Much needed relief from eurocratic Brussels was provided over the weekend by the folks at Festival Couleur Cafe. Founded in 1990 to highlight music from Africa and the Caribbean against the diverse background of Brussels, the promoters offer the somewhat confusing description of their carnival as it exists today: “ Couleur Café can no longer be rightfully described as a world music festival but more like a festival that proposes a full array of music styles coming from all over the world.”
I’ll let you figure ponder that one while I attest to the quality of the musicians on the final day of the three day festival. I was lucky enough to catch a strong set by the “Golden Voice of Africa,” Malian wonder Salif Keita, whose music and band of happy traveling musicians had the Africans and the euro-hippies swaying, shucking and even singing along to his latest record, La différence. It’s beautiful.
If Keita represents the honored elders of Afro-pop, relative newcomer Biloji is trumpeting in the new era of so-called “whirled music”, fusing his creative brand of Belgian hip-hop with his Congolese roots. His new record, Kinshasa Succursale, is a tribute to Congo’s 50 year anniversary of independence, best heard on the track Independence Cha-Cha, below.
This dude is hot. And while I mean that in a purely musical way, some of the ladies on hand might have a different opinion. In Brussels, where he is based, Baloji played an acoustic rendition of a sonically mind-bending collaboration with Kinshasa’s low-tech, hi-fi human sound system, Konono No1.
The last act I was able to catch at the festival was the Colombian techno-roots cumbia outfit Systema Solar, who really rocked the party with their high-energy, Afro-Latin coastal sound.
Alors, it was a wonderful Fête de la Musique here in Paris last night, thanks to the rollicking sounds of the brass band ensemble known as the Monty Pistons, pictured below. Fun for the kids and the whole family! Covers of Dandy Livingston’s ska classic “Message to You Rudy” and Dr. Dre beats spiced up the playlist, and the neighborhood vibes made this music lover’s premiere fete one to remember.
Fête de la Musique is a national day in France and subsequently around the globe meant to celebrate the importance of music. To honor the day, musicians of all calibers are encouraged to take to the streets, with many cafes and bars providing suds and other such libations to musicians to keep the music going through the night.
In 2010, 16 countries in Africa celebrate their independence, each achieved to its own unique soundtrack. With this (and a renewed global and American interest in Afro-pop) in mind, a number of compilations and online gems are sure to be found throughout the year. We’ll dedicated a post along the way to each of Africa’s major regions, beginning with West Africa, home to some of the first independent African nations.
From the roots of the popular, resurgent Afrobeat to the soothing kora strings of ancient African kings, we’ll send you to sources that provides insight into the political contexts that led to the creation of highlife, national orchestras and jazz bands and all of the other musical gems of West Africa.
A great first stop is RFI (Radio France International) which has excellent write-ups and tracks focusing primarily on the Francophone countries of West Africa (with the exception of Nigeria and Ghana) organized by country, including:
One defining feature of the music of this period was that it was really a hybrid of African and Western sounds, as indigenous cultures could not help but we influenced by the music of their colonizers. Nowhere is this more apparent than in “highlife”, which combines elements of calypso (brought from the West Indies through the global slave trade), the brass bands of Europe favored by the continent’s elite (hence the name “highlife”) and traditional African rhythms. Check out this track from Ghana’s Et Mensah and the Tempos Band for a sample.
Scheduling meetings here in Brussels and Paris has been suspiciously tough this week, with one person I met with actually admitting he was late because staff was gathered round the conference room television watching, yup, you guessed it, World Cup matches!
If you have not checked out Africa blogger Derek Catsam’s posts from SA, now is the time to do so. As Derek’s posts indicate, the World Cup really is a celebration, and what’s a celebration without music? And while we’re at it, who does music better than AFRICA?
Here is a short list to some World Cup related music, from mainstream to the African street.
The concert was spearheaded by legendary South African horn player Hugh Masekela, who starting things off with his 1968 Grammy winning song “Grazing in the Grass.” Original version below.
NPR’s new Latin America music blog, Alt.Latino, streams seven classic “futbol” tracks here, including one of my favorite Jorge Ben songs, Ponta de Lança Africano, which Jasmine Garsd and Felix Contreras explain “is about an imaginary African player who is slick on the field.”
Los Angeles bastion of sound music selections KCRW offers an eclectic selection of tracks, one for each team competing in the cup. According to the ‘pitch’ (ha ha), ”You’ll find Phoenix in studio to represent the French, celebrated kiwi Neil Finn of Crowded House supporting New Zealand, Buraka Som Sistema waving the flag for Portugal, and many more.”
Finally, if none if these is quite up to your speed, here is a mix of “Kwaito” — South African inspired house music — I put together a few months back. Go Bafana Bafana!
