Stuart Ellis is the curator of the amazing music blog Radiodiffusion Internasionaal, and also an associate of Sublime Frequencies (he compiled their excellent Bollywood Steel Guitar disc).
Here is the raw stuff of an interview I conducted with him via email for my article in Musicworks Magazine issue #102.
Me:What is your perception of the term World Music? Do you the music represented on your site fall under that banner? Why?
Stuart Ellis: World Music is just a catch all phrase. It’s like the term Jazz. That term includes Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, John Zorn and regrettably Kenny G... And that term is a marketing tool for labels like Putumayo and Rough Guide – now available at Starbucks. Ugh. Does the music on my site fall under that banner? Yeah, I guess. It’s from this world. It’s music. But, the stuff that I post – for the most part – defies description and I try to let the music speak for itself. It does need some context, but to call it World Music is to almost dismiss it.
Me: Are there any quasi-activistic motivations behind your site? (even on a small scale... like as a reaction within the world of music)? SE: My site just kind of happened. It originally was just for a few friends, and was mostly stuff off of compilations that I had bought from Forced Exposure and Aquarius Records. But it eventually evolved into the mess it is today. I had no idea what I was doing, and still don’t. It’s just an obsession. I’ve always been that guy who gives you a mix tape of weird stuff you’re probably only going to listen to once. Me: There seems to be a broader trend toward the emergence of labels and blogs which curate a range of popular music or neglected trad/ classical from around the world (your site is included, as well as my blog, and labels like Sublime Frequencies, Yaala Yaala, Buda Musique, and bands like Konono)... Do you feel that this is a mere marketing trend, or do you feel like this is a broader movement? How do you feel this impacts the public's perception of non-anglo-american/ anglo-european music?
SE: I definitely see it as more of a movement. I think that right now, people are just bored of the same old crap that has been spoon fed to them for so long. First it was Rock ‘n’ Roll. Eventually Punk came along, followed by No Wave, Post-Punk, Hardcore, Alternative, Indie Rock... But, it’s all been done, and we’ve heard it all. And what I think is happening, is that people are starting to ask: Well, what else is out there? Take, for instance, the Broken Flowers soundtrack. I think that got more than the actual movie. And what about all the press Vampire Weekend is getting because they are supposedly influenced by Afro Pop?
The impact? I cannot answer that. The cynic in me says that eventually, it will be watered down and get over played and I’ll get sick of it and move on to something else. But even if that does happen, people will be enlightened that there is, and has always been, a lot of great music from places that they didn’t think even existed.
Me: Have you had any criticism with respect copyright/ intellectual property to the material on your site? SE: The only thing close to a response that I’ve had in that area, would have to be from Karim Abranis of El Abranis. I asked him what he thought about the two songs that were on the Waking Up Scheherazade compilation. He was actually happy that someone was getting to hear “those old songs”. But for copyright stuff? No one has said anything.
... In a weird way, I see this as almost a “scene” (for lack of a better term). Back in the late 80s and early 90’s, I used to put on punk rock shows, do a fanzine, and work at the college radio station. There was a network of bands and labels, zines and promoters. This has a similar feel (without the sleeping on floors and endless nights at Kinko’s cutting and pasting). There are the big labels that are putting out crap, but then you have Sublime Frequencies and Terp and the bloggers who really do it because they love the music. I think it’s no coincidence that a lot of the people involved are from the old Punk scene...
This is a lovely site as it gives a small peep into the insanely diverse musical world of Indonesia without cutting too many corners. Poking through the blog archive, you can see that near its inception, it's weighted far more toward the underground hip hop scene in Indonesia. This makes sense too as he is Rotterdam ex-pat Hip hop producer who's been living Indonesia (currently in Bandung, West Java) since 1996.
More recently, Madrotter's been digging up all sorts of treasures, from hip hop to Jaipong, schmaltzy Waldjinah records, traditional Sundanese stuff, hardcore ... even Indonesian bollywood!??!?!
Exciting, to say the least. Pay Madrotter a visit or one every few days. He lives in Indonesia, so surely has access to a lot of awesome things quite readily. The Mp3s are only 128kbps, but the Internet ain't the same over there, I've been told so cut the dude some slack!
Over the spring and summer I conducted some interviews for the second article in my series "The Untold Stories Of So-called World Music" for Musicworks magazine. The topic of this article was to call to attention the methodologies and music of labels such as Terp, Yaala Yaala, Sublime Frequencies, Crammed Discs, as well as the plethora of blogs out there...
Seeing as the article only used fragments of the interviews, I decided I would publish the full interviews on the blog...
To start, I am going to present an interview that was not actually used for the article. It did end up having an impact on the article, though.
Here's an interview with Yaala Yaala Records founder Jack Carneal that I did over email. Regrettably, some my wording had initially led to some misunderstanding about my position vis-a-vis his label. I also allude in the questions to to the Wire's harsh criticism of some their methodology, which likely made it seem as if I was trying to "stick it to him" or something. Thankfully after explaining myself, Jack graciously answered my questions, and, as I had hoped, provided some fascinating rebuttals to said criticisms, along with other insights about the label.
Me: What is your perception of the term World Music? Do you think that the music you present under Yaala Yaala falls under that rubric or do you think it's something separate altogether? Why?
Jack Carneal: It's hard not to conclude that World Music was a term created by a marketing department whose job it was to figure out how to organize more products in order to better sell them.
It has become shorthand to describe a particular kind of comforting pop music usually made by effortlessly GOOD musicians with crack recording teams in studios in Europe even though I suppose it was started to categorize the more academic releases from the Smithsonian, etc. The term assumes that any music referencing mostly African or Asian culture is "world" whereas Swedish folk or Irish folk might conceivably be found under folk or "Celtic" tags, and these are but a few of the many puzzling inconsistencies about the term World Music.
