02/08/25 - Jam_8

"The neighbors couldn't believe hearing bagpipes in the ghetto of Philadelphia. So the cops would comes to the house and say, 'Im sorry, we have a complaint that theres bagpipes being played here,' and I would get away saying, 'Do I look like Im Irish or Scottish to you?'" -- Rufus Harley talking about practicing bagpipes for the first time

 Listen to the show below! 

Artist	Track	Album	Label	Year	Notes
Rufus Harley	Nobody Knows the Troubles Us People Had Seen	Re-Creation of the Gods	Ankh Records	1972	The only well-known jazz bagpipe player. Bagpipes put into spiritual jazz. Inspired by JFK's funeral procession, Harley bought bagpipes and developed a unique sound in jazz that few if any have tried to replicate.
DJ Harrison	Pipets (How We Feel)	IndieGiver	N/A	2018	A one-man band. Associated with Stones Throw. Layered, groove-heavy instrumentals. Lo-fi aesthetic rooted in hip-hop and jazz fusion.
Sensational	Thick Marker	Loaded With Power	WordSound	1997	A prolific experimental rapper who started with the Jungle Brothers. Off-kilter flow and muddy beats make his sound unconventional and backpacker-esc.
Donald Smith	Mystic Man	Luv	Whynot	1976	Pianist and brother of Lonnie Liston Smith. Unlike his brother's cosmic jazz, Donald leans toward freer, more dramatic playing. This track comes from his only solo album, Luv.
Sir Douglas Quintet	I Wanna Be Your Mama Again	Mendocino	Smash	1969	A Tex-Mex rock band from San Antonio. This cut features subtle distortion and reverb, standing out from their typical country-rock style.
Damon	Song of a Gypsy	Song of a Gypsy	Ankh	1969	A rare psychedelic folk recording by LA-based Damon, who envisioned himself as a wandering mystic. His debut album is rare enough to be worth thousands of dollars today.
Nick Nicely	Beverly	Psychotropia	Castle	2004 (1983)	A psychedelic artist who bridged the gap between 60s psych and 80s electronic experimentation. His work--especially "Hilly Fields (1892)"--influenced other artists, such as Dukes of Stratosphere (XTC), Robyn Hitchcock (Soft Boys), and Robert Wyatt (Soft Machine).
Deux Filles	The City Sleeps	Silence & Wisdom	Papier Mâché	1982	An ambient pop duo created by two former members of The The, who adopted fictional female personas with a tragic backstory. Their sound is dreamy ambient pop.
Laika	Prarie Dog	Sounds of the Satellites	Too Pure	1997	A mellow, groove-heavy trip-hop track. Formed by ex-Moonshake members Margaret Fiedler and John Frenett.
Augustus Pablo	Dub in a Matthews Lanes Arena	Rockers Meets King Tubbys in a Fire House	Rockers	1980	A semi-late-period track from the dub pioneer, following his peak with King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown. Heavy rhythms, as characteristic of dub.

10/26/24 - Jam_3

"Kanu" meaning that as you plant, you also bury. 

 Slowly easing in some weird elements today. Listen to the show below! 

