f54 THE


GARIFUNA


COLLECTIVE Ayó Cumbancha/Stonetree CMB-CD–27


DANNY MICHEL WITH THE GARIFUNA COLLECTIVE


Black Birds Are Dancing Over Me Cumbancha/Stonetree CMB-CD–28


Garifuna singer-songwriter-guitarist-band - leader, WOMEX winner and UNESCO Artist for Peace, Andy Palacio’s tragic death at 47 was a searing cultural loss for the 300,000 African-Amerindian Garifuna people of Caribbean Central America and the inner-city US. But on the evidence of The Garifuna Col- lective’s Ayó, and their collaboration with Juno-nominated Canadian singer-songwriter Danny Michel, Black Birds Are Dancing Over Me, Garifuna music has much more to convey.


These releases cultivate a fine contempo- rary edge while simultaneously taking the music ever deeper into African-Caribbean sec- ular and spiritual traditions. Singers Lloyd Augustine (rhythm guitar), Desiree Diego (maracas), Chela Torres (hand percussion), and Mohobub Flores (turtle shell percussion) con- stitute a powerful vocal front. They are expert- ly backed by Sam Harris and Guayo Cedeño (lead guitars), utility singer- instrumentalist Rolando ‘Chi-Chi Man’ Sosa, guitarist-bassist- producer Ivan Duran, bassist-guitarist-engi- neer Al Ovando, and Garifuna drumming mas- ters Joshua Aranda and Denmark Flores.


‘Chi-Chi Man’ and Mohobub Flores (co- founder with Pen Cayetano of the legendary Original Turtle Shell Band, which essentially invented Garifuna punta rock, defining an enduring popular regional dance style that opened the way for Palacio and company) lend their veterans’ gravitas while melding impeccably with the Collective’s youthful spir- it. The younger members, Augustine, Diego, Aranda, and Denmark Flores, have grown as artists and proponents of Garifuna tradition, and are now passing it on to Garifuna youth who a generation ago might have spurned their roots for global pop.


With its complex layered sound, rhyth- mic drive, creative soul and seamless flow, every song confirms the group’s continued maturation. Ayó (Goodbye), the opening track, is a muted invocation of Palacio, while Justo Miranda’s closing Seremei Buguya (Thanks to You) is a salute to the master, in the New World African American spiritual mode of honoring those who, having given all, now reside with the ancestors, while


Briga


instructing and inspiring a nascent transna- tional generation. And every other song invokes a dancer’s instinctive response to the insistent rhythmic groove, while revealing new nuances with repeated listening.


Having never met Palacio, Canadian indie rocker Danny Michel was understand- ably nervous when producer Duran invited him to an exploratory encounter with the Collective. Bearing only a handful of songs and lyrics to the Stonetree studio in rural western Belize, Michel didn’t know what to expect, but the result reflects a deeper human and artistic investment than most Western artists have the sense to cultivate in their tentative, sometimes (if unintentionally) predatory incursions into world music collab- oration. As the Garifuna have done for cen- turies, the Collective welcomed a stranger into their midst with an openness that is key to their creative survival as a culture long besieged by powers greater than they.


Michel’s is an original voice that refer- ences and yet transcends the lyrical incision and topicality of Dylan, the songwriting gift and earnest poetics of Paul Simon, the depth of Marley , and hooks worthy of The Talking Heads or The Police. Listening deeply, learn- ing from, and granting his collaborators broad latitude in shaping the unscripted result, Michel conjures an optimistic cosmo - politan spirit of probing social critique, human vulnerability, and joie de vivre.


With the insistent drive of Garifuna per- cussion, terrific guitar and horn work, brilliant choruses and turnarounds, excellent produc- tion values, and attractive packaging, the gems of Black Birds are too many to enumer- ate. But from a traditionalist’s perspective, the album’s essence comes with the closer, This Is What Is, an enigmatic call-and-response bal- lad from somewhere at the end of the known world that opens simply but profoundly with octogenarian legend Paul Nabor’s creaking guitar and plaintive Garifuna lyrics.