The term has never made any sense to me even though I've probably used it before to simplify something as I was trying to explain it, for example trying to explain to an older relative or something what Yaala Yaala produces: Oh, it's World Music, grandma.
Why has the term not made sense? For obvious reasons stated above but also, to wit: I recently searched for an Okkyung Lee cd, not her new one, and found it at an online store classified as "african/world". How is that world music?
When I lived in Bougouni you could buy, along with bunches of Malian musicians, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Wu Tang Clan, Argent, Deep Purple. To Malians, this was rather exotic music, of course but it was hard to imagine them considering this as anything more than, well, weirdo rock music made by white men from far away with long flowing hair like women, or something similarly random.
Regarding the term as it applies to Yaala Yaala or Sublime Frequencies, I'm of the mind that if it helps sell more cds I'll call it whatever someone else wants.
I think of our releases as Malian folk-based music. It wasn't the most popular or common music I heard in Mali but did have a strong presence out in the brousse where we lived.
Me: Are there any quasi-activistic motivations behind your label? (even on a small scale, like, as a reaction to something within the domain of music)
JC: Not really, no.
The basic motivation of starting YYR could not have been simpler: this is great music and my friends need to hear it. After that I did start to make various judgments about what I was doing, namely, that if I didn't put this music out into the world then no one else would and therefore I became an advocate for the idea that the music needed to be heard.
Me: There seems to be a broader trend toward the emergence of labels and blogs that curate a range of popular music or neglected trad/ classical music from around the world (Sublime Frequencies, your label, Buda Musique, Terp..etc.) Do you feel that this is a mere marketing trend or do you feel like this is a wider movement? How do you feel this impacts the public's perception of non-anglo-american/ anglo-european music? I've read statements where you've related your source tapes to the early US punk/ independent scene.... Do you think it's a coincidence that most of these labels, blogs even, shared blood with that scene (Sun City Girls, The Ex, your own ties to Drag City)? Elaborate on this relationship if you feel that it's important...
JC: People who consider themselves outside of the mainstream of popular culture have ALWAYS been arbiters of cultural and musical trends and not because it's hip or now but because these people have ALWAYS been nerds of the highest order who have little else to do but to try to find new music to get into. As the interwebs have allowed the instantaneous access to unlimited information and data these same tirelessly curious people--read: NERDS-- have run out of krautrock or Peruvian psych or Montreal indie bands or Japanoise or Swedish free jazz improvisers or Berlin heroin house to discover, so naturally one begins to look into the farther corners of the world. All of the people you reference above (Drag City, Alan Bishop) are of that order, that is, tirelessly curious culture hounds. Also, the success of the Ethiopiques series definitely opened up a lot of doors.
Me: The Wire, in June 2007 mounted a very interesting critique of your label in their reviews section. They reference Yoro Diallo who not only had a considerable reputation (not least for his position as a man among a female-dominated scene) but also rallied against music piracy, alongside other Malian artists . I'm curious about your response to this, in light of your choice to reissue pirated cassettes as well avoiding liner notes.
JC: The answer to this question is so complicated and involves so many socio-cultural elements that I was surprised that a mag like the Wire that purports to serve the segment of the music market who probably consider themselves intellectual or almost academic studiers of music would dumb it down to such a degree. I would've been happy to respond to Clive Bell's claims but they chose to run it without ever once contacting me. I thought it was horrible journalism.
It's not Sublime Frequencies, Mississippi Records, Terp and Yaala Yaala who're hurting these musicians, it's SF and YYR who're guaranteeing that a new order of Western music fan knows what Mali (and Ethiopia, Zaire, etc) is and that there is a lot of great music out there in the world.
All of these labels have firm moral beliefs that people will benefit from what we do, both musicians and listeners, and I would assume that we all sleep the sleep of the just.
I've stated a bunch of times why I don't use liner notes and it's getting tiresome. I knew nothing about this music, nothing at all. I couldn't understand what they were singing. When I picked up these cassettes in Mali they didn't have liner notes. It was a consistent and easy decision to make: I did not want this music to become about my perception of it, something that would've happened if I'd subjectified the music by trying to write about it, and I wanted the listener to be able to stumble upon this music exactly as I did.
Me: I am curious in general about your perception of this whole industry of pirating music that exists around the world. This is something that seems to be particular to musics outside of the "Western Music Industry", and can be found all over the place. I would love to hear your comments on this underground industry--why one cannot even order a single Googoosh album from the HMV catalog in Canada (despite her status as *THE* Persian pop diva) yet can readily purchase CD-Rs of her music in certain suburbs of Toronto.
JC: Criticizing the music industry these days for shortsightedness is like kicking a retarded toothless dog that is also blind and incontinent, if of course the dog chose to be blind, retarded, etc. The problem of course is that, like airline industry, they have over the decades created an entirely unsustainable and top-heavy business model where each artist is essentially treated like a corporation: debts are incurred against accounts (recording, promotional work) and there are an awful lot of hands waiting to be paid from these debts. Everyone who has half a brain knows that entering into any business relationship with anyone in certain sectors of the music industry is to cast your fate to the wind.
So people around the world have recognized that the old paradigm of ensuring that people hear your music is broken. The industry monolith just does a horrible job of identifying and producing and distributing music that people want to hear. There is more interesting music out there than is possible for us tiny and inconsequential humans to ever understand and finally the music, and the artists who make the music, are winning: they are in control of what gets out there to be heard.
The internet has made this paradigm shift all the more extreme. The big record companies will die out, there is no question. Bootlegging and other sub-industry means of distributing music will eradicate any semblance of the industry as we know it before too long.
Low overhead operations like YYR, Sublime Frequencies, Mississippi Records, Terp, etc., with the help of sensible and gentlemanly operations like Drag City--former punks whose sense of moral rectitude is strong and old fashioned--are the future of the music industry.
