Rolling Global Outernational Non-West Non-English (Some Exceptions) 2018 Thread Once Known as World Music

The Mdou show I saw was very loud.

egregious and awful dancing in the audience.

Ha. A number of west African acts I have seen invite folks onstage to dance-- that's where I dislike the awful dancers. Invariably, some goofy dancers insist on going onstage. Thankfully they are usually balanced out by the skilled dancers, able to shake their hips and do other movements in an impressive artistic fashion.

I saw Amadou & Mariam last night in a tables and chairs sit-down place, but they encouraged everyone to get up and dance at one point. I was near the stage. I hope no one thought my movements were egregious. It was a good show too btw. I like Amadou's guitar playing and Mariam's vocals. Plus their backing singer/dancer is good. I don't know the material from their most recent album but it sounded good, along side the older cuts I do know. Last time I saw them Amadou stretched out some guitar solos in a way that was not interesting, he was more concise last night.

Saw a video of a Noura Mint Seymali and band song at Tropicalia in DC last night plus one from the night before at
Lincoln Center in NY. A powerful voice and her husband on guitar has such a cool sound. They’re from Mauritania

Love the two Noura Mint Seymali albums I own.

saw Orlando Julius & the Heliocentrics live this Saturday

both crowd, venue and weather could have been better, but band was very groovy, and I enjoyed it

Orlando seemed quite tired, though, not strong in his solos, outshined by the young trumpeteer :/

Listened to the Turkish Ladies comp out on Sony. Gorgeous packaging and the music fluctuates between traditional styles and a more Disco take. Would've liked more of a breakdown of the scene in the liner notes - genres are mentioned but not contextualized, singers brought up within the essay but not really given their own spotlight. Translated lyrics though, which is nice.

listening to 2017 from high-pitched, slightly nasal (but in a unique good way) singer Leila Gobi from Mali. Her uptempo rhythms from her band are impressive too

I like the Leila Gobi one a bit more than Bombino’s latest Deran. Deran is good too though. He’s got that North African desert guitarist style down.

Back in the end of May, folks were writing about Angola here. Just remembered that writer Jonathan Bogart put a guide to Angolan pop circa 2016 on Medium & he has been tweeting occasionally YouTube videos of Angolan pop.

https://www.voanews.com/a/leo-sarkisian-voa-music-time-in-africa-program-dies/4432645.html

Sarkisian who died at 97 led such a cool life. I saw him speak at the VOA in DC in 98. He traveled in the Middle East and then from the 1960s on to ? With his wife and his reel to reel tape recorder in a number of African countries. He hosted the VOA’s Music Time in Africa program that was very popular there. A nice guy who invited the audience at the talk I was at, to come back to his office and see some of the memorabilia he collected over the years.

He was an Armenian American who spoke multiple languages and was also a musician himself

When he retired at age 91, this article was published. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/pioneering-collector-of-african-music-retires-from-voice-of-america/2012/09/28/a9c10744-0998-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.80ea44d6179c

I

Saw on twitter that some Sarkisian projects are now being digitized. He recorded Fela way back when, wonder if that’s available.

Haitian band Tabou Combo are on a 50th anniversary tour. I like their older stuff that melded Afro-Caribbean rhythms with James Brown funk. Gradually they have followed Haitian trends and added more syrupy and schmaltzy keyboards, and modern r'n'b. But I haven't heard them in awhile. I want to check out some videos and such and see what the current version of the band is like (have a conflicting event and can't see them this Saturday in Maryland).

young energetic Zimbabwe band Mokoomba are touring the US again. Great live, and pretty good on albums

Gonna see Mokoomba again tonight in DC at a special 6 pm gig.

Mokoomba were fun—great harmonies, grooves, dance steps and more.

The annual free Smithsonian Folklife Festival outdoors on the national mall in Washington DC is starting now, and they are featuring music and culture from Armenia and Catalan. Alas, I am not excited. Been never wowed by music from those locales. Maybe I will go and have my mind changed. Catalan fireworks tonight too.

