Gospel — Then and Now

It all comes from the Church, doesn't it? And the Church is in this business of show, just like some of us secular folks are. Here are the Dixie Hummingbirds in action. Showmanship — for the glory of the Lord.

This month, appropriately enough, is all Gospel — almost 4 hours of it — from old field recordings that will make your blood run cold to contemporary R&B style tracks that, in a fairer world, would stand alongside the secular recordings of Beyoncé and Usher — they are, in my opinion, just as well made, sung and hook-filled. The world ain't fair, that's for sure. I guess maybe people don't want to hear about Jesus and God when they're chatting up a new friend over drinks at the club. Lots of secular folks are also turned off for other more ideological or philosophical reasons when they hear God or Jesus mentioned in a song. Many of these same people love U2, or maybe they prefer Sufjan Stevens — who are both Christian too, they just don't let it be obvious in their songs.

Here are the The McCollough Sons of Thunder (I think). A good Scottish name. One of quite a few Gospel trombone ensembles here on the east coast. Yes, the East Coast has a brass band tradition, just like New Orleans — but the music here is different. I've seen them a few times. Their magnificent sound is probably impossible to capture on record — it's an immense wall of massed trombones and a sousaphone, a sound that fills a room with swinging Gospel chords...big chords, really big chords.

Here (below) is a mysterious ritual/performance in a Gospel church. There are too many mime jokes already, so I will not go there....I have no idea what this is, Gospel Kabuki? Ghosts? Holy Spirits? White oppressors? I wish I had been there — it looks like it might have been something special and powerful. I do know that the Gospel Church is musically open to creative additions and discoveries. Robert Randolph, a popular artist on the jam band circuit, was once part of the Sacred Steel circuit, a network of churches that feature lap steel guitars as the principal instrument. Sadly, some churches now are using Karaoke machines — a modernizing trend that I hope will be nipped in the bud quickly.

Anyway — Elvis's favorite group was the Golden Gate Quartet. The Rolling Stones song "It's All Over Now" was originally recorded by a (former) Gospel group (the Stones version was a cover.) Here the Blind Boys of Alabama do a song that seems very very similar to their song "The Last Time". The well-known song "Stand By Me" was originally "Stand By Me Father", here sung by Sam Cooke and The Soul Stirrers. If you listen closely, many of these songs will sound familiar, as they later became secularized and the grooves and melodies were only slightly changed — they had secular words put to them and often became huge hits. Of course massively popular artists like Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Aretha, Al Green and Whitney Houston all came out of this tradition, but it didn't only happen back then — it continues to happen. I won't go into the musicology of it all, but suffice to say the form also goes back too, way way back, probably to before any Baptist churches even existed. What has molded and influenced so much of contemporary global pop music is as old as water, and as powerful as dirt. Jesus Walks, indeed.

In the context of the Church the audience is ready and primed, they share a common belief and faith with the performers and they are ready and willing to be led and lifted — there isn't the mercantile and sexual underpinning and overlaying as in a typical secular concert. It's there, sure, but it's ignored in favor of and in deference to the common aspects that everyone shares. The audience isn't suspicious that they're being manipulated, marketed to or pandered. It's all about God and Jesus, so just let go, it's O.K. Everyone joins together, everyone loses themselves in the mass, in the sound that fills and vibrates the air, it's a transcendent experience that music is typically pretty good at providing. The audience is there to be lifted and the performers have a clear-cut job to do. Now the artists may claim they are simply doing God's work and it's all about praising Him, but the structure, the build and the dynamic of the performance, are well-oiled, practiced. Naturally, some do it better than others, some are prettier or more handsome and some are more hip to the tricks of the performing trade. But whether they are national acts or they live down the road they can achieve great and amazing things when it all comes together. It is a transforming experience to be moved by a great Gospel artist in a Church.

Now it might be odd to hear the above from me — from one who rants on and on in my blog/journal about organized religion and the perils of irrational belief. But though these artists might not like to hear it, I would suggest that this music transcends the Church. It touches a person on so many levels that you don't have to believe to be moved — in fact even a non-believer, an infidel, can be lifted, almost the same as a believer. Secularized versions of this music drag a portion of the Church with them. That of course, is why this music, born of deep and solid faith, can be transferred to a secular context with relatively little loss. It's unfair — and much anger, bitterness and confusion has resulted when this happens, but the line is just too easy and tempting to cross. Even the Devil loves Gospel music.

