[FA Worldmusic] Jon Pareles' NY Times World Music Article "A Big, Wide World of Music"

Sat Jun 30 11:56:56 EDT 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/arts/music/29worl.html

Check out the great photos and music samples at link above with New York date
and venue listings for world music concerts this summer.

Here's Jon's great write-up!

Best,
Evangeline
---

June 29, 2007
Music
A Big, Wide World of Music
By JON PARELES
Music from all over the world floods into New York City year round, but
especially in summertime. Thats when outdoor stages supplement clubs and
theaters, and free concert series can introduce audiences to music with lower
commercial profiles.

This summers world music concerts include return visits by superstars who
will have expatriate fans singing along with hits, like the Brazilian
songwriter Carlinhos Brown, who is at the Nokia Theater tonight, and the
Mexican rock superstars Cafi Tacuba, at Central Park SummerStage on July 14.
And because it seems that everyone wants to be heard in New York City, this
summer also brings a rare event like the July 21 SummerStage concert of music
by 12 acts from Sudan, which is now torn by civil war and genocide.

Not so long ago, world music  the usefully vague marketing category, not the
music itself  romanced isolation. A new album or a concert promised a rare
chance to share what people half a world away were dancing to all night long,
or a ceremony formerly closed to outsiders or sounds shaped through
generations of a particular family or a village. Of course, the fact that the
music had traveled at all was the beginning of the end of that isolation, for
both the musicians and their new audiences.

Now theres a circuit of world music festivals where Irish fiddlers regularly
run into Guinean griots and Lebanese oud players. There are world music
concert producers who draw connections across national and stylistic
boundaries, like the World Music Institute, whose continent-spanning Gypsy
Caravan has now been preserved as both CD and documentary. Although world
music performers are well aware of the importance of tradition, they arent so
purist that theyre afraid to experiment. Why not, since their music is
already being sampled and mixed by everyone from hip-hop producers to lounge
D.J.s, who care only about the sounds, not the pedigree.

Albums that were once stocked only by the most comprehensive record stores are
now much easier to find than the surviving comprehensive record stores
themselves, at online sites like calabashmusic.com and emusic.com. Information
that used to be tucked into academic enclaves or shared by word of mouth is
now easily accessible at sites like worldmusiccentral.org, afropop.org and
worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com.

Meanwhile, musicological forays that once meant journeys deep into the outback
 where satellite TV and Internet connections are now wreaking cultural
changes  have been supplemented lately by visits to the archives of local
labels. Hearing world music has always been a kind of vicarious travel, and
now its more like time travel than ever. What follows is a selection of some
of the most notable world music CDs released over the last year.

AUTHENTICITi : THE SYLIPHONE YEARS (Sterns Music)

After Guinea gained independence in 1958, its government supported regional
and national big bands to nurture authenticiti: modern music with
traditional roots and politically correct messages. In songs recorded for the
Syliphone label from 1965 to 1980, authenticiti ended up wildly untraditional,
mixing ancient griot songs and local rhythms with Afro-Latin and American
borrowings, horn sections, electric guitars and keyboards (complete with
distortion), suave vocals and dizzying beats. The 28 songs collected on this
double album range from delightful to downright mind-boggling, testimony to
how well musicians can subvert specifications.

CARLINHOS BROWN A Gente Ainda Nco Sonhou (Sony International)

Like other titans of Brazilian pop, the songwriter Carlinhos Brown wants it
all: history and sensuality, melody and rhythm, comfort and startling
technology. His new album apparently aims for an international market, with
two songs in English and a flamenco-pop hybrid for Europe, and it loses its
balance. Its best songs, like Pagina Futuro, Te Amo Familia and O Aroma
da Vida, blend kindly melodies with smart constructions of beats and samples.
But theyre outnumbered by gooey ballads.

KEVIN BURKE AND CAL SCOTT Across the Black River (Loftus)

Born in England to Irish parents and now living in Portland, Ore., Kevin Burke
is one of the great living Celtic fiddlers. His first album on his own label
is a collaboration with the self-effacing guitarist Cal Scott and various
guests thats cozy and mature, full of modest tributes to fellow fiddlers.
Its all straightforward, songful melody, until Mr. Burke gets to a set of
reels that show how many trills, twists and curlicues he can add without
losing that singing line.

FANFARE CIOCARLIA Queens and Kings (Asphalt Tango)

The Romanian brass band Fanfare Ciocarlia has already proved itself in the
breakneck, muscular oompah tunes of its own Gypsy music, which has never been
shy about incorporating funk or jazz. Queens and Kings goes international,
as the band backs up Gypsy singers from around Eastern Europe, including the
witchy-voiced Hungarian singer Mitsou and the cutting-voiced Bulgarian singer
Jony Iliev, all with raucous good humor. The albums last oompah extravaganza
isnt Romanian: Its Born to Be Wild, recorded for the soundtrack of
Borat.

GYPSY CARAVAN: MUSIC IN AND INSPIRED BY THE FILM (World Village)

The Gypsy Caravan was quixotic musicology: a nationwide tour bringing together
musicians spanning the Rom diaspora, from their roots in Rajasthan (the group
Maharaja) via Eastern Europe, with Gypsy musicians from Romania (Taraf de
Haidouks and Fanfare Ciocarlia) and Macedonia (the singer Esma Redzepova), all
the way to flamenco musicians and dancers from Spain (Antonio el Pipa). What
they share is a penchant for zigzagging modal tunes, high-speed playing and
throat-tearing vocals.

