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.

10/12/24 - Jam_2

"What about a blues in W, in the key of W." - Rahsaan Roland Kirk. 

 Listen to the show below! 

Artist	Track	Album	Label	Year	Notes
Rahsaan Roland Kirk	Salvation & Reminiscing	Prepare Thyself To Deal With A Miracle	Atlantic	1973	Roland Kirk is probably best known for playing multiple woodwind instruments at once all while being blind. He'd to have had a strong neck for that. Imagine all those sax straps tearing into your neck... Regardless, he labeled his music "black classical" because he felt jazz was not representative of all the things he was taking from. This track is described generally by the term third stream, a genre that combines elements from classical and jazz to create a somewhat controversial "third stream" between the two.
Grupo Folklórico y Experimental Nuevayorquino	Cuba Linda	Concepts in Unity	Salsoul	1975	Experimental Afro-Cuban group from NYC. They made two albums, both melding traditional Cuban music with modern styles like salsa and Afro-Cuban jazz. This song is a great example of that concept -- a traditional song about missing Cuba that starts with a minute-and-a-half long conga solo a la descarga, then moves into guaguancó-flavored salsa dura for the remaining seven or so minutes.
Rodolfo Mederos y Generación Cero	Homo Sapiens	Fuera de broma	Trova	1976	A very modern take on tango nuevo -- modern for 1976, anyway. Astor Piazzolla's style had overwhelmed the genre throughout the 50s and 60s. A new take was definitely in order, and so came the likes of Rodolfo Mederos. He was the bandleader for Generación Cero, and like just about every other tango nuevo bandleader he plays bandoneon (Piazzolla's influence on the genre is so great that even this continues to be true for many groups doing tango nuevo today!), but his style is more of a tango-flavored jazz rock than a jazz-rock flavored tango.
Walter Franco	Cena maravilhosa	Revolver	Continental	1975	Franco was part of this 2nd generation of MPB artists who were not present for the 60s bossa nova or tropicalia excitement. Franco started out in a more freak folk orientation that represented the more out-there sounds of the late 60s. But on this album, his sound is much more on the mellow side, which is the direction he would continue to go in for the rest of his career.
Brian Eno & Robert Fripp	Evening Star	Evening Star	Island	1975	Easy pick for the musical consistency of the show so far -- sorry for being a bit predictable here. I mean, it's pretty well known that Fripp & Eno did some very innovative things together and apart. Fripp from King Crimson, Eno from... well you can say Roxy Music, but that wouldn't really cover it, would it? Apart from the rock bands that brought them success, Their 70s collab records are some of their first projects outside of the rock bands that brought them early success and attention. These records are considered early bits of ambient music that sprang up in the late 60s/early 70s, along with Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Wendy Carlos, and Popul Vuh. This pick is the title track from their second collaboration.
Os Tincoãs	Ogundê	Os Tincoãs	Odeon	1973	Possibly the most musically-pleasing sounds of today's program, Os Tincoãs are a group that deserve more attention than they have gotten outside of Brazil. They started out as an unremarkable bolero trio in the 60s. After some member rotation going into the 70s, they transistioned into afoxé, an Afro-Brazilian style originating in west Brazil. It is a non-religious version of candomblé, an essential part of the Afro-Brazilian religion by the same name. Os Tincoãs completely reinvented themselves in the image and sounds of candomblé. Their sound is very delicate but consistent, with just guitar, some percussion, and vocal harmony. They released three seminal albums in the 70s, only getting better with each record released. This song is from the first of that set, with lyrics mentioning Orisha Ogun, a deity of war and metalwork in the Yoruba religious tradition.
Docteur Nico	Canshita	Orchestre African Fiesta sous la direction du Docteur Nico	Ngoma	1967	Some soukous, a guitar-based dance music emerging from Congolese rumba. Nico Kasanda, or Docteur Nico, was an early figure in Congolese music. He grew up during the Belgian colonial rule in the Congo. He started out as a guitarist in Le Grand Kallé et l'African Jazz, a popular rumba band in the 50s. He soon formed the band African Fiesta with Tabu Ley, another former member of Le Grand Kallé's band. But they had disagreements and split the group in two, with Docteur Nico naming his half African Fiesta Sukisa in '65. This song comes from the first album of this group.
The Mighty Diamonds	Them Never Loved Poor Marcus	Right Time	Virgin	1976	Roots reggae bemoaning the fate of Marcus Garvey. I personally don't really have any significant opinions about Marcus Garvey. As with the other controversial figures in the Pan-African and black power/nationalist movements in history, to me he's just another one of those guys who made an impact on certain elements that have impacted various aspects of black culture and politics, for better or worse. But his impact in Rastafarian culture and politics is perhaps the greatest. You can tell just from the music -- he shows up everywhere in reggae from this time and later. As for his fate, U.S. black orgs considered him controversial, sort of on a Malcolm X level where he spoke angrily about the present conditions, riling people up. So you have folks like W.E.B. du Bois criticizing him. And then later after he left the states, his conservative leanings left him a bit aloof from leftist black orgs like those in London where he lived out his final years. So this song frames the black folks who rejected him as betrayers to the black cause.
Waylon Jennings	Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way	Dreaming My Dreams	RCA Victor	1975	There's a psychedelic twinge to this song that you don't often hear in country music, not even during the period where psychedelia was most popular. This is really due to the phaser effect on the guitar. But it adds a tiny layer of nuance to the track that probably exemplifies what Waylon Jennings is talking about here... country needs some freshening up. Of course, as with other traditional-minded genres and -- really, movements in general, the appeal is not towards the future but to the past for a way to change what's going on in the present. Regardless, there is a bit of subconscious change happening, as this is what is known as progressive country. Very much a reaction to the nudie suit era that was waning in both popularity and relevance in the 70s.
Airto Moreira	Uri (Wind)	Seeds on the Ground	Buddah	1971	Moreira was one of the members of Quarteto Novo, a 60s Brazilian group that very extremely influential to jazz and pop music both in Brazil and abroad. He continued on to be a prolific percussionist in his own solo work and on several monumental records (e.g., Bitches Brew). Down Beat (the top jazz mag) voted him number #1 percussionist in 1981. He consistently has done a samba/latin jazz fusion style for his entire career, not really deviating from that base. But the atmosphere on this track is particularly interesting -- almost with a light drunken feeling? Calling it "Wind" is apt; the sound is not in your face but very subtle, gently winding around the listener... inviting, but not pulling them in.
Batsumi	Anishilabi	Batsumi	Records & Tapes	1974	South African folk jazz, or just afro-jazz for a different term. This group put out two albums in a two year period, so they didn't last very long, but have garnered attention as of recent through reissue labels such as Matsuli Music. Very interesting, this -- to be made during apartheid. Batsumi was inspired by the Black Consciousness Movement of the late 60s, led by forefront anti-aparteid activists Steve Biko. There are a few records like Batsumi during this time that used jazz as a way of defiance against the present opressive system. Batsumi were locally very popular and toured South Africa playing stadiums and festivals. Really speaks to how popular the anti-apartheid movement was.