— DB

Textures, Soundscapes, Melodies Even

For much of my musical life I have alternated between songs and other types of music. Here is a selection of the latter, some of it pretty well known, other tracks unreleased and unavailable. Some of it tuneful and some textural.

It's a cliché that soundtracks are a refuge for the has-been pop musician — some of these (The Catherine Wheel, done for the Twyla Tharp dance-theater piece) were done while Talking Heads were having their biggest successes, so the argument sort of falls apart there. But in other ways it is indeed a kind of refuge.

Doing music that is done "to order" and with creative freedom within boundaries is both challenging and stimulating. If the music has to satisfy some need — if it has to work with a particular stage movement or the mood of a movie scene — then whether it's working or not becomes pretty clear-cut. It has a job to do and it either does it or not. Working to order also frees one of personal liabilities; one doesn't have to fear that the music will be viewed as a personal statement. It's liberating to write to help support someone else's statement.

That said, the challenge is also to do the job, solve the puzzle, in an elegant and innovative way — not to do it the way it's been done a million times before just because you know that will work.

I've been lucky most of the time — or clever in my choices — my collaborators on these projects have allowed me a lot of musical freedom, but we both know that whatever I do still has to work.

Sometimes I got to play. Working with Robert Wilson on The Forest I got a chance to muck about with an orchestra — some times more successfully than others. With the films Philip Haas did for the "Magicians of the Earth" exhibition I could try a number of approaches. Hearing that the Arnhem Land Aboriginal artists loved the rave up endings of Hendrix and other rock songs I went for went for a sound slightly softer than that guitar drone wash ensemble — and with another film I made a dozen tape loops (this was in 1990) which played constantly — and then I played the mixing board, raising and lowering their levels, intros and exits to the live video. With some of the Young Adam tracks I could mix squeaky church gates, subway brakes, thunder and a hurdy gurdy, all of which sank into the atmosphere — a little too well sometimes.

— DB

Instrumental Miniatures

Uh, um, well, OK, what I really mean here is stuff that doesn't have lyrics and is pretty short and is completely composed — which is why jazz was left for another month, except for a few very short pieces. But the previous sentence would make a pretty long-winded title, so Instrumental Miniatures will have to be it.

Some of these pieces are, I imagine, more difficult to successfully write and arrange than a traditional song, as they don't have the advantage of a singer/lyric focus to draw upon — they have to maintain interest without that crutch. Larger serious pieces, like symphonies, have an advantage over these miniatures as well — they can allow themselves a longer stretch of time to sink in and have an impact. So, here is a genre that is hidden in plain sight.

There are quite a few soundtrack excerpts here, usually well-known themes by the acknowledged masters — Nina Rota, Morricone, Bernard Herrmann, Mancinni — which for some of us have become like pop songs, tunes we can't get out of our heads that evoke a weird cinematic landscape. They don't necessarily only evoke the film, but they are often so mood-laden that they make any place or moment seem like a scene from a movie.

But what happened to the instrumental single? Jazz sides used to be singles too, so what happened?

Café Tacuba once did an instrumental CD which was rejected by their label. Their presentation of the project was hilarious: they made a film — two films, actually — to "sell" the idea of the record to the record company. At marketing meetings they would show a video detailing the long and illustrious history of instrumental singles — most of their examples were big hits. The implication being that they were extending an illustrious tradition. That a vacuum lay waiting to be filled. The powers that be were not impressed. (In addition they commissioned a wonderful 25 min impressionistic film about Mexico City that used their new instrumental music as a soundtrack. This did not fly with MTV, either.) They added a 2 nd CD to the package, one with words, and it came out after a while.

Catchy film and TV themes are still being written — I've included Jon Brion's lovely theme from Punch Drunk Love — but I don't think any of these are released as "singles" these days (except that Enya tune.) Though who knows? With downloading you could buy just the theme and not the whole moody soundtrack, if they let you, so the "theme" single could resurface as a force.

Mostly, though, it is the dance music crowd and few others who have carried on the tradition of instrumental "singles". Fatboy Slim, Moby, Thievery Corp, Chemical Bros, Prodigy, Daft Punk, Aphex Twin (a lot of Brits here!) have all had singles and video hits with more or less instrumental compositions, though they have all been seduced by the temptation of the singer and lyric (or lyric sample). Even Dr. Dre has an instrumental CD out — though that seems more like trawling for samplers, amateur rappers and a tool for DJs than a real record.

