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Katerina Tsiridou
Leyla McCalla
KATERINA TSIRIDOU
Aman Katerina: A Tribute To Panayiotis Toundas Protasis PR1173-2
Composer Panayiotis Toundas, 1886–1942, grew up and began his musical career in Smyrna until that multi- cultural paradise was destroyed in the 1922 tragedy. Like many Greek refugees from Asia Minor, he relocated to Piraeus, one of
the two cradles of early 20th Century rembeti- ka, and soon became local director for inter- national record labels of the day like Odeon, Columbia and HMV. His songs were recorded by major rembetika artists like Stelios Per- piniadis, Roza Eskenazi and Rita Abatzi.
This Toundas tribute record of Katerina
Tsiridou’s – perhaps best known out here for her work with the group Kompania (previ- ously reviewed in fRoots) and her appearance in the Rosa Eskenazi film My Sweet Canary – is an absolute gem of real, proper-job ensem- ble rembetika. Top flight musicians, schooled as tight at it gets, provide those swelling waves of bouzouki, baglama, mandolin, gui- tar, violin, accordeon, kanoun and percussion, and on four of the seventeen tracks she’s joined by guest singers, notably the marvel- lous young Areti Ketime. The playing is uni- formly exciting, superbly directed by Nikos Protopapas, to a standard which would rival any top jazz players, while as lively and unin- hibited as you’ll hear in any living tradition.
But the best instrument of all is Katerina’s voice: expressive, heartfelt, flexible, smoothly negotiating all the dynamic decoration inher- ent in the West-meets-East historic roots of classic rembetika.
Of course, cut off as I am from the tumble of everyday Greek music developments and inevitably hampered by using the wrong lan- guage and alphabet, I can hardly make any sort of stab at an authoritative pronounce- ment (how I miss being able to wander into Green Lanes’ much-lamented Trehantiri shop to consult the late Aki Pattalis, my Greek music oracle), but if this isn’t one of the best new old-school rembetika records you’ll encounter this decade I’d be very surprised.
www.tsiridoukaterina.com Ian Anderson LEYLA McCALLA
A Day For The Hunter, A Day For The Prey Jazz Village JV5700116
This album, released on the Jazz Village label, arrives with a press release bearing the instruction: “File under Classical.” When loaded onto my iTunes library, it became “genre: Country & Folk”. Leyla McCalla plays cello, tenor banjo and guitar,
and sings in English, French and Haitian Cre- ole. This is clearly not an artist who can be easily pigeonholed. Raised in New Jersey to
Haitian parents, McCalla lived in Ghana for two years and studied as a musician in New York before settling in New Orleans, where she currently resides.
The twelve tracks are a roughly equal mix of traditional, self-penned and other writers material.
McCalla has a real talent for sparse yet
effective arrangement, as evinced by the insistent, percussive cello riff that underpins the title track, the fiddle, cello and ti fer (tri- angle) on the Creole waltz Les Plats Sont Tous Mis Sur La Table, and her solo guitar with atmospheric backing vocals from Sabine McCalla on a powerful performance of Abner Jay’s Vietnam.
She’s no slouch as a vocalist either, wringing real emotion from a beautifully- sung arrangement of Ella Jenkins’ Little Spar- row, while a duet with her erstwhile Carolina Chocolate Drops bandmate Rhiannon Gid- dens on Manman – a song by Haitian musi- cian, activist and former politician Manno Charlemagne, may well be one of the most memorable things you’ll hear all year.
A Day For The Hunter, A Day For The
Prey is a musical exploration of McCalla’s cul- tural identities which delivers on all the promise shown by her 2014 solo debut Vari- Colored Songs. Like its predecessor, it con- nects to the past and honours her forebears, but also confidently asserts her singular per- sonality as an impressive and important artist for our times.
www.leylamccalla.com Steve Hunt
Photo: Sarah Danziger
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