being an abstracted chronicle of biographical data and sociological observation essayed thru a garbage sandwich of cultural obsession.
Saturday, May 09, 2009
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.
...mandatory in Paris is a visit to un regard moderne; a legended retailer of small-press and otherwise marginal comix publications. Near neighbour is the former 'Beat Hotel': one-time home to Burroughs, Gysin, Balch et al.
To be honest: I found the selection - which is sufficiently extensive as to render human egress past the leaning 'skoob' towers of accumulated graphic detritus mortally perilous - a little disappointing. Ebay has been very kind to me in recent years & I've hoovered up some horribly obscured items (principally, in the Elles Sont De Sortie line) for what was relatively dirt-cheap (& correspondingly; proof also of just how difficult specialist retail is become in an increasingly global & digitised marketplace).
Such were the boom years of the Australian economy: in retrospect I can recognise what a supremely serendipitious thing it was to be earning real money while the Australian dollar actually traded at a decent rate of exchange... Upon returning, I stifled a weary yawn to make the final Goran Bregovic gig of the Melbourne International Arts Festival. Bumped into a former colleague there, "we were worried you'd run out of money - the exchange rate went directly south for the Aussie, while you were away"... But I suspect, rather, that my timing could not have been better: I spent my savings while they still obtained a reasonable value.
Is financially much more tightened circumstances now, & perhaps not only for myself. But a joy it was to traipse about Europe in the knowledge that I didn't have to go back to work at the library. And now, the misremembered luxury of leisure moments in which to enjoy alla musique concrete vinyls and 'figuration libre' monographs. I've been hoarding gourmet artefacts of marginal creativity for the last 2 years, but with the defered expectation of ever being able to actually enjoy the damn things!
Anyways. Paris! Un Regard Moderne. Mark H found himself a graphic anthology of works by Roland Topor. I picked up the new Henriette Valium omnibus, and a collection of punky strips by Marc Caro; both of them published by L'Association (who did Persepolis, and the works of our friend Caroline's housemate, Florent)... some confoundingly beautiful books, but I was visited with much better luck at Bimbo Tower - digging up a long OOP #4 of L'Horreur est Humaine, and for a bare 4 Euros, heh heh...
"Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen, and welcome on board Air Bosnia Herzegovina. May we take the opportunity to ask you to extinguish all burning objects, including fellow passengers. Now put your head between your legs and KISS YOUR ASS GOODBYE..."
... this one has been a decade in the scaring-up, but ebay delivered where more conventional music retailers had previously failed. Now I have 2 of 3 CDs released by Szeki Kurva.
Difficult to characterise this stuff in any meaningful shorthand fashion. There are the casually scattered brutal beats of breakcore. There's a wonderfully inspired choice of samples from Hungarian trad tunes. And its informed by a politics of social collapse that was the Balkans in the 1990s - rustic village life sundered by anachronistic tribal hatreds.
I'm not clear that there was so much other music this thrilling in the 1990s (and this stuff was hardly "available" at the time...) I heard about it from ex-housemate & congenial maniac, Glenn Normal (where he'd heard of it, I'm less clear).
Anyways: is killer! The discs are inconsistent, but the best tracks are at the pinnacle of the style & Szeki Kurva have that niche all to theyselves. Some of it might bear comparison to Curse ov Dialect's first long player on Mush; tho' for its ethos & execution, rather than the actual "sound".
Some infos:
Download their debut CD on Iris-Light, "Music for Joyriders" - unavailable for long years
Mailorder the other 2 discs (label, Iris-Light, also do a comp of Joe Banks' Disinformation project, and a DVD of solar VLF recordings...)
and here we jump the time tunnel heading back aways: is now, sunday 14th of october...
so I'm a week back from Brisbane; where I momentarily recovered my human citizenship in company my kinfolks - gathered for my Mum's 60th b-day - and making the acquaintance also of new small humans: twin nephews Sam & Jo, who'd winged over from Eire a couple days previous with their own Mother, and my long-absent Sister, Libby (photos to follow)
20 after 7 in the pm, the phone is buzzing & its Anthony Magen asking if I'm feeling "spontaneous"...
Lord help me: but no, dude - I have a bunch stuff to do, perched afront my overheated PC all day (& it only then occurs to me that I have neither eaten since breakfast nor even showered which may demonstrate just how tenuous my human citizenship can be)
"Esma Redzepova is playing tonight in Epping - a final show before she flies out of Australia..."
Ah but fortune has visited a rare & consoling boon upon me: solitary regret of the previous w/e's flight northwards was passing up the chance to make what had been advertised as Esma's only Melbourne shindig...
... so 10 minutes later we're driving north into remote & unfamiliar suburbs, past the advisable limits of human habitation. I'm wearing my 2nd most floridly colourful shirt & Anthony is similarly attired & we're working thru the bag of apples I brought along for nourishment. Any expectations are already confounded halfway from the city: this is by way of an adventure! Our destination, an industrial estate. And here we find a Macedonian function centre which achieves that rare marriage of 'wedding cake' architectural confection & prime iron-curtain era brutalism: the venue for this evening's show...
The audience is polite & restrained, but visibly & abundantly happy. While I suspect we're most likely the only folks there of a non-Balkan extraction, I recognize before long that for the local Macedonians this is an occasion of genuine community celebration.
(photos of her show up in Sydney at the Bankstown Football Club should provide a fairly near indication of what kind of scenario we were in...)
So myself & Anthony are a little by way of outsiders here, but the mood is so exhuberantly jovial that while our presence is at first quizzically noted nobody seems at all bothered by it: just a pair of white-boy nerds w/ tasteless shirts. (& at this point I was glad that I'd only worn my 2nd most colourful shirt)
Anyways, the band played for 4 hours with barely a half-hour break, and were still blasting away when we swung out to the car at midnight. Anthony clued me that the musicians are actually gathered from among Esma's adopted children(!)
Esma herself is diminutive and homely but completely charming and in all these respects reminded me very much of Asha Bhosle... also for the fact of her peerless stature within this particular musical culture. Despite her tiny size, and an indifferent PA, she works her way through a repertoire of new & old tunes (I couple of which I even recognise). The music almost provides the audience a licence to emote: before long they loosen up; money gratuitiously changes hands as notes are pressed into the instruments of the wandering players and the crowd happily dance a meandering cocek with Esma at its centre. Her singing is powerfully expressive, but she gave little indication of how demanding the performance must have been (several times she vanished off stage, only to return a few minutes later in a new and even more theatrical costume).
The whole thing put me in mind of some evangelical faith-healings I'd been to as a teenager, or the rare concerts by touring bands in the small country Qld town I grew up in: a magical evening.
Thx to Balkan beast DJ Delay for clueing me to this caper...
Big news! Esma Redzepova will be performing this Saturday evening at the Croatian Centre in St Albans.
Redzepova - sometime actress, & Nobel peace prize nominee - occupies an Olympian pinnacle of Roma femme-vox. Some readers will be familiar w/ her singing from the Borat soundtrack, but here is the earliest recording of her's I have to hand - a 1979 cassette of A Bre Ramce.
audio transcriptions are from deleted vinyls and licensed live recordings only. if you believe a posting is infringing your copyright, kindly alert me and i'll bring down the offending item.
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