Ernie's El Dorado Pt 2 - Belize

We have arrived at our second stop in our search for the musical gold of the Americas and it is quite a contrast to Argentina. From the pampas to the swamps, from one of the continent's largest countries to the second smallest in terms of both size and population. Welcome to Belize.

Squeezed into a corner between Mexico and Guatemala and 750 miles due west of Jamaica, the former British colony of British Honduras can offer the visitor delights such as a Barrier Reef, jungles and more than 450 islands. Apart from tourism the country makes its living from sugar, papaya and money laundering.

Belize is the only country in Central America where English is the main language and perhaps because of that much of the music I have dug up seems to my inexpert ears to have more in common with Jamaica and some other Caribbean countries than its mainland neighbours. But what do I know. 

As far as indigenous music is concerned the best known is probably the punta music of the Garifuna, a people of mixed African and Amerindian ancestry who have a minority presence in several countries in the region - in Belize they account for around 5% of the population. The interest in Garifuna music and culture will hopefully only increase following Tavo Man's Grammy nomination, the first for a Garifuna artist.  

The man who did more than anyone to promote punta and Garifuna culture more broadly was the late Andy Palacio, whose 2007 album "Watina" found worldwide success and led to him being named a UNESCO Artist for Peace and winning the 2007 WOMEX Award. Sadly he died the following year aged only 48.

The track I have selected from Mr Palacio actually comes from an earlier album ("Keimoun" from 1994) but the narrative will stick with "Watina" for now. For that album he gathered together Garifuna performers from Belize and beyond. They became known as The Garifuna Collective and some of them went on to record another album without him under that name in 2013.

Among the members of the Collective was Paul Nabor, one of the premier exponents of paranda music (a sort of speeded up version of punta). Mr Nabor himself passed in 2014 at the rather riper age of 86. The only material of his I have been able to find is on a compilation called "Paranda - Africa in Central America". Some of the other folks on there are pretty nifty too.

As well as the Garifuna, Belize has a large creole population (roughly 25%) who enjoy nothing more than a bit of brukdown on a Saturday night. Brukdown is a sort of local version of calypso and mento with some call and response chucked in and the late Wilfred Peters MBE was the king. When Mr Peters strapped on his trusty squeezebox nobody could resist his blandishments. This track comes from 1997's "Weh Mi Lova Deh".

All the albums featured so far were released on the excellent Stonetree Music label based in Benque Viejo del Carmen in Belize, and you can find plenty more goodies on their Bandcamp site. But back in the day there was only one label in Belize, Compton Fairweather's C.E.S. In 2006 the good folks at the Numero Group put together a compilation of the best C.E.S. recordings under the name "Cult Cargo: Belize City Boil Up". It's fantastic.

I have selected two tracks from "Belize City Boil Up". The first comes from Lord Rhaburn and his Combo who have been stalwarts of the local scene since the 1960s. I am very pleased to report that the good Lord celebrated his 89th birthday earlier this year. The second comes from The Harmonettes, the brainchild of one Godfrey 'D-Mack' MacGregor. You can read a bit more about him and them here. 

We are heading back to Stonetree Music for our penultimate selection, and it is highbrow stuff - some dub poetry courtesy of Leroy Young (aka The Grandmaster). Mr Young kindly provides a bit of a bio in the blurb accompanying his 2003 album "Just Like That", from which this track comes. He first made his name in the late 1990s when he used to be invited on to the local TV news every Friday, as explained in this clip from 2017. 

We finish up with Bredda David Obi (or Bro David as he was known to the record-buying public of Belize). His debut album "No Fear" (1984) introduced what he considered to be a new sound that he called kungo, but it sounds remarkably like Mandatory American Reggae to me. Either way it is good stuff and you might want to invest in "Modern Music From Belize" which contains highlights from "No Fear" and Bro David's other early albums. 

"Mafiougati" - Andy Palacio

"Náguya Nei" - Paul Nabor

"Bilhine Mibak Dehn Taak" - Mr. Peters

"Disco Connection" - Lord Rhaburn Combo

"Can't Go Halfway" - The Harmonettes

"Same Script, Different Cast" - Leroy Young

"Experience" - Bro David

We start the videos with a little bit of politics and history from Cocono Bwai and his good friend Shamrock. Apologies to our many Guatemalan viewers for any offence caused.

Swedish Pop Music

On a recent visit to a charity shop I spotted a compilation CD with the dull but (mostly) factually correct title "Swedish Pop Music". Further inspection revealed that it was issued by the Swedish government in 2009 to mark the Swedish Presidency of the EU.