There are plenty of other people who do instrumental music — noise bands, jazz ensembles, techno DJs, and bluegrass bands — but mostly those never ripple out much further than within their genre, whereas many of these, but not all, did...and do.

— DB

 

Hey David, What's Happening With Your Label?
The Story of Luaka Bop, Part II

I get asked fairly often, "What's your record label up to?"   I don't know quite how to answer, as I don't have much to do with Luaka Bop these days. A few years ago the label was distributed by Virgin, and, as had happened previously with Warner Bros., Virgin merged with or was absorbed by a larger company — in this case EMI — and there were firings and re-shufflings and our little label was once again out in the cold. Towards the end of the Virgin era I was putting in half days every day at the label — the office was in my house — for no money, and mostly it was a little like pushing a large rock up an ever-growing hill. Artists complained and asked what was going on and I felt bad and didn't have answers. I made shit up. I felt crappy. Clearly, for me at least, it was time for a change — a lot was changing in my personal life as well, possibly not coincidentally. So I got out.

Yale Evelev, God bless him, kept it going. Some artists defected during this "special period" — not surprisingly, as there was no activity for a long time — but others stuck it out and now Yale's got a distribution deal with V2 and has released some records in the last year that have been very well received.

Tom Zé
Finally, this man is getting the respect he deserves! He's making a living, too, in Brasil at least. His new CD (Estudando o Pagode   — nominated for a GRAMMY!) is a concept record about women — how they're perceived, their subjugation, rights, myths and archetypes. It's a musical play, an opera maybe, in 3 acts, which in typical Tom fashion brings together lots of musical genres and mixes wordplay, humor and philosophy. One of the great innovative artists of the last 100 years, he unites avant-garde tropes with regional and vernacular styles in a way that seems to mirror the streets of São Paulo.

Os Mutantes, old friends of Tom's from Tropicalia days, have reunited (except for Rita Lee, who became successful and therefore didn't feel the need to) and have been touring — and have been incredibly well received, too. Thanks to Beco Dranoff of the Red Hot organization for digging out his old vinyl and making mix cassettes on this one.

From the NY Times review of their recent NY show:

Because Os Mutantes' songs are so full of quick changes, the music doesn't just sound nostalgic. It also anticipated the current era of sampling and juxtaposition. The band began Friday's set with a song from 1969 that imagined Don Quixote getting a chance to sing on television, with music that switched styles every 20 seconds or so, from light-opera vocal harmonies to fuzz-toned garage stomp to slow, mock-bluesy rock to a brief bit of improvised chaos. And that hardly exhausted Os Mutantes' inventiveness; they had lilting pop melodies, Latin rock, mock-Baroque counterpoint and even something like an anthem: "Balada do Louco" ("Ballad of a Crazy Man"), written by Arnaldo and sung by Sérgio. "They say I'm crazy to think this way, but I'm happy," he sang in Portuguese. "It's better than being normal."

Big piece in recent Guardian UK (link)

From soundsxp website on their Barbican show:

Devendra Banhart — in velvet suit and open sandals — and Noah Georgeson, dropped from the supporting bill because of the time problems, happily sing backing vocals and provide the coolest dancing on 'Bat Macumba' while the set comes to an emotional close with the Beatles-y 'Panis et Circenses', that starts with catchy smooth pop and stretches out into the hypnotic chant of the 'reprise' version from 'Techicolor': "the music lighted with the heat of the sun". It's clear why they're revered; they bring something elemental, something that wasn't there before Os Mutantes existed but is now back. That's why the audience — of many nationalities, drawn to hear a musical lodestone — chant their name, refuse to leave until they see the roadies dismantle the equipment, troop out stunned and wonder how to get to the U.S. for the limited number of show they're doing there.

Love's A Real Thing
This is Yale's collection of what he calls African psychedelic tunes. I don't know about this classification — but I guess it was a marketing idea — some of the tracks do indeed sound like Grateful Dead jams — loose and swinging, open ended, light and relaxed.

Jim White is busy
His last record (Drill A Hole in That Substrate and Tell Me What You See) was, in my opinion, the best he's ever made. (What the hell is substrate? — Answer: the surface on which an organism grows, canvas or paper on which an image is printed, material beneath the surface soil — this last must be the one he's referring to?!) His songwriting is always good, but now his arranging and recording chops have evolved too, and he is busy — his latest project is a collaboration with Johnny Dowd called Hellwood (not being released with Luaka) — and he has a new solo record coming out next year on Luaka, as yet untitled.

