Day 59: Ali Farka Toure "Radio Mali" & Duke Ellington "The Best of Duke Ellington Centennial Edition"

I continue to be amazed at how grouped up these CDs are. It's like the CDs that were alike wanted to hang out together or something.

Ali Farka Toure
Radio Mali

I've talked before about my failed amatuer ambitions towards ethno-musicology. One of the underlying curriousities that drove that was the circular notion of influences and cross fertilization that music undergoes. Ali Farka Toure is a fantastic example of that.

I'll admit that I didn't really know anything about him, so after writing that first paragraph I did the "don't say something stupid" Google search to see if I was about to get a detail wrong. Instead I made the same observation that everyone has made about Toure's music, about the intersection of traditional African music and music that is influenced by traditional African music.  I just called the sky blue...

Well, regardless of how well tread and obvious my observation is, it's still pretty intriguing to hear Africa re-absorb the blues. I don't have any translations or liner notes to go on to see the translations of the lyrics, so I don't know if subject matter carries over or not. I know that the music remains solemn and mournful sounding.

According to Wiki this is a compilation of earlier recordings, which makes sense since the style, instrumentation, and recording quality shift around from track to track.

There's a bit of a pedal tone to some of these tracks that becomes sort of hypnotizing.

Duke Ellington
The Best of Duke Ellington Centennial Edition

Another day, another Duke Ellington tribute. This one features recordings from Ellington himself, however, from a box set (I believe) that spans his entire RCA recording career.

At least they resisted the temptation to make Take the A Train the first track (it's all the way down at number 8).

This instead features some early recordings, and oddly enough the recordings I'm more familiar with as far as Ellington goes. I didn't, for whatever reason, listen to many of the Strayhorn era and later Ellington but rather a lot of these rough early recordings. It might be that I just picked up anything with Ellington on it from the bargain bin and that was filled with recordings that had cheap rights. Or maybe there was a focus on early recordings at the time I started listening to jazz. I don't know, but albeit still well known pieces like Black and Tan Fantasy and East Saint Louis Toodle-O are instantly recognizable to me and stir up that weird nostalgia for when jazz was still a new world to me. Same goes with Rockin' in Rhythm, I would hum the squeaky saxophone line to this day really, though I don't often remember the name of the song indicating I probably listened to it on tape most often.

Sure enough, the music here is presented in chronological order so that the listener gets to speed read through Ellington's 50some year long music career and hear how his music evolved. Honestly, the best way to put together a compilation of this kind.

Bitter sweet is that two of my favorite and most moody Ellington pieces, Mood Indigo and Creole Love Call are stuffed together on a medley with Hot and Bothered. Granted it's a long medley, over seven minutes which is pretty ground breaking for the time. Also, apparently, when they recorded it they did it from two distinct mics with a time delay so the person who remastered it was able to do so in stereo, pretty cool.

I had a recording a long time ago in which Ellington narrated Mood Indigo explaining that the song was a boy and girl who met every day to play, and they loved playing together, but today it was raining and they couldn't see each other, and this was their mood. Now that I think about it, it might not have been a recording but rather something I read, but I seem to hear that story in my head being told by Duke. Either way, the song has remained heartbreakingly romantic in my head ever since. I heard a story about Creole Love Call, too, something about a singer humming the melody to a set of riffs that eventually became Creole Love Call, but that's less vivid. (According to Wiki, it's actually a melody lifted off King Oliver...not nearly as romantic a notion as the story I had heard...)

Well, apparently there are lyrics added after the fact to Mood Indigo making it not at all about that. The internet ruins some perfectly good myths sometimes.

Now I have another version of Day Dream, this time as a feature for Johnny Hodges, a saxophonist I got into when I felt like most of my playing was going to be in big bands anyway. Plus, it was hard to find an alto saxophonist that wasn't under the shadow of Bird.

So that's four versions of Take the A Train so far, and we've really barely started with the project. Work Song is closing in with a more eclectic spread with a Latin version, Duke's version, and a surf version. Though it's cheating a little, the surf version was already there. I went through my 'surf thing' after I left the store. I mean, I still like it, but there was a six month 'collect all the surf I can' bender I went through while in college. And of course it's a different Work Song with Ellington.

Never knew there were lyrics to Come Sunday, either. I kind of prefer it without lyrics, it was another one of those moody Ellington songs that I really liked. To complete my tour of moody Ellington, Sophisticated Lady is coming up in two tracks. I hadn't realized that my favorite Ellington was in his ballads as much.

Day 45: Putumayo Presents Africa and The Colors of Latin Jazz

I encountered my first duplicate and it was rather quick for how separate the CDs were. Yesterday I did Jacky Terrasson's A Paris and today I fished out some drifter CDs that had wound up in other boxes (the truth is that just about everything has at least a few CDs in it) and I found another wrapped copy of A Paris. I'm not sure what to do with it, I don't know anyone who likes that kind of jazz off the top of my head and it's not really worth anything if I sell it to a used record store. Ah well, on with Day 45...the Colt Day? Yeah, that's not sustainable...