Me: Have you had any other hostile reactions to your label's modus operandi? Describe them, if they differ from the Wire's and talk to me abou your feelings regarding these concerns/ criticisms.
JC: No, none. Particularly from the Malian musicians who I've been sending money to over the past year.
I have yet to really post about music from "here" on this blog, but in principle I'm all for it, since I think it's stupid that we treat everything but "our" folk musics as outside of the whole notion of World Music.
So, in line with my mission to stretch the definition of "World Music" to its breaking point, or at least turn it on its head, let's talk about something from "our"... oh sorry... I mean *my* part of the world. ;-)
Lately I've been really fascinated by a certain trend I've observed in a lot of music from the late 70's and early to mid-80's. Amidst the lot of bland FM-Radio ballads you still hear while getting cavities filled, there have been numerous tunes over the years where it seems as if their producers smuggled a bit of that local anesthetic out of the dentist's office and back to the recording studio.
That's to say that there is this sub-genre of adult-contemporary music that's haunted by a vague numbness--an air-conditioned sort of cool which evokes various sorts of rainy scenes, shot on 1980's filmstock. It's a little too crisp-and-clean, a little too neat-and-tidy for its own good, so much so that it ends up coming off as a little remote.
A perfect example--visually, conceptually and sonically--is the wistful yet somehow aloof sax-n-synth smooth-jazz Vangelis composed for the love scene in Blade Runner between Dekker and Rachel (for those of you who don't know--an android). While the music carries all of the usual 1980's middle-of-the-road signifiers of romance and sensuousness there is something rather cold and appropriately robotic about it.
Some real grumpy people would argue that the sound I am describing is merely a byproduct of the advent of digital synthesizers and other studio technologies at the start of the 1980's and not an actual aesthetic choice made by musicians and producers. Yet while some of the defining features of this sub-genre are due to datedness I'm certain that many people were conscious of the inherent rigidity of these musical instruments, and in fact permitted this to influence there musical decisions. Surely some producers thinking they were real clever were convinced that they could fleece the public, putting that "Doogie Hauser" DX-7 Electric Piano sound in place of a real Fender Rhodes, and even started to believe in their own lies... But I'm also willing to bet that others saw enormous potential in cold FM Synth presets, glacial-palacial reverbs, deadpan drums, and fluorescent-lit ersatz instruments.
I think of it as one of many extensions of the disco approach to music-making birthed during the seventies--doing everything within the confines of the studio and severing the ties between live performance and recording. With greater emphasis on shaping the sound within the studio people opted to craft particular emotional spaces there, rather than working on replicating the ideal live performance.
The group which basically epitomizes the sound I am describing is the Blue Nile. Perhaps they are the only true real practitioners of a pure form of this sound. Their songs paint vivid portraits of the lonely night-times of sensitive introverts living in a big, and, judging by their lyrics, often-rainy city.
Many tracks, like "The Downtown Lights" or "Tinseltown Is In The Rain" create these images in a darkly dual manner. The lyrics suggest the romantic lives of well-to-do yuppies: ostentatious nights out on the town, invitations to candlelit dinners, quiet rides in sleek sports cars, or sweet-nothings whispered close to perfumed necks between cigarettes in the back of a limousine. Near-empty strung-together statements, fit with each other to form a 90% of the perfect 1980's nitelife fantasy worthy of some Club Med ad from 1982.
But what about that other 10%?? That empty part? The little hint of disappointment?
It's as if you're witnessing singer Paul Buchanan, seated by the window in his spacious, glassed-in penthouse atop some highrise building, staring out across a sprawling city. He's singing to a (perhaps) imaginary woman, while dreaming of the ideal romance-filled evening... The table's set with the fancy cutlery, he's got some bubbly on ice, but no one's coming. Does he know? Is he playing some pathetic game of make-believe to entertain himself on Saturday Night? Lord only knows because he maintains so much statuesque poise that you'd never want to disrupt the little ritual. And you sorta figure he's actual drunk as fuck and crying on the inside, so if you were to press him for details you might push him over the edge...
Like... do you ever have those dreams where everything's going terribly wrong but everyone is insisting, in an emphatic euphoric slow-mo voice that they're the best they've ever been in THEIR ENTIRE LIVES? The Blue Nile is like this sort of, without so much foreboding. And there are plenty of safe voyages into MOR-melancholy along the way.
That hole left by the slightly banal lyrics is definitely there on purpose in my mind, in order to permit the high-gloss backing music the shine through. And it reflects the texts perfectly. On the surface it's a band plus a full orchestra in a majestic resonant hall. Listen closer, and you realize it's too good to be true--those people playing violins are actually mannequins. The sounds are just slightly-off kilter, slightly mechanical imitations, almost like the replicants of Blade Runner. But they're almost believable, thanks to the fact that Blue Nile were basically the official spokesband of Linn (makers of the legendary drum machine). They had first dibs on the new digital gadgets and they knew just how to use them. That near-trickery they achieve and the ensuing slight disappointment is what thrusts the music into darker territory.
The pre-digital examples of the MOR-noir vibe make it clear that it is indeed a case of artistic agency over accident. For instance, some of Roberta Flack's output from the late 1970's foreshadows the frigid 'scapes traced by the likes of Buchanan & co. Her hit duet with Donny Hathaway "The Closer I Get To You" definitely gestures in that direction but long before the advent of Roland TR-505 drums and horrid gated reverbs.
