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layered cover of Another Christmas Song (from Tull’s otherwise largely missable 1989 album Rock Island). The threesome’s stylish a cappella harmonies are perhaps best dis- played on a suitably concise account of Ye Mariners All.
Roam is a generous, well-rounded collec- tion that showcases Cupola’s tremendous panache and the accomplished pooling of its members’ individual and collective talents.
www.cupola.org.uk David Kidman LA JOSE
Espiral: Iberian & Flamenco Fusion ARC Music EUCD 2596
Josefina Gómez Llorente ‘La Jose’ is a singer who deconstructs the traditional template that inspires her very artistry, standard devia- tions removed from the cante jondo canon, yet never distant from the flamenco spirit. Duende, Federico García Lorca called it, and in its essence of risk and daring, La Jose is its embodiment, in composition and perfor- mance alike.
Flamenco – that most visual of perfor-
mance styles – engenders rather fixed expec- tations as to its ritualised performance. It takes an artist like La Jose to set expectations on end, in an abundant collaboration with gifted guitarist-composer and co-producer Victor Iniesta. Together with an inspired re- imagination of two traditional Sephardic songs (La Serena, Morenika), eleven original La Jose/Iniesta compositions, no two alike, beat at the heart of Espiral.
Joyously, captivatingly, La Jose sidesteps comparison with any female singer the tradi- tion has produced, defying generic categori- sation with a voice of astounding range and striking tonal clarity, a knowing sweetness,
joie de vivre, and political edge uncharacter- istic of the brooding, wounded heart of deep gypsy song.
If, per the title, this is a fusion project, bel canto, operatic, and eastern influences subtly invoke and reshape flamenco’s transcontinen- tal heritage, a vibrant history stretching from the Indian subcontinent to Iberia.
This recording, along with video evidence readily available to the web flâneur, confirms La Jose as a performer foraging creatively into territory beyond purist demarcation. Liv- ing traditions are never frozen in space and time, that dynamic dimension where true innovators engage, and La Jose is one of them. ¡Que wow, que onda, que viva La Jose!
facebook.com/lajosemusic Michael Stone DUBL HANDI
Morning In A New Machine Own Label No cat no
On their second release Dubl Handi, named after an old washboard manufacturer (the name literally means ‘double handy’), returns to its unusual banjo-and-percussion reading of the American Folksong Book. Hilary Hawke (banjo, nylon-stringed guitar) and Brian Geltner (percussion, keyboards) form the core of the group, the sound at times filled out by acoustic guitars, trumpet, and pedal steel courtesy of sympathetic asso- ciates. Hawke, Geltner, and company are counted among the young singers and pick- ers making names in the current New York City roots revival, its epicenter in Brooklyn.
Except for the two Hawke-penned origi- nals, something like fractured 1920s pop songs, the material may strike you on first look-over as a tad worn: Cindy, Flop Eared Mule, Ida Red, and the like. And if that puts
you off, be warned: you’re at risk of missing something you may live to regret passing by. If Dubl Handi isn’t exactly radically experi- mental – Hawke and Geltner are folk musi- cians by any definition – the two don’t traffic in your grandpa’s old-time music, either. Their dust-shaking style finds a balance between respect and subversion, and moreover accom- plishes it in a fashion you’re unlikely to have encountered before.
Even as Hawke and Geltner upend tra- ditional arrangements, their love for the old tunes is never in doubt. That affection is what leads them to engage with it so vigor- ously, to marry their own urban musical sen- sibility and life experience to rural tradi- tion’s representation of humour and hard times. The result is no better exemplified than in the jagged, rambunctious arrange- ment of Cumberland Gap, a thing of joy that affords the impression of a communal celebration of movement, adventure, and expectation; in short, nothing at all like the sometimes dour, if historically justified, reading that has the singer glumly contem- plating a plunge into the potentially dan- gerous unknown because sheer economic necessity demands it. Even so, not a note of sentimental slush is in evidence in Dubl Handi’s Cumberland Gap, or anywhere else. However eccentric its character, Dubl Handi communicates the felt and lived music of the true vine.
Besides her ear-grabbing neo- clawhammer banjo, Hawke offers up affect- ingly nuanced vocals that, if they aren’t much like Jean Ritchie’s or Hazel Dickens’, are suit- ed to Dubl Handi’s casual, unforced blues and jazz accents. Geltner’s wily percussion, as prominent as Hawke’s strings, snakes, twists, and thrills.
www.dublhandimusic.com Jerome Clark
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