OUTSIDEMUSICBLOG

Shangaan Electro + Butterflies and Hermeto Pascoal

2010-08-05T13:22:00.000-07:00

Altered Zones does an awesome feature on my compilation of Shangaan Electro here. More to come...

For New Yorkers, go see Neu! and Hermeto Pascoal this Friday free at Lincoln Center.

Outside Music youtube classic from Hermeto here:

Outside Music DJs w/ Konono No 1 @ LPR in NYC

2010-07-15T11:25:00.000-07:00

LA MUSIQUE MALIENNE

2010-06-28T09:39:00.000-07:00

FOUR out of print volumes of the amazing Musicaphon Anthology of the Music of Mali. If it's too hot to sleep where you are (it is in NYC) this is my prescription. Better than your dreams?

L'Ensemble Instrumental du Mali

The following two volumes via the amazing Holy Warbles:

Le Mali des Sables - Les Songoy

Le Mali des steppes et des savanes - Les Mandingues

Les peul

Saturday June 19 at Zebulon!

2010-06-16T12:32:00.001-07:00

The CARE Music Project ftr Javelin, Esau Mwamwaya

2010-06-04T08:26:00.000-07:00

CAREMUSICPROJECT from outsidemusic on Vimeo.
Just showed this film at CARE's National Advocacy Conference in Washington, DC. More info on CARE work on their site, CARE.oRG. I've been working on this initiative for about 4 years, trying to bring together my interest in field recordings with the work that CARE does to fight poverty and empower women in over seventy of the poorest countries across the world. More to come I hope!! Grab the MP3s at CARE.oRG/MUSIC.

JAGWA MUSIC FROM DAR ES SALAAM

2010-05-27T09:47:00.000-07:00

JAGWA MUSIC is seeping out from the concrete in Dar Es Salaam. It's similar to what we've come to expect from new regional African urban music: trademark casios trumpet through old speakers a la Konono, traditional meets retro via the strange African time warp (i.e., people use what they can access -- probably the same "retro" instruments you're ordering on Ebay). But no matter how you theorize, this music has grandeur and grit. It's like a more dense juju with sweeping tides of sounds that wash against each other. We haven't been able to find any tapes (yet!) but there are some live recordings made by a label in Germany. Wash yourself in the track below and check the myspace.

01 Sumu ya Teja by outsidemusic

Africa's Alan Lomax: The Field Recordings of Hugh Tracey

2010-05-24T17:16:00.000-07:00

In December and January, I spent time at Rhodes University in Grahmstown, South Africa where Hugh Tracey's archive is located.

The place is unlike anywhere I've ever been -- old notebooks, thousands of recordings, a substantial instrument collection from throughout Africa -- all of this is available to study and explore.

I spent a week there with the staff and the collection, and I interviewed Hugh's son, Andrew Tracey, at least four times (that's him in the picture smelling a seventy-year-old mbira -- "this mbira must have been kept by a family's hearth" he explained.

The product of my work in SA was a radio show for Afropop Worldwide. The show also features commentary from Esau Mwamwaya (The Very Best) and Tshepang Ramoba (BLK JKS). Stream it here on the Afropop site: Discover and Record: The Field Recordings of Hugh Tracey. Pictures from trip are also available in that link on the Afropop online feature.

Fihavanana

2010-05-24T14:56:00.000-07:00

Go to root strata and get this.

A MUSICAL ANTHOLOGY OF AFRICA : SUDAN II

2010-05-02T12:45:00.000-07:00

Here's another out-of-print Barenreiter / Unesco LP, this one is Sudanese music, digitized just in time for the hot weather. Featured on this platter are two tribes from the Blue Nile province: the Ingessana and the Berta. Both are located near the Ethiopian border, and thus are similarly Arabized. Especially noteworthy are the polyrhythmic mono-flute ensemble jams on Side B, which appear to be 9/16 over 4/8!

A MUSICAL ANTHOLOGY OF THE ORIENT: TUNISIA

2010-05-02T12:41:00.000-07:00

Out of print and rare volume from the Barenreiter Musicaphon/UNESCO series. Amazing.

Musiques Urbaines a Kinshasa

2010-04-21T06:47:00.000-07:00

Check that cover! Out of print Ocora cassette(!) which has four 30 minute Congolese jams, including a 1970s recording of Konono No. 1 (listed as Orchestre T.P. Likembe Konoko!).

This is the Orchestre Bana Luya track.

When you listen to this, please focus your energies towards the healing of the Congolese peoples.

JANKA NABAY PLAYS MONSTER ISLAND

2010-02-24T16:12:00.000-08:00

Janka plays the TRUE PANTHER PARTY on March 5th in Brooklyn at Monster Island. INFO here: http://www.truepanther.com/2010/02/march-5th-lemonade-tanlines-janka-nabay.html#links

Field Recording with CARE in Justicia, SA

2009-12-30T00:04:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, I traveled north from Johannesburg with Tshepang Ramoba (drummer from BLK JKS) to make field recordings of traditional Shangaan music in the Limpopo region of South Africa.

Our trip was coordinated through CARE International as a part of an going project (CARE Music), which uses field recordings (and samples) of regional music to help fight global poverty.

We drove north from Johannesburg for nearly six hours, through the mountains of Limpopo -- Biggie on the radio, rondavel huts by the roadside and green as far as the eye could see.

Our destination was simple: a community garden supported by CARE in the outskirts of a small village. Mama Grace (pictured above, far right) was in charge, she explained to us how her vegetables were delivered along with medicine and water to people with AIDS.

