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22 octobre 2005

Songlines sept/oct 05

Music and Media

The excellent British world music magazine Songlines continues to pound away at the absurdity of the organizers of Live 8 presenting a series of concerts on behalf of Africa, yet only inviting one African artists (Youssou ‘N Dour) to participate.

The current issue (September/October) includes comments from Andy Kershaw, Peter Gabriel, Thomas Brooman, Damon Albarn, and Baaba Maal addressing this situation, while Bob Geldof defends the selection process on the basis of popular appeal.

“You have to really pick and be careful about what is going to get you the biggest mass audience where you could talk about the conditions of the poor people in Africa,” Geldof told the magazine. “That’s what we’re doing. If you can suggest to me British blacks acts that should be one, that sell in the same quantities as the bands we’ve got, fine.”

Geldof certainly deserves high praise for his efforts in this arena, but it also can’t be disputed that it’s a bit lame to hold events designed to increase interest in and awareness of Africans, then leave them out of the mix. Hopefully, that won’t happen again when or if there’s another series of similar events.

Les baguettes magiques de Manu Katché

Après avoir joué pour la crème de la pop, le batteur retrouve Jan Garbarek et le jazz

Paris/Fabrice Gottraux

Il figure parmi les batteurs les plus demandés de la planète pop. Peter Gabriel, Sting, Stephan Eicher, ­Cabrel, Tori Amos... Impossible de citer ici toutes ses contributions (plus de 200 albums!). A 47 ans, Manu Katché est au sommet de son art et s'improvise une popularité grâce à son rôle d'expert dans l'émission de variété Nouvelle Star, sur M6.

Il y a deux semaines à l'Arena, le batteur français offrait une rythmique de rêve pour le concert à caractère humanitaire Fight Against Malaria avec Youssou N'Dour. Et le voici qui renoue avec son jardin secret, le jazz. En compagnie du saxophoniste Jan Garbarek et du trompettiste Tomasz Stanko - deux piliers du label allemand ECM -, Manu Katché signe son second album personnel, Neighbourhood, «voisinage»...

Pourquoi ce retour au jazz?

Je ne me considère pas comme batteur de jazz, même si j'ai une tendance à l'attitude du jazzman. Ma musique est instrumentale. C'est ce qui me définit le mieux. Ceci dit, John Coltrane ou Miles Davis ont toujours fait partie de mon environnement. C'est une musique extrêmement agréable et jouissive, qui me donne beaucoup de plaisir à l'écoute. Plus que le classique, que j'ai étudié au Conservatoire, le jazz me permet de voyager au gré des personnalités de chaque musicien. L'imaginaire que suggère cette musique, voilà ce que j'aime.

Vous-même voyagez d'un musicien, d'un style à un autre...

Du Brésil à la Nouvelle-Zélande, de la country à Gloria Estefan, ça reste moi. Je suis très diversifié. Ce que j'exporte, ce n'est pas mon savoir, mais mes impressions.

Vous avez un héritage afro?

J'ai reçu une éducation française, académique avec le piano classique. Mais dans mes gènes africains, je ressens quelque chose de particulier. En grandissant à Paris, dans les années septante, c'était exceptionnel. On pouvait écouter des musiques africaines, j'ai joué des musiques kabyles, de la soul, de la pop... Ce qui me permet de me conduire de façon différente selon les cas. Que ce soit avec un Croate ou un Macédonien, j'amène ma personnalité, une synthèse des musiques qui m'ont marqué. Et le côté «roots» africain, même si je ne joue pas de djembé ou de talking drums, me permet d'avoir un style particulier.

Votre album ne révolutionne pas le jazz...

Neighbourhood est un projet musical assez lisible, avec des références claires à l'album Birth of the Cool de Miles Davis. C'est aussi la réunion de deux entités. Jan Garbarek et moi-même jouons ensemble depuis dix ans. Tomasz Stanko a emmené ses jeunes musiciens, le pianiste Marcin Wasilewski et le contrebassiste Slawomir ­Kurkiewicz. Lorsqu'on a réalisé un casting avec Manfred Eicher (ndlr: directeur du label ECM), le jeu de Tomasz m'a captivé. C'est aussi une première: ­Tomasz et Jan n'avaient jamais joué ensemble.

Quel intérêt à participer à l'émission «Nouvelle Star»?

