get blamed for the lack of sales in Jean-Marc’s pipe-line
• un slide = a Powerpoint slide. Possibly produced for le boss by somebody in le team marketing
• un Powerpoint = une collection de slides. Presentation of “un powerpoint” also provides an opportunity for a frank and passionate exchange of opinions.
• le goodwill = goodwill (ie. the value of a business entity not directly attributable to its assets and liabilities)
• le staff = employees (some of whom were on strike last week)
• le Performance Management = techniques for finding ways to help le staff work more effectively
• le Balanced Score-Card = a tool used in “le perfomance management” focusing not only on financial outcomes but also on operational, marketing and developmental/environmental measurements
• les stakeholders = that’s stakeholders, as distinct the members of le staff who order filet mignon (à point) at the company restaurant
• un lunch = the partaking of food with business colleagues in the middle of the day. Another opportunity for a frank and passionate exchange of opinions (generally about non-work topics).
• le business model = apparently any model of business in France that permits flagrant use of English words in day-to-day operations

So I’m still picking up pieces of my former French fluency.  I’m ashamed of the verbal disaster area I’m creating as a long-dormant part of my brain creaks back into action, rashly gluing together semi-forgotten words with half-remembered grammatical structures.

But it is a relief to know that when I do forget a word, I can insert an English one instead, and sometimes find out that it’s just as acceptable as any French alternative.

Bon courage à tous !

Albert Mangelsdorff Trio – Foreign Fun
From Trilogue - Live At The Berlin Jazz Days : Polygram [Buy]

I enjoy regular email correspondence with a group of knowledgeable gentlemen of unreliable proclivities , whose time is variously spent focused on music, tennis and cultivated idleness.  Some of them are older than me.

This week’s conversation strayed towards the question of  why there are few famous trombone-playing philosophers.  The exchange that follows makes very little sense, but reads moderately well when accompanised by a pinch of salt and the music of Albert Mangelsdorff:

A: Cars were my passion before I discovered I could play music. I wanted to be a motor mechanic and my parents considered it socially unacceptable (“Those dirty fingernails, dear”). They prevented me from learning the instrument I first wanted to play – trombone. “It’s a joke instrument – something they have in circuses.”

B: The trombone was also the first instrument I wanted to play (at age 3. My cousin came to stay and brought her oboe, I decided that I needed an instrument too, and pianos were boring, we already had one of those in the house). My parents objected on grounds of noise, and lack of requisite arm-length. So 3 years later they naively let me learn the trumpet…

C: I would like to have been a pro tennis player (and, prompted by my learned correspondents: a trombone playing gigolo).

B: …I am slightly reassured (and slightly disturbed in equal measure) that we are all possibly trombone players manqués. Is our continuing back-and-forth interlocution some kind of Freudian sublimation of our desire for a well-oiled slide? And (by well-oiled extension) perhaps this is why there are no world-famous trombone philosphers.

Trombonists’ need to comprehend the absurdity of existence is already met symbolically in their choice of an unprofitable and visually clumsy instrument. Just as the original Cynics lived like dogs in the streets of ancient Athens: to show their utter indifference to convential manners.

Trombonists already carry the “slide-mans burden”, therefore further commentary from themselves is superfluous. (Sidebar: “le trombone” is the French word for paperclip).

A: That burden is possibly weighted further by knowledge that their most illustrious peers bore absurd names like Higginbotham, Teagarden, Knepper and Mangelsdorff. Or alternatively a realization that life’s success lay in locating ‘the right positions’.

Nowadays too little attention is paid to the great trombone-philosopher Brad Gowans who finessed the Kantian dilemma by inventing the ‘valide’ – a trombone combining slide and valves.

As can be readily observed, too much email traffic these days consists of mindless banter. It should be noted in passing that the other players on the 1976 Albert Mangelsdorff recording are Jaco Pastorius (b) and Alphonse Mouzon (d).  And the photo credits are due (in order) to Phil Moore, Eliya and  kansasexplorer3128.