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ration, an altogether more benign interna- tional encounter.
Born out of a state-subsidised diplomatic arts trip a decade ago that saw French jazz wunderkind Donarier and his trio visit Tehran to play on the same bill as Southern Iranian master Saeid Shanbehzadeh, both sets of musicians' curiosity and sheer bloody-mind- edness on the night resulted in their playing not separately as planned, but together, improvising around each other, weaving jazz lines around the insistent, intoxicating tradi- tional styles of Southern Iran. This new record is a renewal of the relationship and there is much to recommend it.
Shanbehzadeh's hypnotic interpreta- tions of the music of the region is eclectic: Boushehr is Iran's chief port and has tradi- tionally been a cultural melting pot. In partic- ular Shanbehzadeh draws on his Zanzibari heritage, cooking up a storm as he clutches his huge bagpipes to his chest like a living creature, joyfully loping, strutting, shaking and gyrating (check out his performance on the accompanying DVD). The most magical moments come when Manu Codja's luminous electric guitar pierces and ornaments the tra- ditional sound. Zar means “possession by a spirit”, and this unusual, special CD will pos- sess and enchant you.
www.budamusique.com Tom Jackson
POKEY LAFARGE & THE SOUTH CITY THREE
Middle of Everywhere Continental Song City CSCCD1075
In the 1920s and 1930s, with recorded music still in its infancy, no-one had yet thought to draw rigid lines between different genres. The elements of what we’d now call blues, country or jazz were all there in American popular music, but it would never have occurred to the performers that they were supposed to stake out one patch and forsake all others.
Pokey LaFarge & The South City Three It’s fitting, then, that this St Louis quar-
tet’s second album is so difficult to pigeon- hole. LaFarge has mastered the art of writing songs in his chosen era’s sunny, charming style, but the musical setting he gives them demands that his bandmates conjure up everyone from the early black songsters to Bob Wills and Django Reinhardt. Fortunately, he’s got the boys that can pull that off, with Adam Hoskins’ guitar, Joey Glynn’s stand-up bass and Ryan Koenig’s dual skills on wash- board and harmonica effortlessly serving up every flavour required.
So Long Honeybee Goodbye has a trad jazz feel about it, Hoskins’ lap steel on Shenandoah River brings a trace of Western Swing, and a guest horn section of cornet and trombone colours Feels So Good. Best of all is Koenig’s harmonica playing, particularly on the bluesy Mississippi Girl, where he swoops and dives round the other instruments like a bird loose in the studio. His washboard play- ing’s a treat too, joining seamlessly with Glynn’s supple bass to swing each song for- ward. What drums there are on the record are kept low enough to ensure they never break its gentle mood.
LaFarge himself adds vocals, parlour gui- tar and occasional banjo. He wrote all 13 of the songs here, and sings them in the persona of a sweet, slightly befuddled guy, happily chasing girls and innocent fun in a world as cheery as that of a PG Wodehouse novel. “Say it sunny, say it sunny,” he reminds Hoskins during one solo, and that’s the band’s watch- word throughout.
The result is a thoroughly enjoyable, toe- tapper of an album, and one that’s almost guaranteed to put a smile on your face. No wonder The White Stripes’ Jack White has declared himself a fan, and already done some production work on one of the band’s other records.
www.continental.nl www.pokeylafarge.net/
Paul Slade SHAUN DAVEY
Voices From The Merry Cemetery Tara TARACD 4023
A new album from orchestral composer Shaun Davey with piper Liam O’Flynn and singer Rita Connolly is an occasion. The Brendan Voyage, which featured O’Flynn, was way back in 1980; Connolly joined the team for 1984’s The Pilgrim, 1985’s Granuaile, 1990’s The Relief of Derry Symphony, in 1992 Rita Connolly, and in 2005 May We Never Have To Say Goodbye. Here they are back, again on the faithful Tara label, on full form for a collaboration in Romania with the men’s choir of the Theolog- ical Faculty in Sibiu and orchestra.
The title refers to the cemetery at the church of Sapânta in Maramures, which is known as the Merry Cemetery because it’s full of brightly painted, carved wooden grave crosses, each of which, under its pointed roof, bears a picture and piece of verse summing up, touchingly or sometimes humorously, the life of the grave’s occupant. The lyrics of 12 of the songs on the album are taken from those epitaphs; the 13th is a setting of a poem by Mihai Eminescu. One of the verses used, from the grave of Ilie, who died aged 96, goes in translation: “I am Ilie Petrenjel, a traditional musician and the oldest man in the village. The two Petreus brothers sang with me when we went to play in Baia Mare. I even made it to Bucharest with my old-style routines”.
And from The Song Of Dimitru Holdis;
Alcoholic: “The water of life is pure poison, she brings only tears and pain; she brought only this to me and put me on the road to death. Those who like a good skinful will come to the same end as me. I died with her in my hand.”
The CD was recorded in a church in Maramures and cathedral in Transylvania, but the final concert, for The Long Road To Sapânta festival, was among the graves in the cemetery itself.
Davey has a remarkable skill for creat- ing memorable melodies woven from the shapes of tradition and orchestrating them into big, heart-lifting anthems. Here, to set these plain-speaking verses, he draws on Irish and to some extent Romanian melodic worlds, the choir and orchestra creating a rich-textured environment, full of light and shade, the robust-voiced male choir often opening a song which is then drawn to even clearer focus by Connolly’s glorious, truly regal voice and O’Flynn’s soaring pipes and whistle as orchestral lines twine and surge epically around them.
A welcome return, from an unexpected direction. UK distributor Proper.
www.taramusic.com. Andrew Cronshaw
ANDREW CALHOUN GrapevineWaterbug WGB99
Well, this is real time-warp stuff! The home- recorded quality of this singer-with-straight- forward-guitar accompaniment has that sim- ply-recorded quality associated with many of the early American folk revival albums from the late ‘50s. Add to this the fact that Andrew’s deep resonant vibrato-charged voice is reminiscent of the likes of Burl Ives and you start to get the feel of the album.
Then there is the repertoire: the sort of thing that you haven’t encountered on albums for decades; I Gave My Love A Cherry, Old Paint, John Henry, Shenandoah, O Susanna etc etc, and all the songs are sung with the same approach whether they are lyrical pieces, work songs, gospel songs, shanties or whatever. The only song of reasonably recent compositions is Colum Sands’ Buskers and this turns out to be the outstanding track in the album.
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