The pallid long-player Roberta Flack Featuring Donny Hathaway seems to be haunted by Hathaway's passing, especially on the closing cut where Flack begs the object of the lyrics "Stay with me... Maybe you can rearrange your plans?" Is she singing a lover, or her friend Donny? Either way her aspartame-soul delivery indicates that it's beyond futile--said person is no longer capable of rearranging their plans--she's given up but for some reason decided to sing the song anyway. "I know there's a whole new world you've found, and it's to that world you're bound"... Ouch. And the ghostly quiet-storm stylings of the arrangement certainly provide enough empty space for you to realize that there's something rather sinister lurking beneath those mundane-lovesong lyrics.
Nina Simone's album Baltimore from 1978 was full of similar dark smooth surfaces to the production and arrangements. Apparently Simone had very little say in the arrangements, song selection and other aspects. But still she coaxes an unrelentingly neutrality (to the point of bleakness) from the ballads on the disc. "That's All I Want From You" has Simone almost dismissively snapping her finger between verse despite the song's extremely sombre tone. This underscores the emotional remoteness of the arrangements--violin melodies dangling from the ceiling like tinsel after some party. The mirror ball still spinning, Simone sings alone at the piano? Even the reading of Hall and Oates' "Rich Girl", while upbeat sounds somehow defeated.
Weather Report's downright sappy smooth-jazz ballad "A Remark You Made" makes extensive use of analog synthesizers but sounds right at home alongside the Vangelis track mentioned earlier.
Coming back to the early digital era, another important record in this mini-canon is Pat Metheny's Offramp.
It's tempting to dismiss Mr. Metheny. He has made some awful records, and has a really bad hairdo, but it's hard to contend with warmth of Bright Size Life or the wacky Song X.
Grammy-award winning Offramp, though, is a neglected (well, perhaps among those who ignore things like the Grammies) gem of eerily blank smooth jazz. It's just like it's foreboding cover, which recalls (or forcalls?!) the driving scenes in David Lynch's Lost Highway.
For most of its duration Pat is playing guitar synth, while Lyle Mays plays solos on rectangular-sounding instrument samples (like the dementedly fake harmonica on "Are You Going With Me?"). Everything is bathed in long, gasping reverb that sounds like early November wind. And the big hint that this is not pure new-age-cum-jazz: listen for Nano Vasconcelos' spectral whispers and shrieks which float around the perimeter of the album. Without these peculiar sounds "Au Lait" might be merely your average mid-afternoon cafe jazz.
The titular track is anything but convivial FM-friendly smoothness. Instead it points ahead to the freak-outs on his collaborations with Ornette.
In any event, again, there is a clear-cut conscious choice to add some eerie ingredients to an otherwise bland recipe. Perhaps some of that 2-D quality though is a result of the outmoded electronic techniques. Who's to know, though?
"Are You Going With Me?"
"The Bat, Part 2"
"Au Lait"
There are other artists who also seemed intrigued by this territory, albeit from a more ostensibly experimental perspective. David Sylvian has certainly, over the years, explored this moody-yet-willfully-almost-bland terrain. Scott Walker's Climate of Hunter , the bridge from his 1970's work to stuff such as Tilt and The Drift certainly has moments of Glade-plug-in -synth-pads and stern reverbs which seem to expand and constrict the perception of space simultaneously. In fact, Walker's 1970's output seems is almost like a predecessor to the later form of dark MOR. Even on superficially saccharine songs like "Joanna" he basically carves gaping, dark holes into ez-listening style arrangements.
Even in dance music circles, classy Canadian synth-pop duo Junior Boys appears to have stolen a couple 5 1/4 inch floppy diskettes from the Blue Nile's sound library, yet have maybe sexed things up a little bit with their Destiny's Child-meets-Basic Channel beats. They still have well-rehearsed poker-faces, though despite lapses into slinky funk.
So in summary, this is a bit of nebulous and perhaps dubious subgenre. I guess for me it's more of an illicit whiff of cheap perfume on the collar someone's leisure suit than, say, an actual article of clothing, if you know what I mean. It's more stealthy than an actual style. It's like the aftertaste of diet cola... There making you feel queasy amidst the EZ-listening.
While you may find a good selection of global musics in Toronto at, say Soundscapes (and perhaps at the big HMV, where I was beavering away to get more representative titles in stock before quitting for green pastures (quite literally - I work at the front of 23 acres of parkland now!)) there are many stores around town which specialize in particular musical regions that manage to get titles most stores can't get. You may have to travel a ways to get them, but you'll experience something drastically different from the usual suspects.
Here's a mini-rundown of a few of them that I know about....
A1 Ramiy Video Vision (566 Parliament St., take the Parliament or Wellesley Bus from Castle Frank Station) I had an interesting time at this little shop in Cabbagetown. I came there in search of (how typical) Carnatic Music. The woman behind the counter had difficulty assisting me because her English was not so strong, but no less than three customers eagerly helped me translate my wishes! The one guy tried to assist the woman working by saying something along the lines of "you know that stuff that goes sa-re-ga-ma-pa-da-ni-sa." Soon we were all listening to music on the CD player and chatting. Very much a neighbourhood place, this store carries mainly South-Indian pop/ film music, and mainly newer stuff at that. They do have a fewer older titles... Eventually I left with a CD of Sudha Ragunathan singing krithis, as well as an album of old film duets by K.J. Jesudoss and various female singers. Both were original CDs, and VERY inexpensive. There is also a convenience store nearby which also carries some South Indian music, although I haven't investigated it. Additionally there's Nallur Video Centre (607C Parliament, right at the intersection of Parliament & Wellesley) but, again, I haven't investigated it...
