The August Bank Holiday weekend has arrived, which here in London means the Notting Hill Carnival.
I won't be going to Carnival. I used to enjoy it in my youth but these days I can't be doing with all the crowds. Instead I will be spending Sunday afternoon at the smaller and more sedate Clerkenwell Festival (this year's headliners: P.P. Arnold and The Rockingbirds).
Wherever you are heading for your fun this weekend there is nothing like some soca to get you in the mood. Today's tracks come from one of Antigua's finest sons, the late Sir Rupert Philo (aka Mighty Swallow), a man who was clearly up for a party any time, any place, anywhere.
I was wondering what to do for my midweek post this week when a thought struck me: why not feature one of the CDs that I have recently bought from a charity shop. It seems such an obvious idea I'm surprised nobody has thought of it before frankly.
The CD I picked out of the pile is "Bengali Bantam Youth Experience!", the second and last album by the Leeds-based outfit Black Star Liner.
The album came out in 1999 and was sufficiently well regarded that it was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. That was when Talvin Singh won the prize, so it was a big year for the Asian Underground (and also for Stereophonics who were inexplicably shortlisted as well).
More recently Uncut ranked it as the 465th best album of the 1990s. Based on a couple of listens and having reviewed the list I believe it deserves to be at least in the 300s. Here are a couple of my favourite tracks from the album. That's Jah Woosh guesting on "Pink Rupee".
The album that appears right at the bottom of Uncut's list of the 500 best albums of the 1990s also came out in 1999. I'll hand over to your friend and mine Conan O'Brien to introduce the performers.
Word reached me at the end of last week that folk-popster Photo Ops (or Terry Price as his friends know him) has a covers album coming out next month. Called "Opening Up To Strangers", it is a selection of songs mostly from the 1960s and 1980s and mostly fairly well known.
This encouraged me to dig out his 2023 album "Burns Bright", which I enjoyed when it came out but haven't listened to since. It definitely rewards further listening. There is a bit of a Jimmy Webb influence in some of the melodies and arrangements - no bad thing if you can pull it off - and maybe a hint of Camera Obscura, with whom Mr Opportunities had toured shortly before making the album.
You can find "Burns Bright" on Photo's Bandcamp page along with the rest of his back catalogue. "Opening Up To Strangers" doesn't seem to be available for pre-order at time of writing, but to give you a rough idea of what is in store all the videos feature songs covered on the album.
We end the week with a report on what may be the world's mellowest title fight. It was held in 2013 to determine which is the best plucked multi-stringed instrument. The proceedings were captured on an album called "Clychau Dibon".
In the red corner representing Wales - Catrin Finch on the Welsh triple harp.
In the blue corner representing the Casamance region of Senegal and latterly Nottingham - Seckou Keita on the kora.
After a hard fought contest Ms Finch won on string countback (the triple harp's 75-100 strings massively outnumbering the kora's 21-25) but most judges felt there was nothing between them in terms of quality. Clychau Dibon won multiple awards and was described by one eminent reviewer (me) as the plucking equivalent of the Thriller in Manila.
The two selected tracks clock in at 8 and 7 minutes respectively so any devotees of the cult reading this may prefer to wait until Monday before listening to them.
1000 Violins then put themselves forward as the next challenger. They should really be disqualified on a number of grounds - only 4 strings per violin, bowed not plucked etc - but after some genius matched them up with the Chinese Cultural Revolution Ballet I had to include them.
Not a mystical incantation but a gig line-up. That said I haven't tried chanting it and I'm not sure I want to risk doing so.
In the unlikely event that you have read any of my gig reviews that pop up here every now and then you will have noticed that the Shacklewell Arms in London's fashionable Dalston appears fairly regularly. It is one of my favourite local venues and there is always something interesting on.
One of many good things about the venue is that they will often lay on free gigs in conjunction with small labels and promoters, particularly in quiet times of the year like August. This month they are doing so in a big way with what they are calling their Label Mates festival. Mister F and I were there on Sunday and have two more gigs lined up for next week.
Sunday's show was well worth every penny that we didn't spend. There were three acts all of whom were associated in some way with Moof magazine in Brighton - our headliner had to decline an encore to make sure they caught the last train back there - and all were entertaining.
First on the bill was Christina Deva who describes herself as a "vocal based artist" which appears to mean ululating along to drones. She has an impressive voice but things dragged a little for my personal taste. The performance definitely benefited when she got out her bouzouki to add some variety and texture to the sound.