La popularité n'entache pas la musicalité. En donnant des conseils dans une émission populaire, je suis content d'apporter la petite pièce à un édifice plus vaste, qui donne à voir de nouveaux talents. Cela a son importance, au vu du marasme ambiant. J'amène aussi un crédit supplémentaire grâce à mon métier. Mais pas question d'être complaisant. Les albums produits par Nouvelle Star sont ce qu'ils sont! Au-delà, ça m'a médiatisé, bien sûr, au point de susciter des vocations de batteur chez les jeunes. J'ai reçu beaucoup de courrier, comme cette mère qui m'explique avoir inscrit son fils dans une école de musique... L'émission m'a aussi permis d'être présent à Paris pour développer ma carrière jazz.

Du jazz à la variété télé, un fossé irréductible?

N'oublions pas que le jazz, après-guerre, était une musique à danser! Personnellement, je suis contre l'élitisme. En France, il n'y a que deux radios pour écouter du jazz. C'est pauvre! Voir un batteur jouant du jazz à la téloche, voilà qui donne accès à un genre que beaucoup n'auraient pu entendre autrement. C'est ce qui manque à la musique instrumentale: la visibilité. Imaginez si l'on pouvait montrer des jam-sessions à la télévision. Ça serait génial!

Le monde a changé. On est dans la consommation rapide. Au XXIe siècle, nous n'avons plus le choix: si on veut se faire entendre, il faut faire avec la télévision. Et de plus, je suis métis, dans un pays où la prétendue intégration n'existe pas! Montrer qu'on peut y arriver avec un discours pas trop con, qu'on est Français comme les autres: cela me tient à cœur.

Manu Katché, «Neighbourhood», CD ECM/Phonag.

SATIS 2005


Vendredi 21 octobre - Après-Midi

14 h 00 : la musique au format DVD par Peter Gabriel et son ingénieur du son, Richard Chappell, Extraits de son dernier DVD "Still Growing Up Live"

21 octobre 2005

Abigail Washburn

Song of the Traveling Clawhammer

Banjo Player [21 October 2005]

Twenty-seven-year-old Abigail Washburn is something of a contemporary troubadour, a musical traveler on a fascinating voyage of self-discovery. She reflects on the two worlds that inform her art with PopMatters.
(...)

Asked -- somewhat unfairly -- to describe her own music in just one word, the best Washburn can do is "Alternative folk. But that's two words." So we agree to hyphenate, and then she ponders the appropriateness of the label.

"For one word, one hyphenated word, I think alternative-folk is the best I can do. My style is very much based in the old-time American music, like the Appalachian traditions and the blues. A love of the music from the '20s and '30s inspired a lot of the music on the record. But so did a lot of my experience living in China and studying the culture and the language so maybe some people will see it as interesting hybrid.

"I'm not quite sure [what] world music is or how I would fit into it, so I don't know if that's a good descriptor, but I would certainly like to be seen as an artist or have a career where I'm involved in an international community of musicians."

When I mentioned that I could certainly see Washburn involved in something like the WOMAD festival, she confessed ignorance of the WOMAD phenomenon so I explained a little about the now truly international World Of Music And Dance organization founded by Peter Gabriel in the early '80s.

"How cool! That's exactly the sort thing that I would like to be participating in. I would really like to be part of the larger musical dialogue that's going on between musicians who do consider themselves international and are interested in collaborating with people around the world. I think that's a really exciting new frontier and I'd like to be a part of that."....

Chernov’s choice

By Sergey Chernov , Staff Writer

Moloko, a leading local underground club that is closing at its current location, will say goodbye with concerts by popular bands Tequilajazzz (Friday) and Markscheider Kunst (Saturday).

Sunday will be an all-day farewell party. The club will open at 11 a.m. to hold a table football tournament in the afternoon and a concert by dub band Samosad Bend. Entrance is free.

Two international prog-rock giants will perform in the city this week. The Tony Levin Band was formed by the legendary bass player Tony Levin. Levin, who released three solo albums and one as the Tony Levin Band, is better known as member of King Crimson and Peter Gabriel’s band. His playing can be also heard on many classic albums, including Lou Reed’s “Berlin” (1973), Paul Simon’s “Still Crazy After All These Years” (1975), John Lennon’s “Double Fantasy” (1980), Tom Waits’ “Rain Dogs” (1985), Brian Ferry’s “Boys and Girls” (1985) and David Bowie’s “Heathen” (2002).

The Tony Levin Band concert is part of the so-called “King Crimson Festival,” a series of British prog-rock related events launched by Moscow promoter Alexander Cheparukhin after he brought King Crimson to Russia in July 2003. The previous three concerts were by the duo TU consisting of the band’s members Trey Gunn and Pat Mastelotto in April 2004, Bill Bruford Earthworks in May 2004 and Quodia, a project from Gunn and Joe Mendelson, in October 2004.

