fourth world music

This article about the sound of a loon in Balearic house was in Pitchfork a while back, but was linked to in a review of a compilation of italo-house. I thought it would fit this thread pretty well: http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/474-anaconda-pacific-state-sueno-latino-and-the-story-of-a-sample-that-keeps-coming-back/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9PYhLXG8-Y

This came up on a shuffle earlier and made me very happy for 11 minutes.

It is a lot better than anything Rousseau ever painted imo.

I might include the first Latin Playboys album as akin to the idea of "forth world.'

i feel like i'd slot in Fatima Al Qadiri's Asiatisch in here, even though its influences are more in the post-Night Slugs club scene than Balearic moods https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-SzLpBU63E

Re:Rousseau. Fantastic piece, thanks for posting it! I was looking at that painting in NYC earlier this year.

Hi and speaking of painting, also of blurring the line between (so-called) traditionalism and (so-called) futurism, I'm reminded of "Ancient To The Future", motto of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, which carried over into some of their visuals, like the make-up and costumes, which could seem influenced by The oil and collage paintings Three Musicians were painted in France in 1921 by Pablo Picasso. The paintings feature three musicians, dressed as a monk, Pierrot, and Harlequin, the latter two being stock characters from the Italian Commedia dell'Arte. Thanks, study.com! Or you could say they shared some of Picasso's influences, incl. Commedia and elements of African art, along with African and African-American musical elements of various eras. Also venerable Modernist attempts to mix African and European musical associations, although they didn't go as far as Anthony Braxton. As with Sun Ra (of Bessemer, Birmingham, Chicago, Germantown and elsewhere), it's not so much "Afro-Futurism" as bending time and space---and/or continuing the human jukebox/songster tradition of travelling musicians, making most of their money on the road.
So, "Ancient To and From The Future' might be more accurate---thinking also of mid-60s Dylan, and Beefheart, who seemed to be mixing Howling Wolf vocals with Ornette Coleman-related sax and overall musical conception---then there was Ornette himself with Prime Time, starting with Dancing In Your Head, with guests incl. The Master Musicians of Jajouka, and Bob Palmer of Insect Trust, itself another source of recombinant time-space ventures---and the Asian influences of instrument-builders etc like Harry Partch and Lou Harrison----but is most of this not global enough to fit fourth world? Maybe not, but seems like points of departure for Eno and Hassell in some ways (Eno's mentioned the revelations of African records and Reich's "It's Gonna Rain." Hassell might even have been living in Memphis when Insect Trust was, jamming with them for all I know. Before that, Palmer and Pharoah Sanders were roommates in Little Rock---the South can seem kinda fourth at times).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElKl5s1xQ8o&f=10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbcK0jjKwSQ

Let me put this here for now, but maybe Midori Takada should have her own thread...
https://www.thewire.co.uk/audio/tracks/wire-mix-midori-takada

Ahead of her forthcoming appearance with Faitiche label founder and ambient producer Jan Jelinek at London's Union Chapel, composer Midori Takada has compiled a mix of past recordings from the 1980s and 90s. Takada features on all seven tracks, whether as a soloist or part of a duo, as part of the bands Mkwaju Ensemble or Ton-Klami, or as vibraphone accompaniment to fellow minimal composer Satoshi Ashikawa. Of all her past performances, Takada considers these pieces as being the most ambient in their sounds and sensibilities.

Tracklist

Mkwaju Ensemble
“Ki-Motion”
From Ki-Motion
(Better Days)

Mayumi Miyata & Midori Takada
“Sublimation” (Abridged)
From Nebula
(Sony)

Ton-Klami
“Link 3”
From Ton-Klami In Moers
(Ninety-One)

Mkwaju Ensemble
“Tira-Rin”
From Mkwaju
(Better Days)

Satoshi Ashikawa
“Image Under The Tree”
From Still Way
(Crescent)

Midori Takada
“Futa Aya Asobi + Usuyo”
From Tree Of Life
(BAJ)

Midori Takada & Masahiko Satoh
“Ancient Palace”
From Lunar Cruise
(Epic)

Mkwaju Ensemble - "Tira Rin": wow, this is amazing

Interesting the both Mkwaju Ensemble records were reissued <b>on CD</b> this past January in Japan. Someone must've missed the memo...

I seem to remember the Midori Takada interview in The Wire last year mentioning that WRWTFWW* were reissuing both Mkwaju albums at some point to go with the two MT albums they’ve already put out. No idea when though. My understanding is that this sort of thing takes AGES.

(I’d support a more general Fairlights/Mallets/Bamboo thread for more Japanese stuff in this vein).

* (We Release Whatever The Fuck We Want is a terrible label name)

I seem to remember the Midori Takada interview in The Wire last year mentioning that WRWTFWW* were reissuing both Mkwaju albums at some point to go with the two MT albums they’ve already put out. No idea when though. My understanding is that this sort of thing takes AGES.

Well, the first one's due in June!!
http://wrwtfww.com/album/ki-motion

Just pre-ordered! Here's hoping the first album (which has Joe Hisaishi playing on it) follows shortly too.

Just a random thought and I don't know anything about these labels and music, but since "third world" is not a term in appropriate use anymore (separates world development too much / neatly), and also since a lot of world music is now being more regularly heard by occidentals through films, frequent travels etc, I guess that it would make sense for people to look to reconstruct this feeling of discovering music from afar, either by trying to push the boundaries and finding obscure stuff (say, Madagascar and not just mbiras, Borneo Pygmy and not just Gamelan) or by inventing it.
I don't know if it can be a genre then though, in terms of consistency of approach etc.

