Rolling Global Outernational Non-West Non-English (Some Exceptions) 2018 Thread Once Known as World Music

He used a Brooklyn based band but for awhile was down here ( both working in a food truck and doing gigs for either Sierra Leone immigrants or crossover audiences )

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/obituaries/janka-nabay-54-dies-carried-an-african-dance-music-worldwide.html

Jon Pareles notes in his Janka obit that after Janka’s 2017 European festivals tour, visa issues prevented him from going to the US, so he returned to his Sierra Leone homeland. There he recently had stomach issues and died.

Fatoumata Diawara North American tour happening. She was great live a few years back.

I missed latest local appearances by Venezuela's Betsayda Machado y La Parrando el Clavo, but the Instagram videos of their Afro-Venezuelan percussion and folk harmony vocals looked just as exciting as when I did see them for a bit at a festival

Malian guitarist Sidi Toure and band touring North America this month

Just splashed out on the new album by Hailu Merga, 'Lala Belu'. Only 6 tracks at full price, which I feel is pretty steep but it's quality and I adore the title track.
title track is incredible, so joyful

Yeah that's become a staple track for me. So simple, so fun

Enjoying that Habibi Funk compilation. Touches on all sorts of R&B styles (as well as Cape Verdean coladera), but the overall feel to me is closer to Garage Rock - raw, sometimes somewhat amateurish, full of power. The ppl behind it seem very earnest and conscientious about it, though perhaps a bit lacking in knowledge of the music that inspired the music they go digging for - they omit that one track is clearly a cover of "Treat Her Right", and attribute "Harlem Shuffle" to a French artist (!).

Liked my one listen to that Habibi Funk comp and need to get back to it. On their Bandcamp page they assert:

Some of our favorite records are best described as Arabic zouk (a genre originating from the Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe) like Mallek Mohamed’s music, Algerian coladera (a popular musical style from the Cape Verdean islands) or Lebanese AOR, which means the process of musical influences displayed on this compilation was much more versatile than just taking Western music as a blueprint and translating it with a local accent.

Yeah, they say the same thing in the liner notes. Don't quite get how AOR doesn't count as "western music", but that's pedantry.

Habibi Funk is a great compilation, period. I guess it was a 2017 release.

I need to hear that Habibi Funk compilation more (and read more about it)

It's kind of a label sampler, the liner notes say something like "look out for a full release of this artist's album soon" on nearly every track.

Drove 45 minutes north of me to a Maryland exurb of DC to see Mali's Fatoumata Diawara. A real nice show. She's multi-talented--- plays guitar, has a great singing voice with range, can dance. She's acted onstage and in movies. No backup singers in her band so she looped her voice at times, so she could then dance some more. She sings in multiple languages and did pleas between songs for peace and respect in African countries. I had just seen the documentary "Mama Africa: Miriam Makeba", and Fatoumata's power, charisma and down to earth sensibility reminded me of Makeba a bit.

I think it's a shame Diawara couldn't have been on the Coachella bill-- lots of indie acts on the bottom of that bill that she could have taken the place of. Oh well, almost everything on this thread gets dismissed as obscure "world music" niche stuff that's not as relevant as American or Brit pop, rap, indie, r'n'b or country.

I don't have a grand thesis to offer, but it's interesting (for lack of a better word) that the ease of access provided by digital/social media hasn't lessened the parochialism of north american music culture. I might even say it's worse now than, say, 15 years ago? Not sure I could back that up tbh, and a lot of it probably has to do with the reduction in venues for writing about music / metric-driven editorial decisions about what gets covered, but it feels to me like there hasn't been anything "world" that really grabs attention in a long while. I'm probably forgetting something big and obvious though

tal national are pretty popular from the last show i saw of theirs

probably something about media outlets though

Songhoy Blues, Tinariwen, Jupiter & Okwess all seem to have a decent amount of crossover appeal

ha I was actually thinking of Tinariwen as an old band that got attention in an earlier era, so I guess this is all pretty relative. On that note, I don't know who Jupiter & Okwess are! and I need to check out Tal National

and tbh I was thinking more of stuff at the Beyonce/Weeknd level of global pop (afrobeats, dancehall, soca, kpop, etc) rather than the stuff that usually ends up on this thread. I guess WizKid was supposed to play at Coachella but didn't?

anyway, media budgets are probably the main factor. there just isn't anyone willing to pay someone to report on what's going on in Mumbai or Rio de Janeiro or Johannesburg like there was in my probably rose-colored memories of music media around the turn of the century

anyone else on here been enjoying the gumba fire comp on soundway? synthy 80s boogie from south africa, some amazing cuts on that thing but this is my favourite right now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U12gemqcv1g

anyway, media budgets are probably the main factor. there just isn't anyone willing to pay someone to report on what's going on in Mumbai or Rio de Janeiro or Johannesburg like there was in my probably rose-colored memories of music media around the turn of the century