Susana Baca
She should be our Cesária Évora (Susana has better songs, in my opinion) but she still hasn't cracked that mysterious acceptance barrier. Her new CD was originally to be a minimal two acoustic guitar affair, as envisioned by her and producer Craig Street. It was to be her interpretations of the songs she grew up with. Well, it turned into something else musically, something not quite as simple marketing-wise, but maybe a nicer and more beautiful record. She and Ricardo, her partner, have cleverly managed to maintain her musical integrity despite limited CD sales. Afro-Peruvian music has a limited audience, even in Peru — where the big sellers when I was there were metal, chi cha and cumbia — wonderful effervescent dance music for the lower class. Susana, remarkably, recognized that her musical heritage was important, deep and significant — the way jazz is regarded here. She never cheapened it or turned it into a revue, as others did, and she and Ricardo survived by founding a school and an institute that teaches the traditional rhythms and songs and supports young musicians.

Nouvelle Vague
This is a lovely novelty record — French singers turning post-punk tunes into bossa novas, and it may someday be seen as the record that introduced singer Camille. She was only one of a few singers on what is essentially a producers' project. The record also made one realize that beneath the punky skronky sounds on the original tunes there were great songs. The record became a staple of fashion boutiques, restaurants and lounges. Its follow up, Bande A Parte, expands the repertoire.

 

Luaka Bop Back Catalogue
So, whatever happened to…

Many of the label's early collections and recordings are out of print. Why this should be in the era of downloads is a mystery — I suspect there is a reason, but maybe that's why I am not in that business.

For those of you who weren't around then, the Brazilian compilation Beleza Tropical was the first record the label did. I did NOT produce the music, as it is sometimes thought, on this or on any of the many other compilations — they are collections of pre-existing recordings, cleaned up and remastered. Presented in a new context. New covers and artwork. In this sense the label acts as a filter — a way of introducing you to stuff you might not otherwise have the time to search out. And locating some of the masters did require a bit of searching. One master tape was being used to hold up a coffee table. After listening to many of the songs on the Brazilian compilations for years on crappy vinyl it was worth the trouble to finally hear these recordings in all their glory — it was all there on the master tapes.

Yale's got a new Brasil compilation in the pipeline called What's Happening In Pernambuco?

Some of these sold well. Beleza sold almost half a million — but because our parent label at the time made poor licensing deals we never saw a cent. The Silvio Rodriguez collection was, oddly enough, the first "greatest hits" CD of this innovative and hugely popular Cuban artist. The record sold incredibly well in Europe and in Latin America, where he is well known.

Mimi Goese
Mimi was out of the legendary NY band Hugo Largo. My hairdresser Valerie had given me some new demos Mimi had done and they were lovely — very electronic and minimal, maybe a little guitar from Hahn Rowe, but mostly very sparse. In keeping with conventional wisdom Yale insisted she have a band and do gigs and then make a record with the band — which she did — for about a year and half. The rationale was to get the act out there touring, which is often not likely to happen if a record is a pure studio creation. By touring the public and press can hear how good the artist is. It was a great and unusual band that Mimi put together — a band that mixed the electronic scene in NY with great instrumentalists and her perfect singing, performance art sensibility and dance (Mimi was a dancer). Ultimately, though, her first instincts were probably correct, and the best tracks on the CDs are the ones that eschew most of the band and allow her voice (and the fragile emotions) to come through. Mimi met my manager, David Whitehead, and I guess they hit it off because they've been together ever since and now they have 2 children at their home in Woodstock. Mimi is currently working with Ben Neill in a recording/writing and live show capacity — some shows coming up this fall.

Shuggie Otis
We're talking Syd Barrett / Brian Wilson type casualty here. A genius who had trouble handling the world. Would that the world could be more accommodating to those types. Shuggie is still alive, but needs a lot of tender loving care. The records he made that were collected for the Luaka compilation were prescient, and overflowing with inspiration. Lots of people liked this one. Thanks to Paul Heck for turning us on to these undiscovered gems.

Zap Mama
Marie Daune, who pretty much IS Zap Mama, fell in love with American hip-hop — its vibrancy and relevance — and wanted to steer her formerly accapella sound towards contemporary beats. "The American beat is a revolution all over the world," she says. "Everybody listens to it and everybody follows it. But the beat of the United States was inspired by the beat coming from Africa. Not just its structure, but the sound of it."