Pars Video - 6083 Yonge St. (north of Cummer, just South of Centre Ave. East Side (Finch is the closest station)) While for some north of the 401 is a tad remote, if you're a fan of Persian music, it's one of your best bets with this store Pegah, and X-O City being there. Pars Video is especially good a fairly wide selection and reasonable prices (most "L.A." (they're made in and around Los Angeles) CD's are $9.99 and CD-Rs are $4.99). For those who do not read Farsi, It's not always easy to find everything so for finding particular artists you may need to ask for assistance. But, the main sales clerk has been quite gregarious and helpful each time I've been in! My first purchase there was a 4-Disc Googoosh set, with which I was given a complimentary poster of the Persian diva herself. Their CD-R stuff is also of a quite high quality, the mere mention of paper labels prompted the aformentioned clerk to say "No, ours are heat-sealed! Paper labels are garbage." Amen, brother! So expect your CD-R purchases to WORK!
X-O City (6123 Yonge St. just at the other end of the plaza with Pars Video, facing onto Centre Ave.) While the music selection is not quite as comprehensive as their neighbours at Pars Video. It's nonetheless worthwile taking a peek at X-O City.
Pegah Books (5513 Yonge St., just south of Finch Station) I've never been to Pegah Books myself--yet, although it comes highly recommended by a santur-playing friend of mine who knows his stuff. Apparently there is nary an unauthorized CD-R in sight.
Indian Record Shop (1428 Gerrard St. East. Coxwell Station, bus south along Coxwell to Gerrard, walk west) Apparently these folks used to furnish the legendary Sam The Record Man back in the day with a selection of Indian imports. Still today, they have an excellent selection of soundtracks, classical music, ghazals, bhajans and qawwali from both Indian and Pakistan. Their stock is well organized, mostly non-CD-R and quite uniformly high quality. They are also quite friendly and helpful. Look out for their extensive collection of Abida Parveen discs, if you're a fan. A bit of trivia: recently I was there and found an LP by chutney singer Sundar Popo. Didn't expect to find that there!
Right next door to it in the India Centre there is also a decent music store with a reasonably large selection, where I've made a few purchases. It's just not quite as consistent as their neighbours, carrying a few more paper-label CD-rs and the like.
Payless Electronics (1340 Gerrard St. E North side of Gerrard (Between Greenwood & Coxwell)) This store is quite bizarre and not really technically a music store. Essentially a junk shop, this store also features cheap DVDs and CDs alongside oversized calculators, cheap umbrellas and off-brand batteries. You have to be careful with the CDs you buy... Some I've found are actually defective. Others may be a lame CD-R edition... But they do have a lot of buried gems in there, mainly older Hindi soundtracks. But at $3 a pop, who can complain!? A fun spot for those who enjoy "digging." The owner once told me that he just gets boxes upon boxes of CDs, without any real sense of what the boxes contain. Yet, despite that, he can often tell you if he does or doesn't have something, despite the disarray. A great place to track down late-70's to mid-80's soundtracks.
Shri & Bros (1843 Lawrence Ave E. between Victoria Park & Warden, south side) This store has a few hidden gems, but you really have to watch out for the shoddily paper-labelled CD-Rs (bubbles!). I got a really lovely CD-R of Carnatic violin duets there as well as a fairly CD of Jesudoss duets with some nice stuff on it. The prices are very reasonable... I paid $5 per disc.
Dhaka Audio-Video Corner(2988 Danforth Ave., slightly west of Victoria Park Station) I've only visited this store once. It's right in the heart of the Bangladeshi area of Toronto, between Dawes Road and Victoria Park along Danforth. This store had a large variety of CDs and movies but it could be rather difficult to navigate if you don't have a Bengali helping you out (I did, and even then it was tough!). I found an intriguingly fey 1980's-sounding steel guitar recording akin to the Sublime Frequencies release (but slightly later). I also found some fusion-Baul stuff that wasn't as good as I would liked it to be... too much fluf not enough hardcore baul-belting... although some was nice. The store stocks a mix of actual CDs and burned discs.
Super Latin Music(1088 St. Clair Ave. W, between Oakwood and Dufferin, St. Clair West Station, take the 512 west) I've only been once, and it seemed to be all about contemporary latin pop music. Not being as tuned to Latin music, as the music of other regions, I don't know what to comment about except that I felt it was worthy of inclusion on the grounds that it is only one of a (very small(?)) few of its kind in Toronto.
Nezahet(3905 Keele St. Unit 4 - Downsview Station, along *at least* the 106 Bus Route) I've never been to their actual store, but they recently had a stall at a Turkish festival at Dundas Square. There, I purchased a great Selda (Bagcan) album from 1983, and my girlfriend grabbed a nice disc of Turkish folk music. Both were reasonably priced and the Selda was well-packaged and clearly a legit recording... I look forward to going to the actual shop in an attempt to find some Derdyoklar Iklisi albums (even if the staff will laugh at me). And they have way more than just music at the store too...
Minimart (884 Bloor St. W, just a few steps east of Ossington Station) At this variety store on Bloor just east of Ossington you can not only buy groceries but also get some great Ethiopian and Eritrean music. Unfortunately it's all behind the counter, which makes it a daunting task for those without a shopping list, but nonetheless, you can get some pretty decent titles there. One thing that may appeal to fans of the Ethiopiques series is the Tlahoun Gessesse comp they carry which only 1/3 overlaps with the Buda Musique disc. I also acquired some CDs by Yemane Ghebremichael (Yemane Barya), Bereket Mengisteab and others.
There is also another store just off Bloor on Concord Ave. with quite a decent selection of Eritrean music. The name escape me unfortunately.
Nasr Grocery Store(1996 Lawrence Avenue East, just west of Warden) This grocery store, in what some call "Little Arabia" (although it *is* just a bunch of stripmalls) has a small music department with some intriguing selections. The prices are a little steep but you may find something worth springing for. I bought a disc of 1982 concert recordings of a nice singer called Magida El-Roumi. Reminded me of a more modern Fairouz. Given their small selection they have quite a range: from Arabic music to some Armenian and Turkish discs. The only issue for someone like me was that there was not that much older discs... and I tend to prefer older music in general. Oh... and while you're there, just got to the other end of the plaza to get some fig pastries at the Ladan Bakery... They're absolutely mindblowing. (If you have a car, too, you may want to visit Hopper Hut restaurant at Ellesmere & Kennedy for some delicious Kottu Roti! If you're a downtowner and make the trek, it's best to make it count!!) Pannonia Books (300 St. Clair West at Spadina Road, just east of St. Clair West Station) Even though this is a mere stone's throw from my house, I have yet to visit this outlet. I can safely say, though, by perusing their online store that they do have an interesting collection of Hungarian Music. So, if that intrigues you... by all means investigate further.
