Esma encore

... well I did only a very little of digging for vinyls, this most recent European trip (there was however a substantial component of film research). Here is the fruit of a leisurely wander thru the market stalls at trg. Brittanski, my first day in Zagreb. The vendor sniffed dismissively at the crates I was riffling, "Zose are do-mestic". "Oh. Good!", I thought.

This is early Esma Redzepova - her voice is in a much higher register, & she has a wildly expressive ululating vibrato. Difficult to date with any confidence, as nothing like a year appears on either of the cover or the record labels, and scant information by way of a discography is available online. But, so near as I can figure, this is her first LP.

A couple of these tunes have become standards of the contemporary Balkan/Gypsy repertoire, and I've heard several performed this year by both Fanfare Ciocarlia and the Kocani Orkestar. Caje Sukarije is something like her signature tune, and was infamously bootlegged on the Borat soundtrack. I'm guessing there may be some interest in this; something like 100 folks DL-ed the Esma tape I posted an age back; several tracks from that tape reappear here, but in greater fidelity.

Anyways. Enjoy!

Heartbeat of Africa

... back to home (after a further couple weeks in Brisbane). Made a garage sale on Sunday morning; found this - which is not quite what the title might suggest - among a haul of ethnomusicological vinyls.

So far as I can tell, the original (Series 1) releases in Sapra's 'Heartbeat of Africa' series were all recorded by David Fanshawe; otherwise famed for his African Sanctus LP. Chances are, these are the audible fruits of the field recordings that he, unnh, 'harvested' for that disc, and its companion, Arabian Fantasy.

Most of the recordings that I've found on this label document the musical traditions of East Africa, but at least one (CMIL 92, Pearl Divers of Bahrain) is from further afield. Bits & pieces from these 7s were compiled to a pair of Nonesuch Explorer LPs, both of which are currently available on CD. Almost all the rest has been out of print for decades - a great shame, as it represents an exhaustive survey of a stunning wealth of ritual and festive musics, sounds of bird & beast, and local ambience. All of them are beautifully recorded

Anyways: "The Wagogo are a little known people who live in central Tanzania, around Dodoma. Those who have met them rate them as one of the most musical tribes in Africa. Their variety of home made instruments and vigorous dances come perhaps nearest to the accepted Western concept of music; yet Gogo music remains unquestionably African..."

Sensational music, like everything I've heard in this series. Dating from the early 1970s. Sometime soon I'll post up a link for DL of some of this material.

(An aside: I think all of the 'Heartbeat of Africa' 7s that I've found in Melbourne came originally from the same West Brunswick garage sale, back in 2000 - the grandchildren of a deceased evangelist clearing his cluttered house. The entire top floor of that place was a god-bothering home cinema. I guess there's a chance that character was connected to some kind of missionary activity?)

... For recordings of African music within more popular idioms, albeit from the other side of the Continent, check the amazing Voodoo Funk blog: recommended!

We remember: Khmer musics

... It was un-proud Australian journalist, John Pilger, who initially alerted international citizens to the horrors of the Cambodian killing fields. Pilger defines his professional mission as a "guardian of the public memory", invoking these words of Milan Kundera: "The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

The Maoist political program of Pol Pot had a very different intention; it sought to erase the past - to declare a revolutionary 'tabula rasa': Year Zero. To that end, books and ancient texts were burned, buildings were levelled, and vast human populations were murdered.

3 decades later, and history has liquidated Pol Pot - if not his memory, or that of the atrocities he visited on his fellow citizens. Now the task of recovering the history of Khmer culture has enlisted humans from about the globe; 1 of my favourite is DJ bUMp, of Defective Records. He's been kind enough to send me a copy of the Cambodian Psych-Out complication... My colleague, Sokha Suy, is going to do a little translation for him.

Mr bUMp relates that several luminaries of the Khmer pop scene were involved in the Royal Orchestra, so for yr delectations I'm posting this LP: UNESCO Collection Musical Sources/Art Music from South-East Asia IX-3 Royal Music of Cambodia...

"This record is dedicated to those magnificent artists, the royal dancers and musicians of Cambodia" - Jacques Brunot, January 1970. Download it here.

The music bears analogy to Javanese and Balinese Gamelan, but is closer in style to the traditions of Malaysia and Thailand. Wonderfully melifluous, and supported by a female choir who sing in a language which is essentially devoid of the harsh guttural consonants of Anglo-Saxon dialects. Recorded on the eve of the coup which would depose Norodom Sihanouk, the palace orchestra employs antique instruments tuned to a traditional scale, and the choir has been augmented to reflect its size at the beginning of the 20th century. A little over 5 years later, and all those instruments and most of the musicians, singers and dancers were 'liquidated' by Pol Pot & his crew.

There is something of an irony that these recordings were made by UNESCO: Cambodia is the only nation to have suffered an embargo on UN aid & assistance. Instead, food & medicine were directed to the Khmer Rouge militia of Citizen #1, in accordance with the strategic interests of the Western democracies.

Cambodian musicians were recording extraordinary pop and psychedelic music in the late '60s and early '70s - music which reflected their indigenous traditions, but made ample accomodations to the alien influence of Western culture. Those unique stylings are enjoying a revival through several documentaries and a succession of CD compilations...