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KARIM BAGGILI Kali City Home Records 4446111
A Belgian of Yugoslav-Jordanian heritage, Karim Baggili has so far made his name through his blend of flamenco, tango, South American folk and Western and Arabic classi- cal music. In this, his fourth album, Baggili gets in touch with his Levantine roots and puts down his usual Spanish guitar to return to the oud. Kali City is Baggili’s second major explo- ration into oud music (all self-composed), and to kick off the album, he invites the Palestinian oud trio Le Trio Joubran to join in.
The first five tracks of the album are moody duets and trios of oud between Bag- gili and the trio, with subtle percussion. Here, Baggili’s skills as both an oud player and com- poser can been seen as the various oud parts swirl together and swim apart, with tango and flamenco teasing their way out of the Arabic melodies.
Given the high status of Baggili’s guests and their prominence in the album’s press, it’s a little strange that the album actually reach- es its peak once Le Trio have taken their leave. They hand over to Baggili’s ‘Arabic Band’ to support him, and with violin, bass, kawala flute, drums and percussion, as well as Arabic vocals provided by Samia Sabri and Baggili himself, this ensemble seems to create a more exciting sonic landscape – a bustling urban environment rather than a stark desert scene. The album’s title track and the piece Arabic Circus, both from this latter half of the album, are probably the most enjoyable of the set, bringing to the mix flavours of jazz, classical music and even the occasional aroma of the 19th Century Parisian café.
Karim Baggili does seem to have announced himself as just as proficient on the oud as the Spanish guitar and makes an entertaining album while he’s at it. It’s a bit of a shame that the collaboration with Le Trio Joubran doesn’t quite deliver, but this can be forgiven in light of the overall quality of the music on display.
www.homerecords.be Jim Hickson MICHAEL CHAPMAN
Live At Folk Cottage, Cornwall 1967 TreeHouse44 TH44CD0201
MICHAEL CHAPMAN
Playing Guitar The Easy Way Light In The Attic Records LITA114
The Cornish folk clubs of the 1960s have been document- ed, archived and pho- tographed more than most (for a quick refresher course see my features on John The Fish in fR 347 and Wizz Jones in fR 352). Even better, their organisers and performers
extended a welcome to a number of folks with decent quality tape-recorders and microphones, preserving performances by the likes of Ralph McTell, Wizz Jones & Pete Stan- ley and Clive Palmer.
Live At Folk Cottage, Cornwall from 1967 (the same as Brenda Wootton’s Brenda At Buryan, released in 2013) pre-dates Chap- man’s debut singer-songwriter album Rain- maker by over a year. Captured by Lionel Rigby via a single microphone hung from a beam above the stage, this set features ‘Mike’ Chapman as an acoustic bluesman on Take Me Home Whiskey (with a couple of bars of Day Tripper craftily inserted in to the extend- ed instrumental intro), Parchman Farm, Woke Up This Morning and Baby Please Don’t Go, a jazz crooner on The Prisoner’s Song (aka I Wish I Had Someone To Love Me), When Did
’60s Michael Chapman
You Leave Heaven and I Thought About You, a rock ’n’ roller on That’ll BeThe Day and Kansas City and an instrumental improviser (with Instrumental Number 2 including a size- able chunk of Angi.)
With no PA system upstairs at Willough-
by’s Farm – “one of the main reasons he played BIG guitars and walloped them pretty hard,” according to Andru Chapman’s sleeve-notes, the remastered sound here is remarkably clear and powerful and really is just like being in the room amongst an attentive, good-humoured and very appreciative audience.
Conversing recently with a couple of stal- warts of the ’60s scene, one (a friend of the late Diz Disley) remarked wistfully that “the folk clubs then were places where anything could happen.” The folk clubs of Cornwall provided a launch-pad for one of the great English originals (as uncategorisable now as he was then) and this album serves both as a wonderful document of that era and a listen- ing pleasure from beginning to end.
Originally released in 1978, Playing Gui-
tar The Easy Way is, according to its creator, “in no way intended to be a course of instruc- tion, but rather a series of hints and ideas that would hopefully lead to further experi- mentation.” It’s essentially a collection of pieces played in a variety of alternate and open tunings, the use of which, Chapman claims (with typical self-deprecation) were necessitated by “having fingers more suited to a builders yard than to a fret board.”
Each title is performed full-length and full-speed, preceded merely by each string plucked to check the tuning a couple of times, so it functions perfectly well as a fine instrumental record of 1970’s Michael Chap- man in all his phase-shifted and fuzzed-up glory, while the booklet contains full tabla- ture (notated by Derek Brimstone) for those wanting to learn to play along.
www.michaelchapman.co.uk Steve Hunt
SVÄNG Karja-La Galileo GMC061
Four slightly droll-looking besuited blokes clutching harmonicas in ring-blinged knuck- les, but Sväng are no Finnish reincarnation of a music-hall novelty act.
On this fifth CD they’re still making big strides. Big, rich and varied far beyond the honky-chuff one might expect are the sounds Jouko Kyhälä, Eero Grundström and Eero
Turkka get out of ingeniously mic’d chromat- ic and diatonic harmonicas, Kyhälä’s keyed Hohner Harmonetta, and punch-chugging under it all Pasi Leino’s bass harmonica, which isn’t acoustically very loud but gains a huge depth and punch by the band’s carefully devised close-micing systems.
I’m lost in mystification and respect for how they put together these fearsomely smart arrangements of their own composi- tions and make them so alive and natural.
These are instrumentals that speak.
There’s Eero Grundström’s opener Schengen, inspired by a tune played by a pair of Roma- nian buskers in frozen Helsinki. Tracks include Jouko Kyhälä’s march and brisk polska for the wedding of Eero Turkka and his Bulgarian wife Neda, Turkka’s surging Eksyneen Tango in memory of getting lost at night in a mili- tary area near Neda’s home village, Jeppo’s coupling of Finnish-Swedish march and min- uet and Turkka’s nod to rakija intoxication and Howlin’ Wolf. Kyhälä’s dark Kyytiläinen – The Captured Passenger reflects the ugliness of Finland’s post-independence civil war as reflected in his family history; Grundström pays lyrical tribute in Impivaara to the Finnish spirit of escapism and national romantics such as Aleksis Kivi, Jean Sibelius, and, to finish, the titular quadrille, also by Grundström, is an imagination of a non-border-divided utopia in Karelia, the heartland of kantele, jouhikko, runolaulu and Kalevala.
www.galileo-mc.de, UK distributor
www.discovery-records.com Andrew Cronshaw
HARMONICA HINDS
I’d Give You Anything If I CouldWolf 120.831 CD
Mervyn ‘Harmonica’ Hinds was born in Trinidad and Tobago in 1945, studied in Cana- da for a degree in sociology and, encouraged by fellow harmonica player James Cotton, moved to Chicago in 1973 where he became a club regular.
This album is culled from two self produced albums recorded in 2008 and 2010 and unfor- tunately fails to ignite musically, despite gui- tarist Eddie Taylor and drummer Kenny Smith being among the recording personnel. Hinds is neither a strong vocalist or innovative har- monica player. The only point in his favour is his original lyrics.
www.wolfrec.com Dave Peabody
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