02-04-2020 > WORLD:MUSiC:MiX # 33 selected ETHNiC FUSiON tracks 1988-1977 # WmW

02-04-2020  > WORLD:MUSiC:MiX # 33 selected ETHNiC FUSiON tracks 1988-1977 # WmW:   Los Lobos, Pata Negra, Issa Juma And Super Wanyika Stars, Dead Can Dance, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Richard Thompson, Lô Borges, Richard Horowitz, Amara Toure, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Silvio Rodríguez, Hailu Mergia and The Walias

M  U  S  I  C / WmW

if you want excitement PRESS SHUFFLE!

LISTEN THE PLAYLIST ON DEEZER.COM

1988-1977

East L.A. barrio band that draws gracefully from rock, Tex-Mex, country, folk, R&B, blues, and traditional Spanish and Mexican music.
Los Lobos
Estoy Sentado Aquí (Cesar Rosas) 2:28
La Pistola y el Corazón (David Hidalgo / Louie Pérez) 3:27
from La pistola y el corazón 1988
Los Lobos used the commercial breakthrough represented by La Bamba to turn to their first love, Mexican folk music, and recorded this excellent collection of norteño songs. If this is a band that seems to do too many things well, in a sense they are at their best when they narrow their focus, and they are certainly masters of their style here.

Pata Negra (literally, Black Leg, which is the best cut of ham in Spain) was formed in the 1980s by brothers Raimundo and Rafael Amador. Combining flamenco with amplified blues guitar, they scored their first hit with the EP Guitarras Callajeras and then again with Blues de la Frontera. The band has broken up and regrouped several times following musical differences between Raimundo and Rafael.
Pata Negra
Bodas de Sangre (Rafael Amador / Federico García Lorca) 3:04
Pasa la Vida (Romero San Juan / Garrido Lopez) 3:51
Blues de la Frontera (Rafael Amador / Raimundo Amador) 4:13
from Blues de la frontera 1987
Flamenco is both a romantic, alluring music and a dynamic, aggressive one, particularly when played and sung by masters of the idiom. Rafael and Raimundo Amador are contemporary players who understand this dualism, and illuminated it through all nine selections. Raimundo Amador provided punch on electric and flamenco guitar and bass, while Rafael sang with both lightness and spark and answered his brother's flashy chords and passages with equally hot, sensual lines and phrases.

Adamu and Abbu are the guitarists featured on most of the tracks on World Defeats the Grandfathers, a compilation of recordings made between 1982 and 1986 by Issa Juma, a Tanzania-born vocalist and bandleader who became a star in Kenya. Juma, a key figure in the creation of Kenyan Swahili rumba, scored numerous hits with the band Les Wanyika. After leaving the band in the early 80s, he led a number of successful ensembles, all with some variation of Wanyika in their names - Wanyika Stars, Super Wanyika Stars, Waanyika, Wanyika Super Les Les.
Whatever the band name, Issa Juma stretched the boundaries of Swahili rumba, adding Congolese flavor and elements of Kenyan benga to the mix. Still, the tracks collected on this delightfully, if puzzlingly titled collection, don't vary greatly in format or style, despite having been recorded in five different sessions with varying personnel. The sound is rhythmically supple, guitar-driven, and relaxed; every track runs eight to nine minutes, giving the players generous (and sometimes excessive) space to stretch out.
Issa Juma And Super Wanyika Stars
Barua [The Letter] 8:34
Mwanaidi 8:51
from World Defeats the Grandfathers / Swinging Swahili Rumba 1982 - 1986
2010 release. Wanyika is Swahili for "wild ones," and it's a fitting moniker for the various related Wanyika bands that dominated the nightclubs, recording studios and radio waves of Nairobi, Kenya, from the early 1970s into the 90s. The Wanyika bands defined Swahili rumba, the dance music popular throughout East Africa: swinging rhythms, ringing electric guitars and strong, earthy vocals. Issa Juma was one of the founders of the Wanyika dynasty and, with his powerful baritone and rhythmic phrasing, the most distinctive of its singers. (His voice has been likened to that of the Jamaican reggae singer Toots Hibbert of Toots & the Maytals.) A prominent member of Simba Wanyika and then Les Wanyika, Juma formed his own Super Wanyika Stars in the early '80s and produced hit after hit until an untimely stroke ended his career in 1988. World Defeats the Grandfathers collects the biggest and best of these hits in one rollicking CD that brings the sound of "the wild ones" to America for the first time.