The Tony Levin Band perform at the Center for Contemporary Art (formerly Priboi film theater) on Friday.

Also due is the comeback tour of Van der Graaf Generator, the seminal prog-rock band from the 1960s and 1970s, which reformed earlier this year. Van der Graaf Generator will play at the Music Hall on Tuesday....

20 octobre 2005

Jorane, en parfaite harmonie

Premier contact avec Jorane : Festival d'été 1998, Café des arts. Encore inconnue, la jeune femme inscrite à la programmation Vol de nuit envoûtait de son archet magique tous les noctambules réunis.

Quelques années et réussites plus tard, elle nous revenait hier, au Petit Champlain, pour la première d'un spectacle intime rappelant étrangement la chaleureuse rencontre de l'époque. Si, depuis, l'étonnement a laissé la place à l'admiration, le coup de cœur, lui, est demeuré le même.

En apparence, la Jorane qui s'est présentée au public de Québec, hier, les pommettes roses et l'œil pétillant, n'a pas beaucoup changé en sept ans : même sourire dévastateur, même exubérance, même brûlante passion pour son inséparable violoncelle.

Force est toutefois de constater que la jeune fille un peu brouillonne de l'époque qui, sur scène, n'avait pas encore maîtrisé l'art de l'intervention entre les chansons, n'est plus qu'un vain souvenir.

Car c'est à une artiste de scène aguerrie, cumulant cinq nominations en vue du prochain gala de l'ADISQ, à laquelle on a eu droit, hier. Avec toute l'assurance, le savoir-faire et la liberté que l'expérience et le succès peuvent apporter. Elle avait tout ça, hier, Jorane, et peut-être plus. Question de confiance en ses moyens, probablement.

Il en faut pour assurer soi-même sa première partie en proposant une pièce improvisée d'une bonne vingtaine de minutes se concluant sur Pour Gabrielle, magnifique mélodie tirée du non moins magnifique album 16 mm (2000). Un coup digne de la grande séduction, qui a littéralement subjugué un public attentif et complice.

Cette entrée en matière réussie, inspirée de l'événement Riopelle auquel Jorane a pris part au Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec en septembre 2002, a également eu l'heur de mettre en lumière l'évolution qu'a connue la démarche artistique de l'artiste en quelques années à peine.

Partie de la chanson à la limite réaliste (Vent fou), Jorane a plongé tête baissée dans sa période bleue (16 mm), avant de finalement reprendre contact avec une réalité plus... concrète, se frottant néanmoins constamment avec le cinéma (Évapore, The You and the Now).

En compagnie du guitariste Jean-François Beaudet (lap steel, acoustique, effets), elle a refait, sous des éclairages soignés, le même trajet à travers le temps, hier. Chorégraphiant avec adresse une danse captivante entre sa voix aérienne empreinte de féminité et son violoncelle, plus viril, avec ses sonorités graves et sombres, elle a revisité ses premières créations comme la débridée Vent fou, servie façon Led Zeppelin hier, et la charmante Dit-elle, parfait « au revoir » au rappel, mais aussi ses titres les plus récents comme l'excellente Stay, probablement l'une de ses meilleures compositions à ce jour.

Faisant corps avec son instrument, elle ne s'en est détachée qu'à une occasion, le temps de livrer trois chansons à la guitare, dont la magnifique Pour ton sourire, le « cadeau de Daniel Lanois », et une reprise de Sinéad O'Connor, Black Boys.

En fin de parcours, la communion était totale entre le public et l'artiste. Tant et si bien que c'est ensemble qu'ils ont interprété les dernières lignes chantées du spectacle. En parfaite harmonie.
Kathleen Lavoie
Le Soleil
Québec

18 octobre 2005

All Things Youssou

A four-night celebration at Carnegie Hall this month displays the range, depth, and diversity of Africa’s brightest star.

One song composed by Youssou N'Dour, "Wiri Wiri," contains this line:
"If you don't know where you're heading anymore, go back to where you came from."

Now 45, Youssou N'Dour has been a star at home, in Dakar, Senegal, for more than half his life. He has traveled widely during the past two decades, earning acclaim in Europe and the United States. But N'Dour always returns to Dakar. He continues to live there. And his music, however far and wide it has ranged in style and in reach, still speaks first and foremost of home.

This month, Carnegie Hall's Perspectives will showcase the voice and the vision of N'Dour in unprecedented fashion--with four concerts that shed light on how N'Dour's music has drawn from Senegalese tradition and how it has sparked new innovations by younger artists.