9/28/24 - Jam_1

 The first show of the 2024 fall semester was a Jam. Listen to the show below! 

Artist	Track	Album	Label	Year	Notes
Eddie Kendricks	My People...Hold On	People... Hold On	Tamla	1972	Founding member of the Temptations. Relatively successful solo career in the 1970s. People... Hold On is part of prevalent wave of 70s black power music that was very popular to engage in regardless of the artist's typical output.
The Counts	Thinking Single	What's Up Front That Counts	Westbound	1972	Little known funk group from Detroit. The album is overall pretty fantastic if you're into funk, a real rare nugget. They incorporate a few weird bits in their stuff, the beginning of this track being one of them.
Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention	Andy	One Size Fits All	DiscReet	1975	What a weird bit of Zappa this is. It lacks that satirical/parodic angle he typically goes for -- not in the lyrics mind you (see: "Andy Devine had thong rind") but the instrumental behind it has a strange sincerity that I wouldn't expect from a Mothers showing. Features George Duke and Napoleon Murphy Brock on vocals.
João Bosco	Casa De Marimbondo	Caça à raposa	RCA Victor	1975	Brazilian MPB singer-songwriter. As is the case with other MPB artists, Bosco is a conscious and philosophical writer. This track is no different... it declares samba to be a powerful cultural force that should not be belittled or dismissed. Possible political implications.
Eero Koivistoinen Music Society	SUITE 19	Wahoo	RCA Victor	1973	Finnish band leader Eero Koivistoinen puts together a group for a bit of jazz fusion in 1973. Reminds me of fusion from the 90s. Ahead of its time in that way. Koivistoinen is decently prolific if you're interested in hearing more. This group is probably his most well known project outside of the world of performance and in the world of recordings.
Stray	Time Machine	Stray	Transatlantic	1970	Heavy Psych from the UK. Outside of the confines of men 40s+ who collect heavy psych records, this group isn't very well known. Their sound is solid regardless. I found out about them through Peel sessions.
Cortex	Troupeau bleu	Troupeau bleu	Espérance	1975	Upon first listen, I immediately recognized Cortex as sample music despite not being able to think of any songs that sample them. It's definitely got that air about it. The drums, the vocals, the piano, the sax, the bass, the guitar. Sample-able elements galore. You really don't even have to do anything to it. The musical hooks are everywhere, this song is a prime example.
Mahmoud Ahmed	Endenesh gedawo	Mahmoud Ahmed	Kaifa	1975	Super warm tizita from Ethiopia. Ahmed released a few albums and many singles before moving to the U.S. He had a revival in the mid-80s and returned to making music, largely because of the album this song comes from. It's a very involved experience, puts you in a trance.
Lucio Battisti	Anima latina	Anima latina	Numero Uno	1974	Anima latina = Latin soul/inner self. Music by Battisti, lyrics by Mogol -- big duo in 70s Italian artsy pop music. This track is from their most progressive and complex album, featuring grand orchestrations. This album is supremely ahead of its time and shocking to be from 1974. I hear a lot of different things in it, pretty crazy. If you listen to any album from today's set, this is the one. Battisti and Mogol spent months in Brazil making it. Like the rest of album, the title track explores themes of colonialism, cultural resistance, and the impact of consumerism on traditional societies; i.e., Latin America circa mid-20th century.