Dead Can Dance combine elements of European folk music, particularly music from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, with ambient pop and worldbeat flourishes.
Dead Can Dance
De Profundis (Out of the Depths of Sorrow) (Dead Can Dance) 3:58
Mesmerism (Dead Can Dance) 3:52
Circumradiant Dawn (Dead Can Dance) 3:17
from Spleen And Ideal 1985
With this amazing album, Dead Can Dance fully took the plunge into the heady mix of musical traditions that would come to define its sound and style for the remainder of its career. The straightforward goth affectations are exchanged for a sonic palette and range of imagination. Calling it "haunting" and "atmospheric" barely scratches even the initial surface of the album's power. The common identification of the duo with a consciously medieval European sound starts here -- quite understandable, when one considers the mystic titles of songs, references to Latin, choirs, and other touches that make the album sound like it was recorded in an immense cathedral.

Globetrotting French musician whose eclectic body of work encompasses New York's no wave scene and authentic African rhythms. A musician, songwriter, poet, painter, author, and actress, Lizzy Mercier Descloux enjoyed a recording career as eclectic as her résumé would suggest, breaking boundaries as one of the pioneers of New York's no wave scene as well as fusing African rhythms with R&B and pop, anticipating the worldbeat movement before it became a music business buzzword.
Lizzy Mercier Descloux
It's All My Imagination 3:32
Wakwazulu Kwezizulu Rock 2:42
Confidente de la Nuit [French Version] 3:02
from Zulu Rock 1984
Originally released in France as Mais où Sont Passées les Gazelles back in 1984, Zulu Rock is the re-release of Lizzy Mercier Descloux's third and, for many, best album, with a variety of alternate tracks -- sung in French, often with different titles from the originals -- added to the reissue. Some years before Paul Simon scored both attention and protest for his Graceland album, Mercier Descloux had arguably not only beaten him to the punch but had created a more exuberant and fascinating record -- Simon's studied ruminations can have their place, but Mercier Descloux, simply put, actually sounds like she's having fun. A quote from ZE Records' Michel Esteban -- "this South African music reminded us, as incredible as it may sound, of the Velvet Underground" -- sums up how easily Zulu Rock's blend comes together, rejecting exoticism in favor of kinship and play...

British folk-rock icon who is a triple threat talent: dazzling guitarist, strong and insightful songwriter, and gifted vocalist.
Richard Thompson
Tear-Stained Letter (Richard Thompson) 4:42
How I Wanted To (Richard Thompson) 5:12
Two Left Feet (Richard Thompson) 3:53
from Hand Of Kindness 1983
Richard & Linda Thompson's final album together, 1982's Shoot Out the Lights, was widely seen as a document of their collapsing relationship, despite the fact that both of them strongly denied that was ever their intention, and when Richard Thompson released Hand of Kindness in 1983, it was similarly read as a sad and bitter letter from a lovelorn divorcee, conveniently ignoring the fact that Richard left Linda (not the other way around), and was already involved in a new (and happy) relationship by the time he cut the album...

Lô Borges, member of the Clube da Esquina, is a composer of several hits like "Um Girassol Da Cor Do Seu Cabelo" and "Paisagem Da Janela," recorded by Milton Nascimento, Toninho Horta, and other top artists.
Lô Borges
Todo Prazer (Ronaldo Bastos / Lô Borges) 3:02
Uma Canção (Ronaldo Bastos / Lô Borges) 3:25
O Choro (Lô Borges) 1:34
from Nuvem cigana 1982
Nuvem Cigana is the 1982 follow-up to Lô Borges' 1979 classic, Via Láctea, and although this album doesn't reach the same quality as Via Láctea or Borges' self-titled solo debut, it is still very nice and enjoyable. The sound and production are typical for the early '80s, but the songs still preserved some of the characteristic atmosphere that made Lô Borges famous as a performer...

Composer and multi-instrumentalist Richard Horowitz specializes in music from the Middle East. From 1968 to 1979, Horowitz lived in Paris and Morocco, where he studied music, Arabic, French, and Oriental philosophy while performing throughout Europe and Morocco.
Richard Horowitz
Eros Never Stops Dreaming 5:17
Queen of Saba 3:30
from Eros in Arabia 1981
On his 1981 debut album, the composer and percussionist channels the Fourth World spirit of his collaborator Jon Hassell, to spellbinding effect.
...A Moroccan frame drum echoes and distorts on “Eros Never Stops Dreaming.” The processed ney recalls the odd sanza songs that Cameroon musician Francis Bebey was crafting around the same time, while the churning bass figure suggests the cavernous interiors of Arthur Russell’s World of Echo. ..
...From there, the album moves into coarser terrain, taking sandpaper to the magical spells of the opening tracks. The eddying voices and chants of “Queen of Saba” sound like something lifted from a Smithsonian Folkways field recording...
...Fittingly, for an album whose title suggests the Greek god of love crossing the Mediterranean Sea to ancient Arabia, Horowitz’s music seeks a space in between and finds something magical there.