Next up was Rose Io, the only one of the three I was previously familiar with at all as I have a few songs by her former band Rokurokubi in my collection. Rose's solo work is pretty similar to that with the band, no bad thing if you like lots of songs about death, ghosts and the afterlife performed in a style slightly reminiscent of Lavinia Blackwall (solo and Trembling Bells). I do.
Rose is an engaging performer and I enjoyed her set a lot. We were also treated to a mini 'set within a set' by her alter ego, a homicidal bunny rabbit called Ecto. Ecto's song outlining different ways you can kill and dispose of family members was one of the highlights of the evening.
Rose played a lot of songs that will appear on her first solo album titled "Autumn Automaton" due out in October. Ecto is apparently planning to release an EP of their own later in the year.
Our headliner was Lau Ro, a Brazilian expat who treated us to a short but very sweet set of mellow samba that would not have been out of place on last week's visit to Brazil. They were accompanied by a cellist and keyboard player and the cello in particular enhanced the sound very nicely.
Lau Ro previously led the band Wax Machine whose albums I am just discovering and rather enjoying. As with Rose, there isn't a significant difference between the band and their solo work. Think of it more as a natural progression than a new direction.
Here are some before and after examples of the main two acts' work. All performers and their previous bands are on Bandcamp (except for Ecto The Bunny Rabbit). Just click on their names for the links.
This is the second Monday in a row we are featuring Nigerian music with a link to Fela Kuti. I only realised that after I had finished preparing the post. Please don't mistake this for a series.
Odion Iruoje was the #1 producer in Nigeria in the 1970s and 1980s. He is the man who signed Fela to EMI Nigeria and co-produced many of his early albums, and his list of production credits on Discogs reads like a who's who of Nigerian music of that era - Sonny Okosun, Tunji Oyelana and the Lijadu Sisters to name but a few.
Mr Iruoje only ever released one album under his own name but its a real cracker. Originally released in 1983, "Down To Earth" was reissued by the good people at Soundway Records in 2016. It makes a great way to start a new week.
I tried to find another musical Odion for the video slot but met with no success - the former Watford and Manchester United player Odion Ighalo does not appear to have joined the ranks of footballers who have made records. I did find an Odia though. Obviously you are getting the terrible hit but it turns out she also did a decent ELO cover.
We are on our third continental tour now. To date we have covered 85 countries. For many of those countries I have to search and scrape to find enough decent music to justify a post, but very occasionally I have the opposite problem of having more than I know what to do with.
Brazil is one such example. Even after taking the precaution of hiving off some of my favourite Brazilian musicians into a separate post I was still overwhelmed by the quality and quantity of what remained.
Apart from the first two tracks today's songs were selected by an elaborate process of closing my eyes and dabbing. If I did this again tomorrow there are many others that might be included instead but what we have ended up with are ten top tunes, most of which will encourage the shaking of one or more body part.
The first two songs are included because of their significance to the Tropicalia movement which revolutionised the music and art worlds in Brazil in the late 1960s and was seen as such a threat by the military dictatorship in power at the time that many of the leading lights were arrested or exiled. The musical wing started with Caetano Veloso's self-titled 1968 album which opened with the track "Tropicalia", named after Helio Oiticica's 1967 installation.
Later in 1968 Caetano teamed up with Gilberto Gil, Os Mutantes, Gal Costa and others to record "Tropicália ou Panis et Circencis", which is considered to be the manifesto of the Tropicalia movement and which regularly tops charts of the best Brazilian albums. From it I have picked the Os Mutantes track that provides the second part of the title.
Before Tropicalia came along all the cool kids were glued to their TVs every Sunday night watching "Jovem Guarda" which from 1965 to 1968 transformed the musical taste and fashion sense of Brazilian teenagers and made stars of its presenters. One of these was Erasmo Carlos who went on to enjoy a long and successful career. Today's track comes from his 1972 album "Sonhos e Memórias" and is a beefed up version of a song originally released in 1964 by fellow Jovem Guarda star Roberto Carlos (no relation to either Erasmo or the footballer of the same name).
Our next act is another with a link to Tropicalia. Miguel De Deus was singer and guitarist with the psych practitioners Os Brazões, who as well as making some great records in their own right also served as Gal Costa's backing band in the late 1960s. Fast forward to 1977 and Mr De Deus released the album "Black Soul Brother" under his own name. I have selected the title track on the grounds that it is magnificent.