Liking the latest Fatoumata Diawara album.

Oh, turns out the Catalan fireworks were not last night. They're on Saturday. Saw a Catalan rap-rock ska bnd who had to play without their Algerian born bassist who could not get a visa. Also saw Armenian jazz and Catalan harmony folk. Just ok. All of it

Still liking the Fatoumata Diawara album. Some nice poppy melodies

From another obit of Leo Sarkisian (see up for earlier obit post by me). This one by record collector, compiler Ian Nagoski https://canaryrecords.tumblr.com/

[I]At night, he went out and listened to music and drank and blew his wages in jazz clubs in the Village listening to Artie Shaw, Lionel Hampton, and Vido Musso, Benny Goodman’s Italian tenor saxophonist. Leo had always been a clarinetist himself and played jazz. Then there were the “oriental” clubs up and down 8th Ave, where music in Turkish, Greek, and Armenian thrived among the immigrants - The Egyptian Gardens, The Brittania. The music there was close to the music from childhood in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where the older Armenian men played oud, violin, zurna, and dumbek and sang Ottoman folk songs in Turkish, listening to Marko Melkon and “Sugar Mary” Vartanian, and Louis Matalon, Sephardic Jew at whose side Leo often sat, watching him play the 72-string dulcimer, the kanun. That was when Leo wasn’t throwing money at the dancers or ordering another drink.
And it was like the fleeting, fun nights in Rabat and Casablanca when Leo had heard Arabs playing the same instruments with bellydancers. There was one night when he had been chased off by the French police because the music “stirred up the locals.” There was another when he had a moment of stardom because he, an American G.I., had gotten up and played oud and rocked the house. A bellydancer had wrapped her arms around him because played a song he knew from back in Lawrence.
The nightclubs in New York were for the weekends. Weeknights were all in the New York Public Library. Four nights a week, Leo read anything about music from Asia and Africa. There he saw patterns of expansion of instruments and ideas. The kanun and its scales travel from here to there. One instrument travels to another place. A local instrument replaces it, but the idea of how it’s played remains. There is a connection from the Ottoman Empire to the Arab world. Then, Africa to India and China… There is a deep musical connection among all of these people, including a boy from Lawrence, Massachusetts who feel compelled under the city’s lights to understand how his own feeling of music connects so many other people.
“I don’t know why,” he told me in 2014, when he was 94 years old. “I’m reading, reading all this stuff. There was something in me that I had that feeling that whoever wrote those books didn’t really have that feeling… Even if someone does get a degree in music and stuff like that, there’s something between – under – inside of you. They can’t get that.”

He knew how to live. Sarkisian made it to 97

Congo's Jupiter and Okwess have a new album Kin Sonic out, that Jon Pareles of the NY Times likes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/03/arts/music/jupiter-okwess-kin-sonic-review.html

I was just reading this New York Times story on Bombino:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/17/arts/music/bombino-desert-blues-deran.html

and this line caught my eye:

"North African desert blues ... has become arguably the most successful world music genre to break through since reggae"

What do you think? Agree? Disagree? What other "world music" genres are in the conversation?

Among 1) non-Latin musics, 2) in America 3) over the past decade, none.

Compared to Latin American genres, from Buena Vista Social Club type stuff to Ranchero, Tichumaren is pretty minor.

There was huge soukous and related post-rhumba afropop movement that penetrated further in the late 80s and early 90s than desert blues does now, especially in France. Every Kanda Bongo Man and Loketo album seemed to receive as much press in American sources as desert blues does now.

Exhibit: [Soukous in Central Park](http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWSoYkdo799OvI71oOIn_ELo11jEQDQiH) (NY), 1993.

Agree with Sanpaku

The new Jupiter & Okwess album sounds pretty good.

The Jupiter & Okwess album has old-school Congolese roots but feels new to me. Galloping rhythms, some harmonies, it’s as worthy as the American indie and rap that gets more coverage and commentary everywhere including Ilx / ilm.