N'Dour's father is an auto mechanic, his mother descended from a line of griots, the traditional singers and storytellers who have long served as the culture's oral historians. Ever since N'Dour's rise to musical prominence--first through local religious ceremonies and by hustling gigs outside popular Dakar dance clubs, then on radio amateur hours, and finally, on the world stage--he has developed a strikingly original sound that still communicates the stories of his heritage.

N'Dour's sinewy tenor, his dazzling vocal melismas, and his urgent, engaging lyrics (mostly concerning social responsibility and cultural memory) have become the face of mbalax, the popular Senegalese music that blends centuries-old praise-singing tradition and percussion, Afro-Cuban arrangements, and guitar-based Western pop. The band N'Dour has led since 1979, The Super Étoile, has held sway over Senegalese fans since its formation. They are widely considered to be the most exciting African band to hear in concert--a blend of rhythm and voice that can be appreciated without translation.

Originally, N'Dour had been churning out cassettes on Jololi, his Dakar-specific label, consistently wowing the home crowd. Soon he captured the ear of a much broader audience, in part due to his singing on Peter Gabriel's hit "In Your Eyes." N'Dour's 1990 release, Set, had some folks talking about N'Dour as the "next Bob Marley," a purveyor of the next roots music to sweep across the globe. Others saw him as the good-looking poster boy for a nascent "world music" wave. In fact, he was neither.

"My music is like a spinning ball," N'Dour says. "It can turn in one direction, and then it comes back to its origins." ....

17 octobre 2005

Catch up with Peter in his Full Moon update

I have to report that tonight a very large yellowish moon appears to be rising above the studios at an astounding rate - it brings to mind questions about the relative nature of perception, and as I'm hoping our speed of planetary rotation is within 'normal' operating parameters, there must be some other explanation....

"As animals get bigger, from tiny shrew to huge blue whale, pulse rates slow down and life spans stretch out longer, conspiring so that the number of heartbeats during an average stay on Earth tends to be roughly the same, around a billion. A mouse just uses them up more quickly than an elephant.

Mysteriously, these and a large variety of other phenomena change with body size according to a precise mathematical principle called quarter-power scaling. A cat, 100 times more massive than a mouse, lives about 100 to the one-quarter power, or about three times, longer. (To calculate this number take the square root of 100, which is 10 and then take the square root of 10, which is 3.2.) Heartbeat scales to mass to the minus one-quarter power. The cat's heart thus beats a third as fast as a mouse's."
(see link below)

I'm not quite sure that this explains the moon's apparent haste, as I'm roughly the same size as last month, but as a link to this months 'Full Moon Club' update there's possibly a tenuous thread through elephants to 'Africa' and from 'our stay on earth' to 'Still Growing Up", both of which are to be found in this months video offering...the moon's not full forever!

Watch the video in The Full Moon Club
Of Mice and Elephants: A Matter of Scale
'Africa Calling' and 'Still Growing UP' in our store

Grand multicultural music-making

AN ISRAELI IN DREADLOCKS played the organ for a Touareg artist. A male Indian dancer gave Bollywood dance lessons to Brit and Chinese girls, while a funky Singaporean group whipped the crowd into a dancing frenzy with their Brazilian samba music fused with Afro-Latin beats.

Five stages, 18 artists from 12 countries and five continents, one ultimate goal. This was the Womad arts festival in Singapore, an event that celebrated music, arts and dance drawn from a mishmash of cultures all over the world to bring the message of unity through arts.

Womad, or World of Music, Arts and Dance, kicked off in England in 1982 from English musician Peter Gabriel's vision of "introducing an international audience to many talented artists." The festival is akin to the hippie-counterculture Woodstock event and France's Fete de la Musique. Since then, 145 festivals have been presented in 22 countries and islands.

New Zealand, Spain, Sicily and the United Kingdom. Singapore hosted the eighth leg of the tour in August. Far from the stiff, high-brow image usually associated with the progressive island, Singapore has been hosting the annual gig for eight years now. It was awarded the Best Experience at the 19th Singapore Tourism Awards. This year's three-day jam at Fort Canning Park saw multicultural audiences in three outdoor stages, a gallery where artists gave bite-size workshops and a tunnel for the party crowd. There was also a bazaar-like Global Village that exhibited international crafts and foodstuff, from Sri Lankan puppets to Turkish ice cream.