So gradually her records became wild collaborations with Michael Franti, The Roots, Erykah Badu, Talib Kweli, Common, King Britt and Bilal. She moved to West New York, which is actually in New Jersey, and commuted to Philly to self-produce the sessions with the Roots community. The hip-hop community is mostly a cash business, so the last Zap Mama record (Ancestry In Progress) ended up being our most expensive record to make.

Si*Sé
This band became one of the only NY trip hop groups to actually be able to pull it off live. Fronted by singing DJ Carol C fronting a killer band, they mix Latin, hip-hop and old school seductive ballads. Frustrated by the way things were going they struck out on their own and still perform around NYC occasionally.

Latin Rock
At one point we had more Latin rock acts available to North American and European audiences than any of the major labels. That didn't last long, but for a while, and maybe even now, the majors don't know what to do with this stuff. They can market reggaeton and straight pop acts, but those that mix styles and genres have a tougher time. This indecision and confusion allowed us to pick up acts the majors dropped or didn't know how to sell — acts that in my opinion would have been beyond our reach if anyone recognized their true value. We may not have sold millions, but we often managed to at least get the acts introduced to North American and Euro audiences — and then they toured and got reviews, which then gave them some strange credibility back home. You know how that is — Iggy was never popular in Detroit.

Los Amigos Invisibles
Out of Caracas, now in Brooklyn, these jokesters are better live than they have any right to be — you might think their genre-hopping lecherous lounge lizard personas would preclude transcendence, but these guys are incredible live — recent shows begin with DJ Afro spinning, and the other members join one by one, playing along to whatever record he is playing. After a while, when a sufficient number of musicians are on stage, the DJ stops and the live musicians continue, a seamless transition. The end is the same, in reverse.

The jokes are in the words — for example, "La Vecina" is a drooling ironic ode to the woman next door.

Bloque
Record of the year, said the Chicago trib, and live they were amazing as well. Former members of pop star Carlos Vives's writing and performing team who decided to strike out on their own — and this CD was the result — a record that combined Afro-Colombian rhythms with rock energy. The music combined the singing of Ivan, an innovative vernacular poet and songwriter, and that of Mayte, a vibrant representative of Afro-Colombian culture — and it was just a perfect match. Strangely, their manager decided they should all live and woodshed deep in NJ, in a remote house near the Delaware water gap. It was cheaper housing than NYC, no doubt, but what a traumatic shock it must have been! — Their lives in Bogotá were cosmopolitan and lively — what were they gonna do out in the NJ woods? Soon only Ivan remained in the area, doing acoustic gigs of new songs in NY. He was always juggling a few projects, as his writing is always in demand by others. He's a survivor. Mayte can still be seen touring with Carlos Vives. Teto, one of the best tele players I've ever heard, has been invisible, at least to me.

Los De Abajo
Began as a political ska salsa punk project out of Mexico City. I saw a video of them playing at a union gathering and by the end of their set the place had turned into a seething mosh pit. Their collaboration (Cybertropic Chilango — BBC World Music album of the Year for the Americas 2003) with Macaco, the Barcelona-based band, was one of the first Latin rock efforts to bridge that trans-Atlantic divide. Their new record is on Realworld and it has some great songs on it. Being outside of the hip rock circuit they were never really accepted in Mexico, but European fans can't get enough of them.

A.R. Kane
We did a compilation of the best of the ahead-of-the-curve UK synth pop duo A. R. Kane and followed it up with a CD of new material called New Clear Child. These guys were part of the team that broke out "Pump Up The Volume", the groundbreaking dance tune, but their own stuff tended more towards what got called dream pop. iTunes says they were "a crystal ball prophesizing nearly every musical development of the 90s".

Paulo Bragança
A young man in Lisboa makes a record that fuses Fado — the traditional tragic Portuguese song — with loops, moody atmospherics and non-Fado instrumentation. Among the fadistas he was controversial, to say the least, but I thought he was doing something new with his approach, and he was, so we released the record. His live shows, however, were a Goth diva spectacle, not what Fado lovers Joey and John from Calexico, who selflessly backed him up on his U.S. dates, expected. Neither did any of us. A good record that never found its audience.

Cornershop
The former Anglo-Punjabi punk band had a number one UK single with Fatboy Slim's remix of "Brimful of Asha", the ode to Asha Bosle, the famous bollywood playback singer. Suddenly shot to pop stardom, Tjinder did what UK rock stars do — he trashed hotel rooms and whinged about success. He got his wish — within a short period they were back to being a cult band, and despite Luaka's desire to put out their last CD (Handcream for a Generation) their asking price was too high. Oddly, the U.S. major that handled Luaka at the time (Warner's) refused to release the Fatboy mix of "Brimful", despite it being a number one smash hit in the UK and elsewhere. That's major labels for you. Granted, to go for a commercial single in the U.S. is a major financial undertaking — the payola and other costs are significant. In England, it being the size of New York State, it's easier to spread the word and excitement.

