g l o b a l m u s i c a l v i l l a g e
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
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No recording artist has more impeccable street credentials than Joe Bataan, the originator of the New York Latin soul style that paralleled Latin boogaloo and anticipated disco. His musical experience began with street corner doo wop in the 1950s, and came to include one of the first rap records to hit the charts, 1979's "Rap-O, Clap-O." Gypsy Woman (Joe Bataan / Curtis Mayfield)
Fuego (Joe Bataan)
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...
An artist of extrordinary range who became a Brazilian icon and the most illustrious female singer of the tropicália movement. Gal Costa is an awarded singer with an extensive solo discography and international experience. A fundamental presence in the Tropicalia movement, she has been in Brazil's leading team of singers for decades. Since very young, she has been involved with music as a singer and violão player; when her mother's business broke she became a record shop attendant, where he spent long hours listening to music, especially João Gilberto. Lost in the Paradise (Caetano Veloso)
Vou Recomeçar (Erasmo Carlos / Roberto Carlos)
Divino Maravilhoso (Gilberto Gil / Caetano Veloso)
...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)
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: Música de Fundo
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. ..
Nigerian singer who was a key figure in the development of Afro-beat, blending agit-prop lyrics and dance rhythms as a medium for social protest. It's almost impossible to overstate the impact and importance of Fela Anikulapo (Ransome) Kuti (or just Fela as he's more commonly known) to the global musical village: producer, arranger, musician, political radical, outlaw. Roforofo Fight
Question Jam Answer
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.
World group formed in London did much to raise awareness of African music in the early 1970s. 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.
Juaneco y Su Combo have a story ready-made for an episode of Behind the Music, full of hallucinogenic drugs, jungle adventure, hardscrabble barrio life, a fatal plane crash, and plenty of rock & roll. In their heyday in the early '70s, Juaneco y Su Combo were one of the most innovative chicha bands in Peru. And what is chicha, you may ask? Chicha was spontaneously created by the culture clash of the late '60s, when the Indian population of the Peruvian Amazon discovered the Colombian pop music known as cumbia and American rock & roll. Me Robaron Mi Runa Mula
La Marcha del Sapo
Cumbia Pa' La Sierra
...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...
Lole y Manuel was a Spanish Romani musical duo which composed and performed innovative flamenco music. Dolores Montoya Rodríguez (1954) and Manuel Molina Jiménez (1948-2015) are Lole and Manuel. This duo was formed in 1972. Nuevo Dia (Manuel Molina)
Bulerias de la Luna (Manuel Molina)
Sangre gitana y Mora (Manuel Molina)
...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...
Argentinian composer and instrumentalist who became the world's most celebrated advocate of the tango. It's not hyperbole to say that Astor Piazzolla is the single most important figure in the history of tango, a towering giant whose shadow looms large over everything that preceded and followed him. Solitude
L'Evasion
Whisky
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...
Malian music has received a lot of attention the past years, and it’s appeal will continue to spread with discoveries like this being exposed outside the record collectors market. Kanaga De Mopti has the sound of a West African orchestra – unified in rhythm and melody. Kulukutu
Kanaga
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.
Brazilian songwriter and vocalist who became a popular and groundbreaking samba artist. Of the early stars of MPB (música popular brasileira), Chico Buarque was one of the first to become a certifiable pop star. With his warm, nasally croon, elegant phrasing, and considerable skill at lyric writing, Buarque (who is handsome to boot) became extremely popular with women, who loved his understated sensuality. Feijoada Completa (Chico Buarque)
Trocando Em Miúdos (Chico Buarque / Francis Hime)
Pequeña Serenata Diurna )Silvio Rodríguez)
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. ..
Trombonist, composer, and bandleader Willie Colón is one of the pioneers of Latin American music and a noted social and political activist. 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.
Pedro Navaja (Rubén Blades)
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...
