11/15/24 - Jam_5

"When people misuse you, give Him thanks" - Otis G Johnson

 Listen to the show below! 

Artist	Track	Album	Label	Year	Notes
Otis G Johnson	Walk With Jesus	Everything: God Is Love 78	Holy Spirit	1978	Lo-fi gospel minimal synth from Detroit. What a combination of words. This is the first outsider artist I have played on the program. He sings a little bit, got a drum machine playing in the back, and plays a bit on a Hammond Organ. There are probably many records just like this -- it's much easier to record by yourself even for genres that somewhat demand the participation of many -- they just haven't been found. Everything: God Is Love 78 was released on O.G. Johnson's own record label, Holy Spirit, where he mostly released his own records, including singles. But he did also operate two other labels that had other similarly obscure gospel artists... though not many. He's also been a DJ and host of gospel programs. This record was rereleased by the great Numero, one of many rerelease labels operating today.
Omar Khorshid	Ah Ya Zain	Rhythms From the Orient	Voice of Lebanon	1974	70s Egyptian bellydance music. This is particularly synthesizer-focused, which steers away from how this music would traditionally sound. Omer Khorshid was a guitarist from Cairo. After a lot of political turmoil in Egypt including shift from Soviet to USA support during the Cold War, the bread riots, and political repression of citizens, Khorshid moved to Lebanon to continue his music career which had just started getting along. That's where he produced much of his recorded output, including this record.
Francis Bebey	Agatha	Fleur tropicale	Ozileka	1976	Cameroon singer-songwriter-tinged bikutsi. Bikutsi is a traditional folk music of the Ewondo people in Cameroon. Generally, Francis Bebey's discography (which is quite large) is more in line with a traditional bikutsi, most notably with 6/8 time signature. However, on Fleur tropicale, he used an instrument associated more with modern bikutsi style: the synthesizer. This record is heavy on the spoken word, as you can hear in this track, which in my mind partly earns it the singer-songwriter label. The rest is due to much of the lyrics on the record being written by Francis.
Eddie Palmieri	Cobarde	Unfinished Masterpiece	Coco	1975	Descarga/salsa with jazz components from the ever-flourishing NYC salsa scene. The 70s were a big time for salsa; you had the rise of the Fania label, which had pretty much all of the big-time names from this era -- including Palmieri. This record, however, was put out by Coco, a label created by a former employee of Fania. This record is considered the peak of experimentalism in salsa, with this song being perhaps the most out-there showing of it. It really ramps up and gets crazier as the song goes on. The record itself is unfinished according to Palmieri, but Coco put it out regardless and used this 'unfinished' label as a way to market the album.
Henri Guedon	Sainte-Marie	Cosmozouk Percussion	Epic	1975	Kreyol djaz (creole jazz) from Martinque. Kreyol djaz combines influences from various styles of French Caribbean music with jazz. This particular style of it though reflects the spread of salsa and other latin american music styles throughout the world. Guedon was a pioneer in exporting different types of latin music to France (Martinique has not left French ownership since the Napoleonic Wars). This record in particular fuses guaguanco, descarga, and guajira along with zouk, a sort of vocalist-focused dance/party pop music. This track is moreso a jazz fusion heater though.
Jon Appleton	Chef D'Ouvre	Appleton Syntonic Menagerie	Flying Dutchman	1969	Musique concrete/sound collage from Hollywood. A collection of electronic soundscapes in a time where the concept of electronic music was mainly novelty, even when it did not carry any satirical edge like this does. I enjoy stuff like this because it really does break up the monotony of expected melodies and rhythms and such things like that. I don't mean to be pretentious, but... how about this: it's fun! Frozen lil' pizzas from Chef Boyardee!
Cody Chesnutt	Can't Get No Betta'	The Headphone Masterpiece	One Little Indian	2002	The most well-known weirdo neo soul record, The Headphone Masterpiece, featuring German, Japan, Rastafarian, and UK flags on the cover without a semblance of connection to anything going on in the music. I'd recommend listening to the album yourself to truly experience it because a more accessible cut like this does not represent that weirdness very well. Same record label that put out most of Bjork's records for some reason also put out Cody Chesnutt's The Headphone Masterpiece as well. This was before The Roots covered his song "The Seed" a year later, which is what he's most known for. The record is sometimes a little goofy, mostly overtly sexual in the most absurd way -- but it is extremely stylistically experimental and adventurous in a way I have honestly never heard before in any soul music, even in recent stuff. It's really out there.
William Onyeabor	Good Name	Good Name	Wilfilms	1983	Continuing on with the lo-fi elements here, here's some lo-fi synth funk from from Nigeria. Got electro elements in there as well: Roland TR-808 drum machine syncopation. Onyeabor was actually quite the success in Nigeria, enough for there to have recently been a Vice doc about him and his career titled Fantastic Man -- plus the millions of streams of his tunes on Spotify. Sort of as a side effect of afrobeat, the song is quite long, many of his songs are this way as others as well from this period. Despite the low fidelity being pretty strong here, the grooves are just as strong if not stronger.

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.