The album is kaleidoscopic, not didactic; it has songs from studio albums,
live recordings, backstage bits, even a club remix of Maharaja. While it makes
more sense after seeing the documentary, the album is full of adrenaline.

THE INSPIRING NEW SOUNDS OF RIO DE JANEIRO (Verge)

What unites this collection is the socially conscious messages of the songs,
which zero in on urban problems like poverty and crime. The music is a
Brazilian miscellany  hip-hop, reggae, pop and funk  and its at its best
when acts like A Filial or BNegco e os Selectores connect with samba and rural
Brazilian roots.

RICARDO LEMVO AND MAKINA LOCA Isabela (Mopiato)

Ricardo Lemvo, a singer from Congo, has been pursuing a new generation of
connections between Caribbean and Congolese music. (The guitar rumbas of
soukous, which spread across Africa, were an earlier Cuban-Congolese fusion.)
While Mr. Lemvo sings in a honeyed Congolese croon, the styles on Isabela
bounce back and forth across the Atlantic in separate songs: Cuban charanga,
Angolan kizomba, boogaloo, Congolese soukous. Mr. Lemvo wrote most of the
songs  though not the bolero in Turkish  and his fusions are supple, never
forced.

LURA Mbem di Fora (Times Square)

Lura was born in Portugal but embraced the music of her parents, who are from
the Cape Verde islands off the coast of Senegal. The irresistible songs on
Mbem di Fora (the title means Ive come from far away) envision life on
the islands and as a homesick expatriate. They draw on Cape Verdean rhythms,
particularly the brisk, six-beat rhythm of the funana.

Lighter-than-air acoustic guitars, percussion and an occasional accordion
carry her through songs that hint at the islands problems  the poverty that
causes so many Cape Verdeans to emigrate  but dance through them.

NAWAL Aman (nawali.com)

Nawal sets her gritty voice to sparse, staccato patterns of upright bass,
thumb piano and the banjolike gambusi on Aman. She is from the Comoros
Islands, which are in the Indian Ocean between Africa and Madagascar, and her
music is a personal fusion that draws on the repetitive power of Sufi chants,
along with modal acoustic vamps that can sound both African and Arabic. Her
songs are lean and incantatory, and they may benefit from a language barrier;
every so often she deflates the music with a phrase in English, like too much
pollution. But more often, she can be hypnotic.

ORISHAS Antidistico (Universal Music Latino)

The politics are complicated, but the music is a pleasure for Orishas, a
tuneful hip-hop group of Cuban expatriates who now live in Paris, Milan and
Madrid. On this compilation their singing and rapping styles are so diverse
that they can sound like a different group on each track. Orishas often draws
on old Cuban music  rumbas, sones, boleros  for songs (almost all in
Spanish) about cultural pride and the countrys current hard times. Even
earnest messages arrive with a grin.

MUSTAFA OZKENT Genclik Ile Elele (B-Music)

The song titles are in Turkish, and Mustafa Ozkent has had a long career as a
Turkish studio musician. Yet except for an occasional belly-dance-tune phrase
on his electric guitar, the campy music on this instrumental album, originally
released in 1973, could have been a forgotten spy-movie soundtrack. Conga
drums, electric organ, scrubbing rhythm guitar, funk bass lines,
wah-wah-pedaled leads; who says world music has to be exotic?

POR POR Honk Horn Music of Ghana (Smithsonian Folkways)

Old rhythms, new instruments: thats how truck and taxi drivers in Accra, the
capital of Ghana, came up with honk horn music. Using squeeze-bulb horns
hooting back and forth in syncopation, and tire rims for percussion, along
with drums, bells and voices, the La Drivers Union Por Por Group plays
frenetic, clattery, jubilantly kinetic songs, even if most of its performances
are at funerals for members of the drivers union. The drivers incorporate
rhythms from the many ethnic groups along their routes to make true urban
village music, and its far more danceable than the Cross Bronx Expressway at
rush hour.

THE IDAN RAICHEL PROJECT (Cumbancha)

The Idan Raichel Project was a huge hit in Israel for good reason: it
envisions a modern, multicultural nation where voices of young and old,
Ethiopian and Yemenite, are all heard in songs devoted to love and tolerance.
Idan Raichel is the keyboardist, songwriter and producer behind the scenes,
and hes clearly as familiar with Peter Gabriel as with Middle Eastern
traditions. His arrangements bind the voices together in somber minor-mode
anthems paced by electronic beats, earnestly seeking to uplift.

THE ROUGH GUIDE TO THE MUSIC OF TANZANIA (World Music Network)

Tanzanian music encompasses Arab-inflected taarab, lilting electric dance
bands, urban hip-hop and traditionalist styles built on local rhythms. This
compilation picks superb examples of them all, from the cascading thumb-piano
counterpoint of the Master Musicians of Tanzania to Saida Karolis delicate
pop (rooted in Haya traditions) to the bubbly guitars of the Mlimani Park
Orchestra. Its a tantalizing glimpse from afar.

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