Jupiter & Okwess is/are as worthy as Wye Oak and Rolling Blackouts and techno and Rico Nasty rap and whatever other niches get acclaim on ILM

Jupiter & Okwess are busy touring now.

Wish the Jupiter & Okwess tour was coming back to my neck of the woods. Same with the Sidi Toure one. They've been here in the past, but not on current tours.

Will make do with the Jupiter & Okwess album and try to also listen to some old Orlando Julius maybe

I need to find that NPR story re music in Zimbabwe post-Mugabe I heard mentioned on the radio as coming up (but I then didn't hear at the time)

Banning Eyre I know write about the return of Thomas Mapfumo there. But npr story might also be about younger musicians

https://www.npr.org/2018/07/20/630419032/politics-in-zimbabwe-has-a-new-soundtrack

Oh, that's not the greatest article. The writer found the leader of a longtime Zimbabwe cover band who is now working with younger musicians

Chitambo is making music again. He has a new outfit, called Friends Band. The group mostly plays covers — they are much less famous than Wells Fargo was — and nearly all of the musicians are about 40 years younger than Chitambo. They have only ever known a Zimbabwe ruled by Mugabe.

Still need to check out latest Kiran Ahluwalia album 7 Billion

Ahluwalia is from India but blends in other influences (north African and more) in a well-done way; not world music cliches

Saturday night is busy in the DC area

Made in Cameroon music festival at the Fillmore

* Love Wins--A celebration in honor of new Ethiopian Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed’s historic visit to #WashingtonDC with Ephrem Tamiru, Madingo Afwerk, Sami Berhane, Berehanu Tezera & More backed by Ras Band at Echostage (Ethiopian acts)

* Dancing under the Stars for free with Afro-Colombian champeta band Bazurto Allstars and Congolese act Soukous Stars plus dance lessons on the Kennedy Center North Plaza

* Tinariwen at the Warner Theatre

*Anna Mwalagho one woman show at Silver Spring Black Box Theatre

* Chardabat Video release party at Lee's Lounge, 2903 Hamilton Street, Hyattsville, MD (Congolese)

digging Ahluwalia on first listen, thanks for the recommendation

Leila Gobi ‘s squeaky voice over insistent rhythms is kinda entrancing. Listening to her 2017 album

Noura Mint Seymali appears to be the token African woman on that NPR music list of 200 songs by women who debuted in 21st century or had their major impact in 21st. I think Yemi Alade should have made the list

fatoumata diawara would've been good too

Yep.

So Angelique Kidjo's take on Talking Heads "Remain in Light" is kinda uneven. On some of it, I am not enthused about her vocal delivery-- like she's trying too hard to be avante-garde or something. Gonna see her and her band live tomorrow night at a big outdoor theatre, with Femi Kuti opening

Enjoyed the show. Kidjo did a few of her own older songs plus covered Miriam Makeba “Pata Pata.” She can dance and her voice was strong.

Femi Kuti did a bunch of songs from his latest album. Some of it is formulaic afrobeat, but he makes it work. Political lyrics about evil people and how religion gets misused.

Kidjo and Femi Kuti are around my age. They are impressively energetic onstage

Listening to Fela now

http://www.sternsmusic.com/topchart.php

African and Brazilian stuff from December 2017, including some reissues and comps-- Le Grand Kalle; "Urgent Jumping", and a Vieux Kante album.

No newer list

August 2018 albums on top of European "World Music" chart
Fenfo Fatoumata Diawara, Mali; So Calypso! Calypso Rose, Trinidad & Tobago; Wande Samba Toure, Mali;
Joys Abound Bhattacharya Anandi, India Plaza Francia Orchestra Plaza Francia Orchestra, France; Maghreb United Ammar 808, Tunesia; Cachaito Orlando Cachaito Lpoez, Cuba; Guerra Cesare Dell'Anna, Girodibanda, Italy ; ; Sound the People Red Baraat, USA
Ne la Thiass (remastered) Cheikh Lo, Senegal; Remain in Light Angelique Kidjo, Benin/USA

http://www.wmce.de/

Album title, artist name, then country