Intimate gig

While about 20 percent of the crowd were tourists, and the artists themselves spoke different languages, festival director for Asia Sarah Martin said communication was hardly a problem because the artists could simply jam and play. "The beauty of Womad is to put people and culture together on one platform through a beautiful, peaceful process," she said. Around 7,000 people, mostly in their teens and 20s, popped up on the warm, bustling Saturday night of the event. Martin said they quickly ran out of tickets. "We're not here for the money, we want everyone to enjoy. We're trying to make it self-contained, intimate," she said.

Each artist was handpicked from a roster of aspirants. Martin and the UK team go through tons and tons of CDs each year to choose who would play in the event. This is a regular job for her. After the three-day gig in Singapore, she and her team will start planning for the next one.

Not just world music

American master drummer Bill Cobham topbilled this year's performers. A consummate percussionist for over 30 years now, he has worked with the likes of jazz giant Miles Davis. "We need your support. We don't play for ourselves, we play for the audience. If we have more people interested in the arts, it means we have more brains. We think," he said. Cobham awed the crowd with his ambidextrous skills as he pounded on the drums with his eyes closed.

Admitting his brand of jazz was not that popular (compared to the likes of Michael Bublè's and Norah Jones') especially among the younger pop crowd, the animated Cobham explained: "Jazz is selfish. It is a highly intellectual platform."
"Music is all about learning, it's never about being comfortable. It's the thing that you like to do. It is to be cunning," said the indie artist. "When I play the drums, I always think of what I want to do. But everything has a price. You've got to have a lot of patience."

Would he recommend working as a musician, though?

"No," he answered, laughing.
"But it's the only thing I know how to do, it's the only thing I wanna do."

Another crowd favorite was the Idan Rachiel Project, a group of eight from Israel that played ambient-like Israeli-Ethiopian folk songs with loads of percussions and chants. Each member had mastered his instrument and could be a stand-alone performer. Frontman Idan Rachiel might not look like your usual pop star in his all-black boho ensemble, turban, dreadlocks and piercing eyes, but the 28-year-old musician had a huge following in Israel.

The Idan Rachiel Project is not a band, he said, but a music company. Rachiel, an all-around musician who had been working with Israeli pop and rock stars for some time, scouted for artists and asked them to work with him. A virtual unknown, he had a pool of 70 artists for his first album, "Idan Rachiel's Project," which shot up to No. 1 on the Israeli music charts. His fame, he said, was not intentional. "It's not our job to make it commercial," he said. "I don't regard myself as an icon."
It would be easy to classify the Project's sounds under "world," but Rachiel would rather call it "Israeli music." It has raw and moving bursts of energy with fast riffs and drum loops, fusing rural and urban, traditional and modern Middle Eastern sounds. In Womad, he performed with Wogderass Avi Wassa, who did fast songs; Cabra Kasaisings, who chanted in Hebrew; and Maya Abraham, who exhibited notable Arabic influences. Rachiel said some of the songs might be dealing with politics, "but at the end of the day, it's all about being alone, and the subject is about love. It is to see the world from the outside."

Wicked lineup

Crowd favorite Wicked Aura Batucada played batucada music fused with local ethnic rhythms with intense power. Nomadic "roots rock rebels" Tinariwen from the Republic of Mali, meanwhile, rendered some African blues-influenced pieces. The Dhol Foundation of London bounced onto the stage with their large wooden drums. Algerian Akim El Sikameya played Arabic-Andalusian music. Indian artist Sheema Mukherjee strummed classical sitar pieces. Coming from Sri Lanka with their Kandyan dance and drumming was Ravibhandu Vidyapathy. The French group Les Yeux Noirs demonstrated Gypsy music. Malaysia's "jazz queen," Sheila Majid, provided smooth jazz and RnB sounds.

UK's first mainstream Asian DJ Apache Indian rocked the park with Anglo-Asian mixes. Yes, he's the same artist who performed the '90s hit "Boomshackalak." Other performers were Singaporean hip-hop artist DJ r-H, Cuban band Asere, Australian singer-songwriter Lior and vintage reggae/funk group Future World Funk. Sri Lankan puppeteer Sri Anura and Singaporean visual artist Sun Yu-Li also exhibited their works.

Martin said they would keep each year's festival fresh by mixing traditional, New Age and fusion music, by finding artists with different styles and looking for new materials and approaches.

Or, as Gabriel put it, "Music is a universal language. It draws people together and proves, as well as anything, the stupidity of racism." The nomadic music fest did just that, and proved that passion for music and the arts could bring a multicultural society swaying and headbangin' for a common cause.

Visit www.womadsingapore.com and www.stb.com.sg.