Giant Donut Discs® – September 2010
31. 8. 2010 | Rubriky: Articles,Giant Donut Discs
[by Ken Hunt, London] This month a raft laden with new provisions landed. It would have been rude not to, as they say, that is, not to have included some. In no particular order, ladies and gentlemen, here’s the Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band, Flora Purim, Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin, Laurie Anderson, Alastair Hulett and Dave Swarbrick, Jenna and Bethany Reid, Bill Kirchen, Wargaren, Annette Pinto and Diva Reka. It’s not entirely new stuff because, as ever, it reflects other work going on during the month.
Jailer Jailer – Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band
Peter Rowan has a body of great songs behind him and a cadre of collaborators that really takes some beating. Bands of the calibre of Earth Opera, Seatrain, Muleskinner and Old And In The Way provide a pretty fine array of calling-cards to come wooing with. And that’s before factoring in his apprenticeship of bluegrass fire playing with Bill Monroe.
So what sets this new outfit apart and amongst the finest he has ever performed and recorded with? The musicianship is a given. After all, he has Paul Knight on bass and vocals, Keith Little on banjo and vocals and, especially, Jody Stecher on mandolin and vocals. But Legacy – the album this comes from – is a parcel of astonishing new Rowan compositions. Jailer Jailer may not be everybody’s favourite but it touches the hem of the Sufi garment like in the way it dishes up its paradoxes. “My cage is better than your cage” is followed by “You know my god is better than your god” and “My truck is better than your truck”. But to get a completer inkling about the jailer’s role in this tale you will have to listen to the song yourself. This song is like lowering clouds on the horizon drawing ever closer. From Legacy (Compass Records 7 45432, 2010)
Stories To Tell – Flora Purim
This is the title track from Flora Purim’s album Stories To Tell, originally released in 1974 on Milestone Records M-9058. The instrumentation is as richly hued as her voice. The core band on the album is George Duke on keyboards and synthesisers, Earl Klugh on guitar, Airto Moreira on percussion and King Errisson on congas with the song’s co-composer (with Purim and Mario Capolla), Miroslav Vitous on electric bass. It’s very much of its time when jazz and jazz-funk was reaching out into new weird territory. Listen to the electric guitar to hear a foretaste of the licks and effects that Jerry Garcia would employ on the Grateful Dead’s studio album Shakedown Street released in November 1978. From Stories To Tell (BGP CDBGPM 218, 2010)
Fine Horseman – Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin
I was a long way from home and got to reminiscing about Lal Waterson – whose song this is – and when I arrived back home Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin’s new album was waiting for me like a perfect homecoming present. Lal’s line about strange dreams running through her head is about as typical a Lal line as one could imagine. She juxtaposes that thought with the everyday sensuousness of somebody toying with her hair. I’ve written it before of Lal’s songs but you just learn to sing them in the hope that the meaning will come. Mostly, the meaning will never work if you stick a pin through it, as if it were some sort of specimen moth. Remarkable song. Remarkable rendition. I love the final harmony that Kate adds at the end of the song. From Return (no name, no number, 2010)
Only An Expert – Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson’s Homeland is a fragmentary work that figured in my mind since seeing her perform it at TFF Rudolstadt in 2007. I should hasten to add that ‘fragmentary’ refers to the suite’s development. Only An Expert (Can Deal With The Problem) as presented here is a much transformed piece of work since the last two occasions I saw her perform it. It has metamorphosed into a different beast.
