specialists in all styles: orchestra baobab

When Orchestra Baobab makes that claim, you want to believe them. Not because it is so endearing (it is), or because it reminds you of a particular touching mixture of hope & pride one might encounter elsewhere (one does) – but because once they get jamming, you end up wishing that a lot more music were as ..  content as theirs is.

Orchestra Baobab was formed in the wake of Senegalese independence, and a notion of ‘negritude‘: pride in being African. At the center of a surge in rediscovery & redefinition (Club Baobab belonged to the brother of the then Senegalese president Leopold Senghor), they found themselves being encouraged to incorporate traditional music into the otherwise standard Cuban son and pachanga that nightclubs in Dakar had popularised since the 40′s. Unlike other contemporary bands like Bembeya Jazz National (from Guinea) or the Super Rail Band (Mali) whose work integrated one single regional style, Orchestra Baobab (like the tree) spread their roots wide. Members included Wolof griot singers Laye M’boup and Thione Seck, Mandinka saxophonist Issa Cissoko, guitarist Barthelemy Attisso (Togo), Cassamance vocalist and songwriter Balla Sidibe, and vocalist/songwriter Rudolphe Gomis from Guinea-Bissau with his Latinate compositions.

What is remarkable about Orchestra Baobab is the sheer effortlessness of the fusion of styles they pulled off. You can hear the Cuban influences (what, exactly? figure it out: we’re not musical structure geeks), but you know that the music is its own thing, not a copy. While it might remind you a lot of things (Attisso cites Congolese guitarist Doctor Nico, Ibrahim Ferrer, Django Reinhardt, BB King, Wes Montgomery and Carlos Santana as influences), you know that you’re hearing something that belongs to itself. This music touches you everywhere.

Consider the evening. Tomorrow is on its way. But consider the evening: it is sufficient for now. Do you have something to drink? A comfortable chair? Someone to love? Good. It is sufficient for now.

Hommage a Tonton Ferrer (“Tribute to Uncle Ferrer“) from the album Specialist in All Styles by Orchestra Baobab Buy from Emusic, Mondomix or Amazon More Orchestra Baobab at Last.fm

~ posted by arvind

black

Dawn is the sacred hour.
Dawn is the sacred hour,
Saffron and rose-coloured it throws open the doors of the sky.

Mists, like evil spirits, shrink and shrivel,
Vanish into thin air.
The sun pierces them through and through.

It lights the recesses of cavelike shrines,
Flashes on the brass and copper vessels of bathers in the river.
Pure grace.

Once the breath goes out, it’s fit to burn.

Your head,
Your turban, artfully arranged, will adorn it,
With the beaks of crows.

Your bones will burn like tinder,
Your hair will burn like hay.

While Vishnu reclines on a serpent called Endless,
Don’t fear death; welcome it.
Once the breath goes out,
Once the breath goes out, it’s fit to burn.

Dawn is the sacred hour.

World,
Secular or social interests as distinguished from the religious or spiritual.

Here’s the cause of it all –
It’s a house of tricks.

Life has slipped away.
No-one is left on the road,
And in each direction, the evening dark has come

Here’s the cause of it all –
(It’s a house of tricks)
It’s a house of tricks.
Ignore the world.
Ignore the world.
Ignore the world.

Kala from the album City of Light Buy from Amazon More Bill Laswell at Last.fm

~posted by nithya

new voices for old stories

It is evening, just past the setting hour. You are in your room, doors closed. Then it begins: a slow strumming, gentle, fluid. An old sound: the kanun, Wikipedia tells you. Now, almost imperceptibly, a flute joins in. Someone is taking long breaths and releasing them with infinite patience. All this while the kanun has been rising and falling, like a flame flickering, trying to stay alive. This is the beginning of the cold: you know it, it will soon be night. You are in your room, doors closed. You are in a field under an orange sky.

You are in your room, doors closed. A voice begins speaking: it is deep, it comes from the belly, comes from the heart. The words are alternately harsh and entreating, staccato and melodic. It is a slow voice. It knows time: it has seen it pass. Its parents have seen it pass. Passage, a long passage, is at the roots of this voice: it has come a long way and there is no need to hurry. The voice is speaking of something old, so old that it does not now matter how long it takes to finish, because the story it is telling has come so far. Because there is time, there is always time. There has been time for thousands of years since this story happened, and there will certainly be time tonight. Under an orange sky, where the heat of the day hangs reluctant, unwilling to make place for the coolness of the night. In a field, where time bows to the ney and the kanun and the measure of the story and the voice beseeching.

You are in your room, doors closed. You are listening to Abed Azrie tell the story of Gilgamesh. You are under an orange sky, cocooned by the warmth of day in a field of night. The voice stops, and the kanun returns to prominence, joined by a violin. You are in your room, doors closed. The voice starts again, and it is clear that the man and his instruments are playing tag, now one speaking, now the other, but always sounding alike, always carrying the same gravity. You are in an orange field under the warm sky listening to a story that began five thousand years ago, in a field like this one, behind closed doors like these.

This is music from Alep, or Halab to the Arabs and Aleppo to the Italians. Alep is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. It was here when Alexander left Macedonia. It was here when the Ismailis and the Mamluks fought for control of Egypt. It was here when Tamerlane ransacked it before deciding to rape India. It was here when the Ottomans were overlords of Turkey and pushing at the borders of Afghanistan. It was here, at the end of the Silk Road, when silk and peony from China terminated their arduous journey at Antioch. It was here when the French gave Antioch to Turkey and Alep to Syria and the Armenians and the Turkish Christians and the Lebanese were drawn to in this century. It might have even been here since Gilgamesh and Enkidu left behind an unforgettable story. And so it has seen emperors pass, religions clash, travelers settle, and it has absorbed all of the musics and the instruments and the sense of continuity.

So when Abed Azrie does the telling, he begins gently and proceeds slowly, building up the tension, always keeping the mystery. He is the narrator, grief pouring from every third syllable. He is Enkidu, and his wild instruments keep pace. He is the narrator, but from another time and age, and a little French sharpens his indignance. But it is a deep story and deserves contemplation. So you contemplate the shape of his words, the import of his drawl, and the accents his instruments provide to tell you you must feel fear, or awe, or empathy or joy. And you contemplate the silence, behind closed doors, unwilling to open them. Now every other story will feel small, too young, too brash. Every other story will seem forgettable.

And it will not matter that this album was released in 1977, shortly after Azrie moved to Paris, and it took you this long to discover it. And that you do not know of his other vast soaring renditions of Omar Khayyam and other Arabic poetry. It will not even matter that you will not understand ‘spoken word’ as a genre in the same way again.

So listen.

Gilgamesh from the album Épopée de Gilgamesh by Abed Azrié Buy from Emusic, Mondomix or Amazon More Abed Azrie at Last.fm

~posted by arvind