― rob, Monday, April 16, 2018 8:4

That's true. But alot of it really comes down to the individual writer (and if there's not a pr person hyping the stuff too). The Washington Post ran a freelancer's piece a year and a half ago about afrobeats/afropop; but they haven't had anything since. I was reading critic/author Amanda Petrusich in the New Yorker say that she doesn't use Spotify,and only occasionally looks at Youtube so I guess expecting her to cover music that isn't mailed to her or that she can't buy, would be difficult. Former NY Times jazz critic critic Ben Ratliff used to go to Brazil and current New York Times writer Jon Pareles has as well. Peter Margasak in Chicago covers African music like Tal National as well as avante-jazz stuff. But Pitchfork's coverage is so hit and miss.

the ease of access provided by digital/social media hasn't lessened the parochialism of north american music culture

Well, has it done anything for North American cinema culture, or literature, or anything? I feel like this ease of access has been totally amazing for ppl already inclined to seek out stuff from other cultures in the first place, but it hasn't really lead to a more global world culture.

(I do wonder if ppl click on random Korean or Spanish shows on netflix sometimes. I hope so!)

anyone else on here been enjoying the gumba fire comp on soundway? synthy 80s boogie from south africa, some amazing cuts on that thing but this is my favourite right now:

Yeah, really nice. There's a lot of Boogie and a lot of House in there but I was surprised at how much it truly feels like its own thing.

curmudgeon: you're right that some established critics likely have the clout to follow their curiosity and write about something "riskier," but I can't really speculate as to why they aren't. tbf, I feel like the Quietus does a good job on this front, and while their tastes rarely match mine the Singles Jukebox consistently reviews non-anglophone pop songs that I never see mentioned elsewhere. I also haven't picked up an issue of the Wire in a very long time, and there are probably other venues doing work that I don't see.

Daniel_Rf: I think there are some pretty big format (meaning both digital file formats and length, not to mention differing language/translation issues) and consumption differences between music, literature, and cinema that make comparing them difficult. There aren't digital platforms for literature like there are for music; and as you mentioned, Netflix has actually invested quite a bit in offering "foreign" content, certainly compared to network/cable tv/your average multiplex. Of course, we have no idea how popular those shows & movies are, but they feel a little more visible to me than the music does. That said, I take your point that for lots of people, music (and lit/movies) not in English has very limited appeal and ease of access won't affect those attitudes.

These things are very difficult to compare, I agree. I guess I was just thinking of the early promise of the internet - culture and infomation distributed across the world! - and how this has certainly come true for a small cadre of enthusiasts, but the mainstreaming of the internet has not magically brought it about for the majority. I guess it's pretty naive to think it could have.

Latest Sidi Toure and band album on Thrilljockey has a nice rocking Malian groove feel. They’re touring North America now.

Aww, I missed this Sidi Toure appearance streaming--Apr. 22 - Charleston, WV - NPR Mountain Stage Radio.

The Sidi Toure April 24th 6 to 7pm US EST gig at Kennedy Center will be video-streamed by Kennedy Center on Facebook Live, and video archived on the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage website

Got to admit only discovered this through James Yorkston tweeting that he plays on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l37oVFrobGA&feature=youtu.be

Went back and checked out her other work thanks to it.

Try again with the youtube link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l37oVFrobGA

https://ostinatorecords.bandcamp.com/album/abu-obaida-hassan-his-tambour-the-shaigiya-sound-of-sudan

http://www.sikhnet.com/gurbani/artist/manika-kaur-kandhari

That video Dan W posted is of this Australia raised singer Manika Kaur who moved to Dubai . A bit too polished maybe but her voice still shines

X-post —ooh, I like Hassan’s rhythms and the call & response aspect to the vocals. Looks like another nice effort from the Ostinato folks who did the Somali Broken Dates comp

http://www.banningeyre.com/blog/2018/4/29/the-big-bira

With the recent changes politically in Zimbabwe, Thomas Mapfumo decided to return after 14 years in exile. He just did a big show and Afropop.org 's Banning Eyre has been there blogging about it.

Eyre also has a book about Mapfumo.

Mapfumo with Tuki (Oliver M) can still draw 20,000 there

Couple of releases at the weekend caught my eye.

Partir by Elina Duni, jazz tinged somber folk from the Balkans and beyond. https://open.spotify.com/album/2Rz462A64on4veQuq9RRL2?si=NXiy54oQQR6wekgJwIDpMg

SOAR by Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita, second collaboration between the harp and kora players. https://open.spotify.com/album/2s5WYOg1fezE42u6X0GqJc?si=9xI9lJXgRwCgqDnIbEIovg

Mdou Moctar, Tuareg guitarist on another North American tour now. You may remember him from that Purple Rain in the desert homage movie. In Philadelphia any day now plus more gigs across the continent.