Not the most compelling reason to buy the album perhaps but when I saw it included the likes of Lykke Li, The Soundtrack Of Our Lives and Maia Hirasawa (whose video for "And I Found This Boy" is a thing of pure joy that has featured here many times over the years) I decided it was worth investing 50p.

Most of the tracks on the album are Noughties indie-tinged pop, some of which are included in the videos below. But there are two that really don't fit at all. Needless to say, those are the two that you are getting. And before you ask - yes, it's that Benny.

 "Cirkus Finemang" - Benny Andersson's Orkester 

"Leksands Skänklåt" - Kebnekasje

My Trip To Tiny Town

Last Friday I was in Beaconsfield on family business and took time out to visit Bekonscot Model Village for the first time since 1972.

We lived a few towns over for a while in the 1960s and early 1970s and I always enjoyed going to Bekonscot then. I enjoyed it almost as much as an adult and there are some aspects that I am better able to appreciate now, for example their takes on local landmarks such as the wonderful Hoover Building on the A40.

My friend Little Ernie came with me and he enjoyed it even more as he is small enough to make use of all the local facilities. Here he is about to board the funicular railway; you can find a full account of his big day out on Flickr.

Most of today's musical choices are fairly obvious but they are all pretty marvellous too. Take it away folks.

"Model Village" - Penny Peeps

"Little Village" - V*n M*rr*s*n

"Small Town Talk" - Bobby Charles

"The Village Green Preservation Society" - The Kinks

If you are based in London or the eastern Home Counties and want to do something a bit different for a day out, I can recommend following the directions from these gentlemen of the village.

Gigs-A-Go-Go

I have been to two gigs in the last week, both in churches. Maybe I should have titled this post Gigs-a-God-God. Then again maybe not.

Last Saturday we were at St John's in London's leafy Leytonstone for a lunchtime show to mark Midsummer. It was a triple header. First up was Lucine Musaelian with her viola de gamba and some baroque and Armenian folk tunes, and last up were The Memory Band. I enjoyed them both.

But it was the woman in between who were mainly there to see - Lisa Knapp. She did not disappoint. I first saw her taking part in an all star Bert Jansch tribute back in 2013, around the time of her fine second album "Hidden Seam". Her follow-up album in 2017 was a collection of May songs and given the time of year she drew quite heavily on it during her set, including today's selection.

On Wednesday it was off to St. Pancras Old Church in London's... (you can probably work that bit out for yourself) to see Kassi Valazza on the opening night of a very brief European tour. She is over here to promote her new album "From Newman Street", a copy of which I picked up at the gig. I've not had a chance to listen to it yet but judging by the songs she played on Wednesday it is well up to the standard she set on "Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing" (from which today's track comes).

How much she really knows is hard to judge. It may just have been the jetlag but she wasn't what you would call a Chatty Kassi. Not that it mattered. Together with her band she put on a very good show with a fine selection of songs from across her career to date. As an unexpected bonus they galloped through "Matty Groves" as an encore. Obviously nobody can match Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson but they gave it a bloody good go.

"Padstow May Song" - Lisa Knapp

"Rapture" - Kassi Valazza

"Matty Groves" - Fairport Convention

Either Oar

On Monday I was in Henley-on-Thames for reasons that I won't bore you with. There was lots of activity as the folks down there were preparing for the annual rowing regatta which starts next week. As a tribute to them, and in the absence of any other ideas for a post, here are two songs with "row" in the title. 

The first song ties in with Walter's post from yesterday in an attempt to turn this into The Congos Week on the world of blogs (please join in). I have also bunged in a wonderfully wonky Thai version of the second as a special treat for you all.

"Row Fisherman Row" - The Congos

"The Boat That I Row" - Lulu

"The Boat That I Row" - Sodsai Chaengkij

In my previous post I made the foolish mistake of offending Alyson by taking the mickey out of Lulu's ex and his brothers and her favourite ever love song. I have no wish to be on the wrong side of the Queen of the Blogging Scene, so to make amends here are the lads with what may be my two personal favourites from their catalogue. I hope you enjoy them more than the audience in the first clip.

A Deep Cut

We have a stripped down Single Song Sunday for you today. Severely stripped down - just the Mandatory Reggae Version. It is a Lee 'Scratch' Perry production of "How Deep Is Your Love" credited to The Inamans. 

I know nothing about The Inamans. There is an online rumour that this gentleman was the inspiration for their name but it seems unlikely. 