I've had a quick look and it doesn't look like it's been mentioned but the Optimo-sequenced Miracle Steps compilation from a couple of years back is really good. Very much toward the new age/ambient end of Fourth World if that's a deal breaker. The Rapoon track is killer.

still need to hear that!

I either missed it or listened a couple of times and let it slip into the playlist abyss. Definitely need to pick up a copy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2daKDHBxV8

nice, thanks for the rec! I really like Rapoon and haven't listened to them in a while, so that alone is enough to draw me in.

wasn't sure whether to post here or on the Balearic thread or some other place, but the New World Science album that came out at the end of last year is good and ~~~vibey~~~: https://templerecordsofficial.bandcamp.com/album/osmos-movements

It doesn't look like anyone's mentioned Optimo's Miracle Steps compilation from a few years ago. It's an excellent introduction to the scene.

https://www.discogs.com/Various-Miracle-Steps-Music-From-The-Fourth-World-1983-2017/master/1160218

Literally six posts back! But agreed, it's a great compilation.

Ah bloody hell

Fourth world music from Moscow, imo much better than this year's Hassell, which I still think is a disappointment:

https://digmoscow.bandcamp.com/album/healing-cycles

Cheers pom, this is killer.

According to Spotify, Fourth World is one of my top genres. I have no idea what it is and have never in my life used it as a descriptor for what I like or seen it as a genre section in a record store. So is it ambient?

the thread has some interesting attempts at answering that question imo !

On RYM it's usually classified as 'tribal ambient' fwiw.

Ah, ok. Johnny Nash was one of my top artists (favorite for reading and sleep), and I play a bunch of Clay Pipe which would seem to fit as well. I wish Spotify unmasked some of the genres on the UI so we could see how things are classified.

Come to think of it, I hear Bennie Maupin's The Jewel in the Lotus as a precursor of 4WM.

tribal ambient is a gross genre name

Some good background reading:

https://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/entry/tribe

Hassell talks a fair bit about here: http://www.furious.com/Perfect/hassell.html

Some of it is a bit, ah, sketchy.

This must be the URL:
http://www.furious.com/perfect/hassell.html

Come to think of it, I hear Bennie Maupin's The Jewel in the Lotus as a precursor of 4WM

why tho? aside from "excursion" it's a fairly generic (and imo somewhat overrated) jazz fusion record

I've always found it to be more impressionistic and meditative than your average early/mid-70s fusion record, and 'Ensenada' in particular, with its proto-ambient harmonic wash over a percussive stutter step, puts me in mind of the vibes discussed itt (sans the electronics, of course). Maybe it's just me? Anyway, I kind of want The Jewel in the Lotus to be 'fairly generic' and 'somewhat overrated' as you say, because it would imply there are countless LPs in the genre that top it, but I just can't think of that many.

yeah I love it, a great album

I also got fourth world as one of my top genres on the Spotify thing. I expect Oregon is what they're referring to as I listen to a lot of them

what’s the relationship between this stuff, spiritual hat jazz, and high prog/fusion? it seems at least adjacent in spirit and sound

orientalism in classical music is another important influence/precursor/parallel e.g. messiaen, debussy, cage. a lot of newer “classical” music e.g. jonathan harvey seems to be coming from a vaguely similar place

Good topic for a PhD thesis in musicology.

Coincidentally I've just been listening to Jon Hassell for the past hour.

from upthread, i think this is generally otm

At its best, fourth-world music does feel like a more honest attempt to process the influence of non-Western musical ideas in a way that (as far as possible) respectfully takes into account their original context, vs overdubbing some funky African drums because it sounds exotic.

But dear god, the language used to describe this is a minefield. Hassell's music is wonderful, but when he starts describing it ("coffee-coloured") I want to slam the laptop lid down. (And he's not moved it on - went to a talk in London by him last year where his big new theory is how the north and south of the equator maps to the north and south of the body - up north it's all brain and intellect, down south it's all sex. Er, right.)

The idea makes sense when listening to JH's music, he just really shouldn't talk about it. Basically the music is far less problematic than his descriptors.

mind/body stuff is oof. shut up and play your trumpet

I like a lot of this music but feel a bit weird about it. I can live with that

This is indeed excellent. If I'd seen it being filed under 'tribal ambient' I probably would've avoided it lol, so cheers Pom.

The top "tribal ambient" picks on RYM for 2020 are all worth checking out:

https://rateyourmusic.com/charts/top/album/2020/g:exact,tribal-ambient/

Stupid genre name, agreed, but the categorization is fairly consistent. My recommended titles are the aforementioned Koyil, Karuna Trio, Contours, MinaeMinae, XYR, Molero, and the Alternate African Reality comp. Tag it as Fourth World or Balearic if it makes it more palatable.

According to Spotify, Fourth World is one of my top genres. I have no idea what it is and have never in my life used it as a descriptor for what I like or seen it as a genre section in a record store. So is it ambient?

― brotherlovesdub, Wednesday, December 2, 2020 10:38 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Funny, yesterday evening my wife said this exact post out loud to me about her Spotify results nearly word for word.

I listened to a bunch of Japanese ambient too which I think is now Fourth World according to the machines at Spotify.

The Contours album ‘Balafon Sketches’ is great

Also yes the Koyil album is lovely, though it reminds me more of U. F. Orb than Jon Hassell.

xp

yep Balafon Sketches is some very nice ear candy, not seen many reviews and I think the only person I've seen repping for it was Ted Gioia.