Yudu - fRoots AugSep 2015

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Hoskins’s searching voice, but the following track, Was Is, is like The Band stripped down, all shuffling funk and busy organ with knowing, confidential singing; of the other highlights, Change For Good is a recitation of good intentions through bad behaviour. The lyrics throughout are ellipti- cal and mysterious, summed up in the qua- train “The trees do crack and testify/Like a murder of chattering crows/Whatever it is they think I’ve done/It’s better if nobody knows” from the devastated When That Far Shore Disappears.

If there’s any genre that The Henrys touch, it would have to be alt-Americana, but their intelligent and sinuous take on this avoids cliché and the obvious pitfalls of trying too hard. Theirs is indeed quiet industry (the beginning of Dangers Of Travel sums this up), and if we have to wait years between albums, there can be no disappointment at the end. www.thehenrys.ca

Ian Kearey JERRON PAXTON

Recorded Music For Your Entertainment Blind Boy Records 880074259524/ JP 2015

Something’s been stirring in the US folk scene since the first Black Banjo Gathering was held at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina in 2005. Dur- ing these ten years, the pro- file of a small coterie of African-American folk per-

formers has risen enormously, with the Car- olina Chocolate Drops winning a Grammy Award, Dom Flemons establishing his creden- tials as ‘The American Songster’, and Rhian- non Giddens’ star ascendant both as a solo artist and a basement-taping Mumford daughter. Otis Taylor captured and named the essence of this revival with his 2008 album Recapturing The Banjo.

26-year-old Jerron ‘Blind Boy’ Paxton, it appears, is out to recapture everything. A virtu- oso multi-instrumentalist, Recorded Music For Your Entertainment is a true solo performance, variously featuring Paxton’s voice, banjo, fid- dle, resonator guitar and harmonicas.

The track listing reveals a true artist, unafraid to dig as deep as it takes to find where the roots lie – tackling material like (1850s minstrel song) Massa Am A Stingy Man, Stephen Foster’s The Glendy Burk (pub- lished in James Buckley’s New Banjo Book in 1860) and Irving Jones’ 1904 song: I’ve Lost My Appetite For Chicken.

Appalachian balladry is represented by a fiddle-accompanied Pretty Saro (Roud 417); blues by Motherless Child Blues (which doesn’t appear to be based on either the Bar- becue Bob or Elvie Thomas songs of the same name, but is a beautful blend of the guitar techniques of Blind Blake and Lonnie John- son) and the Blind Lemon-esque Trying To Make One Hundred; and old-time dance music by Soldier’s Joy and Devil’s Dream. Lutin Reel and Poor Beeny (Benny) – a version of the temperance song Come Home Father (Roud 839) – are unexpected delights.

Arriving through my door over the week- end of Kanye West’s grandiloquent Bohemian Rhapsody karaoke in a field in Somerset, Pax- ton’s joyful, evocative record feels like some- thing more than a re-enactment of the past – exploring and affirming something timelessly essential in the common culture. Whether that’s the artist’s intention or mere projection is up for debate, but either way Recorded Music For Your Entertainment is a very fine record by a huge talent.

www.blindboypaxton.com Steve Hunt Jerron ‘Blind Boy’ Paxton

CUNCORDU E TENORE DE OROSEI Novarra Musique Du Monde 4737042

Sardinia has a wide range of fascinating tra- ditional harmony singing styles unique to the island. The name of this group shows that they are involved with two of these.

‘Su cuncòrdu’ is usually songs with reli- gious themes, though they can be used to express rebellious thoughts. ‘Su tenòre’ brings us to a spine-chilling and compelling form of singing. These secular songs often derive their texts from distinguished local poets. A solo voice, the oche, leads off with a line and then he is joined by others singing nonsense syllables in tight harmony. They use a sort of guttural overtone singing that is said to derive from the bleating of sheep, the low- ing of cows and from the wind. Once you get beyond the initial weirdness, this becomes utterly compelling and gripping.

The Tenore De Orosei differ from the other leading exponents of this wonderful singing in that their settlement is on the east

Cuncordu E Tenore De Orosei

coast whilst the others are all based in the small towns and villages in the highland centre of the island. There are also five of them rather than the traditional quartet. All these groups have some- thing strident in the quality of their singing and this is

perhaps most marked here, yet the certainty of the voices, the sure harmonies, the precise timing all show a commitment to stylistic cor- rectness that is admirable.

Three adjacent tracks show something of the breadth of the music; Ballu A Passu Tur- turinu is for dancing with the glottal stops of the harmony singers providing a lifting per- cussive sound. This is followed by a Kyrie and a Sanctus. It does not say so in the booklet, but appropriately enough it sounds as though these glorious voices have been recorded in a church with lovely resonant acoustics.