Various Artists - fRoots #4

My final earworm and another Cuban track. This is the title track from ¡Dundunbanza!, the first album Sierra Maestra recorded for World Circuit Records. It has been included on many compilation albums including fRoots #4 the free CD given away with fRoots magazine fR 139/140.

Sierra Maestra, for long years renowned as one of Cuba’s finest son bands, was put together by Juan de Marcos Gonazález who was later was instrumental in establishing the Buena Vista Social Club and Afro-Cuban All Stars.

The album ¡Dundunbanza! was dedicated to legendary bandleader Arsenio Rodríguez, who, in the mid-40s, played a key role in the formation of modern Cuban dance music.

The band has seen many changes of personnel over the years but is is still active and this year have released a new CD Sonando Ya and toured the UK to promote it.

Sierra Maestra – Dundunbanza

Buena Vista Social Club - Buena Vista Social Club

Can earworms be slow and laid back? If so then this could easily be an earworm, Buena Vista Social Club’s Chan Chan. It is the opening track to the original Buena Vista Social Club album, the CD that relaunched the careers of innumerable aged Cuban musicians. Chan Chan is the signature song of Compay Segundo one of the vocalists on the album.

The story of the album bears retelling. Nick Gold of World Circuit Records had lined up Ry Cooder to play alongside the best musicians of Africa and Cuba to celebrate the cross-fertilisation between these music traditions. In the event, the African musicians had problems arranging their visas and so Gold, Cooder and the Cuban musicians that had been assembled by Juan de Marcos González used the pre-booked studio time to record the Buena Vista Social Club album as well as the Afro Cuban All Stars and the first solo album by the pianist Rubén González. The rest, as they say, is popular music history. The Buena Vista Social Club album alone has sold over 8 million copies and led a resurgence of interest in Cuban Music.

Buena Vista Social Club – Chan Chan

Steely Dan – Can't Buy a Thrill

Lots of pictures and big writing for this week’s homework blogpost. I’ve been away for the weekend celebrating my sister’s 60 and nephew’s 28th birthdays, so a quick post is required.

We have rock music for this week’s earworm! There is not much of it in my collection but I do have a Steely Dan CD. (Memo to self: should re-buy all the old Steely Dan CDs.) The track is Reelin’ in the Years from Can’t Buy a Thrill. Listen and then try to get that guitar riff out of your mind today – it’s impossible.

Steely Dan – Reelin’ in the Years

Patrick Street – Live from Patrick Street

Earworms! Yes – lets have a month of them!

This week then, the much recorded Music for a Found Harmonium. This catchy piece was written by Simon Jeffes and released in 1984 on Broadcasting from Home, the fourth album by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra.

The story of the writing of this tune bears retelling (from the Penguin Cafe Orchestra’s website): “In early 1982, they went to Japan, a country which held a particular fascination for Simon Jeffes, not least because it was the home of Zen Buddhism, his religion of choice. After the tour ended he stayed on in Tokyo working with the composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, then went to the ancient city of Kyoto where serendipity intervened again to inspire one of his best known pieces. “Walking one evening I found a harmonium on top of other bits of scrap wood apparently discarded in the street. On contacting the owner who was indifferent to its future. I took possession.” Music For A Found Harmonium was the outcome a few weeks later, since which time the tune has taken on a life of its own. Now a firm favourite in Celtic folk circles, it remains the Penguins’ most convincing example of “imaginary folklore.””

It is indeed a firm favourite in Celtic folk circles having been recorded by Sharon Shannon, De Dannan, Kevin Burke and Patrick Street to name but a few. The version I have and am posting today is by Patrick Street and comes from their album Live from Patrick Street recorded during their 1998 tour of Britain and Ireland.

I hope that this tune worms its way into your ears, just as it has in mine!

Finally whilst talking of earworms, I see that, in 2006, The Guardian listed Tight Fit’s The Lion Sleeps Tonight – a version of Mbube by Solomon Linda’s Original Evening Birds – as a top ten earworm. I know which version of this song I’d rather have buzzing around in between my ears!

