This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
63 f


other items that enthusiasts may well have in their collections, but the inclusion of so much truly rare (and quite superb) material marks this as a most compulsory purchase.


www.tompkinssquare.com – distributed in the UK by Cargo: www.cargorecords.co.uk


Just one track on Fire In My Bones repre- sents the tradition of sacred steel music, Willie Eason’s 1951 recording I Want To Live (So God Can Use Me). Arhoolie Records has long been a champion for the phenomenon that is sacred steel… the steel guitar-led praise music developed in African American Holiness-Pentecostal Churches in the USA, and has released a good number of albums dedicated to the idiom in recent years. A new compilation from the label contains 16 fine examples performed by some of the music’s greatest practitioners (including a track by Willie Eason) that range from the sublime to fiery. www.arhoolie.com


Another area of gospel almost passed


over on Fire In My Bones, is the vocal quartets who had a long period in ascendancy in the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s. Probably the most famous of these groups was The Golden Gate Quartet who originally formed in 1934. A version of The Gates is still performing today (with the longest-serving member of the current line-up having joined in 1954). Their longevity, I sup- pose, in one form or another, justifies their new album’s title. The hallmark of The Gates was their intricate vocal arrangements. They were always smooth perfection but the music on this CD is so polished the shine has dimmed to a warm glow. The CD has a seven-minute embedded video that includes a clip from the1948 movie A Song Is Born with the origi- nal group performing the song Mockingbird that’s pure magic… but highlights just how the group has adjusted their music with age.


Via www.discovery-records.com


The Sojourners are a newish group of Afro-American vocal veterans, friends who originally got together in Vancouver, Canada to record some background vocals for anoth- er recording and found their vocals just came together in a natural formation. Their har- monies and vocal sound are squarely in the Golden Gate mould but The Sojourners deliv- er their vocals with more force and with a more modern, punchy musical setting that’s been provided by producer Steve Dawson. Dawson plays some great guitar (especially electric slide) and gets just the right balance between the instruments (guitars, organ, bass and drums) and the vocals. On this, their second album, The Sojourners show how quartet-style singing (even though there’s just three of them) can still be vibrant today.


www.blackhenmusic.com – distributed in the UK by Proper; www.thesojourners.ca


Dave Peabody


SKERRYVORE Skerryvore Tyree Records TYREE01CD


Been missing that old Highland rock since Run- rig and Wolfstone went occasional? Got the blues for hard guitars and bagpipes? Want some funk with the fiddle? Well, who would- n’t? Fear not, Skerryvore are at hand and whilst they may not be the full deal just yet, that doesn’t mean to say there isn’t promise here and a willingness to play the game with a long-term view. They’ve been skipping hither and yon for five years or so, not Johnny Come Latelys then, but what they have done is canny because whilst I may playfully suggest kinship with the finest of Gaelic rockers, Sker- ryvorites – is that right? – are carefully forging a sound and identity all their own.


Youth and looks on their side, they merri- ly mix Scottish traditions with huge dollops of everything from blues to country and a whole load of Caledonian soul, most of it from their


own fevered imaginations although the odd nod to trad does crop up as on The Clueless Wife. They may not want to come storming over the borders and forage south into English territory just yet, though I suspect that whilst they may have done it to some degree, they want to consolidate home ground first. There’s no reason why that shouldn’t happen on the back of this album and it then become a launch pad to adventures elsewhere. The green shoots are there with vocalist/ compos- er Alec Dalglish having just the right amount of steel and sentiment in his voice to handle the drive of Path To Home and the swaying absence ballad Home To Donegal – er… lads aren’t you from Tyree? The folk players on fid- dle, pipes and accordeon have enough chops to mess in with a tight rhythm section who believe funk was invented in Falkirk, perhaps it should have been if Simple Life is evidence. So to cut to the chase, this I like, it’s gutsy, it’s cheeky and has bags of potential. They will make better, of course they will, but Sker- ryvore are starting to cut the ties that bind and freedom suits them.


www.skerryvore.com Simon Jones


THE MASTER MUSICIANS OF JAJOUKA


The Source Le Son Du Maquis 7 94881 97672 0 – bar code


You’re invited to Bachir Attar’s house in Jajouka, 150 miles south of Tangier, for a night of orchestrated thunder, 2000 years in the making. The ritual wigout is back, but what fresh madness is this? With the Master Musicians, it’s tempting to reach for Blakean proverbs and, certainly, lost in the whorls and whirls of the circling drums, the guembri- playing Rif riffs with more twang than a Duane Eddy of the Mountains and the flutes hyperventilating like a crate of caffeinated nightjars, it certainly feels like you’ve stum- bled onto a mountain path of excess, leading, if not to a palace of wisdom, at least to a sky blue town of blank eyeballs in thrall to a man in a goatskin. This is heady, strange stuff.


With the Master Musicians less is defi- nitely not more: clattering cake-tin drums pile on top of looping, swooping flutes. Too much can never be enough. The hadra music of the men in the hooded burnouses is said to be healing. If so it functions with a strange homeopathy: as rhythms accelerate, spi- ralling into a mis en abime, it’s easy to feel the intoxication of a descent into sweet mad- ness. This latest release was recorded as an adjunct to a documentary and features the usual repetition, incantation, call and


The Master Musicians Of Jajouka


response, and shock and awe waves of drums. The Master Musicians’ appeal is at least partly anthropological, so whether you need more than one recording by the group is debat- able, but if you’ve yet to don your goatskin pill box hat, this is as good a place as any to start. Is it better than the other recordings? Not sure, but right now it’s my favourite Jajouka jam. What’s that sound? A crack across the sky and a hint of hell in the air.


maquismusic.com www.jajouka.com Tom Jackson VARIOUS ARTISTS


The Rough Guide To The Music Of AfghanistanWorld Music Network RGNET1237CD


The Rough Guide To The Music Of Afghanistan is a journey into consciousness- raising. Some names – Mahwash and Homayun Sakhi are examples – have figured in these pages. For societies whose perspec- tives and perceptions of Afghanistan have been fed, succoured and blinkered by televi- sion images and print tales of the Taliban, the prospect of this anthology might well sound like a minuet in a musical minefield. One of the many wonders of this truly valuable col- lection compiled by Simon Broughton of Songlines is the number of musical myth bub- bles that he bursts. Admittedly, he has had to cast his net wide historically and geographi- cally speaking, not least of all because many Afghani musicians went into exile. Naghma, one of many Afghanis who went into exile, sounds old-style popular on her Meena Dakhklo Sanga Kaygi. In a more contempo- rary, i.e. westernised vein is the diaspora pop- ster Farhad Darya’s plea for peace Salaamalek with its English-language interjections (like its “Give us a piece of peace/ Give us a piece of love…” repeat) and a lyric based on greet- ings to places that have experienced warfare and hatred including Kabul, Berlin, Moscow, Hiroshima, Cape Town, Beirut and Shanghai.


The unmissable bonus volume of the spe- cial edition is Ahmad Sham Sufi Qawwali Group. Rae Maykhana O Masjid, delivered by Mir Ahmad Sham and second vocalist Zia Mohammad, is a treat. Here translated as ‘The Way To The Mosque And The Wine-house’ (that is, inverting tavern and mosque), it is a Sufi meditation on where the knowledge (wine) of love is served, leading to spiritual intoxication. The inclusion of flute – probably Zalai Paktia – within the instrumentation is a lovely touch, as if hearkening back to Rumi’s Song Of The Reed. A remarkable journey.


www.worldmusic.net Ken Hunt


Photo: Ian Anderson


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100