One former correspondent has recently taken me to task for publishing excerpts from his "private correspondence" to me, going as far as threatening legal action (!) I'd like to make it quite clear that unless you specify any email content to me as being "off-the-record", i'll feel free to quote it. I'd like to reassure my regular readers that I'm a good judge of what needs to be private and that any truly confidential info offered up will be treated with the respect it's due.
(phew)
Nice couple of emails from man like Michael Manners. The first:
"i have a copy of the 12" by les vampyrettes on an old sony tape which has been played to death. would you consider sending me a copy or maybe even selling your 12"? (have you ever considered putting up the cash and re-pressing it on your own white label and selling it on this way??)
this is one of the greatest ever records and still 20 or so yrs later i still want a copy of my own!
Jim Clarke and me were talking over the whole reissue business over a whiskey the other night (in the company of none other than Job de Wit and legendary Reggae hound Steve Caruana). Jim mentioned Jason Gross's extremely cool recent letter to The Wire in which it was revealed that Antilles/Island were asking a fee of $1,000 a track for the rights to reissue the classic No New York compilation. (And you'd still struggle to listen to the whole LP). Yeah sure bootlegging is a thoroughly enticing option in these times. I worked it all out, how I would slip Holger a fat cheque under the record company's nose when the figures were in. Come to think of it offering up mp3s isn't much more ethical EXCEPT that one isn't making any money out of the venture (but then again neither is the artist....)
Then today (after I belatedly got round to getting back to Michael- ALL EMAILS ANSWERED). I got this jolly note from him:
"the good news is i've got a copy on cd and even better the man himself, holger czukay has sent it to me!"
How cool is that!
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I love getting emails from Kirk Degiorgio, particularly as it underlines that there was no love lost after my (basically respectful) but pretty cheeky tete-a-tete a few months back. This was especially cool as Kirk is obviously not blinkered to the euro impact on Deetroit.
He says:
"check out the forthcoming New Religion-EMI compilation called 'Secret History'... feats many Euro-electronic tracks that influenced the Detroit scene...
Visage: Frequency 7
Telex: Brainwash
My Mine: Hypnotic Tango
Klein & MBO: Wonderful
and many more...
Yeah that sounds WICKED, I'll look forward to that.
And then get this:
"(btw - I was DJing in Japan with Carl Craig last week and we discussed the euro-electro-pop stuff in some depth... not many more tracks surfaced in our discussions that I haven't already mentioned - except Soft Cell's 'Memorabilia', Prince 'Let's Pretend We're Married' and the Visage track...)
Cool!
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One of the best things about doing this blog is the incredible connections one can make. Do you remember this from June 22nd, where I dug out a couple of Egyptian Son et Lumiere records? Well i'll be blown if I didn't get an email from Didier Papeloux:
"nice to see that you liked my father's son et lumière records ..."
Evidently as shadowy as his Dad, as mysterious as the swirling sands of the Sahara, as nebulous as the riddle of the sphinx; cos that's all he said, and my consecutive email imploring Didier for the story of the records inception went unanswered.
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As you might imagine (smug) I got some great correspondence following my African film, and thanks to everyone who has emailed me and said they enjoyed it. There is a CD available which has an exquisite 25fps MPEG on it playable on just about any computer made in the past ten years. If anyone hasn't seen the film, can't get their head round the QuickTime requirements or doesn't have the luxury of a broadband connection drop me a line (Get Personal>I need you to know) and I'll sort you out. There will be a fee levied of $15, though at a push I'll accept a trade, oh and Luka can 'ave one for free. On the downside despite emailing Dan Curtin, Kirk, Planet e and Underground Resistance I was slightly disappointed to hear nothing from the Detroit crew themselves. That would have dignified proceedings a bit. I wonder if that UR thread is still raging at uk-dance?
However (put your specs on now) I did get a brace of fascinating caffeine-fuelled emails from H Arefe Aine who is the mastermind behind the Womex World music organisation/networking-event, mainly in consequence of the comments I made about Putmayo (don't like), but mopping up the World music notions that were heavily in the air round at TWANBOC at that date. H is based in......wait for it....Addis Ababa. Hardcore! Me here in purple, H in bronze. I've edited H a bit where I feel (raises eyebrows) he may want to be discreet. It's quite lengthy but I think it's all good stuff.