Geggy Tah
This super talented trio from the inland empire of southern California, were, in my opinion, torn asunder by their own insanity and the machinations of Virgin, who rightly heard the incredible songs that Tommy Jordan and the others were writing and imagined hit singles (they'd already had a minor hit with "Whoever You Are".) Upon delivering their last record they were met with the usual major label demand to "go back and record some singles" — with the implicit promise that more "support" would result, which ended up simply dragging out the record completion process for almost a year. By the time the wonderful Into The Oh came out the band didn't exist — a great shame, as this is still one of my favorite records, whether it was on Luaka or not. Tommy was deeply in love and the songs reflect his ecstasy in unclichéd and imaginative ways.

Waldemar Bastos
The Angolan Bob Marley made a beautiful record produced by Arto Lindsay — despite the fact that they didn't get along very well. His rare performances could give one goose bumps but the record didn't sell very well at all, so there was no budget to finance more recording. We just scratched out heads and wondered why nobody got it.

Cuban Compilations
We did two collections of post-revolution Cuban music — music that had been eliminated from the U.S. musical diet due to the 1960 embargo. Previously Cuban music was a U.S. musical staple, as anyone who's watched I Love Lucy should be aware. Well, with the embargo it all stopped cold in the U.S. — the plug had been pulled — but not in Cuba or elsewhere. We were especially fascinated by the mixtures that had happened in Cuba that rarely happened in the Salsa bands based in NYC — wah wah guitars, mini moogs and fuzz basses joined the traditional sounds — a sort of prophesy of what would happen with Latin Rock and pop a decade later.

Vijaya Anand
One of our worst sellers. Yale had, over the course of many visits to India, collected examples of some of the stranger and wilder examples of filmi music I'd ever heard (music done for film soundtracks and musicals.) The Chennai productions of Vijaya Anand were among these — psychedelic techno cut and paste tunes that encompassed more genres that one could imagine, not just Indian genres — but disco, techno, blues, romantic ballads and synth pop. Wonderful stuff that never failed to make me smile. Despite being appreciated by the hip downtown crowd who saw similarities to Zorn, Zappa and others, the public stayed away.

Shoukichi Kina
Both Yale and I had the vinyl version of Blood Line, this Okinawan artists' LP from the early 80s, in our personal collections. There was a reason we worked together. The LP was never available in the U.S. or in the rest of the world so we pulled together some tracks from that LP and some other stuff and Kina did some live shows as well. Despite not being Japanese he was considered by many to be the first "Japanese" artist to merge traditional instrumentation (jamisens, mostly) and traditional melodies with rock instruments and energy. Japanese pop was until then in clone and copy mode — as much Asian pop still is. He opened the door. Now there are weird dreamy electronic Asian electronic artists in the Asian pop world unlike those anywhere else, and of course there is the Boredoms crew — lots of screaming and noise in that area...as stylized as Butoh or Noh, but unbearably loud. This is truly catchy Asian music, though the high-pitched backing singers are not always to everyone's taste.

The +2s
Moreno Veloso, Dominico and Kassin, three talented young musicians from Brasil, take turns being each other's backup band. Therefore there are 3 records on which each band member takes turns being a front man — Moreno+2, Dominico+2, Kassin+2 (coming out early next year) — you get the idea — democracy, or a weird version of it — applied to creativity. I suspect that part of this is Moreno's determination not to ride on his daddy's coat tails...and to instead recede and lower his profile in the overall plan. Admirable, as he's got impossibly big shoes to fill, and riding on dad's rep would be asking for a smackdown, but sometimes this kind of democracy is impractical — Moreno is without a doubt the best singer of the lot, Kassin is a great producer and Domenico has become a virtuoso of the live drum machine. From each according to his ability, eh Karl?

Their other project, a large orchestra, is a recreation of the traditional ballroom samba ensembles of decades past, but with contemporary touches added. They are reintroducing a somewhat devalued genre back to a new generation. There is no record of that project yet.

