Al compas del mundo - programa #69

Al compas del mundo - programa #69 - potpourri

Let’s start the capsulation of this week’s program from the bottom. Don’t know how easily I could sneak Johnny Otis’s Signifyin’ Monkey on to the USA airwaves, but here in the very deep South there’s no issue. Sassy stuff and a righteous way to end the show. But there’s more…preceded by Nora Dean’s description of her improbable Jamaican boyfriend sporting barbed wire in his underpants. More efficient than a chastity belt. Preceded by Ethiopia’s prince of wailing saxophone, Getachew Mekurya raging alongside The Ex, a Dutch proto-punk aggregation. They match up nicely, methinks. Preceded by (amongst others) Holger Czukay, a founder of the group Can, experimenting successfully in a melding of traditional Iranian and Western melodies – Persian Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. Just ask Khameini! Trickling upwards past multiple hits and (and near-misses?) that all fit this week’s aspirations, we top off the set with the deliciously mysterious sound of the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers. Where did this music originate, or better, from what roots did it spring forth? God only knows.

MUSIC LIST POTPOURRI - First broadcaset 3-23-2023

01 Alabama Sacred Harp Singers - Present Joys (USA)

02 Georgia Sea Island Singers - Beulah Land (USA)

03 Hoyt 'Floyd' Ming and His Pep Steppers - Indian War Whoop (USA)

04 Hermanos Calderon - Las Conchitas, (San Luis Potosi, Mexico)

05 Hermanos Bravo - A Santiago a Pie (Cuba)

06 Honoré Avolonto - Tin Lin Non (Benin)

07 Afous d'Afous - Tarhanam Toussassi (Algeria)

08 Vellezerit Aliu - Keq Kur Tkam (Albania)

09 Toinho de Alagoas - Balanço Da Canoa (Brazil)

10 Ramesh Das - Sharm-e Boos-e (Iran)

11 Holger Czukay - Persian Love (Germany-Iran)

12 Kebi Dhindsa - Chak deyan ge (India)

13 Ologte Ono with the Sahel Souls - Zota Yinne (Ghana)

14 Getatchew Mekurya & The Ex & Guests - Che Belew Shellela (Ethiopia and the Netherlands)

15 Nora Dean - Barbwire (in His Underpants) (Jamaica)

16 Johnny Otis -The Signifyin' Monkey (USA)

Comments

British Invasion - 1960s

I wanted to declare “Kick out the jams, mo’fos!” as a signpost towards the message in this week’s Al compás del mundo radio show, but that actually came about a little later. As humanity descended ever deeper into the Cro-Magnon state, Iggy Pop and the punks claimed that honor. What we have here instead, is a post-WWII let’s shake up the political order a bit, and no, not everyone has signed up to be an unconscious consumer attitude. There’s something afoot with these lads. Not exactly revolutionary fervor, but most certainly promoting a change in the general way of things. Recalling Che Guevara’s famous quote “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”, the Animals, Yardbirds, Rolling Stones et. al. pouted and preened – some more than others – in a way that hadn’t quite been done before. Youthful vigor ensued. These groups pushed the evolutionary chain of popular music a step further and we’re all better off for it. Set list Al compás del mundo programa #183, 6-5-25 - The British Invasion, 1960s 01 Yar...

India y Nepal y Tibet

W here a human voice is heard in today’s program it’s often starkly different from what most Westerners might find pleasing and melodic. But I must remind my listeners that the West probably did not invent the concept of vocalizing as accompaniment to plucked/blown/percussed musical instruments. Why do we sing in the style that we do? I imagine there are knowledgeable tomes wrestling with that idea. I ’ve read that vocals were meant to imitate the sounds made by instruments...or vice versa? The chicken or the egg? I’m not here to answer that question, in spite of the college course I had taken of “Music Cultures of the World” decades ago. What I offer is the opportunity to pay attention to and digest musical expressions performed by people steeped in the traditional ways of their culture. T here is a geographic component to lumping together India, Nepal and Tibet as the Himalayas served to isolate and circumscribe the peoples of those northern regions. But here’s where I fud...

Guitarras del mundo

Choosing music and writing about “the guitar” opens many doors. I could have gone off in any number of directions and with a singular narrow focus - but I didn’t. Instead, I threw a whole bunch of varied tunes against a wall to see which ones stuck. Sometimes there’s a continuity and other times none: just two aesthetically pleasing pieces that worked well in tandem and, hopefully, were preceded and followed with similar morsels. Usually, that is how these programs come together. I receive a divinely inspired revelation for a certain theme, region, or style of music and build it from there. Baden Powell, Brazilian beatnik poet and guitar master, seemed to me an obvious choice to begin the program. From there (as you can well see) we stick around Latin America a bit; segue into Spain, notorious as a guitar hotbed; head South to North Africa for the venerable Bombino (yes, again!) and more of that desert blues ilk; logically morph into a short blues set and settle at the bottom sid...

Search This Blog