(email 1)
Been offline for the past 10 days so just saw the Indian series and the latest, as well as Tom's short comment in NYLPM so thought I'd email you both as I was thinking about the issues raised by both.
Putamayo is an odd label with and odd relationship to music. Having started life off as a clothing store (an "ethnic" Urban Outfitters) they only started to move into music after mixtapes played in the store became popular with clients who asked where they could buy them. After coexisting for a while the clothing side was sold off to focus on music but their whole approach tomusic is, I think, shaped by that image of it as lifestyle accessory.
Dan Storper of Putamayo (a really nice guy) tends to be excoriated in the world music community at every opportunity. Putamayo is seen as selling the blandest mix of product it can to people, who are then satisfied with the pap they have been given, consider and themselves aware of the entire genre/nation/what-have-you featured. A lot of people think that it does great damage. Dan's calm response is that he hopes this can provide a gateway for people and that he has never pretended to be an expert, is just selling what he likes. Having only met the man a couple of times I can't judge how accurate that is and how much is marketing. I do have serious problems with their choices, compilations like "music of the coffee countries" piss me off as they (outside of a marketing tool have no connection with each other) Whenever I have had any familiarity with the artsists or styles being covered I've always been pissed off by their choices, not for purist reasons but that they tend to be boring.
A far better example of someone taking a loose theme and making inspired artistic & commercial choices would be Nettworks Desert Blues I & II compilations which, though they start off with a somewhat suspect reasoning, are able to at least make a compelling aesthetic argument.
As far as your comments re "world music" as a term for music, I've never been as bothered by that as some people. Ian Anderson's history of why the term came to be is pretty accurate for me and is only a temporary. As more and more people start listening to it and learning it can become a more specific thing (tropicalia, afrobeat, tuvan throat-singing) but till then it does serve as good business tool. For ian's history go here here.
world music also has an interesting tension going on within at present. I've commented on this to a few people but you can see a sort of tug going on between people who have been in world music from the 60s, 70s came to it thru jazz, folk, early African hits etc. and a younger group of people who came to it from a punk, postpunk background either as professionals or fans.
More and more of those people are working in the field either as artists (Sam Mills from 23 skidoo with tama) producer (sam again with tama and susheela raman) manager (lu Edmonds from the damned and mekons who manages yat-kha) and many more both ex-musicians and people like myself and friends who came in from different areas. I don't think that a lot of people (or these people) are particularly trying to escape pop in search of 'authenticity' or rootsiness, but I guess it is easier to sell that sound/aesthetic to people (again, see Putamyao's success)
I think I once said on a RW vs. Luaka Bop thread on ILM that I preferred Luaka Bop more as it was more interested in the odd fusions ormore offbeat stuff while RW has always felt a little too?..well not reverential but weighty perhaps?(or at least that it thinks of itself that way)
There are labels and people aplenty that are attempting fusions: in the UK Apartment 22 is releasing people like Momo and Dj U-Cef and you got the Future World Funk parties and compilations. Six Degrees out of NYC has a consistently classy and well put together of releases that explore the fusions being attempted between roots and electronica (sorry if y'all hate that term, just can't think of a much better one) as can be seen by their releases of people like Karsh Kale, Cibelle, Zuco 103 etc.
There are others out there, hell I can't be too hard on Sterns, they released the DJ Dolores album which while coming nowhere close to their live shows is something that makes me grin happily whenever I put it on.
my friend Fabian who runs a management company also plays with Tabla Beat Science (matt, if you haven't heard their live album you should check it out) and does a global dance party called Globesonic (www.globesonic.com) which is just one of the most fun nights ever. At the womex meeting a couple years back GS closed the conference and ppl danced till the power was cut by the venue (excerpt) since then at womex I've seen more and more acts like this and more electronic influences creeping in and the older crew seem to be opening up.
The site www.ethnotechno.com plays a lot of electronic tinged world stuff if you're interested in seeing what is out there in this area.