…

I'm a little sad that I'm not involved in the label any more — there was a lot of great music that was unearthed, brought to new ears, and created — but ultimately it was not my strength to manage a label. How do the folks of Superchunk manage Merge? I look on with envy and wonder. Yale soldiers on, and he has some great records in the pipeline.

— DB

 

Standards

A standard is something that we use to measure other things. It is the Ur thing, the original hidden Platonic thing that casts the shadows on the cave, which we then perceive as all other things. These songs, most of them written between the last two world wars, are popular songwriting carried to a level of melodic, harmonic and sometimes lyrical sophistication that was rarely superceded. The Bossa Nova composers maybe were their equal, the Philly soul of Thom Bell, Burt Bacharach and others — but those were all afterwards. In North America, between those wars, due to the symbiosis of the songs with musicals and films, the belief and confidence that there could be a new kind of popular music really took hold. Talent arrived by the boatload. Immigrants. Uh huh.

Though they are often referred to as standards, these songs are only viewed that way by a relatively small group — others would view Hank Williams as the "standard", or Robert Johnson, or The Doors, or Professor Longhair or Aretha or Grandmaster Flash. And they are right- this music has little to do with the majority of existing musical genres — but it has influenced all of them. To my mind, here is what happened to classical music between the wars — here is where that road led. The rest of orchestral classical music burrowed deep into academia or morphed into Hollywood soundtracks — but, for sophisticated music that was as popular as the Italian operas once were, and that's how I'm defining classical music — not by instrumentation — this is it. And this was where musical genius of a certain stripe gravitated.

I'm referring to the writing when I say genius — the interpreters of these songs are by and large a motley crew...and I haven't even included Rod the Mod's recent million sellers. I've ignored some major artists. I am not a Sinatra fan — it's not because of his politics — and his phrasing is cool — it's his voice that I can't get used to. Hundreds of cabaret singers mine these seams — I've ignored most of them too. It's hard to find folks who can simply let the song speak through them. Often, in my opinion, it is the outsiders who succeed best in that respect — Fred Astaire is one of my favorite singers from that era — you can hear him on the verge of straining as he reaches for notes as he modestly sings the songs. Audrey Hepburn! Her version of "Moon River" is much better than the Andy Williams hit version. Louis Armstrong — unconventional, but heartfelt. Willie, Chan Marshall, Caetano. Elvis Costello.

Anyway, I've learned a lot from these songs — new harmonies, song structures that aren't blues-based, romance. Occasionally those techniques and qualities can be incorporated into the funkier Afro-American and Country-rooted music that is the contemporary world's musical lingua franca in a way that is natural (Willie's writing on his song "Crazy", some Beatles songs, the previously mentioned Gamble Huff Philadelphia productions) — but it's tricky. When it works a new song is added to what will be a new generation of standards.

— DB

Avant-Pop

Glitchy squiggly pop is more like it. Spanning 30+ years here are 3 hours of music that sounds like it all branched from the same tree trunk. A tree with roots that strangely matches that imagined by the creators of 60s Sci-Fi movies and TV shows, but fully realized only now, in the 21st century, their future. This music's forerunner was heard in the movie scene where the weirdly beautiful woman sings and plays an instrument that looks like a 3-D spider web. Or something similar. Odd how the future turned out to be almost exactly as it was imagined. As if those TV shows and movies were prescriptive, not just imaginative. As if the fictional possibilities as writers imagined them and presented to us defined the scope of our imaginations — we will build the future but only as we can imagine it. You can't make it happen unless you visualize it first. How could we do otherwise?

So movie scenes and the soundtracks are like words — we think in concepts as defined and restricted by our language, and we imagine, create and hear only that which is within our grammar of sounds.

There are alternate futures, alternate music, but we will never experience them as our present as they were never imagined, or were imagined and then forgotten. There is music out there that we cannot hear, because it does not fit our definition of what music is. Someday that music will be imagined, and then inevitably, created.

The grooves here tend to be skittery, the percussion like the sounds of distant cutlery rattling, but the structures are often surprisingly (and comfortably) traditional — clear-cut verses and choruses. Voices lean towards the intimate, breathy, slightly mournful. Whispering strange and very personal messages in our ears. These are folk songs. Folk songs from a culture made of ones and zeros.

— DB

A Skewed History: Part III: Latin Rock

The tree trunk that was last month's “radio” selection branched off in many directions. Tropical music — salsa, merengue, batchata, plena, cumbia — continued, it remains popular, but it also grew additional limbs that became reggaeton, Latin jazz and what is sometimes called Latin rock. It’s also called Rock en Español and Rock Nacional (in Argentina) to separate it from North American acts like Santana or Los Lobos. To me, hearing this music for the first time was not only evidence of a new and exciting cultural and musical fusion, but it also seemed to be something that was emblematic of my own generation’s global condition.