It's like a Starbucks in the Albatross today...

Various Artists
Africa

This is the kind of CD you might buy at a coffee shop. In fact, I'm almost certain that Putumayo specifically sells in coffee shops. Putumayo CDs are easy to pick out because the covers are all done by the same artist, Nicola Heindl. It's a world music label that puts together themed compilations that are more or less easy to listen to and therefore handy CDs to buy for someone who wants to dip their toe in a country's music. I'd be snide about it but really, people have to find out about other kinds of music somehow and things like this are pretty efficient ways to go about it.


And like any good patchouli-label, they donate proceeds of their sales to the area represented by the CD.


The descriptions are typical short-bio style usual in these compilations, and a little loose with the descriptions. Signe, for instance, was described as an acoustic guitar recording...which is true, but leaves out the heavy electronic beat and bass added to the Togolese love song.


The Albatross has provided some awesome. I started an ill-fated internet forum discussion a few days ago asking people to trace the lines in their musical tastes and one of the the people that actually tried mentioned a form of music I had never heard of before, Mbaqanga. Aparently I should have, it's the African music that Paul Simon used. Now with this recording by the Soul Brothers I have an actual sample to go by. Actually pretty cool. Thanks Albatross, you usually don't deliver this quickly.

All of this is pretty accessible with plenty of western pop elements fused into the African harmonies and poly rhythms. It makes sense that these come together so easily, African music influenced the development of modern music, it's only fitting that the influence comes full circle. But this could pass as a folk/jazz cd with lyrics you likely won't understand.

Various Artists
The Colors of Latin Jazz: Cubop!

This compilation is a little more focused than the last, though truth be told there was a lot of similarity in the previous selections.

I've never heard latin jazz referred to as 'cubop' before, though there is an un-cited stub article on wiki about it. The idea is the combination of Cuban or Afro-Cuban rhythms with bop pace and harmony. So far songs don't really seem to reflect the blistering pace or flighty solos that I've come to know of be-bop, rather it sounds pretty much like latin jazz. I guess that is a wide enough term to need a distinction as this is certainly a little 'hotter' than other forms of Latin jazz.

Well, that'll show me for not looking ahead. Not only does this track have the blistering pace and flighty solo, it's an actual bop song--Charlie Parker's Donna Lee. Donna Lee is kind of the Matterhorn of jazz, completely doable for everyone of a certain skill set but still something musicians occasionally tackle to make sure everyone knows they're of that skill set. Alright, according to Wiki, that's actually a Miles Davis song wrongly attributed to Charlie Parker. Regardless, the tune is known through Bird and the challenge is sort of a goof. It's almost melody-less, as Bird seems to launch into his solo with only the fiegntest hint of any recognizable 'head.' Various performers have approached Donna Lee different ways, from Jaco Pastorius playing a transcription of Bird's solo to this version where people burn over the changes (taken from the song Back Home in Indiana) while making their slight bow to the head as well.

Work Song, one of the coolest hard bop songs every, also gets the Latin jazz treatments.

Apparently I should look at least at the track list before I make declerations about the theme of a CD, there's a lot of bop standards on here--the aforementioned Donna Lee and Work Song as well as Night in Tunisia and Yesterdays.

One thing Latin jazz gives you is a lot more percussion solos.

Kind of short entries today, though I guess that isn't all bad.

Day 21: Tama "Nostalgie" and Peter Maxwell Davies "Job"

So much of the Albatross is made up of pretense. It's easy to be pretentious when the CDs you're getting are free. I don't know that it's all that uncommon for people to want their music tastes to say something about themselves and who they are to other people. We play our music loud, our clothing styles are often influenced by the music tastes we have, at least in our youth.

It's hard to say exactly what message I was trying to send with this collection (obsessive hoarder?), but for a lot of these selections it's hard to argue that they weren't as much for the bookshelf as they were for the CD player.

To be fair to myself, there was an equal amount of curiosity involved, too. I mean, at free there was no risk for me in taking home a CD and trying it out. Except that I never got to all of them and they just kept piling up. Two curios make the selection today in that vein.


Tama
Nostalgie

I had no idea what this was going to be. African, clearly, but no idea what part or in what way. iTunes classified it as pop. It's on the Real World Records label, started by Peter Gabriel as part of his whole WOMAD festival thing (which I attended in San Francisco).

Real World is also responsible for the spinning display rack I took home and made into one of my many storage shelves for the Albatross. It's one of the better ones, because I can just tape the CDs into the tall spinning rack and move the whole thing, CDs and all.

