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DUO BROTTO LOPEZ Le Bal C.A.M.O.N. CA12008 3246 BL


Cyrille Brotto playing the diatonic accordeon is heard here in the company of the singer Guillaume Lopez who also contributes bode- ga bagpipe, pifre and flute, and their main interest seems to be the traditional songs and dance tunes of the French Occitan region. They include tunes and songs in a variety of dance rhythms including branle, mazurka, cer- cle circassien, rondeau, ronde, bourrée, schot- tishe, and waltz. The songs are in four lan- guages Occitan, Catalan, Spanish and French.


Their combined playing is tight and pre- cise and all the better for generally being presented in an understated manner. Various guest musicians are used sparingly and effec- tively. The most impressive aspect of the album is the Lopez voice. It rattles away in the rapid-fire almost rap-like Si Vòls Venir Ambe Leu. The album is very listenable throughout, but we have to wait until towards the end to get the best items. The voice really soars on a difficult modulating tune that starts as a lament, resolving to a waltz on Vaqui Lo Polit Mes De Mai before the best and final track introduced on bag- pipe over accordeon chords until the voice brings out a contrast of emotional moods to conclude a very pleasing, carefully planned and prepared album.


http://diato.org/autredis.htm Vic Smith


FUNI Flúr Green Man GMCD007


Iceland has made a strong image for its pop and rock music, with Björk, Sigur Rós and oth- ers and Reykjavik’s Airwaves festival; and for its visual art and dramatic volcanic landscape; and the Icelandic epic sagas are well known as literature. But very few Icelanders sing its traditional songs, even though many are archived in the Árni Magnússon Institute.


A leader among the exceptions is Bára


Grímsdóttir, who has been singing and arranging the old rímur ballads and other folk songs since she heard them on her fami- ly’s farm as a child. A decade or so ago she met, and subsequently married, English folk musician Chris Foster. Since then the pair, as Funi, living in Reykjavik, have not only been researching and working with the songs,


Funi


which are traditionally unaccompanied, but to accompany them they’ve brought back into use the old Icelandic instruments: the fretted dulcimer langspil and strange two- stringed fiðla. There’s very little evidence of the playing styles of these instruments, save that both were bowed, so they’ve had to deduce their own.


This, the second Funi album, doesn’t fea- ture fiðla, but Chris’s guitar, langspil and newly-acquired hammered dulcimer and Bára’s kantele provide a delicate ringing- stringed environment for most of the songs, while Bára sings some unaccompanied. Chris is now deeply immersed in Icelandic music and as well as having developed new approaches to his already modal guitar style to fit these modal songs, he joins her on vocals, in Icelandic, for some tracks. Guests occasionally contribute vocals, double bass, clarinet or sax.


The lyrics are mostly from named 19th and


20th Century writers or poets. As Rósa Thorsteinsdóttir of the Árni Magnússon Insti- tute points out in her introduction to the book- let notes, rímur lyrics and the kvæðalög melodies weren’t firmly attached to one anoth- er; it was normal for singers to use or modify whichever tune appealed to them at the time. (Rósa herself has been a tireless worker on this material and advocate of making it available and used, and she was key in the release of the archive compilation CD Raddir – Voices and Steindór Andersen’s Rímur album).


Funi’s melodies are mostly traditional, or occasionally new-composed as in the closer, a 17th Century hymn text set by Bára in the voice-switching, ‘medieval’-sounding parallel fifths of tvisöngur style.


Not only is the music on Flúr attractive, melodious and varied, Funi are pioneers in bringing Iceland’s neglected song tradition appealingly into the light of the 21st Century, where hopefully some of Iceland’s many young musicians will pick up on its possibilities as they have so distinctively in pop and rock.


(Incidentally, the late and much-missed producer Hector Zazou told me when he was making his big Songs From The Cold Seas multi-artist CD project in the mid-1990s that he was having trouble finding anything in Iceland that could be regarded as traditional music, until he went for tea with Björk’s aun- tie, and so came across the song Björk sang for the album).


www.funi-iceland.com Andrew Cronshaw


PIERRE AKENDENGUÉ Destinée Lusafrica 662362


Pierre Akendengué is a hard man to cate- gorise. Born and raised on a forest-covered river island in Gabon (which still serves as some kind of Eden in his personal mythology) he went to study in France as a young man and ended up with a doctorate from Paris University for his study of religion and educa- tion among the Nkomi people.


Poet, composer, musician and pan- African activist, he became an important early figure in bringing African music to the wider world’s notice in the ’70s and ’80s, but his own music is a singular blend of Latin and French influence, not to mention the classics. On one of his earlier albums, for example – and this current one is his 20th – he combined Bach cantatas with Pygmy chants.


Traditional elements pop up all over this album, though usually, having set an atmo- sphere, they transform themselves into some- thing a little more general. Akendengué is a master of the elegant style change; lots of sleight of hand, lots of happy surprises. The first track is more or less a cheery singalong, but it’s followed by haunting forest noises and itchy percussion – which resolve into a more Latin rhythm and a chorus of breathy ladies, a perfect counterpart to Akenden- gué’s light tenor. There is no lack of rhythm, but it’s not exactly a dancefloor groove – nor is the almost-calypso that follows, so relaxed it would be a mistake to attempt an upright posture while listening. And so it goes on, ringing changes.


This is a varied, coherent, easy-going


album. Like the gliding swan, you can’t see the propulsive activity below the surface. But it’s there. Strong, thoughtful, assembled with care.


www.lusafrica.com Rick Sanders


MIRANDA SYKES & REX PRESTON Sing A Full Song Hands On Music HMCD37


Sheer musical chemistry brought together these two outstanding instrumentalists (a rather unusual pairing of double bass and mandolin) a little over a year ago. But remember that Miranda’s also a superb singer, and that Rex had more recently found a singing voice of his own, and it was inevitable that their debut CD, released at the start of 2012, would be a showcase for a significantly wider range of skills than mere (ha!) virtuoso playing (though there was still plenty of that on display).


Its follow up builds naturally and com- pellingly on that debut, and with even more assurance and enterprise in the selection of material. Once again the duo has ferreted out some fine creations by contemporary writers which they engagingly make their own, while two of the album’s songs were even written specially for them by Boo Hew- erdine, providing a brace of tellingly con- trasted highlights that are mirrored by a key pair of songs taken from the Pacific Pilgrim LP by the well-respected Paul Metsers. The impressively eclectic menu also unselfcon- sciously embraces apparent extremes which here form natural bedfellows – Oliver Knight’s Mysterious Day, Imogen Heap’s Little Bird and John Kirkpatrick’s inspirational Sing A Full Song – while a further standout moment occurs when Miranda creatively revisits Bill Jones’ haunting Turn To Me in a dark, dramatic new minor-key setting.


The duo also take on tradition for the first time with an elegant adaptation-cum- rewrite of Lady Isabel And The Elf Knight, after which they cover a song by Sara Watkins, formerly of Nickel Creek. In that


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