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GROANBOX Groanbox Groanbox Records GBR-006

‘World Roots Band’ Groanbox celebrate their tenth anniversary by releasing a self- titled, sixth studio album recorded across two sessions in Ontario in 2013 and New Orleans in 2015.

This is a spontaneous, environment- based record, and New Orleans permeates both the lyrics and the sound of tracks like Katrina and Buffalo Truck, while Ontario is evoked in Demon Truck and Deep Tree Diving.

The four Groanbox members – Oscar

Cainer, Paul Clifford, Cory Seznec and Michael Ward-Bergeman are a geographically dis- persed group, and there’s a palpable sense of excitement in their shared endeavour. Songs start out with swirling, Big Easy piano, before bluegrass banjo and blues harmonica kick in and join the party. Multi-instrumentalist Cory Seznec currently resides in Ethiopia and his desert blues guitar and kora-like circular riffs infuse tracks like Graveyard Of Pines and The Root Will Split The Rock.

Deep Tree Diving and Orchestrated

Entropy feature modern, insistent dance grooves, conjured from primitive acoustic percussion instruments, while jazz trumpet, trombone, café accordeon and fife all enliven the musical gumbo.

Groanbox (the band) are capable of incorporating more ideas into a single song than many bands manage in their entire careers. Groanbox (the album) proves it, with natural, uncontrived ease.

www.groanbox.com Steve Hunt

SEIVA Seiva Bigorna BGN005CD

The Portuguese revolution (1974) sparked a revitalisation of interest in folk heritage that cast off an ideologically loaded folkloric con- struct with decidedly fascist leanings. In the cultural opening of the post-dictatorship era, scholars and activists collected, rehearsed, revived, performed, and inevitably reinter- preted traditional repertoires, vocal styles, and instrumentation. Experiments with roots aesthetics and practices enfolded emergent urban popular strains, influenced as much by foreign recordings (French chanson, immi- grant West African traditions, rock, pop, jazz, televised performance) as by the range of fado elements, rural work songs, and the music of religious festivals, pilgrimage, and balladry, all played on an array of Portuguese strings, bagpipes, and percussion.

Seiva (sap, lifeblood) was formed by Joana Negrão (voice, gaitas portuguesas, adufe frame drum, pandeireta) and Vasco Ribeiro Casais (braguesa guitar, cavaquinho, gaitas portuguesas, adufe), veterans of the long-lived but now-defunct neo-trad-alt-rock ensemble Dazkarieh. Rounded out by the dramatic intervention of percussionist Rita Nóvoa, the trio aspires to situate Portuguese folk idioms in a contemporary, cosmopolitan domain, drawing on national roots while embracing the dynamic inevitability of musi- cal change and cross-fertilisation (hence the occasional electronic filigree, vocal sampling, and pointed invocation of rock guitar on braguesa and cavaquinho).

Seiva is the first to declare its project to be anything but fado, and listeners will detect a certain Celtic stylistic, rhythmic, and tonal affinity in the music’s communal orien- tation, modal predilections, pipes, and per- cussion. Vocal creativity and poetic flair (Negrão has the gift) are enduring values in Portuguese oral tradition, so for the unschooled listener it’s unfortunate that the song texts are not included in the notes, no

doubt a function of CD production cost and the trio’s primary orientation toward a Por- tuguese-speaking audience. Nonetheless, lis- teners conditioned to equate Portugal exclu- sively with fado will find compelling evidence to the contrary in the resplendent musical heartbeat that is Seiva.

seivaonline.com Michael Stone

MILAGRO ACUSTICO Rosa Del Sud Cultural Bridge CBMA0005

ALMA FOLK Volamu Li Vesti CNI Music CNDL 28957

RADICANTO Oltremare Area Live (CNI) AL001007

OFFICINE POPOLARI LICANE Officine Popolare Lucine CNI Music 28960

AGRICANTUS Turnari CNI Music CNDL27910

Their website introduction to the album by Milagro Acustico has an apologetic start; “Probably, some purists will not like Rosa Del Sud,” Here’s the reason why.

Rosa Balistreri (1927-1990) was a Sicilian singer of great power and emotion with a raw lived-in voice that won her many admir- ers. What this band has done is to license some of her voice tracks from Warner and set these to their own accompaniments. They must have feared that some will think that this is a travesty. To be able to consider this necessitates a familiarity with some of her original recordings and here, as usual, Youtube is very useful.

This reviewer’s natural reaction would be ‘leave well alone!’ but comparing the simplic- ity of the original releases with these new Milagro Acustico settings, it would be very difficult to argue that the majesty of her voice has not been enhanced by these arrangements. The treatment sounds a sym- pathetic and worthy way of adding to the impact of a very interesting voice.

www.culturalbridgelabel.com Alma Folk are young Calabrians, eight

singer/musicians and a dancer who give a vibrant and energetic approach to the roots music of their area, one which is rich in tradi- tional music. The music scoots along driven by

Seiva

hand-held drums with whistles, accordeon and pipes usually prominent in the mix. This album comes three years after their debut album Luna Tunda and shows the band fol- lowing the same direction but with a more varied and powerful approach, especially in their singing.

After the youthful vigour of Alma Folk’s tarantellas, the music of Radicanto comes over as a more mature affair, as it ought to – they have been around since 1996 when they were founded in Bari. Their take on the Ital- ian tradition has been used in stage shows, plays and films as well as being chore- ographed for ballet and television. This comes across in their approach. There is great beauty in their playing and more particularly in their singing, but it is a gentle, relaxed beauty. There is lovely singing from Maria Guiquinto and from pianist, Fabrizio Piepoli. The arrangements for the accompaniments of traditional songs are by their mandolin and guitar player Guiseppe De Trezio who also wrote about a half of the songs on their new album. There also should a mention for the excellent twenty-page booklet design with the lyrics intermingled with some inter- esting vintage sepia photographs of their home area.

The next album claims its home region

as “Lucinia”. You won’t find that on a mod- ern map as it is the name from classical times for the area that reaches from the instep of the imagined boot of Italy up towards Saler- no. It corresponds roughly to the modern area of Basilicata.

If the Officine Populare Lucine album were a building then all the foundations would be built on tarantella and other southern Italian dance rhythms but many of the rooms would be decorated in different ways. Some of the tracks are straightfor- ward but others combine the rhythms of their area with a variety of other influences. There are tinges of Latin, middle-eastern sounds, rap, hip-hip, club dance, perfor- mance poetry, yet with the various cross rhythms it all resolves into the firm, pound- ing beats of their own region. You would have to say that it is all very cleverly done and that the outcome is very satisfactory. This lovely music is only part of the work of OPL which involves itself in many aspects of the culture and history of their region.

The last album brings us back to Sicily and Rosa Balistreri. She is quoted as one of the inspirations for the formation of Agrican- tus way back in 1979. The band has devel- oped in many different directions since then – not always happily – and has had its dormant times during the ensuing decades. Now the

Photo: Rita Carmo