Touré’s 30 year-long career began in the late 1950s in Dakar as part of the Senegalese collective known as Le Star Band de Dakar. Touré and the band enjoyed rapid success and became prominent figures in Senegal’s booming, Cuban-influenced son montuno and pachanga scenes in the 60s. The singer-percussionist later went on to form his own band Black and White based out of Cameroon, where he further refined his unique take on Cuban music by fusing spirited, West African mandingue sounds…
Amara Toure
Amara Touré Et L'Orchestre Black & White
N'Niyo 5:59
Lamento Cubano 5:45
Fatou 4:52
from Amara Toure (1973 - 1980) (Analog Africa No. 18)
The enigmatic Amara Touré from Guinée Conakry finally getting a well deserved compilation showcasing all of the 10 songs ever released between 1973 and 1980. Cuban influenced music of a different kind featuring amazing spaced-out guitar works!!

"Latin music, is it really foreign to us Africans? I don't think so. Listen to the drums, to the rhythm. It all seems very close to us - it feels like it’s our own culture”, declared enigmatic singer Amara Touré... 

Born in Jamaica, based in England, he is a talented reggae singer, writer, and poet; originator of the "dub poetry" style.
Linton Kwesi Johnson
Want Fi Goh Rave 4:21
Sonny's Lettah (Anti-Sus Poem) 3:53
Forces of Viktry 4:53
from Forces of Victory 1979
If Dread Beat An' Blood brought Johnson and initial flush of notoriety, then Forces of Victory was the record that cemented his growing reputation as a major talent. Bovell and the Dub Band swing hard on this set, especially on the album's opening track "Want Fi Goh Rave." This contains some of Johnson's most memorable songs/poems, such as the heartfelt prison saga "Sonny's Lettah" and the confrontational "Fite Dem Back," which he delivers in his trademark sing-song Jamaican patois. Dramatic and intense to the point of claustrophobia, Forces of Victory is not simply one of the most important reggae records of its time, it's one of the most important reggae records ever recorded.
Magnificent, top 10 all-time reggae album, and selected by David Bowie in his top 25 "confessions of a vinyl junkie". Jamaica-born LKJ was a poet, journalist and (political) activist before starting fronting a band in London...

Cuban songwriter who founded the nueva trova movement. In Latin America, his work is on par with Bob Dylan's and John Lennon's.
Silvio Rodríguez
Mujeres 4:18
Rio 2:13
Y Nada Más 3:03
from Mujeres 1978
...Silvio Rodríguez's Mujeres is often regarded as his masterpiece, representing a great artist at his very best. Instrumentally spare and transparent, the record is sonically crystal clear and shining. Rodríguez's guitar is bright and shimmering, and his voice has a bell-like open tone that would never sound quite as unencumbered and free again. The playlist includes some of his very finest material, including the light yet impassioned "Río" and heartbreaking "Y Nada Más." Recordings both before and after this album would have a significantly more produced, polished sound, with complex instrumentation and sophisticated studio work...

An innovative Ethiopian keyboardist, accordionist, and bandleader, Hailu Mergia rose to prominence in the early '70s fronting the Walias Band, an instrumental funk and jazz ensemble and fixture of the Addis Ababa hotel circuit.
Hailu Mergia and The Walias
Tche Belew 5:00
Yikirta Lemminalehu 3:35
Ibakish Tarekigne 4:00
from Tche Belew 1977
So excited for the long-anticipated re-release of “Tche Belew,” Hailu Mergia and the Walias’ 1977 instrumental jazz and groove recording set against the backdrop of post-revolution Ethiopia. Following Mergia’s Shemonmuanaye/Classical Instrument reissue last year, the keyboardist and accordion player has been visiting stages across Europe and North America to much critical acclaim. “Tche Belew” was a groundbreaking recording and the LP became collectible for so many reasons but overall it is just an astounding merger of Ethiopian songs, elegant contemporary arrangements and “western” instrumentation. Completely sublime music from one of the seminal bands of a funk-laced era of Ethiojazz and soul.