57 f WAI


Ora Te Mangai Paha/ Minaaka Music CDJAY416


Better late than never! After the praise heaped on the debut by New Zealand/ Aotearoan duo Wai, the expectations were raised by several world tours and occasional rumours that a second album was imminent; here it finally is, a full decade on.


What is surprising – and in this case grati-


fying – about Ora is how little their music has changed in that time. The layered, organic thwack of sampled poi (percussion balls) still forms the basis of their sound, and as on the first album, Iain Gordon (who has since achieved great things with Fat Freddy’s Drop) supplies additional keyboards. As before, Mina Ripia’s lead vocals are joined on every track by various guests, and they still sing in Te Reo Maori – the Maori language.


Perhaps because several of the tracks are


karakia (sung prayers) rather than waiata (songs), Ora is a calmer record than its prede- cessor, and seems more focused on showcasing the voices. It’s apparent from the lovely a cap- pella opener Tuhia Te Hä and the likes of Tira- mathat Mina is not only a more confident and mature singer, but more at home with the lan- guage, which she learned as an adult. Maranga Ake Ai was a mid-eighties hit by Aotearoa, the ground-breaking band that pro- grammer/ producer Maaka ‘Phat’ (a.k.a. McGregor) started his career with, but this new version is barely recognisable from the lilting but militant reggae of the original. The most distinguished and easily recognisable guest is Warren Maxwell (formerly of Fat Fred- dy’s Drop and Trinity Roots, and now fronting his own band Little Bushman) who adds his breathy croon to Te Hapu Koe, arguably the album’s highlight. And the closing Faifai Malie features the subtly different sounds of the Samoan language as well as rhythms derived from the Samoan pati (slap) percussive style.


Of course, Ora can’t possibly match the ‘shock of the new’ that accompanied 100%, and it is a shame that it’s a bit short, but it is also rather sweet. www.jayrem.co.nz


www.myspace.com/wainz Jon Lusk


SWARBRICK Raison D’Être Shirty Records SHIRTY1


Almost in danger of his music being overtak- en by his legendary tenacity and survival instinct, it’s a real pleasure to report that Rai- son D’Être not only restores the name of Dave Swarbrick to a new release, but does it in some style. Find enclosed what you might expect as well as a huge proportion of what you most certainly wouldn’t, no doubt both his sense of humour and cavalier instinct are intact. From the off you’re gloriously wrong- footed as he struts out in fine style a reggae version of Spanish Ladies as if he’s fronting E2, but actually hand in glove with a rocksteady crew, the Jason Wilson Band who’re closer to Misty In Roots than Martin Carthy. Dub fiddle anybody? A whirlwind of a creation, it’s buoyed on a honking brass counterpoint which lifts the full glory of the tune. Dodge and weave right to the other end of the CD and there’s a piece of pure crystal and grace, We Brought The Summer With Us, which has high classical elegance and a lofty beauty.


Recorded over a mind-boggling eight years, the album’s been a long time in cre- ation, but given history that was inevitable, as the promo blurb says, “I don’t think it can be repeated”. The musicians present are worth the asking price and they allow Swarb to shine each in their own way, by coming to his work from different angles. His playing with the late Beryl Marriott for instance is almost telepathic,


likewise the exemplary jig set featuring Martin Carthy and John Kirkpatrick, they are chunky and dependable whilst his fiddle flits and swoops like a swallow in full flight. Simon Mayor’s mandolin strings match note for note the violin on an inventive take of two tunes from Playford, whilst the funk of Kevin Dempsey’s acoustic guitar is omnipresent though never intrusive and you have to listen hard to isolate his soulful strumming.


Consisting of chiefly Anglo/ Irish tunes,


Swarb’s notes are precise, down to listing 18 editions of The English Dancing Master, but then the detail is obviously important to him as he engineered and produced too. Nice to see credits to family, friends and medical team, though the real kick here is the name of his label, the catalogue number and his wife Jill’s label design – yer man in night shirt ‘n’ slip- pers! Long may he be a shirty one, that’s just fine in my book. Time marches on but his rest- less spirit and adventure remain. Raison D’Être is better than anyone could have hoped.


