fourth world music

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.