We will skip ahead two decades now where we find Molejo winning hearts, minds and feet with their pagode sound. Pagode is a variant of samba which developed in Rio de Janiero in the 1980s, hence the title of this track from Molejo's 1996 album "Não Quero Saber De Ti Ti Ti". Personally I can't really tell the difference, but apparently they use a banjo and a tan-tan rather than a cavaco and a surdo. So now you know.
The 1990s also finds Carlinhos Brown - up until then the leader of the percussion ensemble Timbalada - taking his first steps as a solo artist. Mr Brown is one of my favourite Brazilian artists and I am pleased to say he is still going strong today, having picked up some Latin Grammys and an Oscar nomination for writing "Real In Rio" (from the soundtrack of the animated film "Rio") along the way. Today's tune comes from his 2017 album "Semelhantes".
Our next artist also has an connection to the Academy Awards having been one of the stars of the 2002 film "Cidade De Deus" (City of God) which received a number of Oscar nominations. We are of course talking about Seu Jorge, who has maintained a parallel career as an actor and singer for the last 25 years, combining the two of them in "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou" where he performed David Bowie songs in Portuguese. That was not without its charms but personally I prefer his own stuff, like this cracker from 2011's "Músicas Para Churrasco, Vol. 1".
"Is it rock? Is it reggae? Is it funk? Beiradão? Fusion? What's that sound?". These are the questions posed on the Soundcloud page belonging to Os Tucumanus, a band from Manaus who have been on the scene since 2006. I found this track on an excellent 2014 compilation called "Rolê: New Sounds of Brazil".
If any of you were wondering what the answers to those questions are, according to the always reliable Google Translate it is music made by "an authentic, pavulous, idealistic, and unusual being". I think we can all agree that it is the level of pavulosity that gives Os Tucumanus' music its distinct sound.
We are nearly at the end of the waffling now, but we can't leave Brazil without sharing some sertenajo music with you. Essentially their country music, it is incredibly (some say inexplicably) popular. The commercial boom happened in the early/mid 1990s when literally thousands of male duos starting emerging from the southern plains.
One of the biggest were Rick & Renner who during the course of their career sold over 10 million albums and performed to an estimated 225 million people. This tune with its synths and riff nicked from "Da Da Da" dates not from 1982 as you might expect but from 2007 (on their album "Coisa De Deus"). Its cheesy but I have a soft spot for it.
We have something much more up to date and cutting edge for the MAR slot. In 2013 the Recife based producer/engineer Buguinha Dub teamed up with local scenesters Yorujah to create an album they called "Aduba Duba Dub". On this track they are joined by Luiz de Assis on vocals and I think they all deserve a round of applause.
I only noticed when I got to the end of the list that it was all men, with the sole exception of Rita Lee of Os Mutantes. So let's try to redress the balance with a selection of some of numerous fabulous female singers from Brazil.
Later in the week we will arrive at the fourth destination in our musical tour of the Americas and it is a big one - Brazil. Trying to sort that post out has been a big challenge simply because I have so much Brazilian music - well over 500 tracks just on my shuffle with many more on CDs and the hard drive.
To help with the editing process I decided to take out three gents who are probably my favourite Brazilian artists, each of whom have featured on these pages many times over the years - the father of samba-rock, Jorge Ben, the king of samba-soul, Tim Maia, and the boss of them all Gilberto Gil.
But having done that I had second thoughts. The reason they are my favourites and keep turning up here is because they are all bloody marvellous. Who am I to deprive you of more of their magnificence?
This is the compromise. A track from each of the Big Three today to warm you up for the proper Brazil post on Friday. The selected tracks are new to the blog even though the gents themselves are not.
And now a video apiece. Contrary to the titles at the start of the Jorge Ben video the song is "Taj Mahal" and it definitely wasn't ripped off by Rod Stewart.
Like many musicians with famous parents, Seun Kuti probably struggles to step out from their shadow. He is probably still best known as Fela's son. Unlike many of his peers, however, he makes excellent records and deserves to be admired in his own right.
Stylistically Seun hasn't fallen far from the tree, perhaps unsurprisingly as he inherited his Dad's old band Egypt 80 when Fela died in 1997 (he was 16 at the time). His sound has been getting a bit more diverse over time though and his latest album "Heavier Yet" features collaborations with the likes of Kamasi Washington, Sampa The Great and fellow nepo baby Damian Marley.
