Compilations of early recordings of World Music - 1920's-50's

I adore stuff like this and don't listen to/know enough of it. Let this thread thrive!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/3036914048/sr=1-1/qid=1203557152/ref=dp_image_0/103-1605082-3084626?ie=UTF8&n=5174&s=music&qid=1203557152&sr=1-1

robert crumb-curated (warning for the hipster-phobes among us)

oops: here's the link:

http://www.amazon.com/Presents-Women-Singers-Robert-Crumb/dp/3036914048/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1203557152&sr=1-1

http://www.rounder.com/images/album/ROUN/ROUN5017_Cover.jpg

http://www.mentomusic.com/images/mentomadnessLarge.jpg

oh, yes, Mento Madness! that is great!

IIRC there was a really great African High Life comp on... Fontana? Some weird major label. It has a great orange & red cover. NOT the one on Blue Note. I couldn't find a picture but a GIS for" "african high life" + lp turned up some pretty LOL things, like Sun City Girls and Rallizes Denudes LP covers (first page of results.)

I thought I posted about it last night, but the comp "I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore" on Mississippi isn't entirely devoted to this stuff (some gospel & blues too) but there's great ethnic 78s comped on there. I don't have the sleeve handy, but there's great Hawaiian, calypso, Greek, some almost-exotica stuff on there too.

Also, a friend of mine is trying to get rid of a bunch of Polish 78s, if anyone wants 'em (doubtful.)

I bet that Baltimore record store owner who put together the Black Mirror collection might want them

Ian Nagoski? I think I've got his contact info around somewhere, actually. Or at least his ebay ID.

Big fan of these, made me think about guitar in a new way:
http://www.rounderstore.com/images/catalog/1166110122_0.JPG http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41DGKV3642L._AA240_.jpg

x-post re Ian N.

Yes. The True Vine Record shop, 1123 w. 36th st., baltimore, md 21211

I think they're working on the store's website right now, so I'm not sure of an e-mail contact

There are various good comps of various African rhumba musics that evolved into various afro-pop guitar band styles

I want that Victrola Favourites album bad.

And High Life has got to be the coolest name for a type of music.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61CvM8zG8SL._SS400_.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5191SS8FRDL._SS400_.jpg

http://www.yazoorecords.com/2202.htm

I'm fond of these:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61Mz8R1C05L._SS500_.jpg
http://www.bluebeat.com/i/an/2/0/2/9/2/l29202.jpg

Daniel Padden from Volcano The Bear has a very nice piece in the 'Epiphanies' slot at the back of this months issue of The Wire (April 2008) about his interest in indigenous/world music.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61L%2BPeJjjML._SS500_.jpg

just buy it

http://www.amazon.com/Song-Crooked-Dance-Bulgarian-Traditional/dp/B000005ZC8

http://excavatedshellac.wordpress.com/2008/05/26/jararaca-e-ratinho-sapo-no-saco/

http://sombarato.blogspot.com/2007/08/native-brazilian-music-leopold.html

http://bp1.blogger.com/_XlquDvTK8Jw/Rs2UdWVdnWI/AAAAAAAAA5M/2mfDeCbsBjw/s1600-h/NBM1FC.jpg

http://www.folkways.si.edu/searchresults.aspx?sPhrase=music%20of%20the%20world%27s%20peoples&sType='phrase'

I only have side one of volume one, taped off late night radio about fifteen years ago onto a cassette, have listened to it countless times. Never knew the title of the compilation until today's Excavated Shellac post filled in the blank. Downloaded the pdf of Henry Cowell's liner notes... are these the earliest overview? In any case I can vouch for that first twenty minutes, I feel completely alive listening to this

http://www.dustygroove.com/item.php?id=cncfrpyrqg&ref=browse.php&refQ=incl_oos%3D1%26amp%3Bincl_cs%3D1%26amp%3Bkwfilter%3Dbroken%2Bheart

Living Is Hard: West African Music in Britain, 1927–1929

From Amazon:
This series opener presents the music of the West African underground of 1920s Britain, recorded at Hayes and released on the Zonophone label (which exported nearly all the records to West Africa). You can hear Caribbean influences here, the promise of highlife there, but Living Is Hard mostly disavows fusion and assimilation. And by contrast with antecedents in the history of black music in Britain, minstrelsy and spirituals, for example, ragtime and jazz.

The Juju Roots record depicted by Hurting 2 above is great.

http://music.cdbpdx.com/ArabicMusic/

you can listen to snippets of all the tracks from the living is hard comp and the baghdad comp on the honest jon website. sounds like good stuff. i might actually pick the living is hard as the one to buy.

http://media2.nacs.uci.edu/rgarfias/mp3/japan/japan.html

Living Is Hard: good in short doses.

Living is Hard, to me, sounded like any of a dozen of Folkways or Ocora records, but showcased as pop rather than folk music. I only listened to about half of it though.

