Yudu - fRoots October 2015

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folk and traditional elements from their island take their place alongside a wide range of genres including world music, ambient and ‘ethnic electronica’ (hands up all those who did not know that there was such a thing!). There is certainly the feeling that their cur- rent music is pulling hard in different, almost irreconcilable directions and during the first listening it seemed to be heading for the ‘And The Rest…’ section, but repeated listen- ings have been rewarding as the complexity starts to unravel to the listener. It is the delightful voice of Federica Zammarchi that compels the sceptical listener to come back for more so that the sound of the bansuri, and ancient flute and one of around a dozen early instruments played by Mario Crispi starts to sit happily alongside the synthesis- ers.

www.cnimusic.it Vic Smith VARIOUS ARTISTS

The Rough Guide To Psychedelic Cumbia World Music Network RGNET1337CD

Like salsa (thanks in no small part to radio and the mobility of musicians, sound record- ings, and migrants), cumbia can signify diverse things to audiences in Colombia (it originates in the black communities of the Caribbean coast region), Panama, Mexico (seeded by expat Colombian singer Luis Car- los Meyer Castandet), Peru (where it’s often known as chicha), Bolivia, Argentina (cumbia villera), Chile, and Brazil. Pablo Yglesias ‘DJ Bongohead’ compiled this eighteen-track tour de force and, like the unruly, wide-rang- ing cumbia complex itself, there is something for everyone here.

The ‘psychedelic’ element traces its ori- gins to the indelible impact that Carlos San- tana in particular had on popular Latin Amer- ican music from the late 1960s onward. Peru is the classic manifestation, from the Farfisa- surf guitar ‘jungle cumbia’ signature of Juaneco y Su Combo (with the aptly titled Perdido En El Espacio – Lost in Space), to the cumbiadelic José Luis Carballo, the chicadelic Los Orientales De Paramonga (La Danza Del Mono –Monkey’s Dance), and Los Wembler’s [sic] de Iquitos. Colombia is in the house with Jaime Gale y Sus Profetas (Cumbia Profeta tosses so much into the genre blender that listener-dancers can only surrender to the sonic chaos), MAKU SoundSystem, and Afrosound, while Mexico steps up with Sonido Gallo Negro (Inca-A-Delic), Money Chicha, and the San Diego-Tijuana ensemble

Cumbia All Stars – roughly psychedelic!

Sonido de la Frontera. Cosmopolitan neo- cumbia outfits include Cumbia All Stars, Chicha Libre, and Frente Cumbiero. More detailed notes about each of the combos would have been welcome, but whatever the case, it’s a wild and woolly ride through a sin- gular soundscape of many cumbia colours.

www.worldmusic.net Michael Stone VARIOUS ARTISTS

Folksongs Of Another America: Field Recordings From The Upper Midwest, 1937-1946 by James P Leary University Of Wisconsin Press/Dust To Digital (ISBN 978-0- 299-30150-7)

Comprising 186 songs and tunes on five CDs and a DVD, housed in a hardcover 456-page book, this project is a co-production between Dust-to-Digital and the University of Wiscon- sin Press in collaboration with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and the Association of Cultural Equity/Alan Lomax Archive. James P Leary is a co-founder of the Center for the Study of Upper Mid- western Cultures at the University of Wiscon- sin-Madison and co-editor of the Journal Of American Folklore. The recordings that Leary has compiled were collected by Alan Lomax, Helene Stratman-Thomas and Sidney Robert- son (whose boss, Charles Seeger, tellingly advised her: “Don’t select, don’t omit, don’t concentrate on any single style. We know so little! Record everything!”).

Breathtaking in its diversity, the collec- tion includes African-American, Austrian, Belgian, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French Canadian, German, Ho-Chunk, Icelandic, Lithuanian, Irish, Italian, Luxemburger, Norwegian, Ojibwe, Oneida, Polish, Scots Gaelic, Serbian, Swedish, Swiss, and Welsh performers, with at least 25 lan- guages represented.

There are dance tunes and ballads a-

plenty, but also fascinating spoken-word pieces, ranging from comic recitations to charms for toothache and hiccups. The sweet- est, most devout of hymns can be heard alongside the filthiest lumberjack songs imaginable (“they’ll give me a dollar and a drink to sing it in these places where there ain’t no decent girls…”)

The text of the book consists primarily of extended notes about each of the recordings, which are listed by track number, title, per- former/speaker, instrumentation, recording location and date, recorder/collector, tran- scriber/translator/annotator and the disc

number in the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress. There’s extensive bio- graphical information about the performers and the cultures of their various migrant communities. The numerous black-and-white photographs and the artworks of Isabella Leary contribute enormously to what is, even by Dust To Digital’s usual exacting standards, a thing most beauteous to behold.

The cherry-on-the-cake is the DVD, filmed in colour, which documents Alan Lomax’s 1938 trip through Michigan, record- ing “a thousand songs” for the Library of Congress. “The upper peninsula of Michigan” he noted, in his field diary, “proved to be the most fertile source of material…”

Folksongs Of Another America surely numbers among the most significant of com- mercially-available historical recording collec- tions ever assembled, and represents a monu- mental achievement by James P Leary. A trea- sure to be studied, enjoyed, and passed on to the next generation.

www.dust-digital.com/folksongs Steve Hunt

FRED SMITH Home FS0010

Smith’s latest album finds the Aussie song- smith straddled between two worlds. His stunning 2011 offering, Dust Of Uruzgan, drew on his time as a diplomat in Afghanistan, liaising between the Coalition troops and tribal leaders, but now he’s back home with his wife and their first child. Per- haps inevitably, the resulting CD is a Janus- faced affair, looking both backwards at old comrades and forwards to the rather differ- ent adventures now in store.

Among the retrospective songs, Going

Home is a very literal farewell to Afghanistan, with Smith expressing the career soldier’s ner- vousness at returning to family challenges as he boards the plane home. Darapet was writ- ten at the request of a Brisbane soldier who saw his friend Jared ‘Crash’ MacKinney die at that battle in 2010. Like all the songs here, they put Smith’s vocals and acoustic guitar firmly centre-stage, often with no more than a restrained bass line or a bluesy harmonica solo to fill out the sound.

The great strength of Smith’s soldiering songs lies in his utter rejection of melodrama, preferring a matter-of-fact tone which carries quiet authority and the troops’ authentic voice. In a coda to MacKinney’s tale, he acknowledges the vampiric role he himself must sometimes play in making art from other men’s deaths: “… and Fred Smith got his song”.

The album’s other major strand has Smith looking back on old friends and lovers before turning to his new life as a father. The two key tracks here are Beautiful Girl, a rightfully soppy paean to baby Olympia, and Song So Uncertain, a tribute to his late friend David Branson. Branson played roughly the same role in Australian theatre that Ken Campbell played here, and Smith’s affection and respect for the man are manifest. Shane O’Mara’s elec- tric guitar helps him pull off the risky Women In My Life with aplomb, while Heel And Toe combines a celebration of the nomadic life with a love toast to Olympia’s mum.

All in all, then, this is another strong col- lection from Smith – his eighth to date – and more evidence that he can match the best work any Americana troubadour has to offer. The point is underscored by his version of Townes Van Zandt’s Pancho And Lefty (this album’s only cover) which he tells with such clarity I’ll confess it’s the first time I’ve ever really understood the nature of Lefty’s sin.