"Heavier Yet" and its predecessor "Black Times" can be found on Seun's Bandcamp page but his earlier albums cannot. So to help you plug the gap here is a track apiece from "From Africa With Fury: Rise" (2011) and "A Long Way To The Beginning" (2014).
Listeners of a delicate nature are warned that "IMF" contains multiple rude words. Suffice to say that according to Seun MF doesn't stand for Monetary Fund.
Originally this post was going to be called "Like Father, Like Seun" but I changed it to give me an excuse to include this video. Not that I really need an excuse of course.
I treated myself to a day out in Canterbury earlier in the week and very nice it was too. A potter around the town, a stroll along the Stour. There was a cricket match on but I only made it as far as The Cricketers.
The cathedral was the highlight as always, it really is spectacular with a huge amount of history attached. The £20 entry fee might suggest that Jesus' line about the rich finding it harder than the poor to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven was a load of guff, but to be fair each ticket is valid for a year. When I left I gave mine to the first impoverished wretch I saw.
Many years ago, roughly midway between Chaucer and today, there used to be a scene in Canterbury. Here is a playlist featuring some selected scenesters. True to the spirit of the typical Scene output, it goes on way too long and some of the fiddlier bits could happily have been cut out completely.
I have been listening to Yama Warashi a fair bit recently and I thought you might like to as well.
Yama Warashi means mountain spirit in Japanese and it is the nom de plume of Yoshino Shigihara, a musician and illustrator who describes her sound as a mixture of free jazz and African music with a slice of electric psychedelia (and who am I to tell her otherwise).
Although now based back in Japan most of Yoshino's records to date were made while living in the UK, first in Bristol and then London. In 2022 I was lucky enough to see her live in London supporting Bas Jan. Quite a line-up.
She seems to have a thing about the moon. Here is one track apiece from "Moon Zero", "Moon Egg" (both 2016), "Boiled Moon" (2018) and "Crispy Moon" (2022). You can find all of those albums and more on her Bandcamp site.
Yoshino's hardly the only musician with a thing about the moon. It is after all one of the lyrical staples of popular music as these examples show. The first is sublime, the others marginally less so.
For this edition of Single Song Sunday I've chosen a song that has been covered much less frequently than most of those that we have featured previously. Some of them had 100+ versions knocking about. For this one the good folks at Single Song Sunday have only been able to verify nine. Seven of those feature here, and I've found a couple of others for you.
The song in question is "Thin Line Between Love And Hate", written in 1971 by the Poindexter brothers, Richard and Robert (not Buster), and Robert's wife Jackie Members. The Poindexters were New York based writers and producers who had a licensing agreement with Atlantic. Jimi Hendrix was a backing musician on some of their early releases in the mid-1960s.
"Thin Line Between Love And Hate" was written specifically as a launch pad for the newly formed Persuaders. It succeeded admirably, making it all the way to #15 in the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971 and topping the R 'n B charts. For me it is still the pick of the bunch.
It was quickly covered twice the following year, one being by The Lost Generation (we will come to the other one later). Then there seems to have a bit of a lull until 1984 when The Pretenders' version rocketed to #49 in the UK and #83 in the US.
We then had to wait another decade for a sudden rash of covers in the mid-1990s - Annie Lennox in 1995 and Sly, Slick & Wicked (on a live album) and H-Town both in 1996. The latter two are relegated to the videos - one is decent, the other is not.
Then there was another decade long gap until the mysterious Donald McCollum popped up in 2008. The single came out on a German label called Sundae Soul that was active between 2006 and 2016. Quite a lot of the singles it released were reissues by American artists like Barbara Lewis, so whether Donald's original recording dates from 2008 I have no idea.
Which brings us back to the other cover version from 1972, and probably my favourite apart from the original. Filling the MRV quota this time out we are delighted to present the late great B.B. Seaton. There is some extra MRV in the videos for you fanatics.
Earlier in the week I was at London's fashionable Wallace Collection for a panel discussion and a peek at the current Grayson Perry exhibition.
The eminent art guru C has already reviewed the exhibition over at her place, and if it had not been for that review I would not have found out about the panel discussion. So many thanks C.