The liner notes are a write-off, and the license sticker obscures the translation of the tracks. Before I go looking this guy up and seeing what he's all about, it does sound like that kind of pretentious mid-nineties pop by long-established artists like Gabriel and Paul Simon, where there is an electronic underpinning that is then bolstered by African percussion and some string instruments. This is clearly the music that Gabriel was listening to when he did songs like Biko. The only real difference is I can't understand what the guy is saying, but as I mentioned before, most the time I don't care anyway.

Well, right off the bat, I'm already wrong about at least one thing. It's a band, not a guy (Did you hear Lynyrd Skynyrd was marrying Molly Hatchet? Pink Floyd is the best man...etc.) Real World really promotes them on the idea of a 'band of equals' and doesn't really tell me much else except that they're from Mali, the UK and Guinea-Bissau. I don't know if this is a dominant feature of the band or if Real World is just really committed to that whole 'one world aesthetic.'  There doesn't appear to be a Wiki page on them.

I guess there is something to be said to experiencing the music without being pitched, to only know so little about it.

This doesn't really jump out at me, but I do find myself moving my head to it now and then.

It's good enough, and has a unique sound to it. There is a legitimate reason to listen to this even if you're not from Mali. You're only likely to get imitations of this music elsewhere. But I don't know that it would be that easy to give someone listening to this the benefit of the doubt. It's completely unfair, as I write this, to be that way about it, because on at least some level I'm genuinely enjoying it. But if I was hitching a ride with someone who had this on their car stereo, I'd expect it to be a beat up Subaru with a worn dreamcatcher hanging from the mirror, the driver to be barefoot and laying a lot on me about 'one world' or things of that nature. Or, if they looked 'normal', I would think they're really like that and trying to 'pass.'


Peter Maxwell Davies
Job
 

This is the first 'complete' work to go into the hard drive, a modern oratorio based on the book of Job, obviously. Or at least obviously I think. The book is fused together.

There really are two classes of modern composition, there's the evolution of harmonies in the vein of Shostakovich and Stravinsky that use unconventional voicings, structure, and the like. And then there is the clanking and banging kind that stretches what our definition of music is and should be, à la John Cage.

This is the former. The sad thing is that when operas, operettas and oratorios are in English, I can't help but think I'm listening to an overbearing musical. Though this would be a pretty damn intense musical. I can't really make out what they're saying all the time, just a few choice moments.

So far the only information I can find is from a British website selling sheet music to the whole thing. Rather than paraphrase, here it is:

A substantial work for four soli, SATB chorus and orchestra, using text from the translation of Stephen Mitchell's The Book Of Job.
Like Vaughan Williams in his Job: A Masque for Dancing, Davies was inspired in part by William Blake's 21 engravings for the Book of Job. His oratorio, however, is less dependent on find parallels for Blake's visual details, given the direct poetry in David Lemon's adaptation of the Stephen Mitchell translation from the biblical original, it is hardly surprising that the spotlight should be so much on Job's suffering litany. The baritone has the lion's share of the setting, though the other soloists occasionally reinforce his plea and chorale-like episodes universalize his predicament. Davies frames with work with two seminal plainsong-like passages; there is also plenty of dramatic contrast both within Job's monologues and in the vivid orchestral writing for the smarmy Comforters, the initially shrill God who finally appears out of a dazzling orchestral whirlwind and the animal life he uses to illustrate the wonders of creation to a humbled Job.
Commissioned by the University of British Colombia, it was first performed in May 1997 by Valdine Anderson (soprano), Linda Maguire (mezzo soprano), Paul Moore (tenor) and Kevin McMillan (baritone) with the Vancouver Bach Choir and the CBC Vancouver Orchestra, conducted by the composer.
Vocal score with piano reduction of the orchestral score. Duration c. 70mins.

 I have to say, I've never really got what the book of Job was supposed to be all about. Like, if you're life sucks and bad things keep happening to you don't worry, it's God getting into a pissing contest with the Devil and fucking you over to win a bet? I always kind of feel like the Devil won this one. It sort of proved that God is a fickle, insecure douche who will grind your life to butter just to prove a point to someone else.

A friend and fellow playwright in college wrote an allegory of the story of Job as rival gangs where the loyalty of a henchman is tested. When you see it played out like that, it's hard not to see the guy buying into the bet as a tool and jerk. I don't know if he's still shopping that play, but at the time it was called "The Job." If you see that playing somewhere, check it out.

Unfortunately, it seems that the CD player wasn't able to get all the tracks off in their entirety. That's too bad. I'm never sure how to handle this, it's not the first time. I guess I'll put it with the discs that need repair and later try and re-import it.

I wish the book wasn't deteriorated; from some of the lyrics I'm catching here and there it seems like there is some cool stuff going on. Orchestrally, it has the expected, really. All in all, an interesting piece. I'm sort of surprised I didn't listen to this when I got it. Though I might have and just turned it off once I realized it was in English. Well, I've listened to most of it now...