GYPSY WOMAN > WORLD:MUSiC:MiX # 33 selected ETHNiC FUSiON tracks 1968-1979 # WmW: Joe Bataan, Gal Costa, Pentangle, Carlos Paredes, Fela Kuti, Osibisa, Juaneco y Su Combo, Lole y Manuel, Astor Piazzolla, L'Orchestre Kanaga de Mopti, Chico Buarque, Willie Colón, Rubén Blades
M U S I C / WmW
if you want excitement PRESS SHUFFLE!
if you want excitement PRESS SHUFFLE!
1968-1979
Gypsy Woman (Joe Bataan / Curtis Mayfield)
Fuego (Joe Bataan)
from Gypsy Woman 1968
Born Peter Nitollano, of African-American/Filipino parents, Joe Bataan grew up in Spanish Harlem, where he ran with Puerto Rican gangs and absorbed R&B, Afro-Cuban, and Afro-Rican musical influences. His music career followed a pair of stints in Coxsackie State Prison. Self-taught on the piano, he organized his first band in 1965 and scored his first recording success in 1967 with "Gypsy Woman" on Fania Records. The tune was a hit with the New York Latin market despite its English lyrics sung by Bataan, and exemplified the nascent Latin soul sound. In early anticipation of the disco formula, "Gypsy Woman" created dance energy by alternating what was fundamentally a pop-soul tune with a break featuring double-timed handclaps...
Lost in the Paradise (Caetano Veloso)
Vou Recomeçar (Erasmo Carlos / Roberto Carlos)
Divino Maravilhoso (Gilberto Gil / Caetano Veloso)
from Gal Costa 1969
...Mere months after the release of this relatively safe debut, however, Costa and Veloso found themselves alongside Os Mutantes, Tom Zé, and Gilberto Gil, recording contributions to Tropicália: Ou Panis et Circencis, the unofficial manifesto of the Tropicalismo movement. The compilation dove headfirst into avant-garde experimentalism, embracing the psychedelic tendencies happening in American underground circles, and the politically charged energy of radical dissent to Brazil's ongoing military dictatorship. This wild new hybrid of Brazilian pop and far-reaching outside influences resulted in something instantly miles away from everything that came before it, and Costa's self-titled Tropicalismo debut is no exception...
Virtuoso British folk-rockers who set themselves apart with a unique jazz flavor and the distinctive twin guitars of Bert Jansch and John Renbourn. Were Pentangle a folk group, a folk-rock group, or something that resists classification? They could hardly be called a rock & roll act; they didn't use electric instruments often, and were built around two virtuoso guitarists, Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, who were already well-established on the folk circuit before the group formed.
A Maid That's Deep in Love (Traditional)
Cruel Sister (Traditional)
Jack Orion (Traditional)
from Cruel Sister 1970
Originally released in 1970, this was the fourth release from the British folk-rock group Pentangle and may qualify as their swan song. With only five songs, Jacqui McShee, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Terry Cox, and Danny Thompson create a dense, layered sound that is woven within the fabric of each song like a tapestry... The crowning jewel of this masterpiece is the epic "Jack Orion," though one has difficulty imagining what possessed Pentangle to record a folk song that took up an entire side of an album. Jansch shares vocals with McShee on this multiple part song, and generous time is left for Renbourn to turn in a bluesy, then jazzy, electric solo. Cruel Sister shows Pentangle at their artistic height, combining all of their skill and inspiration to create a vital and enduring album.
The Portuguese guitar is a 12-string instrument with double courses (string pairs) and a small body, similar in tone to the mandolin or Greek bouzouki. Its penetrating sound is championed by Carlos Paredes, a sensitive, even shy performer who balances tradition and spontaneous invention. His original approach was likened to the freshness of Ornette Coleman by bassist Charlie Haden, who is himself a minor cultural hero in Portugal.
Mo!imento Perpétuo
Mudar de Vida: Tema
Mudar de Vida: Música de Fundo
from Movimento perpétuo 1971
Parades made this incredible music in 1971, after being imprisoned for opposing the Portuguese dictatorship... Paredes was a master of the guitarra, a 12-string lute/guitar hybrid that he played with a virtuosity that never descended into showing off. Known in Portugal as “the Man of a Thousand Fingers”, Parades made this incredible blend of early music, fado, classical, jazz and folk in 1971, after being imprisoned for opposing the Portuguese dictatorship. He would walk around his cell pretending to play guitar, making guards think he had gone insane: in fact, he was practising his scales. ..
Roforofo Fight
Question Jam Answer
from Roforofo Fight 1972
It's true that Fela Kuti's early-'70s records tend to blur together with their similar groupings of four lengthy Afro-funk-jazz cuts. In their defense, it must be said that while few artists can pull off similar approaches time after time and continue to make it sound fresh, Kuti is one of them. Each of the four songs on the 1972 album Roforofo Fight clocks in at 12 to 17 minutes, and there's a slight slide toward more '70s-sounding rhythms in the happy-feet beats of the title track... The James Brown influence is strongly heard in the lean, nervous guitar strums of "Question Jam Answer," and the horns cook in a way that they might have had Brown been more inclined to let his bands go into improvisational jams.