Jong Ro Books(650 Bloor St. W , Between Christie and Bathurst Stations) While the selection is small you can nonetheless get some great Korean classical and popular music here. There is both instrumental and vocal classical recordings as well as pop ranging from recent stuff back to the golden era of trot (teuroteu/ pyongjjak) The staff is knowledgeable and the discs are really high quality, and, consequently, slightly pricier... The upside: you'll never find faulty paper-label CD-Rs here. Little Burma Variety Store (1278 Bloor St W, just East of Lansdowne Station) The selection is meager, they're just CD-Rs in sleeves with a couple of words of burmese printed on them, but I did happen upon one really nice CD-R there of sort of neo-traditional stuff. I cannot tell you who it is, or anything. And really it's just a tucked-away box of stuff they have there, but it's only $3 per disc. I must say, I wasn't really interested by the other CDs he gave me. Weird Karaoke-ish Burmese covers of country songs and oldies... ouch. Oh well... to each their own...
Papelaria Portugal (220 Ossington Ave. just south of Dundas West) Alongside other various items, this store has a decent, yet slightly pricey selection of Portuguese and Brazilian music. There's more than meets the eye there too. Ask anyone working in the shop about particular artists and they'll magically make more titles appear! (photo borrowed from this blog) MVP/ Master Video Productions (604 College St., at Clinton, 506 Streetcar, or take the Bathurst Streetcar South from Bathurst Station, walk west) Another place I have not yet investigated, but they specialize in Italian music. Just near the Royal Cinema.
More info on specifically African stores can be found here although I have a sneaking suspicion that it may be a wee bit outdated. It also does not include some stores, such as a newer addition (whose name escapes me) in the Bloor/ Ossington area which specializes in Ethiopian and Eritrean music.
Here is a list of various Tamil Music & Video stores.
Happy shopping and...
Any readers with recommendations, please feel free to write them in the comments!
Just for your info. Northern Sumateran band (led by a couple of ethnomusicologists) Suarasama have had their sublime first album Fajar Di Atas Awan picked up for reissue by Drag City for release August 19, 2008.
To refresh your memories, these are the people who were featured on the final track of Smithsonian's Indonesian Guitars. While there is a slight, slight new-agey/ world musicy vibe that they have, the biggest strengths which set them apart is that A) they opt for mainly acoustic instruments; B) they have great taste; C) they draw on classical musics from around the world in the sense that there's a lot of space in the music which allows the intense gestural detail to be highlighted.
Another great thing is that they manage to sound inspired by Indian music and, to an extent Arab music as well (but how much is that just the Northern Sumateran thing?) but they are by no means dabblers making shallow music. This stuff is a mix of folksy rawness with understated classical virtuosity and a sprinkle of pop-sugar to sweeten things ever so slightly.
I just moved to the St. Clair Ave. W & Bathurst St. area in Toronto recently and have been, of course, scouting out potential repositories of intriguing music (especially the stuff I like to post on here).
One of the first places I noticed was the Hungarian Book and Music store Pannonia, nestled in what appears to be a residential building, just east of Spadina Rd at 300 St. Clair West.
That led me to doing some research before going into the store--I thought some knowledge of Hungarian popular music and folk might prove useful. I've had a few negative experiences buying music based solely on the assertions of a store's staff, since it not always easy to convey my tastes to someone, as they have their own associations which impact their impression of my inquiries.
In my net-travels I stumbled across a few intriguing groups from Hungary which offered some nice takes on the late 1970's to mid 1980's sounds which loosely fall under the New-Wave and post-punk umbrella. Each group has their own blend of ingredients, including hints of No-waveish clatter, icy Factory Records-style bleakness, 4AD-label gauziness, psychedelia and Kraftwerkian zap.
Trabant Trabant is a bit like if the Young Marble Giants, the Sugarcubes and the Slits had a jam session. They're a lot less gothy than a lot of these other bands, eschewing echo and 'verb for a more lean punk-informed sound with hints of 60's pop, Joy Division drum kit sounds, and intermittent greasy synth sounds...
Varga Miklós It's very difficult for me to decipher the narrative of this video, but I like the weird party-in-dystopia vibe it has. As for the song, there's something quite unappealing to it, I find, but strangely, it's also quite likeable. The little changes to the more brisk parts are quintessentially 1980's, and the synth programming is deliciously dated. The singer's brand of hoarseness is not something you would've heard as much in Western European and American 1980's pop as well, which is neither good nor bad.
A.E. (Albert Einstein) Bizottság Ever wondered what it would've been like if Blixa Bargeld had been the vocalist for the Birthday Party and was really into cheap flange pedals? Ok, I admit that I never considered that idea either, but these guys at times are a bit like that little recipe. The second clip especially shows the singers penchant for similar patterning of phrases to earlier Neubauten tracks. The background music is rigidly funky with that persistent airplane-engine sound whooshing away.
The last clip on here is just plain fucked. Initial it has a strange and cheap funereal vibe which subsequently explodes, or disintegrates? into this flailing party quasi-anthem... Weird.
Another touchstone with these fellows' mix of menace and perverse humour is previous End(-)Of(-)World Music featuree Yuri Morozov.
Mutant Sounds also offers an interesting record by Európa Kiadó here.