Like me, this generation of Latinos grew up with rock, R&B, soul and funk as its soundtrack. A generation in Mexico, Argentina and elsewhere grew up hearing James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Black Sabbath, Dylan, The Beatles and Marvin Gaye. Local bands initially imitated those famous acts, as they did in suburban Baltimore where I grew up. The difference from my experience was that these kids were also steeped in musical traditions that were more local. The first rockeros may have viewed this local music disdainfully as “their parents’ music” but a later generation realized that those cha-chas, guajiras and cumbias were part of them too — and to cast out this music as being antiquated or uncool would be to cut off part of oneself….and to become merely an inferior degraded copy of the North American model. (That’s not entirely true — plenty of hugely successful Latin rock bands sound just like the Rolling Stones or The Police.)  So a whole generation of artists — in film, music, fine art and cooking — began to mix and absorb freely. Mix, remix and sample. Cabas (from Columbia) sings in "Caribe Soy" that he’s “Caribbean” and tips his hat to Juan Luis Guerra and Rubén Blades from the previous month’s playlist. The line of influence is explicit, acknowledged.

This generation realized that one could have one’s pizza and tortillas both — one didn’t have to stop drinking coco, horchatas or mate if one was going to have a Coke, as much as the multinationals might have liked it. The bands began to make music that expressed this openness — they took the louche attitudes and wide-ranging lyrics of rock, the power of guitars and drums, and mixed in the funky sensuous rhythms that they heard in the corner kiosks and bodegas. What you got was not always initially perfect, but as the merging sunk deeper it became more natural, more profound. To me this expression was a musical metaphor, which expressed what it might mean to live not just in Latin America but also in much of the world today.

This music suggested that one might be able to take the cool stuff from the big dominant cultures (America, mostly) but leave the crap and lame stuff — and then mix in the best of one’s own culture. You then get something that mirrors what you’re made of.

Abstract art was seen by much of Latin America as the corporate wallpaper it soon became. Once they may have felt pressured to follow the cultural dogma being dictated from abroad, from the North, but no more. One could mix ska and salsa, punk and flamenco, cumbia and disco (!) — crank up the volume and play to a sea of ecstatic churning bodies.

I’m not an historical expert on who did what first. My own introduction to this music was scattershot, random. I heard “Matador”, by Los Fabulosos Cadillacs (the band name alone embodies this mixing perfectly); in that song I heard the influence of Brazilian Afro reggae drumming (actually it was probably a more local influence — but still it was an affirmation of the profound African influence, even in Argentina.) I heard Los Autenticos Decadantes mixing disco with rock insanity, Aterciopelados (the velvety ones) doing electronic cha chas, Bloque bringing Afro Columbian grooves into a rock context. It was a continental (even wider if you include Spain) movement, with no central hub. Touring was difficult — cites are fairly spread out, unlike Europe and parts of North America — and there are huge mountain ranges and Amazon jungles that make van tours from Argentina to Mexico fairly unlikely, for example. So interactions between bands aren’t as frequent as one might imagine.

Antecedents like Silvio Rodriguez in Cuba (for decades a stadium act across much of Latin America), Leon Gieco and Charley Garcia in Buenos Aires, Mano Negro in Europe and Peret in Spain may opened the doors, but it took another generation for everyone to catch on.

Now, since the 90s, electronic and dance acts have soaked up these amazing grooves. Recently I’ve been working with Fatboy Slim, and on a lot of his stuff he mixes Latin grooves and funk with ease. Hip hop artists mix in these beats with their massive bass drums, and pop artists like Shakira do it too.

I wonder to myself if this musical example will rub off on other areas of culture and politics. If Latinos will realize that the flow of information and (some) goods need not mean that North America will necessarily dominate. In recent years a number of nations have been bold enough to stand up to the U.S., and to seek ways of using their own resources and culture for themselves, rather than simply selling them off. It remains to be seen how long the U.S. will refrain from intervening as they have in the past. So far the distraction of Iraq has been preoccupying the Empire….but Venezuela has oil, so who knows?

Meanwhile, the music says, often without words, what the newspapers and TV have yet to acknowledge and absorb. The music says it with pleasure, with gentle anger and with love.

— DB
Brighton