(excerpt)
-h-
(ps matt, the only 2 raves in Ethiopia I know about is one some friends of mine gave a last year as a going away party for other friends, and one a couple of years back down at en ecocamp some British guys were running at the time. So they have happened but def not an ongoing thing)
(email 2)-H replying to my lengthy self-opinionated waffle:
No major quibbles or arguments with most of what you said, just in a couple of places.
As far as I'm concerned, as a marketing principle, what's missing is...............GLAMOUR. And that is entirely a problem this end, nothing to do with what's being sold.
In regards to that, well with Putamayo I do have lots of problems with what is being sold, just nowhere close to what is the best out there, even in not challenging areas (see your comment on the Putamayo reggae comp eg)
In regards to glamour, well that was what i was trying to comemnt on re the rootsiness being sold in a lot of ways, not just by labels lke Putamayo but by the way world music is covered - ppl who are trying to experiment with dance, or hel just with using nontraditional instruments are viewed/covered as 'seling out' or being unauthentic.
as to fusion, well I've always seen most musics as being fusions to begin with so I don't have a problem with pppl mixing it up now. Ethiopiques which you
said you liked is a mix of traditional and western soul and jazz which was popular at the time. I don't think anyone here would deny its Ethiopainess tho, and what i like for in fusions is the same kind of thing 'hey, thats cool, lets use that' as opposed to mixcing for the sake of mixing. so there is stuff i like and others that fail that test for me. The TBS live album for me succeeded marvelously, especially the track Mengedegna - based on a Gigi track(young ethiopian singer if you're not familiar) it has her trading vocal lines with ustad Sultan Khan and his sarangi underpins the 14 minutes featuring funk bass by bill laswell, tablas by zakir hussain, DJ Disk and Midival punditz scratching and mixing and the whole thing should be a mess but is glorious instead.
(email 3)
My only problem with the dance fusion stuff is it's either too fake or not fake enough. For example I'd praise some of the Rai or South African Bubblegum pop as electronically "wild" as you get, and on the other hand hail the indo-tinged R+B and Ragga like Get UR Freak On/React/Diwali as being satisfyingly fake. Somehow I feel the middle ground, your Frederic Galliano's and Banco de Gaia's or even Talvin Singh/Nitin Sawtney's stuff as being somehow compromised.
agreed actually. galliano's african divas project never did that much for me. talvin also disappoints. (excerpt) talvin has done some good stuff and his live show at least was great (a huge saving point for me)
but yeah, what is happening with rai stuff, with bubblegum, kwaito etc are more interesting, also those people who have grown up with both traditional styles and also listen to hiphop/dance/trance what have you and want to play around because this is normal for them. A personal take on the matter for sure.
as to fusion, well I've always seen most musics as being fusions to begin with so I don't have a problem with pppl mixing it up now.
Another thorny one. One man's fusion is another's....
well, i guess so, but look at groups like bembeya, or baoboab, or any of the artists on ethiopiques. that stuff is a fusion but ppl back at home will be able to say, yeah this is coming from this ethnicity, this style this root and stil feel connected. (using those as from the same time period)
another example, the peul tribe in mali say they are ethiopian and muisc has many similarities to northern ethiopian styles but when ali farka toure is basing stuff on it i don't think it has stopped being malian and is ethiopian. i just don't think that you can find any truly authentic/original style, particularly in urbanized or semi-urbanized areas, its all based on crossfertilization, whether between neighboring ethnicities, religins etc. or further via trade routes.
Big up to H. Great talking to you mate.
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And finally I was chuffed to get this nice note from David Toop:
"I'm quite happy for you to display the post-colonial chart I did. In fact, I'd totally forgotten I'd done it. It's interesting to realise that there was an influence from that to the Ocean of Sound CD which came three years later. By the way, I didn't release anything by African Connexion. That was my friend Musa Kalamulah and I either played, produced or co-produced on a lot of his tracks, though not the early African Connexion. My label was Quartz, back in late 70s-early 80s, releasing ethnographic and improvised recordings."
I think I put the record straight at the time. If you haven't heard Ragnar Johnson's recordings of Sacred Flute Music from New Guinea which David Toop put out on Quartz in the 1970s (now reissued on Rounder) then you're missing out big time. Plays exquisitely back to back with Oval's Diskont.
So yeah keep 'em coming! Always nice to hear from you!
Posted by Woebot at November 12, 2003 05:04 PM