The discussion was titled 'Visions and Voices: Madge Gill and Outsider Art'. I am a big fan of the East London artist Madge Gill, as is Mr Perry it seems as he has included a few of her works in his exhibition, and that was the main attraction for me.
After an unpromising introduction by the moderator that was full of art jargon like 'intersectional' and 'liminal' it turned into an interesting chat. As well as talking about Madge Gill's life and work - both extraordinary - there was a discussion about whether there is such a thing as 'outsider art'.
The general view of the panel was that it is an outdated and unhelpful term. As one of the panellists said, the artists who get labelled that way are all genuinely unique so trying to pigeonhole them and define them as one single group makes no sense. There is also a distinct whiff of 'not one of us' about it on the part of the establishment.
It reminded me of the dreadful phrase 'world music' which fortunately seems to have fallen out of favour. The idea that all the amazing and varied music made outside Europe and North America could be bundled together and treated as one genre always seemed misguided and - even if well-intended - slightly racist to me.
Enough of my right on rantings. Here are some outsiders and some art.
The Numero Group has been running a series called 'Eccentric Soul' for the best part of 25 years now. Focused firmly on the more obscure soul labels and artists there have been over 40 releases, with the latest due out in a few weeks.
Back in 2012 they decided to mark the tenth year of the series with a jumbo 88 track compilation. They named it "Eccentric Soul: Omnibus". Here are just three of the many highlights.
Our third stop of our tour of the Americas finds us in Bolivia. I found compiling this post more of a challenge that I expected. It is probably something to do with the high altitude.
Nearly thirty percent of the country is up in the Andes which in musical terms can mean only one thing - bloody p*np*pes (or zampoña as they are called locally). We can't avoid them completely but we'll keep them to a minimum and get them out of the way quickly.
El Milagro Verde come from Cochabamba, the City of Eternal Spring, and their mission is to "reinvent the wonder of Bolivian folklore with the catchy sounds of cumbia and the energetic power of electronic music". Whether they have succeeded you can decide for yourself by listening to this track from their 2018 album "Orbital Chicha".
For unadulterated indigenous music you really need to get Luzmila Carpio involved. She is a performer of Quechua heritage who has long been a champion of the American Indian peoples in Bolivia, with a distinctive voice and the best bird impressions since the late Percy Edwards. We've chosen a tune from "Yuyay Jap'ina Tapes", a selection of her 1990s recordings that were remastered and reissued in 2014.
There is nothing remotely indigenous about the next couple of numbers, both of which were clearly influenced by noises being made way further north. From 1966 we have Los Bonny Boys Hot's from La Paz - perhaps not the best Bolivian band of that era but definitely the one with the best name, which is really the only reason they are here. This comes from their EP "Shakes Con Los Bonny Boys Hot's".
Around the same time back in Cochabamba Grupo 606 were making a name from themselves as one of Bolivia's finest purveyors of garage rock. This cover of a Blue Magoos tune was released on an EP in either 1967 or 1969 depending on who you ask. They are not to be confused with 606 Group the progressive rock duo from Stockport.
We skip forward now to 1979 where we find Jorge Quiroga, formerly of Grupo 606's rivals Los Grillos, attempting to fuse American rock and Andean folk music with his new band Huinca. This track comes from their self-titled first EP and is considered by aficionados to be their finest moment. They are not to be confused with the metal band from Chile with the same name.
Enough living in the past. We will bring things relatively up to date with our final three tunes. The first two are representatives of the Sound Of Young Bolivia. Some of the influences are fairly obvious but both bands are pretty decent in their own right. Both also hail from Cochabamba. It is clearly the hub of the Bolivian music scene.
First up is Astronauto Suburbano, whose "Aneural" album came out in 2020, followed by Chicas Delfin with a track from their self-titled 2018 EP. Information on both bands ranges from scant to non-existent, but you can find them both on Instagram if you really want to.
We round things off with an example of what they refer to locally as reggae boliviano (MAR to you and me). It is by Illapa Reggae - there is a clue in his name - and it comes from his 2016 album "Illapa". Listen carefully during the early part of the instrumental break and you can detect some p*np*pes that prove it is genuinely Bolivian.
We will start the videos with Bolivia's most popular folk group and their best known tune. Los Kjarkas celebrate sixty years in the business this year and our still going strong - the current line-up played a couple of shows in London back in April as part of a short European tour.