And, quite frankly, this is one of those shape-shifting compositions that can support changes in tempi, lyrics, grooves and instrumentation. Lyrically speaking, it is timeless. There will always be somewhere or someone needing to justify something and who better to call on than experts and consultants? They understand. And they have ‘solutions’ crawling like aces up and down their sleeves. It’s a humorous song with a serious heart. It fits Homeland perfectly. From Homeland (Nonesuch 524055-2, 2010)
Don’t Sign Up For War – Alastair Hulett and Dave Swarbrick
You get what it says in the title. Yet the song tells a story about the repercussions of putting rhetoric into practice. As experienced by John Maclean who got to know the rough end of the Defence of the Realm Act five times between 1915 and 1920. This album by Alastair Hulett (15 October 1951-28 January 2010) and Dave Swarbrick passed me by on its release. It really is a marvellous piece of music and historical document. Hulett’s detailed booklet notes are erudite yet impassioned. From Red Clydeside (Red Rattler RATCD005, 2002)
Jan’s March – Jenna and Bethany Reid
This is the opening track of a suite of tradition-based compositions celebrating the Shetland Bus, a clandestine operation during the Second World War connecting the Shetlands and fascist-occupied Norway. Its hero is a member of the Norwegian resistance called Jan Siguard Baalsud (1917-1988). The musicians named above play fiddle and in Bethany Reid’s case piano on the album. James Thomson plays flute and pipes, Iain Sandilands percussion and James Lindsay double-bass on the album. This is a composition by Jenna Reid. It’s a lilting overture of a piece played by the ensemble. It’s one of those melodies that you can’t quite place but feel as if you’ve known it forever. From Escape (Lofoten Records LOFCD001, 2010)
More information at www.jennanandbethanyreid.co.uk
I Don’t Work That Cheap – Bill Kirchen
Yes, yes, yes, it’s a shameless blag from Dylan but it has plenty of allusions to Blighty. Plus it has George Frayne, the ol’ Commander, pounding the ivories. From Word To The Wise (Proper PRPCD053, 2010)
Er Zou Er Een Meisje Gaan Halen Wijn – Wargaren
Wargaren was a relatively short-lived Dutch folk band. Its predecessor Pitchwheel finagled a couple of tracks onto the Folk Centre Utrecht’s scene sampler FCU (1969). In 1976 Met Stille Trom (Universe hot103) appeared, from which this performance derives. It was Wargaren’s solitary LP and by the time it appeared they had broken up. The most signal aspect of Er Zou Er Een Meisje Gaan Halen Wijn is the voice of Rina de Heus. She sings here over a bed of gentle acoustic instrumentation.
Her understated voice gets me every time I listen to this piece of music. It never gets in the way of the story. The band’s Kees van der Poel went on to form Wolverlei. Its Rob Smaling went on to be active in many Dutch musical endeavours. Jurek Willig also joined Wolverlei and later worked as a sound engineer, for example, on a 2009 release of Ernst Krenek’s Lamentatio Jeremiae Propheta. And Rina de Heus supposedly gave up singing – a tragedy for the Dutch folk scene – and emerged as an actress in the early 1980s. From the Matthija Linnemann-compiled Dutch Rare Folk: 43 Lost Classics From The Golden Age Of Nederfolk 1967-1987 (Food For Thought FFT7060157, 2007)
Sobit Rupnem – Annette Pinto
It should be rammed down people’s throats over and over again that, when it came to world music, the Indian subcontinent’s film industry knew a great deal about head starts. The album that Sobit Rupnem comes from homes in on ‘Music From Goa/Made in Bombay’. Much of it could be called an amalgam of anywhere-Indian filmi sangeet (film song) elements spiced with Latino elements in a transplanted Iberian peninsula kind of way. Not derivative, more like true colours. It was with enormous regret that the album that this track comes from, arrived after the closing date for updates to my ‘East-West Fusions’ chapter of the Rough Guide to World Music (2009). From Konkani Songs (Trikont 0395, 2009)
Prochu se Nayden – Diva Reka
Diva Reka proper is Kostadin Genchev on kaval (an end-blown wooden flute), Dimitar Hristov on tambura (a long-necked lute), Stela Petrova on string bass and Petar Mitov on percussion. But after seeing them perform at TFF Rudolstadt in July 2010 and listening to their eponymous debut, it is the interplay of the quartet and its guests that puts the stamp on their achievement. Prochu se Nayden is Bulgarian folk-jazz. It opens with guest Valentin Vassev setting the mood on piano. Then Evelina Hristova, the lead vocalist on this track, another guest, joins in. The band folds around them. A slow into medium-tempo, slow-build air, it encapsulates the joy and majesty of Diva Reka, the finest new Bulgarian band to come my way in a long time. From Diva Reka (Gega New GD 353, 2010)
Diva Reka at TFF Rudolstadt 2010, photograph (c) Ken Hunt
More information at the Sofia-based label’s website: www.geganew.com