Artist	Track	Album	Label	Year	Notes
Haku	Mamina	Na Mele A Ka Haku	Haku Inc.	1975	Private press release from Hawaii. Haku, real name Frank Tavares, was the head of the music & drama department at Maui Community College (now known as the University of Hawai'i Maui College). The whole record is in Hawaiian, Japanese, and English; this song is in Hawaiian. I could not find the lyrics online for this record, so I will soon upload lyrics once I buy the record and report back what this song means. Regardless, trippy little electronic bit.
Markos Vamvakaris	Ta Matoklada Sou Lampoun	Frankosyriani	MeloPhone	1969	Greek rebetiko musician; "the patriarch of the rebetiko." Rebetiko... or rembetika... or rebetika... or rembetiko... originated in traditional Mikrasiatiki and Smyrnaiki music. Musicians combined those older elements with local Greek traditional elements of the late 19th century. Smyrna was an old Greek town at the western coast of Asia Minor (it is now in Turkey and known as İzmir). When this was recorded, he was a very old man; he had arthitis in his hands and his voice was very rough from bad asthma. The song is very good regardless. Vamvakaris is considered by many Greek songwriters now to be foundational to Greek music.
Ednardo do Pessoal do Ceará	Aviao De Papel	O romance do pavão mysteriozo	Vik	1974	MPB musician specializing in combining traditional elements like xote and baiao with the Brazilian singer-songwriter format of the day (i.e., the 1960s and 1970s). "Pessoal do Ceará" was a title given to artists from Ceará who emerged in the 1970s -- most famously Belchior (he even has a wikipedia page in English :O). They were primarily influenced by the philosopher Augusto Pontes, who was also from Ceará. Ednardo isn't on a Belchior level of fame, but his stuff is a good listen nonetheless. Hopefully this will be one of the last Brazilian artists I put on the show; I've got to cover other regions.
Jeanne Lee	Your Ballad	Conspiracy	Earthforms	1974	I discovered Jeanne Lee through Rahsaan Roland Kirk -- she did vocals on his third stream record. She's also collaborated with Carla Bley, Marion Brown, and Archie Shepp. Conspiracy sticks out in her catalog; it's one of the very few solo records she ever did. She did a private press of it, but it has big names on it like Sam Rivers and Steve McCall. She's just vocalizing on this track and it works very well with the instrumental.
Lubomyr Melnyk	I	Lubomyr Melnyk Performs KMH	Music Gallery	1979	Ukrainian minimalist composer. Melnyk is known for his style of playing notes continuously in a rapid series. The repetition is a key aspect of the minimalism style of classical music that Melnyk largely falls under. Uniquely, Melnyk ties his piano technique to his national identity; he says Ukrainians are self-sacrificing people, and his music reflects that. This piece is a segment from his first recorded work. Sit back and relax -- it's a long one.
Los Tres Ases	Regálame esta noche	Siluetas en trio: Vol. II	RCA Victor	1958	Bolero trio from Mexico City active throughout the 50s in their original formation. The music is sparse, as bolero is meant to be: guitar, maracas, percussion. The vocals are the central focus -- and the lyrics are as romance-centered as you would think. The whole album is a great listen, all on streaming.
Barre Phillips	Mountainscape 3	Mountainscapes	ECM	1976	ECM represents what I call one of the three directions in jazz starting in the 70s: fusion, avant-garde, and traditional. ECM is perhaps the flagship label of a particular brand of fusion that "fused" jazz with classical and ambient elements. it has its own genre associated with the label; a rare feat (see: ECM style jazz). It's not a particularly widely accepted genre name -- but one used nonetheless (e.g., there are drum charts asking the player to play in "ECM" style). The style typically involves lots of reverb, lots of space, and de-emphasis of blues. Now, ECM put out a lot of different stuff that had little to nothing to do with this sound; Barre Phillips included. And I appreciate that as I am not too fond of the ECM style. On this record, he deviates from the sound primarily in tone. It is as if the ethereal elements one would expect from an ECM record (the chiming and ringing and humming of the various synthesizers) are clashing with Phillips's dissonant bass playing. This third track is a great example of this clash.
Charles Rouse	In His Presence Searching	Two Is One	Strata-East	1974	This record was a weird move from Charles Rouse. He was primarily a tenor sax player, ocasionally playing bass clarinet. He played on much of Monk's 60s output, and presumably was in Monk's band. This explains the ten year plus gap between his 1963 Bossa Nova Bacchanal and Two Is One. There are no surprises in his '63 record, nor in his catalog before or after this record. Maybe with Monk's influence in mind, the move towards this segmented post-bop wasn't too much of a surprise; but this track here, the final track on the album, has noticable influences from the spiritual side of things which can make you tilt your head in confusion -- I'm certainly more confused hearing this than listening to any free jazz or avant-garde funk big band or whatever else is out there.
Lonnie Johnson with Elmer Snowden	Haunted House	Blues & Ballads	Bluesville	1960	Lonnie's on electric and vocals and Elmer's on acoustic (primarily in your right ear). This collaboration sits somewhere between Muddy Waters's turn to electric blues in the 60s (shock! betrayal!) and country blues. Like just about any blues record from this time, both these men are older folks who had singles put out in the 20s and 30s on Okeh, Ajax, and Columbia (although Elmer was an accompanist mostly, so records not in his name but his playing on others). Lonnie's the bigger name here, but they're both considered important figures in -- not blues -- jazz, during the jazz age... not of the big band swing types though (e.g., Duke Ellington). People like these two can remind you about the roots of jazz in rhythm and blues that can seem obscured by the time of ECM or even later bop-associated players like Charles Rouse.