According to Discogs they only ever released one side of a single, with Dillinger on the other side, and this was not it. It seems this track was only ever released on a compilation called "Black Ark Volume 2", which came out in 1981 but was reissued a few years ago by VP Records. 

Confusingly the reissue credits the whole album to Black Ark Players not the individual artists and changes the album title to "Black Ark in Dub Volume 2", possibly in an effort to trick people into buying it thinking it is a different record.

"How Deep Is Your Love" - The Inamans

Here is the original version, with Swedish subtitles.

Ernie's El Dorado Pt 1 - Argentina

Our musical journey around the Americas is finally beginning, and as Andy Cameron might put it: "we're on the march wi' Ernie's army, we're going to the Argentine".

Unlike Ally's Tartan Army we're not off to win the World Cup, just to find musical gold. I think we have done it, although I had to sit through quite a lot of drab 1-1 draws with Iran before I found the aural equivalents of Archie Gemmill's wonder goal below.

We can't visit Argentina without taking in some tango, so we will start there. Astor Piazzolla pretty much invented nuevo tango in the 1950s, adding elements of jazz and classical music to traditional tango. He also scandalised polite society by playing the bandoneon standing up not sitting down. Today's track was first released in 1960 but can be found on plenty of compilations, and there's more Astor in the videos.

Astor may have caused a stir when he first burst onto the scene but by 1960 the hep cats in Buenos Aires were hankering for the groovy new sounds filtering down from further north. Which explains the success of Johny Tedesco whose 1961 single "Rock Del Tom Tom" is considered to be the first Argentinian rock 'n roll record. Johny went on to make bad films and country albums - if not quite the Argentine Elvis at least the Argentine Johnny Hallyday.

A few years passed and Johny suffered the same fate as Astor. The hep cats kept getting hepper and in the mid 1960s some of them formed a band called Los Gatos (presumably the word 'hep' does not have a direct equivalent in Spanish). Their big rivals locally were Los Beatniks.  

We haven't got either of them. Instead we have the band that Pajarito Zaguri of Los Beatniks formed next, the mighty La Barra De Chocolate. This little sizzler can be found on their self-titled (and only album) from 1969, available on Bandcamp thanks to the good folks over at Munster Records.

As sure as night turns into day, the psychedelic rockers of the 1960s turned into weedy Cañón Laurel singer-songwriters in the early 1970s. Pre-eminent amongst them was Sui Generis. We've chosen the opening track from their 1972 album "Vida", once ranked by Rolling Stone as #11 in a list of the 100 most outstanding songs in Argentinian rock. Judge for yourselves.

Los Fabulosos Cadillacs are one of the most successful Argentinian bands, having achieved multiple gold records since they started in 1984. They also won a Grammy for their album "Fabulosos Calavera" in 1997, becoming the first Argentinian act to win a Grammy outside the classical (Daniel Barenboim) and jazz (Lalo Schifrin) categories. We have the title track from their 1989 album "El Satánico Dr. Cadillac" for you.

Next up is a singer that I was lucky enough to see live back in 2019 and would love to see again - La Yegros. Her Bandcamp blurb puts it better than I ever could: "Her incredible live concerts are a challenge thrown at those who do not have dancing feet. The singer never fails to unlock even the stiffest bodies, her energy radiating as if she was spitting balls of fire". Today's choice is from 2016's "Magnetismo" album.

Juana Molina is a rather different kettle of fish, being more at the electronic and experimental end of the pop scene in Argentina, but she can ride a groove as well as anyone when she puts her mind to it. The title track from her 2008 album "Un Dia" may well be the pick of today's bunch.

We finish as we mean to continue (if you follow me) with some MAR - Mandatory American Reggae. Los Pericos have been knocking about since 1988 when their debut album went triple platinum. We've opted for the title track from their 1994 album "Big Yuyo". 1994 was also the year they headlined at the Sunsplash festival in Jamaica, so they must have been doing something right.

"Tanguisimo" - Astor Piazzolla

"Rock Del Tom Tom" - Johny Tedesco

"Buenos Aires Beat" - La Barra De Chocolate

"Canción Para Mi Muerte" - Sui Generis

"El Satánico Dr. Cadillac" - Los Fabulosos Cadillacs

"Carnabailito" - La Yegros

"Un Dia" - Juana Molina

"Big Yuyo" - Los Pericos

We'll start the videos with a proud son of the city of Venado Tuerto in Santa Fe Province. You may prefer to skip ahead to the second video. Viewers of a sensitive nature may want to skip the last one as well.