A few days ago I came across the Global Music Project, an international non profit whose goal is to unite musicians and music lovers in order to foster cultural awareness, and strengthen collaboration, peace and understanding in areas of conflict.
The Global Music Project runs several music preservation and music discovery projects that connect musicians and fans to progressive businesses, social activists, event promoters and others who believe in the power of music to educate and inspire humanity. Their current project includes recording music and video footage from developing cultures throughout the world, promoting, marketing, and distributing these recordings globally and showcasing these artist’s work by connecting them to a global audience.
They have a vast database of music available for anyone to listen to for free. Check them out at http://globalmusicproject.org
For those of you in the New York area, I wanted to draw your attention to an event at the City University of New York Tomorrow:
From Combat to Healing: The Music of War
The relationship between music and war—both to rally the troops and defeat the enemy—goes back centuries, even millennia. The Biblical tale of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho is perhaps the most famous example. Graduate Center music professor Jonathan Pieslak, the author of Sound Targets and a participant in the program, has examined how U.S. soldiers roused themselves for battle by playing heavy-metal rock and hip-hop anthems. He has also explored the healing quality of music for wounded and grieving soldiers. Earlier this month Pieslak addressed both themes in an article for the military journal Army, “From Combat to Healing: The Music of War.”
Excerpts:
• “At the initial invasion of Iraq in March 2003… the music that accompanied [soldiers] into Baghdad—and later Fallujah—was primarily metal and rap: Metallica, Mudvayne, Eminem and DMX…. The relentless power of the metal sound and the overtly violent lyrics of gangsta rap may make these genres obvious choices for pre-mission listening, but how can we interpret what is going on here? Can we understand soldiers’ interactions with music as less intense ways of listening when compared with our own? Or do they represent fundamentally different listening experiences?”
• “Music’s power to motivate soldiers for combat can be contrasted with its equally powerful ability to help soldiers relax. Music can play an important role as a calming tool and a way to transport soldiers ‘home’ with memories of loved ones. An Afghanistan war veteran… spoke to me about this power. ‘Music can help you escape the terror and terrible things you may see,’ he said. ‘Makes you think and see things back home, or bring smells of a Christmas morning from home to you in a hellhole. Music can take you through a time warp and, even though only for a second, can make you forget the hell around you.’ Since I began studying the relationship between music and war in 2004, my research has also suggested that music may have considerable potential in soldier treatment. The emerging field of music therapy shows promising work regarding music in response to trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).”
• “With more soldiers returning from the battlefield and making the transition to military life at home and even back to civilian life, music holds great potential to be an acceptable way to grieve, release psychological burdens and express emotions. As much as music has been an important part of war throughout the centuries, my hope is that it will come to occupy just as important a place in the process of soldiers’ healing.”
Program information:
This special evening of performances and discussion explores the role of music in combat and in soldiers’ other experiences in Iraq.
Participants feature:
Alex Ross, New Yorker music critic
Jonathan Pieslak, author of Sound Targets
Colby Buzzell, former Army SPC and best-selling author of My War: Killing Time in Iraq
Jason Sagebiel, guitarist, composer, and former Marine sergeant
Wednesday, February 24, 7 pm
Elebash Recital Hall – CUNY Graduate Center – 365 Fifth Avenue
Tickets $25, $10 students
20% off with discount code CANDC
online at SmartTix
or 212-868-4444
no surcharge!
I think this should be a really interesting lecture. For those of you interested in reading more on the subject, Pieslak’s book can be purchased by clicking here.
While I find Pieslak’s research to be extremely important to the narrative on music and war, I can’t help but think about the flipside to the healing, therapeutic and and inspirational elements of music during wartime, namely, music for the sake of torture and interrogation. Last year it came out that the US Defense Department had been using an interrogation method known as the “futility” technique, which included the playing of loud music to detainees at Guantanamo Bay in order to rupture their eardrums and deprive them of sleep for days on end.
Several musicians, including the bands REM, Rage Against the Machine and Nine Inch Nails filed a lawsuit against the government, demanding full access to the interrogation reports in which their music was used. The lawsuit was part of a a formal protest of the use of music used in conjunction with torture that took place at the prison and other facilities. “Guantanamo is known around the world as one of the places where human beings have been tortured - from water boarding to stripping, hooding and forcing detainees into humiliating sexual acts - playing music for 72 hours in a row at volumes just below that to shatter the eardrums,” said Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, a band which is celebrated for its anti-war political philosophy.
“Guantanamo may be Dick Cheney’s idea of America, but it’s not mine,” he continued. “The fact that music I helped create was used in crimes against humanity sickens me.”