Patrick Street – Music for a Found Harmonium

Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick – Skin & Bone

I had no need for Martin Carthy two weeks ago; but you can’t keep a good man down, he’s forced himself onto Furious Music once again. The reason? Earworms. I’ll explain.

Earworms were the subject of a segment of last week’s Material World programme on BBC Radio 4. The inestimable Quentin Cooper introduced the piece by giving examples of pieces of music that he considered to be earworms. Amongst them was The Skewbald by Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick. Of course, I then had to play the piece and he’s right – it is a earworm and it’s been buzzing around in my head ever since!

On the programme, Quentin Cooper interviewed psychologist Dr Vicky Williamson of Goldsmiths, University of London who has launched what’s thought to be the first attempt to study the phenomenon of earworms scientifically.

Dr Williamson described the earworm phenomenon: “The term earworm originally comes from a translation of the German word ‘Ohrwurm’. It refers to the experience of having a tune or a part of a tune stuck in your head. Often a person experiencing an earworm has no idea why a tune has popped into their head and has little control over how long it continues.”

Her research hopes to discover what causes earworms, why they happen to some people more than others and why some tunes are more commonly heard as an earworm than others. The results should be interesting and if she and her colleagues want a piece of music to use in their research, Quentin Cooper and I can highly recommend The Skewbald!

Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick – The Skewbald

Muungano National Choir – Missa Luba

I’m late posting this week. Apologies for that. Family visitations and some heavy lifting in the garden (heavy pruning and heavy clearing away actually) meant that time and energy were in short supply. But better late than never, eh?

And I’ve got all in a muddle about this week’s choice of music too. Earlier in the week, I read in the Guardian of the death of David Fanshawe, the composer and musicologist. Cue a post on Missa Luba. Only David Fanshawe did not write / record Missa Luba. His work that I was muddling up with Missa Luba was African Sanctus which is not in my record collection. No matter, I’ll post Missa Luba anyway.

My cd of Missa Luba was given to me as a present. I was a little ungrateful on receiving it as, at first, I wasn’t that keen on the music. It seemed too clean and wholesome; I tend to like my African music to have a few more rough edges. But, by virtue of the shuffle play in my computer’s music player (name check Banshee), I have heard it a lot recently and appreciate it much more.

The track I’m posting for you is Sanctus which I first heard on the Soundtrack to Lindsay Anderson’s film if….. Read the Wikipedia article for more on this piece of music and the many and varied films that have used it in their soundtracks.

Muungano National Choir, Kenya – Sanctus

Susana Seivane – Susana Seivane

Congratulations to Spain – champions of 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa (to give the tournament it’s full name). I started off by supporting Holland but after 10 minutes of watching Spain try to play football and Holland try to stop them by fair means or foul I switched my allegiances to Spain.

I’ll give you two quotes from the Guardian and you’ll know all you need to know about the match; “Howard Webb, the English referee, risked repetitive strain injury showing 14 yellow cards, a record for a World Cup final” and “Within walking distance of his old family home at 8115 Orlando West, Soweto, (Nelson) Mandela took a short golf-cart ride across the pitch at the Soccer City stadium as if trying to draw one last epiphany from South Africa’s transformation. He was shrewd not to stay for the football.” Enough said.

It was probably better that Spain won anyway, I have a few Spanish records in my collection and many from Spanish speaking countries around the world. If Holland had won I would have had to resort to Martin Carthy singing The Lowlands of Holland (he never lets you down that Martin Carthy!) or a Scott Joplin rag played on the guitar by Ton Van Bergeyk. Or I could have spent some of my hard earned pennies on some proper Dutch music. One day …!

Enough of these “might have beens” and on to today’s track – Fonsagrada by Susana Seivane. As you well know, Susana Seivane is a young Galician gaita (bagpipes) player. Fonsagrada is taken from her first album and consists of a couple of muiñeiras (a type of traditional Galician dance tune).

Susana Seivane – Fonsagrada

Various Artists - The Rough Guide to the Music of South Africa

It’s finals weekend. Holland play Spain for the honour of being champions of the 2010 Fifa World Cup South Africa. We’ll be there – there being in the comfort of our own home, in front of the tv. My prediction for this is a win for Spain, and though I’m a neutral I’d quite like to see Holland win – despite the problems this will cause me posting next week!