Happy Children (Osibisa)
Adwoa (Osibisa)
Bassa Bassa (Osibisa)
from Happy Children 1973
In the wake of the massive early-'70s success of Santana, a flurry of groups that combined rock with traditional percussion were signed to major labels. Osibisa, though a completely different animal than Carlos Santana and crew, were one of these groups. On Happy Children, the band's fourth album and one of their best, Osibisa emerge as a true world fusion group, merging a myriad of styles to an extent unmatched by almost any other unit of the period... Though they don't generally approach anything resembling a pop tune here (which might make the album a hard listen for the casual funk fan), Happy Children is a fascinating glimpse at a band successfully fusing a celebratory, pre-rock energy with ancient rhythms and modern jazz harmony.
Me Robaron Mi Runa Mula
La Marcha del Sapo
Cumbia Pa' La Sierra
from El Gran Cacique 1974
...The other members of the band, which now called itself Juaneco y Su Combo, had already heard surf music and spaghetti Western soundtracks on cassettes brought in by the oil workers. They could pick up Colombian cumbia and Brazilian carimbo, a percussion-based pop music, on their radios, and began blending those elements with the traditional music of the Shipibo people...
Nuevo Dia (Manuel Molina)
Bulerias de la Luna (Manuel Molina)
Sangre gitana y Mora (Manuel Molina)
from Nuevo día 1975
...This couple was the first exponent of flamenco music aimed at a non-exclusively flamenco audience. They were one of the first precursors of the musical stream called "New flamenco".
Lole and Manuel were married, and were a professional couple. Manuel Molina and Dolores Montoya are members of Romani families of artistic descent. Manuel was the son of Manuel Molina Acosta, better known as "El Encajero", who was a professional guitar player. Lole is the daughter of flamenco singer and dancer Antonia Rodríguez Moreno, better known as "La Negra", and her father was the dancer Juan Montoya. Their daughter is the singer Alba Molina...
Solitude
L'Evasion
Whisky
from Lumière 1976
Piazzolla's hands, tango was no longer strictly a dance music; his compositions borrowed from jazz and classical forms, creating a whole new harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary made for the concert hall more than the ballroom (which was dubbed "nuevo tango"). Some of his devices could be downright experimental -- he wasn't afraid of dissonance or abrupt shifts in tempo and meter, and he often composed segmented pieces with hugely contrasting moods that interrupted the normal flow and demanded the audience's concentration. .. The '70s started out well for Piazzolla, as an acclaimed European tour brought the opportunity to form a nine-piece group to play his music in especially lush fashion. However, all was not well. Argentina's government was taken over by a conservative military faction, and everything that Piazzolla symbolized -- modern refinement, an ostensible lack of respect for tradition -- suddenly became politically unwelcome...
Kulukutu
Kanaga
from L'Orchestre Kanaga de Mopti 1977
Kindred Spirits kicks off its Mali-series with one of the most in demand Mali records, by L’Orchestre Kanaga De Mopti. They are one of the region’s modern orchestra groups, who were were able to flourish in the golden age of West African state music funding. In 1977 the Malian government owned label ‘Mali Kunkan’, released a series of LP’s, including this must-have gem.
Feijoada Completa (Chico Buarque)
Trocando Em Miúdos (Chico Buarque / Francis Hime)
Pequeña Serenata Diurna )Silvio Rodríguez)
from Chico Buarque 1978
Après Os Saltimbancos (1977), un disque léger, ludique et récréatif, Chico Buarque retourne à ses fondamentaux grâce à Chico Buarque (1978), un album éponyme qui mélange MPB et Samba. "Feijoada Completa", qui introduit l'album, s'inscrit dans la tradition Samba chère au compositeur - interprète. .. Sans être transcendant, Chico Buarque est un assez bon album, de facture classique, avec beaucoup de variété, quelques facilités, des arrangements vraiment à la hauteur et des voix, dont celle de Chico Buarque, plutôt convaincantes. ..
Rubén Blades is one of the most successful vocalists and songwriters in the history of Panamanian music and salsa. A former member of bands led by Ray Barretto and Willie Colón, Blades has continued to influence salsa music with his highly literate, politically tinged lyrics and his modern arrangements, which substitute the usual horn and Latin percussion sections with synthesizers and drum sets.
Plástico (Rubén Blades)
Pedro Navaja (Rubén Blades)
Siembra (Rubén Blades)
from Siembra 1979
The high point of Willie Colón's ongoing collaboration with Rubén Blades (and close to a career peak for both artists), Siembra exploded on the salsa scene in 1978 and has never been forgotten by fans. Beginning with a minute of playfully deceptive quasi-disco arrangements, Colón and his band slip into a devastating salsa groove for the opener, "Plástico," on which Blades first criticizes America's throwaway society and then brings all of Latin America together with a call to unity...