As you can see I have a penchant for older music from various places. Before I introduce more here, I would like to qualify it by mentioning that my interest springs not from some sort of retro-fetishism or unquenchable thirst for kitsch. Someone recently mentioned the term "retro" in reference to some of my tastes, and I thought I would like make it extra clear that this doesn't really enter the picture, at least in my mind.
Much of the music I post here does bear unmistakable marks of its time... and this does, for my ears fuse with the actual "musical" material proper. So, it's not so much a conceptualized days-of-yore far-off-place sort of exoticism it is about the evocation through sound. I would personally classify my enjoyment of older sounds as being more related to nostalgia and sentimentalism than to the notion of retro, which to me implies a certain level of ironic posturing. I can certainly identify facets of some of this music which are a bit campy or amusing... but beneath that surface I often feel a deep emotional attachment to some of the sounds... I think it's definitely important to differentiate this form of appreciation. To me this is something which underlies the curation of, for instance, the Sublime Frequencies discs. While some would label the inclusion of strange or outmoded sounds among their compilations as tongue-in-cheek, I would actually be more inclined to treat it as a celebration of psychedelic whimsy and exoticism in the non-ethnic sense of the term. A celebration of the phenomenon of music as exotic...
Moving along to some sweet crumbs of auditory pleasure...
I don't really know what got me investigating old Nepalese tunes exactly, but recently I discovered a bunch of really fascinating and beautiful examples.
Sadly, as with other artists from this era and from the "non-West", there isn't much in the way of translated/ translatable information readily available online.
And I checked, but the older edition of the Rough Guide to World Music didn't have anything about Nepalese popular musics. This is very much congruent with the discourse of World Music as I see it.
The intro to the little section about Nepal:
The music of Nepal, either ceremonial and played on trumpets, cymbals giant drums and ear-splitting shawms or made at home for an evening's entertainment, is as yet very little known outside the country.
They're defintely spot-on with the "little-known" part, but what about all the music outside of these very folksy signposts? While the book does have some great insights, it is by all means very rough. Hell, the first version didn't even have a section about Myanmar!
One of my favourite singers that I've discovered is named Aruna Lama. She has a sweet, transparent voice and appears to be one of the biggest names of Nepali music. I enjoy it how her voice in a very textural, physical sense highlights the relationship Nepal's music has with both Indian music and with other more Eastern Asian cultures... Especially Tibetan. The inflection and timbre of her voice is the exact midpoint between those two sounds--and you could say the same about the stylistic elements at play in the music.
So, here are some tracks, mostly by Ms. Lama, and two others. I couldn't manage to find more at all by Pawan Gole, whereas Udit Narayan is well-known outside of Nepal because of his contributions in India. I've also included two videos from the Nepalese Film Samjhana. The videos present two versions of the same song, "Ke Soche Maile". I'm pretty sure the female version of the song is actually sung by Lata Mangeshkar. The male version is sung by Kiran Pradhan. It's quite beautiful...
Thai popular music from the 1940's-60's offers a distinct set of charms, as I've mentioned earlier on in reference to Wongjun Pairoj (also represented here in this post). Known also as "Mae Mai Pleng" (from what I gathered, this translates roughly to "old fashioned songs") this era in Thai music is a veritable goldmine for anyone who loves teary-eyed ballads sung by mysterious sepia-toned vocalists of a bygone time.
Whoa... please do yourself a favour and check this blog out NOW. I just found it, strangely by Googling my own blog, finding it listed in someone else's Blog Roll!
Basically it's rare 78RPM discs from around the world uploaded for you listening pleasure. NEED I SAY MORE!? EXCAVATED SHELLAC And here's a highlight: "Burmese Female Song" from that blog to give you an idea of what I'm talking about!
The Bauls are a mystical group of minstrel-like musicians from West Bengal, and Bangladesh (formerly East Bengal). They sing religious songs which frequently address their belief of the divine residing within humans (manush), not outside and that one must reach out lovingly to one another in order to commune with the divine.
Here are some songs performed by Binod Das Baul courtesy of beretep
Here is another video courtesy of the same user, this time of Sandhay Das Baul (and others) performing in concert in Paris.
Here is a lovely sequence from the 2002 Bangla film Matir Moina which presents a stylized take on a Baul performance.
Another video from an unknown source that presents a more polished version of Baul music. The visuals are not all that exciting, the music though is quite striking.
What appears to be a no-budget amateur video of Bangla Baul singing, shot with permission (according to the video info on Youtube). Super rugged, without the usual accompaniment of percussion, ektara or dotara.
Another lo-fi intimate pair of videos featuring Satyananda Das Baul:
Three regrettably truncated videos:
Great live video with very pronounced echo on the voice from durdeshi:
Another video captured by an amateur videographer:
Amit, the son of a taxi driver, and Reema, a rich business man's daughter, fall in love. However Reema's father wants to marry her to Vicky, who's father is the biggest gangster in Mumbai. How will their love triumph?
This is the short summary for IMDB's entry on this 1989 Bollywood flick Love Love Love featuring tunes by Calcutta-born Music Director (that means composer to all you goras et. al out there who don't know what that means) Bappi Lahiri. (edit... you all should know that I 100% gora)
I actually discovered this wacky soundtrack thanks to a paper I marked for a course on Bollywood that I T.A. for at York University. The paper, about gujarati influence on Bollywood alluded to the stiff-yet-funky epic "Disco Dandia" from this soundtrack (pictured above) whose picturization and music appropriate elements of gujarati dance.
