Al compás del mundo - programa #108

Al compás del mundo - programa #108 - Oh Potpourri!

Oh potpourri, potpourri,

Girl, what you doing to me?

She’s making me think, is what she’s doing, when I’d rather just veg. What with Christmas Eve dinner, Christmas meals, the day-after brunch, cocktails and wine coming down like rain…it all adds up to where my mind is off wandering with those wild geese in the West.

But the task is at hand and I shouldn’t disappoint my millions of listeners (and readers of this blog) across the worldwide web. What we offer this week are mostly inventory that’s been waiting to pop. There’s a “future playlist” file where reside songs that in the past might not have fit a particular moment but were set aside, deserving of the respect Al compas del mundo offers. Throw an hour’s worth together and you end up with such a program as this: an unruly mix of tunes from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. Precise enough for you? If there’s a piece or artist you’re quite taken with, look it up. Still, I should probably recommend YouTubing L.P. and Tokyo Sunrise. The video is transfixing – at least it transfixed me first time I saw/heard it. A waif-like reprise of Marc Bolan with the vocal range of Yma Sumac. It’s a world beat! - J.H.

Runlist for Oh Potpourri
First broadcast 12-28-23

01 Fabulous Troubadours - Demain demain (France)

02 Barcelona Gipsy balKan Orchestra - Od Ebra do Dunava (Spain)

03 Mike Farris and the Roseland Revue - Good News (USA)

04 Chingón - Malagueña Salerosa (Mexico)

05 P.M. Pocket Music - Kack Toi Mor (Thailand)

06 Kri Kri - Wahdi (Algeria)

07 Chakra - Fuku no Tane「福の種」(Japan)

08 L.P. - Tokyo Sunrise (USA)

09 Zuco 103 - Maracatu Atomico (Brazil and Germany)

10 Hermanas Mendoza Suasti - Sangra Corazón (Ecuador)

11 Étoile de Dakar - Mane Khouma Khol Thi Yao (Senegal)

12 Hamdawa - Hamdawa pt. 1 (Marroco)

13 Anwar Turak - Tuman (Uyghur, China)

14 Giorgos Papadopoulos & José González - Alborea (Greece and Spain)

~~&~~

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