83 f
be blown on. Interesting to see in the sleeve - note (by Professor John Collins, noted author- ity) a poster for a highlife jam involving Men- sah and a certain Fela Ransome-Kuti.
www.retroafric.com
Unlike Mensah’s highlife, the 38-track Soundway anthology offers a picture that’s hardly elegant or graceful at all. It’s rougher, ruder and generally more fun. Restored from old shellac and vinyl singles, it gives us high- life from both Ghana and Nigeria, some tracks recorded in London. And guess who prominently figures? None other than F Ran- some-Kuti, at first with his Highlife Rakers band – his two first recordings, just unearthed after 50 years – then with his Koola Lobitos. Nearly Afrobeat!
Also to be heard is Ginger Johnson, later a well-known fixture on the London club scene with his African Drummers. They opened for the Stones at the first Hyde Park concert. Also here is Nigerian Victor Oliaya and his Cool Cats, another bridge between highlife and Afrobeat. Some tracks here are well worked-out and quite intricate, others are little more than one brilliant riff repeat- ed. The choice is varied, and the roots of the music are much more apparent than with Mensah. Moody and dense, light and jaunty – this is a great project realised. It incidentally supplies tracks by many of the artists men- tioned in Prof Collins’ notes. The well-rounded household needs both sets.
www.soundwayrecords.com Rick Sanders LEAD BELLY
The Smithsonian Folkways Collection SFW-40201-CD
A companion to 2012’s Woody at 100: The Woody Guthrie Centennial Collec- tion, featuring 108 tracks (fifteen previously unre- leased) on five discs, housed in a 140-page large format hardback book. With essays by producers Jeff Place and
Robert Santelli, first-hand anecdotes, record- ing details, the stories behind the songs and an abundance of superb images and archive materials, Huddie Leadbetter has never looked or sounded as good.
Discs One, Two and Three contain most of
the hits. Irene (with Sonny Terry’s unmistak- able harmonica), The Midnight Special, Black Girl (Where Did You Sleep Last Night), Pick A Bale Of Cotton, Rock Island Line, Alberta, Out On The Western Plains and the rest – those songs that never grow old, familiar from life- times of hearing the Weavers, Lonnie Done- gan, Led Zeppelin, Rory Gallagher, Nirvana, Tom Jones, and pretty much every folk singer worthy of the name. In the years 1942-1948, Lead Belly recorded an unparalleled breadth of material – prison songs, work songs, sea songs, children’s songs, religious songs, topical songs, cowboy songs, political songs, even celebrity and royal news story songs (Jean Harlow, Princess Elizabeth) and still nobody sings these songs like Lead Belly.
Disc Four comprises recordings of Lead
Belly’s Folk Songs Of America WNYC Radio shows, some featuring The Oleandar Quartet and Anne Graham (“a lady singing work songs for the first time!”) while on the final disc selections are drawn from the Last Ses- sions, which includes an emotive recording of Lead Belly singing along with Bessie Smith on Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out, along with Black Betty and House Of The Rising Sun.
Discovered by John Lomax in Angola Prison (“as close to slavery as any person could come in 1930”) and subsequently pro-
Lead Belly – broadcasting in San Francisco in 1944
moted via sensationalistic newspaper head- lines like: “Two-Time Dixie Murderer Sings His Way To Freedom”, and “Sweet Singer Of The Swamplands Here To Do A Few Tunes Between Homicides”, Lead Belly is an oft- mythologised figure. From this distance, the titling of the 1939 Musicraft Records album Negro Sinful Songs appears crass, while sub- sequent clumsy attempts to paint him as a ‘noble savage’ have only served to diminish his genius. As his niece, Tiny Robinson, notes: “Lead Belly was introduced to us many years ago, but in the worst way.” The Smithsonian Folkways Collection re-introduces us to this phenomenal artist in the best possible way imaginable. Ignore the plethora of existing budget compilations claiming to be the The Definitive, The All Time Greatest,and Abso- lutely The Best, and just save your money up for this. Whoa, goddamn!
www.folkways.si.edu Stephen Hunt VARIOUS ARTISTS
Hanoi Masters: War is a Wound, Peace Is A Scar Glitterbeat GBCD 021
The spotlight has shone recently on the music made in 1960s / ’70s Cambodia and Thailand, when American influences, in part due to the war in neighbouring Viet- nam, permeated local music traditions. Even as far away as Okinawa, home to many
US military bases, the music scene was changed forever.
In Saigon, US rock and pop influenced local music too, albeit usually in a lighter pop / folk style compared to the raw psychedelic / funky sounds being made across the borders. The main protagonists of the day, such as Khanh Ly, emigrated to America in 1975 along with thousands of other Vietnamese refugees.
This album too is all about the legacy of
the Vietnam war, but in a very different way. War Is A Wound, Peace Is A Scar focuses on the Communist north in Hanoi, with musi-
cians who lived through, survived the war and now sing songs they feel tell their tale. It is a beautiful document, at times moving and surprising. Over the course of the album we are introduced to five musicians who feature on different tracks. Singer Nguyen Thi Lan produces a spine-tingling magical moment, on Road to Home. We are told she was once an AK-47 issued village leader who hadn’t sung for 40 years whose emotional perfor- mance defied her usual stoic personality.
The song titles are in English, which leave no doubt about their content; For The Fallen, Road To Home, Please Wait For Me and Taking Your Spirit To The Next World. 85-year-old Vo Tuan Minh plays guitar and sings on what is the only original song by one of the perform- ers, I Long To Return To My Hometown. Writ- ten when he was a soldier, his role was to sing to boost the morale of the troops.
All other instruments are Vietnamese and include the little known K’ni, an extraor- dinary plucked instrument that is clasped between the teeth and the words spoken in a local dialect on this album by Quoc Hung through its single string.
Holding together what could be a dis- parate group of musicians and styles is former Hanoi and now California resident Van An Vo, whose last album was reviewed in these pages (fR 367/368) and a track included on one of the compilations (fRoots 47). She adds dan tranh, the Vietnamese zither, and occa- sional percussion to most tracks. It’s all beau- tifully recorded in Hanoi and produced by fel- low Californian Ian Brennan, probably best known for his work with Tinariwen and Malawi Mouse Boys.
If there’s one minor gripe, it’s that the booklet-less digipak doesn’t give a bit more information about the musicians and the songs. For example, we don’t get any infor- mation about Pham Mong Hai, who con- tributes, beautifully, the opening two and final track. I get the feeling there’s even more of a story to tell, hidden between the lines sung by these performers. Overall though, an exquisite release.
www.glitterbeat.com Paul Fisher
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