Available through Talking Elephant:


www.talkingelephant.co.uk and via Proper. Simon Jones


AYNUR Rewend Sony Music Türkiye 88697685902


Back in 2004, fRoots described Aynur as “Kur- dish music’s new star”. At the time, her album Keçe Kurdan was propelling her to fame both abroad and in her home country Turkey. The latter was no mean feat, considering that Turkish society has consistently repressed many outlets of Kurdish culture. And as it happens, a provincial court banned Keçe Kurdan soon after its release, ruling that one particular lyric “encourages young women to go into the mountains and join the Kurdish resistance”. A higher court overruled the decision in 2005, but life still isn’t easy for Kurds who want a musical voice in Turkey. Yet Aynur herself has never been particularly interested in the con- troversial side of things. As she told fRoots before the ban: “I do music, not politics”.


Not much has changed with Rewend, her latest release. Even if the title, which trans- lates as ‘Nomad’, might seem to suggest some political message, these songs deal with life, love and loss in a much broader sense. The haunting title-track – Aynur’s own composi- tion – announces that she is “without a place and time”. But its dark repeated vocals incant a personal rather than communal message. As she explains in the liner notes: “My soul has become a nomad, neither a place can hide nor time efface my desolate side”.


A deep and eclectic love of music from all over the world continues to enrich Aynur’s work, but the songs of Rewend remain firmly rooted in eastern Turkey’s bardic culture. This is expressed most clearly, and most beautiful- ly, in her choice of traditional folk songs.


Delalê, Şin Û Şaye and Dotmamê (Xwezila) tell stories of shepherds, villages and rugged mountains. Aynur’s title-track finds a brighter counterpart in Koçerê, in which a “lovely nomadic girl” is glimpsed in an ox shed. But however tempting it might be for the hard- liners, it would be hard work to reduce the profound yearning for the mountains on Rewend to a simple matter of politics.


www.aynurdogan.net John Ridpath


FAY HIELD Looking Glass Topic TSCD573


It’s ten years since Topic Records signed a new artist, inevitably attracting a fanfare of curiosity for this solo debut, particularly given her name isn’t Carthy or Waterson. Not that Yorkshire’s Fay Hield has been plucked from


complete obscurity, having served her apprenticeship in a duo with Damien Barber and nearly five years with the unaccompa- nied Witches Of Elswick, which produced two albums. She’s been consumed since then by motherhood while working on a PhD, but the break may not have done her any harm, allowing her unusually raw and hard-edged approach – she’s what Topic boss Tony Engle calls “a real singer” – to evolve and develop a style that’s already distinctively her own. Her charged vocal indiscipline may occasionally evoke the name of Anne Briggs but other- wise she’s strikingly individual and Topic may be right in its assertion that it has discovered a rarefied talent.


Her vocals certainly aren’t what anyone


would call pretty – which may be a stumbling block to wider popularity in an age of honey- throated whimpering – but admirably fits the brooding darkness of most of her chosen material. The ubiquitous Sam Sweeney adds bountiful fiddle and viola, there’s sparing percussion from Keith Angel on Two Broth- ers, Jess Arrowsmith adds backing vocals on a couple of tracks and Hield’s partner Jon Boden fills in the other gaps on fiddle, con- certina and guitar to add light and shade. Yet the adornment is still sparse and this remains an uncompromising album of old-fashioned folk values that sounds like it could have been made at any time over the past 40 years.


She’s also gone the extra mile


unearthing material, which is mostly tradi- tional, yet remains broadly unfamiliar. Even well-known ballads like Two Brothers and The Banks Of The Nile vary from the norm, while she’s hunted through little-known col- lections to unearth some serious material, which includes the despairing Little Yellow Roses, sung with barely controlled emotion over the forbidding strains of Sweeney’s nyckelharpa, an instrument Sweeney also uses to profound effect on Sheepcrock And Blackdog, another track exuding formidable doom. Light listening it ain’t, though there’s a fun element too – albeit slightly twisted – to tracks like the nursery rhyme Mad Family as well as The Huntsman and King Henry, which closes the album in a kind of manic joy, Hannah James clog dancing and all.


It’s an album of real depth and sub- stance, Hield showing her full worth on a superb delivery of the title track – one of Peter Bellamy’s lesser-known Kipling efforts – and The Shepherd’s Daughter, a magnificent advertisement for the unfashionable art of unaccompanied singing. In the end it’s all about telling stories… and Fay Hield does it with considerable character.


www.topicrecords.co.uk


www.fayhield.com Colin Irwin


Fay Hield


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