R.I.P. Wendo Kolosoy the “father of Congolese rumba.” Had his first hit in 1948, “Marie Louise.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article4445583.ece

-- curmudgeon, Saturday, August 2, 2008 4:47 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

this post will sound obnoxious, so i apologize in advance, but...

everyone seems to talk about these type of comps are so rare, so unusual... but there are gajillions of comps of prewar music from all over the world, on LP and CD. it's just that there seems to be lots of recent activity trying to market this music to, for the lack of a better word, hipsters.

ain't nothing wrong with that, i suppose. i am super, super, SUPER psyched for the "world is shaking" comp of 1950s congolese rumba which is set to be next in the honest jon's series. i have the two comps of ngoma 78s (now OOP) on the popular african music label, which are must-haves, as well as the all-time classic "roots of rumba rock"-- and that's pretty much it for this era of congo music on CD, a few stray wendo kolosoy tracks here and there notwithstanding. there are a few tracks of this era on a few old LPs, but frankly not much--mostly it's post-independent stuff, when african jazz and ok jazz began changing the sound in considerable ways.

there were a few big labels in leopoldville at the time: ngoma, opika, olympia, loningisa. the "roots of rumba rock" is taken from loningisa (folks like bowane and dewayon, and early appearances by franco luambo), there are the two ngoma comps. i don't recognize many of the names on the honest jon's comp, so i wonder if they were on one of those other labels (one associated with gramophone? or perhaps an EMI/gramophone label was actually recording and releasing congo music apart from the aforementioned labels?

p.s. if you haven't heard wendo you owe it to yourself. his music, particular the 1950s stuff, is astonishing. but so was the work of other congo musicians of that period: leon bukasa, paul mwanga, henri bowane, etc.

pertinent: Honest John's has just released a 4LP box or 2CD set of 1920s middle eastern recordings. Haven't heard it yet, but it's on the way...

it is called "Open Strings"

isn't that 1 CD of older recordings and 1 CD of newer stuff "inspired by/related to" them?

That post did sound really obnoxious.

sorry! i warned you.

anyway people should check out the fremeaux catalogue. the sound quality is honestly not so hot, on average, but they have amazing stuff.

You appear to be right, Am.. I hadn't realized that. A lot of the stuff on the second disc (or latter two LPs) looks cool to me, though.

21. Sir Richard Bishop Olive Oasis 03:22 listen
22. Micah Blue Smaldone Martissa 04:19 listen
23. Michael Flower Lake Of Fire 06:29 listen
Side F
24. Charlie Parr Paul Bunyan's Fall 10:38 listen
25. Six Organs Of Admittance Goat, Thorns And Brick 03:23 listen
Disc 4
Side G
26. Bruce Licher Mesopotamia 04:27 listen
27. Paul Metzger Emel 13:20 listen
Side H
28. Rick Tomlinson Surfin' UAE 03:55 listen
29. Steffen Basho-Jughans Improvisation 6 07:54 listen
30. MV & EE You Matter, Sometimes 04:26 listen

I really like Six Organs, Paul Metzget, Basho-Junghans, Bishop, Flower... I find MV & EE to be hit & miss but it's still potentially cool.

In response to amateurist's post there, I had a thought while listening to a CD of gagaku and buddhist chants on World Arbiter I ordered (from Honest Jons!) recently. These are all taken from 78s - is part of the appeal that the listener is actually hearing the medium as well as the music? That is, would I like it as much if it was in some way far more hi fidelity, or do I prefer to hear the crackle and hiss for added "authenticity"? Would I enjoy listening to note for note copies of this music recorded by contemporary musicians in a modern studio. Probably not. Not sure what this says about what I'm looking for in a release of this kind really.

Can't believe I missed this thread before now. May it bounce to the top of New Answers again and again.

BTW, that Open Strings disc Ian refers to upthread is now available on eMusic.

http://www.creativealliance.org/events/2015/ian-nagoski-100-moons

July 5th in Baltimore at Creative Alliance:

Ian Nagoski is a Baltimore-based music researcher of early 20th century music in languages other than English. Ian will transport the audience with an immersive 90-minute exploration of disappearing music he has unearthed and its social/cultural roots and routes. He’ll also share the love of his findings both by listening and discussing various carefully chosen pieces that are like shellac gems.

Recently, he has published acclaimed collections of Hindustani classical vocal music (100 Moons and Kesarbai Kerkar 1944-54), Greek urban folk music (Rita Abatzi - 1933-37), music from the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Widow’s Joy: Eastern European Immigrant Dances, 1925-30), and has published writings for Yeti, Sound American, Ephemeroptera Quarterly and The Wire.

https://open.substack.com/pub/levidayan/p/an-interview-with-ian-nagoski?r=2ck8a&utm_medium=ios

Ian Nagoski talks about collecting old music from around the world, studying it, researching it and digitizing some of it

A one-man machine, that guy. Pretty much anything on Canary is worth at least a listen.