06-07-2018 16:06 # WORLD:MiX # 33 selected ETHNiC FUSiON tracks

Justin Adams

06-07-2018 16:06 # WORLD:MiX # 33 selected ETHNiC FUSiON tracks # WmW   Justin Adams, Kolinda, Lila Downs, Lo'Jo, Tony Allen, Samba Toure, Raul Rodriguez, Tania Saleh, Axel Krygier, Dina El Wedidi

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Guitarist/producer and composer Justin Adams is both one of Britain's great bluesmen and African crossover music's leading proponents. First coming to prominence in 1990 with Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart, Adams laid the foundations of his career through working as a respected sideman. His list of credits grew to include internationally known artists such as Sinéad O'Connor, Damien Dempsey, and more. His love affair with the music of North Africa first became evident with the release of his debut solo record in 2001.
Justin Adams
Desert Road (Justin Adams) 4:28
Blue Man (Justin Adams) 4:07
Majonoun and Leila (Justin Adams / Salah Dawson Miller) 6:08
from Desert Road  2001
Justin Adams has a fascination with the space of the desert, and on his solo debut, he recreates the feel, openness, and rhythms of the Western Sahara, where it bleeds into Mali, Morocco, and Mauritania. A proponent of the less-is-more school of playing, he inhabits a place where North African, West African, and blues music intertwine and notes bend, hang, and ultimately mix with a late 20th century recording studio, where samples and beats co-exist. The percussion, from longtime collaborator Salah Dawson Miller, fleshes out the bones. Although Adams is very much a player's player, he lets the rawness of style show through, never flashy, always to the point, whether plucking lead lines or fingerpicking, letting his left hand dictate the melodies and rhythms. The overall effect is soothingly hypnotic, as mesmerizing as shifting waves of desert sand. It's beautiful, often eerily bluesy (a nod to Blind Willie Johnson, one of his idols), and evokes the mystery of one of the earth's last great places. A tiny masterpiece.

Kolinda plays complex folk music with diverse instrumentation and with medieval and Eastern influences. They lived in France for a time, and were produced by Hughes de Courson of the French folk group Malicorne. Kolinda disbanded in 1979, only to reform five years later.
After playing as a group for 11 out of the past 16 years, with 7 albums under their belts, Kolinda is still relatively unknown in their native Hungary and virtually unheard of in North America.
"They're one of the most interesting European groups that I've heard," says Gary Cristall, organizer of the Vancouver Folkfestival, "but they do it in a different way. Even though they were doing traditional stuff, it had a different edge to it. They've never been looked on very favorably in Hungary. They were always a little too far outside."...
Kolinda
Napforduló / Solstice 4:48
Elfelejtett Istenek / Forgotten Gods 6:10
Rohanás 9-ben / Rush in 9 3:38
from Forgotten Gods 2000
Double Bass – Péter Kôszegi
Oboe – Endre Juhász
Percussion – Csaba Gyulai, Tibor Pongrácz
Violin – Lilla Várhelyi
Vocals – Kriszta Kováts
Vocals, Flute, Violin – Dóra Kováts
Vocals, Mandocello, Gadulka, Synthesizer – Péter Dabasi

A Mexican-American Laurie Anderson or if Frida Kahlo were a musician instead of a visual artist. Singer Lila Downs grew up with the culture of her father, a professor from the United States, but eventually turned her back on it to explore the tradition of her mother, a Mixteca Indian from Mexico. In doing so, she has created a very individual strain of song that has indigenous Mexican roots and North American sonorities. Born in 1968, she spent her early years in Mexico, but after her parents split up, she was shuffled off to live with a relative in California. She grew to love music, specifically classical and opera, and began studying those in college. After two years, however, she experienced a crisis, questioning why she was singing and dropping out to become a Deadhead, following the Grateful Dead around the country in a VW bus, earning money by making and selling jewelry, and not singing at all.
Lila Downs
La Sandunga (Máximo Ramón Ortíz) 4:13
Naila (Chuy Rasgado) 3:14
Ofrenda (Lila Downs) 3:10
Bésame Mucho (Consuelo Velasquez) 5:24
from La Sandunga 1999
Downs weaves a numinous tapestry of indigenous Mexican and Latin American traditions with Tex-Mex, North American folk, blues, jazz, rock, funk, and hip-hop inflections. Hers is an astonishing voice whose mimetic brilliance, affecting coloration and soaring range (in Spanish, English, and indigenous Mexican idioms) reflect a mesmerizing creative tension that razes all categories. Listeners unfamiliar with her work may recall her riveting appearance in the 2002 film Frida, wherein she played a Vargas-like singer, a one-woman Greek chorus to the protagonist's unrelieved suffering (even against a powerful cameo by Vargas herself, Downs more than holds her own). The ensemble (piano, clarinet, tenor and baritone sax, guitar, bass, Latin percussion) commands a variety of idioms, in brilliant complement to the singer. For Downs, music entails a sacred quest, one not without risk; but laying personal claim to some untouchable Latin classics...