They call the song "Llorando Se Fue" and the tune has been used as the basis for many other records since they released theirs in 1981. The best known version led to Los Kjarkas taking legal action for being ripped off without permission. Many of you will recognise it I am sure.
You may not recognise any of the songs in the other videos but you will no doubt be humming along with them all in no time.
Some records by people called Riley. That's the concept today folks. Its a simple one but then I'm a simple guy.
We start with four American musical styles including rock 'n roll from Billy Joe, some zydeco from Steve and his Playboys and naughty Agnes with her single entendre jumping blues. We follow that up with four reggae Rileys including the father and son team of Jimmy and Tarrus.
Today's post is dedicated to my old friend Steve Riley. He's not the Cajun one - he's no playboy and I doubt whether he would recognise a Mamou if one walked up to him and slapped him in the face - but he's a pretty cool dude in his own right.
The title of the CD I am featuring today is "America's Most Colorful Hillbilly Band Vol.1". The lack of the 'u' in "colorful" rankles but that is how it is spelt on the cover and I place great importance on accuracy (or "accracy" as they presumably spell it in America).
Anyhoo, the CD is a compilation of the early recordings of The Maddox Brothers & Rose released by Arhoolie Records in 1993. It contains 27 tracks dating from 1946 to 1951 and pretty much every one is a winner.
The band comprised Rose and four of her brothers, originally Fred, Don, Cal and Cliff with Henry stepping in when Cliff sadly dies in 1949. They were augmented by Bud Duncan on pedal steel and the magnificently named Jimmy Winkle on guitar. Rose handled most of the lead vocals but Fred took a turn for some of the more raucous numbers.
Here is a fairly representative selection. The first track is dedicated to one of our regular readers. There are songs about mules and milk cows on the album but sadly none about goats.
In sadder hillbilly news, on Sunday we lost Dave Cousins, the leader of bluegrass combo the Strawberry Hill Boys, or Strawbs as they became. Lay down, Dave, lay down.
Two brand new albums for you today. Both are by female artistes from West Africa. And both are splendid.
Regular readers may recall me raving about Nana Benz du Togo's debut album "AGO" and their live show at various points over the last couple of years. I'm pleased to report that their second album "SÉ NAM" (which means ‘understand me' in the Mina language) came out last month.
It is a worthy successor to "AGO". There is a bit more studio production this time round. I'm not sure they needed it but its fairly unobtrusive and doesn't detract from the general joyfulness of their sound, and hopefully the live show will still feature a man whacking big pieces of plastic tubing with a pair of flip-flops.
The second album comes from a fine singer from Burkina Faso who I had never heard of before and about whom I have been able to find out very little. Her name is Awa Guindo and the only information I have comes from her Facebook page, which tells us:
"Awa Guindo is part of the new wave of young Mandingo artists who have been shaking up the West African musical world in recent years. Originally from Banfora, in southwest Burkina Faso, she comes from a long line of griots".
So now you know. Anyway her debut album is called "Tama" and I would recommend giving it a listen. It is not on Bandcamp but you can find it on Spotify, at the tax dodgers' place and on EMusic in the unlikely event you have a subscription.
I can't find any videos of Nana Benz performing songs from the latest album so here is an old favourite instead. It is followed by what I think is Awa's searing critique of a corrupt sporting organisation.
A couple of weeks ago we featured "Till April Is Dead ≈ A Garland of May", Lisa Knapp's 2017 album of traditional songs associated with the month of May.
Since that post I have discovered the music of Arianne Churchman and Benedict Drew thanks to a review of their new album "The Tree Of The Left Hand" in the latest edition of Uncut.
A cursory glance of their Bandcamp page and that of the Thanet Tape Centre reveals that they are obsessed with the music of May to such an extent that Lisa seems a mere dilettante by comparison. And they are clearly keen to convert others to the cause as much of their material is available on a 'name your own price' basis.
Here are a couple of examples. Together they clock in at over twenty minutes, making them suitable for inclusion in the Monday Long Song ritual by those of you who still cling to such archaic beliefs.
Cornwall is particularly known for May celebrations and music. Helston alone has two songs associated with its festivities that take place every year on 8 May. These are they (some liberties may have been taken with the second).
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 TheHarmonettes, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Links stay up for a month or so. If you are an artist or copyright holder and want me to remove the link, or if you want to get in touch for any other reason, e-mail me on leggies27@hotmail.co.uk.
