Al compas del mundo - programa #84 - Potpourri of international music

Get ready to stretch! This week’s Al compas program’s like a yoga session. Do your ears hang low? Can you stretch them to your toes? Are you up to hear Cuban bop and Egyptian pop? Do the Tigers of New Orleans make you want to drop (and earn your very own funerary second line hop?) Can you handle the gospel according to Ahmed? Does Occitania even exist…perhaps betwixt Israel and Hungary? Make room for flexibility and funky dance moves with the likes of Willie Colón and Mbongwana Star. Can you handle a Venzuelan joropo and the Maria Chuchena string strum – both with compelling rhythm so similar must be incestuous cousins? Mali and Uganda, they’ll make you want to holla and throw up both your hands. Plus a Brazilian cowboy tune’ll take you back to the stockyards and leave you stretched out just enough, hopefully, that you’ll join Los Xochimilcas in singing “Liberty, liberty, it’s the right of humanity…though it’s easier to find burros in the ocean.” Got that? 1-2-3 and repeat.

List for Potpourri of international music - First Broadcast 7-6-23

01 Chappottín y sus Estrellas - Alto Songo (Cuba)

02 Salamat - Leyl Y A Bo Elyali (Egypt)

03 The Tigers, from Shout and Testify - Don't Leave Me (USA)

04 Golden Gate Quartet - Golden Gate Gospel Train (USA)

05 Ahmed Malek – title unknown (Algeria)

06 Dupain - Lusina (Occitania-Marroco)

07 Klezmorim - Sonya Anushke (Israel-USA)

08 Kolinda - Somogyi ugros (Hungary)

09 Angkanang Kunchai - Isan Lam Plearn (Thailand)

10 Willie Colón - Che Che Cole (Puerto Rico-USA)

11 Mbongwana Star - From Kinshasa to the Moon (DR Congo)

12 El Cubiro Luis Lozada - El Joropo Recio (Venezuela)

13 La Musgaña - Charro Salmantino a Trio (Spain)

14 Conjunto Alma Jarocha - Maria Chuchena (Mexico)

15 Abraham Hanna Dicko - Alfaro (Mali)

16 Akuseka Takuwa Kongo Group - The Benefits of Coffee (Uganda)

17 Clemilda - Recordação De Vaqueiro (Brazil)

18 Los Xochimilcas - Rosas (Burros) en el mar (Mexico)

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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...

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