Everything up to that moment is elo-


quent testimony to the unifying spirit that people from very different walks of life can discover by slowing down enough to share the fleeting impossibility of the human con- dition, the unfathomable passing of an inspi- ration like Palacio, or such everyday wonders as a cacophony of blackbirds dancing inexpli- cably overhead.


www.cumbancha.com Michael Stone


BRIGA Turbo Folk Stories BR-1000


The album cover is all heels, fishnets and a shining, blinging Turbo Folk logo. I was somewhat taken aback: it’s not a sub-genre that receives a great deal of attention in these parts, and possibly for good reason.


For those fortunate, perhaps, to have


escaped Turbo Folk’s charms over the last cou- ple of decades, the genre originated in Serbia during the early days of the Balkan wars, an often shameless blend of Europop and tradi- tional music, veering more towards the 2 Unlimited end of things than Boban Markovic. It was undeniably escapist, created a number of stars, had occasional unsavoury connections with warlords, and insisted on leggy raunchiness in its production line videos. Vocals remained fairly authentic, however, and the musical clashes were occa- sionally intriguing.


But this is Montreal-based Briga, fire- brand fiddler and arranger, brilliant student – and dramatic player – of Roma and other Central European traditional music. And so there isn’t, of course, much Turbo Folk at all.


More accurately, this is a record of Briga’s travels with the great Bulgarian violinist Georgi Yanev, who became her mentor into new, intense and wildly celebratory ways of playing. He was a hard taskmaster, instructing her to learn all the typical time signatures of the Balkans in just 24 hours, rewarding her with a Roma wedding gig in Filipovtsi, where she shared the stage with his full orchestra.


The album, therefore, has its moments


of real energy. Vihor offers up a classic Balkan dance, leading incongruously into Lela, in which Alix Guéry’s resolute accordeon accompanies Briga’s smudged and playful French vocals on a journey from con- fused emotion into purity.


There’s a nod to Yanev with his evocative


Titanic, a dirty groove below skittish violin, while the closest we come to the aforemen- tioned sub-genre is probably Moje Brat Mitko, in which big, smooth and spacey key- boards are an invitation to dance somewhere unsophisticated.


Briga examines the contradictions in this music – of having to endure love and hate together, of having to drink and to dance. The resulting abandon is palpable in Night @ Officers’ Club, a raucous summation of every- thing that she has attempted here, “not an attempt to showcase” Turbo Folk, but rather to “allude to it as a reference point” in what is really an accomplished journey through the music of the Balkans.


www.brigamusic.wordpress.com John Pheby


JOSIENNE CLARKE & BEN WALKER Fire & Fortune Navigator 082


DAVID GIBB & ELLY LUCAS Up Through The Woods Proper HAIRPIN004


PHILLIP HENRY & HANNAH MARTIN Mynd Dragonfly Roots DRCD001


Not so long ago there was such a paucity of duos that the BBC Folk Award for best two- some ritually went to Show Of Hands each year, even when there were three of them. All that’s changed with the new generation finding fresh ways to interact and revive the format. While all three of these fast-rising duos are boy-girl outfits with at least one foot in traditional song that clearly fuels their own compositions, these are widely contrast- ing albums. What they have in common is a distinctive style and character of their own creation based not merely on good singing, accomplished musicianship and intelligent arrangements but impressive songwriting too.


I’m particularly taken with the mel- low mournfulness of Josienne Clarke’s voice and if there’s a


fear of being smothered by the unremittingly lachrymose mood, it is offset by the fragile beauty of Walker’s deft guitar (a match-win- ning contribution to No Such Certainty) and some gorgeous violin and cello parts (Basia Bartz and Jo Silverston respectively) – notably on a lovely arrangement of Green Grow The Laurels – that lift the album way beyond its predecessor, The Seas Are Deep. Other trad songs Month Of January and When A Knight Won His Spurs are more simplistically deliv- ered and there’s even a touchingly delicate My Love Is Like A Red Red Rose; but it’s the original material that really marks their card. The sorrow and bitterness exuded by After Me and Anyone But Me seeps almost imper- ceptibly into your psyche, while the more countrified approach of A Pauper And A Poet


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