While music has systematically been used as a weapon of war for decades, the idea that music has been used as instrument of torture confronts us with a very warped perspective on contemporary musicality in the United States. What does our government’s use of music in the “war on terror” tell us about the music that we listen to on a day to day basis and about the state of the music industry as a whole? What does it mean when protest music, which is such a powerful element of democratic and social justice movements is used to bolster the very actions that it was made to combat? As I contemplate these thoughts I leave you with Testify, by Rage Against the Machine.
This week marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Nelson Mandela from Robben Island, a gesture that symbolized an end to Apartheid. While Mandela’s human face and political eloquence will place him firmly in history as one of the world’s greatest icons, it was musician Hugh Masakela who provided the soundtrack to the anti-Apartheid movement. His songs offered hope to millions of oppressed, and I was lucky enough to catch him at the 2007 African Union summit in Accra, Ghana.
The focus of the summit was debate over a “United States of Africa”, and Masekela offered this prayer for the people of Darfur and others suffering violence:
To the people all over Africa, who are being killed every day by their own people.
We have stood by silently and watched as we watched the Congo burn. As we watched Zimbabwe. As we watched South Africa for decades. We watched Mozambique. We watched Angola. Rwanda. Burundi. And on and on.
And all the people, most of them who lost their lives, innocent people… the people don’t even know why they are being attacked. Because we are really very unconcerned with what is happening in Africa.
A reporter from France backstage came to ask me why I was here tonight. And when I told him, I said, why don’t you speak to some other people here backstage, and he asked every one of them if they knew where Darfur was, or what it was all about. They didn’t know.
That is because we’re keeping it as a secret away from each other. It is incumbent upon all of us this time not to stand by until a film is made, called Hotel Darfur.
And we have to inform our people about what is really going on and explain it to them… because if we do a lot of we can get them to get back their spirits, and outrage, and we can all raise our voices for Africa and say no more.
Otherwise it is pointless to be working on a Union. We are the only people who are not being attacked by a foreign people, but attacking each other. Where all those people have lost their lives in all these genocides, may their souls rest in peace.
While roughly 300,000 people around the globe have participated in the Fulbright Program, named after internationalist Senator William J. Fulbright, since its inception in 1946, it’s probably safe to say that researcher Canyon Cody’s collaboration with producer/rapper Gnotes is the first project to fuse hip-hop with Spanish Andalusian flamenco.
The vibrant, 14 track record, Granada Doaba, was recorded and produced in Granada, and funded entirely by a Fulbright Grant. It features 16 musicians from around the world who currently reside in the Spanish city.
This was one of my favorite records of 2009. Haunting vocal chants, syncopated hand-claps and illustrious guitar chords fuse seamlessly with a fine selection of true-school hip-hop beats behind them for a very special listening experience. Even more enjoyable knowing that U.S. tax dollars helped fund the duo’s (known collectively as “Gnawledge”) efforts.
From the Brussels-based record label that brought the innovative and “hypnotique” sounds of Konono No 1 to the world stage comes another Congolese sensation with a great back story.
Staff Bendi Bililli are a high energy group of paraplegic street musicians who were stumbled upon by Crammed records near a zoo in Kinshasa, DRC. Cruising the streets in inprovised (and some motorized) bicycle contraptions, the band plays a rollicking mix of Rumba, Afro-pop and blues. They’re currently touring Europe, with dates in Zurich, Bern and Paris.
The band’s first record, Tres Tres Forte, features the high pitched twang of a guitar improvised by a teenaged street kid, whose musical chops are fostered by the older members of the group. The record rested near the top of many an African music reviewer, including the one at Afropop.
Check out the documentary preview below, the film is sure to catapult Staff Benda to worldwide acclaim, a la Buena Vista Social Club.
This morning NPR’s Steve Inskeep profiled the music of Afghanistan’s Ammad Zahir as part of the program’s 50 Great Voices series, which highlights the most influential of singers from around the world.
Zahir, called “Afghanistan’s Elvis” by many of his followers, was the king of the music scene in the go-go days of Kabul, when it served as a meeting point for Asian and Western cultures and before the country descended into 30 years of chaos and war. The tabla, a drum originating in India and used throughout South Asia, features heavily on many of his compositions.
One of his tracks was featured in the critically acclaimed film, The Kite Runner.
In 2010, 16 countries in Africa celebrate their independence, each achieved to its own unique soundtrack. With this (and a renewed global and American interest in Afro-pop) in mind, a number of compilations and online gems are sure to be found throughout the year. We’ll dedicated a post along the way to each of Africa’s major regions, beginning with West Africa, home to some of the first independent African nations.
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