Under the shade of a tree in their garden, the women shared many songs with us for the CARE Music project -- traditional songs, songs about their collective, songs for the rain, sad songs, religious songs, welcoming songs. Between songs, the women turned their fingers in the dirt, pulled weeds and seemingly plucked new melodies from the field.

CARE MUSIC - WHELL PROJECT - JUSTICIA, SOUTH AFRICA by outsidemusic

After having lunch with Mama Grace -- hot pepper sandwiches + cold coke -- we traveled farther into the village. Beside a few rondavel huts, Tshepang noticed a set of small drums laid out on the dusty ground. I asked Mama Grace who they belonged to. Moments later, a traditional healer emerged from her hut. Someone cut the radio that was blaring house music and the healer started to play.

She was exuberant, talking to me in Shangaan like I understood every word. Others emerged to play other drums. We danced with the kids and played more drums. Some were made from ceramic pots, some from tin oil drums. The goat skin heads were tight and tuned. We stayed for a bit, then took the long road back to Johannesburg.

Photos from Justicia by Wills and Tshepang

BLK JKS in JOZI

2009-12-16T06:24:00.000-08:00

Last night was my first night in Johannesburg and I headed straight from the airport to see BLK JKS.

"We've come to you all the way from South Africa," Mpume joked with the crowd between songs.

The JKS are back in Soweto after touring for six months in support of their Secretly Canadian release, After Robots.

Here at ground zero, the boys sound different from when I heard them last at Santo's in New York. The songs are mutating. Each tune has its own goals, logic, paranoia.

After only a day in Johannesburg, I don't see exactly how BLK JKS are a by-product or a reflection of "life in South Africa". But maybe that is what's being celebrated here -- the surprises, the disconnect, the self-determination of the art itself.

Malicious Desertion

2009-12-04T12:51:00.000-08:00

Hugh Tracey's audio field recordings from Africa constitute what's been called "the musical memory of half a continent." Starting with acetate recordings in the late 1920s, Tracey made it his life's work to document the disappearing music of Africa. I'm here in Grahamstown, South Africa to research that legacy and to learn about Tracey's life for a radio show I'm producing for Afropop Worldwide.

"It seemed clear that unless someone devoted more time and energy to appraising the social value of authentic African music, it would go (away) by default," Tracey wrote in his The Sound of Africa Series. "The challenge remained as to. . . what techniques should be employed to ensure that the unwritten composition of genuine African musicians would not be ignored or thrust aside by the artificially stimulated demands of commerce and radio, and the intrusion of non-African popular music on films and records."

Tracey was old-school, he was a purist, and a bossy one at that. He plowed "tradition" into acetate, aluminum, and eventually on to tape. Over the next few weeks, I'll write more about Tracey and his work.

This is a place to start listening. With the breath:
"Saliwe Ngamadoda (Malicious Desertion)" a Xhosa song from Tracey's LP series, The Sound of Africa.

Photo taken today outside Grahamstown.

POSSESSION MUSIC

2009-11-30T19:37:00.000-08:00

Here is SIDE A from an out-of-print Ocora LP of ritual possession music and poetry songs from 3 semi-nomadic peoples who live on the coast of Madagascar. These are some of the most magical musics I've heard in some time, beautiful tide pools of cascading, melodic shimmer.

These people hunt and gather off the coral reefs. This side of the record is dedicated to the music of tsuumba (spirit deity) possession rituals. The mediums are described as comical, acrobatic, awkward, and mocking.

From this ethno white paper on the Vezo's concept of ethnic identity: "To be a Vezo is to have learnt Vezo-ness, and to
perform it: identity is an activity rather than a state of being."

Watch Nomades du lagon in Travel | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

1st Panamian Drum and Bugle Corps

2009-10-12T11:01:00.000-07:00

Expect more in-depth OUTSIDE MUSIC coverage of the Panamian Pre-Independence Day parade and the 1st Panamian Drum & Bugle Corp., but until then, enjoy this sound slice from 10.10.09 on Franklin Avenue in Brooklyn, NY.

Panama Hat by outsidemusic

FOLKLORICAAAAS

2009-10-11T11:10:00.000-07:00

Via Cool Places down-south correspondent DJ Ve Steev, we have a few volumes here of Mario de Andrade's rare set of early Brazilian field recordings, MISSÃO DE PESQUISAS FOLCLÓRICAS. Mario is a fascinating cat, a renaissance man of sorts, and thru Gov't funds travelled to pre-industrialized areas of Northern Brazil in the 1920s, recording hundreds of hours of sound, taking a million photographs, writing books and poetry, keeping meticulous philosophic records of his research habits, basically founding Brazillian modernism, etc. Check the sound:

VOL 1

VOL 2

CARE Music in Ghana, Togo and Benin

2009-09-27T09:57:00.000-07:00

I was out with some friends last night and had the idea to start a new blog about field recordings. This first field recording is a collage of my own recordings that I made with my friend Drew last year in Ghana, Togo and Benin with CARE. We piloted a project called, CARE Music, where the idea is to make audio field recordings in humanitarian aid projects, then release the field recordings as a way to generate interest in those communities and in the natural resource of music. To record, we used as Marantz PMD 660 and an Audio Technica stereo shotgun microphone. If you wish to sample from the recording, you can credit CARE Music.

Download CARE Music Sound Collage:
AIF here ( 74 MB)
MP3 here (10 MB)