Tonight (Saturday) it is the third place play off between Germany & Uruguay. Northampton’s answer to Paul the psychic octopus has this down as a win for Germany. We’d like to watch this game too but culture must come first; we’re off to On Common Ground a show in which Chris Wood and Hugh Lupton use music and words to tell the tale of Northamptonshire poet, John Clare.

Talking about finals – today is my final post of South African music for this series and I have chosen another track from the Rough Guide to the Music of South Africa. To give a little variety to the selections, I’ve decided to choose a female vocalist so here is Miriam Makeba and The Skylarks singing Ndidiwe Zintaba

Miriam Makeba and The Skylarks – Ndidiwe Zintaba

Various Artists – Songlines: Top of the World 39

You can’t really have a sequence of South African music without a track from Ladysmith Black Mambazo, can you? I think not and so this week I’m posting Shosholoza, one of south Africa’s most recorded songs. Joe Mogotsi of the Manhattan Brothers claimed that his group was the very first to record the song. Other artists to have recorded Shosholoza include Peter Gabriel, PJ Powers, Black Umfolosi, the Soweto Gospel Choir and the Drakensberg Boys Choir.

Shosholoza was included in Sing Africa! – a education project by Mbawula (a group of African and Western jazz musicians specialising in South African music), the London Boroughs of Bexley, Greenwich, Lewisham, and Southwark, Trinity College of Music, and Blackheath Concert Halls. On their website, there is an excellent page about the song which explains that:

“The song is an old miner’s song, originally sung by groups of men from the Ndebele tribe who travelled by steam train from their homes in Zimbabwe to work in South Africa’s diamond and gold mines. The Ndebele people live in the northern regions of South Africa and across the northern border into Zimbabwe. The Ndebele language is closely related to Zulu. As well as urging workers to “go forward” the ‘sho’ sounds in the word Shosholoza are onomatopoeic, reminiscent of the sound of the train described in the song. Nobody knows who wrote the song, or exactly when it was written, but we do know that South Africa’s mining industry and the development of steam railways in the mining areas both began in the late 1800s.”

This Ladysmith Black Mambazo version of Shosholoza is taken from the cover album of Songlines magazine issue 39. It was included in the picks of the Alexander McCall Smith and was taken from the album Long Road to Freedom where LBM are joined by artists such as Taj Mahal, Emmylou Harris and Melissa Etheridge! On the original album, the track is listed as being by Ladysmith Black Mambazo & Lucky Dube with Bhekumuzi Luthuli, Hugh Masekela, Vusi Mahlasela, Nokukhanya, Phuzekhemisi and Thandiswa Mazwai.

Ladysmith Black Mambazo – Shosholoza

Various Artists - The Rough Guide to the Music of South Africa

I arrived back from a great week in Dorset just in time to watch a dismal England World Cup performance. They lost 4-1 against Germany and thus booking their flights home instead of a place in the quarter finals. So now I’m off to drown my sorrows with a glass or two of South African chenin blanc!

But before I fill my glass, I’ve just time to post today’s track – Crying Games by Africa’s leading of reggae musician, the late Lucky Dube. There will be a lot of England fans crying tonight after a very disappointing performance in the tournament.

Lucky Dube started his career playing Zulu pop music known as mbaqanga. He became influenced by the socio-political messages of the reggae stars he heard and felt that such messages were relevant in institutionally racist South Africa. He used to play a few reggae numbers at his live gigs and then began to record them. His second reggae album Think About The Children achieved platinum sales status and established Dube as the most popular reggae artist in South Africa and a success throughout Africa and beyond. In total, he recorded 22 albums in Zulu, English and Afrikaans in a 25-year period.

On October 18, 2007, Lucky Dube was killed in Johannesburg shortly after dropping two of his seven children off at their uncle’s house. The South African Police claimed that he was shot dead by car-jackers. Three men were tried for his murder, were found guilty on March 31, 2009 and sentenced to life in prison.

Lucky Dube – Crying Games