Being a sucker for the weird end of Bollywood, I fell in love with the peculiar soundworld of the song... Once you take out the instrumental interludes, all that remains is the almost Kraftwerkian drum-machine beat(complete with gated reverb!), adorned with deliciously goofy fills from black-hexagon-pad syntoms and 8-bit timbale samples. And then, on top of that there is just a bunch of monophonic melodies provided by booming voices (solo and in chorus). Only the merest of harmonies supports the voices provided by ambiguous are-they-real-or-are-they-fake strings, so overall the song is quite sparse and futuristic sounding. MIA even pays hommage to the track on "Boys" from Kala which also contains "Jimmy", practically a cover of another one of Bappi's Bollywood disco anthems "Jimmy Adja" from the 1982 movie Disco Dancer
The rest of the Love Love Love album is pretty insane too brimming with grimily psychedelic vocal productions layered atop clean, crisp and tight Eurodisco-informed drum machine, synth and string tracks. The more lush song "Hum To Hain Dil Ke Diwane" bubbles with Giorgio Moroder-style synths, and takes castanet clicks seemingly lifted from the Dinosaur (Aka Arthur Russell) classic "Kiss Me Again". The vocals are evocative of both the aloofness of Yoko Ono's "Walking On Thin Ice" and Asha Puthli's smooth, yet slightly nasal cooing.
According to the Wikipedia entry on the film the music was actually informed by Pet Shop Boys, Modern Talking and C.C. Catch and the sound of Italo Disco (which explains my observations!)
In short, with all but the 4th and 6th track, you'd never really think that this music was made in 1989... But alas it was! Funny how for some of the music I imagine dutch women in spandex circa 1981 as much as much as Bollywood musical scene.
Wow... Yet another long wait between posts. My apologies...
Anyway, here goes...
While it is easy for the average World Music listener to complain about Asian and African countries' use of electronics on the grounds that it undermines the 'authenticity' of the music, or that it's "too western", or (in some cases quite legitimately) too cheesy, I don't think its sane to dismiss this very loose category of music wholesale--especially given its massive quantity!
One example of one facet of this music that has broken through somewhat is Omar Souleyman whose reissue disc (thanks to Sublime Frequencies) employs cloying neon-toned synths, monotonous drum machines, intense vocals.
There are numerous others though from around the world which employ (mostly low-budget) electronic sounds in a way that is quite intriguing. Perhaps the synth programming isn't overly sophisticated, perhaps the instruments are used as substitutes for other acoustic (read: more 'authentic') instruments, yet somehow there is something quite distinct about the somewhat cold and stitled electronic versions.
Eritrea is a country with a really strong legacy of excellent and distinct music, including luminaries such as Tsehaytu Beraki (who recently recorded an excellent trad album for Dutch label Terp).
Conveniently the insistent and instantly recognizable Eritrean ch-boom, ch-boom 6/8 beat, which, roughly two-thirds of the way through the song breaks down into a faster 3/4 cheh-cheh, cheh-cheh makes excellent drum-machine fodder. Many Eritrean popular artists have creatively adapted the hallmark rhythms and sounds to more electronic-driven music.
Elsa Kidane's song "Alemna" even feeds the ornamented vocals through the Autotune effect (employed most famously by Cher on "Believe") and actually pulls it off (to my ears). Meanwhile, some of the work of older artist Yemane "Barya" Gebremichael has the sound of classic 1970's/80's drum machines all over it alongside smooth synth pads. His classic style seems to marry dreamy low-fi 1980's R&B stylings to an Eritrean sonic palette. In many cases he opts to eschew the aforementioned beat, in favour of straight 4/4. Torontonian-Eritrean artist Daniel Nebiat takes a utilitarian route with his use of electronics in his backup band, but even while the drum machine seems to present simply to replicate regular drums, the stiff uniformity of the sounds really carries his music well and provides a consistent base for his vocals and krar.
There are several other examples which I've collected here. Hopefully this makes a case for the value of said style, at least within the context of Eritrean music. Enjoy!
And for Toronto residents... remember that you can hear live Ethiopian and Eritrean music on weekends at Habesha Club at Bloor and Ossington (South-East Side)!
Saturday, May 24 @ 8:00 GUNDECHA BROTHERS www.dhrupad.org Enwave Theatre, 231 Queens Quay W. Tickets $25 advance at Harbourfront Centre Box Office 416) 973-4000/ $30 door
Umakant and Ramakant Gundecha are India's leading exponents of the Dhrupad style, the spiritual heart of Indian classical music. Among of the most active performers of Dhrupad, internationally, these dedicated and immensely talented artists have helped to keep alive this ancient and profound tradition, a musical legacy which resonates today amongst yoga and meditation enthusiasts, as well as classical music fans.
The Gundecha Brothers have sung great Hindi poetry by Tulsidas, Kabir, Padmakar, and Nirala in Dhrupad style. They have numerous recordings on H.M.V, Music Today, Rhythm House, Senseworld Music, Sundaram Records, IPPNW Concerts Berlin, Navras and Audio Rec London. They have also sung for many television channels in India and have been broadcast on British, U.S., German and French, Japan and Australian Radio. As well as being an integral part of all of India's most prestigious music festivals, the Gundecha Brothers have performed at many important international festivals and institutions in Europe, the U.S., Australia, Japan and Hong Kong.
An article of mine The Untold Stories of So-Called World Music (consider it a sibling to this blog) is featured in Musicworks' 30th Anniversary (100th)issue.
It is the first in a series dealing with definitions, perceptions, and marketing of world music. Future installments will also include interview fragments with various musicians, and others involved in various forms of non-western music making and marketing. It will also feature hints for finding intriguing sounds online and in the shops of Toronto. Stay tuned!
In addition to having the priviledge of writing for this wonderful publication I will also have the opportunity to play at their anniversary party/ fundraising event in I HAVE EATEN THE CITY this Saturday (April 26th) at the Tranzac at 9PM. The event is $10 and also features Sandro Perri, Feuermusik and Paul Dutton in duo with Michael Snow (aka 2/3s of CCMC!)