3 Nigerian afropop stars are on individual tours of North America this month: Davido, Olamide and Burna Boy

Moctar has his great band with him

Fascinating to me Banning Eyre interview about Congolese music from the 1970s to the present with Lubangi Muniania runs Tabilulu Productions and is an international consultant on African art and culture . Here's an interesting little bit about "research music." Parts of this I think ended up in a recent Afropop program “Congolese Music: The Fifth Generation.”

There are some interesting tracks from Abeti on that Zaire 74 release that came out last year, the African sets from the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle music festival.

Abeti was doing alternative. Lokua Kanza came out of Abeti. If you listen to early Abeti Masikini, the focus was not on lyrics. It was on the sound. But later, Abeti went back to doing soukous and rumba to go global, because that alternative genre, people didn’t take it well when it came out of Congo. They called it “research music.” You’ve got to research your sound. That’s where you see Jupiter and Okwess.

They call it research music because they are going deep into tradition, but they’re also digging deep into other rhythms, ethnic styles that have not been exploited.

Right. They do that. But not in a popular way. It’s like jazz in a way. They want to hear creativity, but in music that makes them dance. Now today, there’s a growing group of people who are becoming interested in that sound. But that sound has been there. You had Bobongo Stars, alternative Congolese music. Dominic Kanza came out of Bobongo Stars.

http://afropop.org/articles/the-state-of-congolese-music-2018-an-interview-with-lubangi-muniania

More from that interview:

People are feeling abandoned. So one of the ways to keep them up and happy, interested in the country, is music and sports. And sport is not doing too well. They didn’t make it to the World Cup. We were looking forward to it, so they could have something for 2018. But when you have people like Ferre Gola doing amazing concerts in the country, and outside, it brings pride. So it becomes, O.K., Ferre Gola represents me. That’s me ambassador. That’s my leader. That’s my role model. Fally Ipupa represents me. That kind of stuff.

Meanwhile for the Congolese diaspora:

These are kids who grew up abroad, in the Congolese diaspora, but they still want to identify with Congo. There’s one big one. His name is Maitre Gims. He’s in Paris. He is the biggest artist in France.

... So Franco would release a record, and people everywhere would do something similar. This is what’s going on right now a little bit. But it’s different now because it’s on the world stage: Paris, New York. So they do it like to do it there, but with Kinshasa stuff. And you see that in the dance moves. The dance moves that are taking over come out of ndombolo. They combine hip-hop and ndombolo, and that has driven the world crazy. You see ndombolo in Nigerian dance moves, Côte d’Ivoire, early coupé decalé. You see them dance. The kids in Europe. It’s ndombolo-based, and then you add hip-hop moves. And they become creative. If they do hip-hop moves, watch. You will see ndombolo moves coming up right after that. But the way they’ve combined those dance steps, it’s like something totally new. So really, it’s taking over. In early 2000s, nobody would think it would be what it is today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0CNCbNv534

^ new ebo taylor is tremendous

Lusafrica have reissued Bonga's first two albums, Angola 72 and Angola 74. Recorded in exile in Paris while Angola was still under Portuguese rule. The dude is very much a legend in the Portuguese-speaking music world, and most of the stuff by him I've heard is in Portuguese and a lot more straightforward Pop than these albums. There's a lot of the Angolan semba rhythm, which influenced the Brazilian Samba, and you can really hear it. He sings in original Angolan languages (I wish I knew a less awkward way to express that). I recommend Angola 74 particularly - he's got a lot of Cape Verdean backing musicians on that one, and even does a version of "Sodade" (better known as Cesaria Evora's signature song).

Heard one of those Bonga albums and liked it years ago. Haven't listened since, but I should.

x-post -when you said new Ebo Taylor you meant it. At 81 this Ghanaian's releasing Yen Ara, produced by Justin Admas

ebo claims it's the best record he's ever made as well

Still haven't gotten to Ebo Taylor (or re-listened to Bonga) but i heard the Afropop Worldwide “Congolese Music: The Fifth Generation.”

Listened to some of that Ebo Taylor. Good stuff, Highlife with horns...

Congo has Jupiter & Okwess with the Congolese "research music" and Ghana has Ebo Taylor.

guitarist Mdou Moctar visited Episcopal High School in Alexandria today and there is awesome footage of him playing outdoors with kids dancing around him to the music. Don't have the link handly, but it's been shared on Facebook, Instagram and twitter.

Moctar is doing a free noon-time show right now at the Library of Congress in DC

Seeing more footage of Moctar at Episcopal High. Great stuff.

But I still haven't delved back into Bonga albums of Angolan music yet. Still need to.

These performances are mind-bending

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W4pGMwAGIw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4iKmXTfUv8

wow, yes!