I find myself in the timely position of reporting on a fine Celtic artist and band just prior to St. Patrick's Day. Cara Dillon was in town for GlobalFEST, and treated the crowd to some truly wonderful singing and playing. My own affection for Celtic music probably stems from my early love of bluegrass and later, of country music. The Scots-Irish contribution to these idioms is inextricable and has influenced the way we hear our own popular music so much that we tend to slide right into it easily. It certainly felt that way to me, walking through GlobalFEST with its three stages and four acts each, from all corners of the earth. No matter how good they all might have been, when I landed on Cara's set, I felt like I was home.

The band, comprised of Sam Lakeman on keyboards and guitar, Ed Boyd on guitar, Brian Finnegan on various whistles, and Cillian Vellely on pipes, burned through jigs, ballads and reels. Dillon's voice can sound ethereal at times, but it is in fact a strong and precise instrument, and her choice of repertoire kept the audience by turns enthralled and bouncing. 

Some of the most exciting musical collaborations are happening between jazz, classical and world musicians these days. Musicians have always fed off interaction with other players, but the sheer variety of music that is available coupled with access to international artists has led to some truly exquisite sounds. In the classical world the work of Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble and its spinoff collaborations between Kayhan Kalhor and Brooklyn Rider come to mind, and of course, the by now venerable Kronos Quartet and maverick violinist Giles Apap. In the jazz world the same foment is apparent (the kora seeming to be the instrument of choice these days, appearing alongside jazz heavies) and when the world music extravaganza of GlobalFEST blew into town in January, it brought Nguyen Lê's "Saiyuki" with it.

Lê's name is practically synonymous with polyglot music; witness allaboutjazz.com describing his 2006 CD "Homescape" as a combination of  "post-Hendrix rock, Milesian harmon-mute free improv, Maghrebi trance music, Ellingtonia, ambient, a Papua New Guinea vocal choir. . .Delta blues, Vietnamese folk tunes, flamenco, Iranian modes, a Sardinian choir, Australian aboriginal ritual music, French chanson, Gregorian chant, and Indonesian gamelan/gong music." The man is eclectic, and joyfully so.

"Saiyuki," his latest aggregate, is a trio. In it, he has brought together Mieko Miyazaki (Japan) on koto and Prabhu Edouard (India) on tablas. (Lê played his backups in mid to low range to fatten up an otherwise treble sound.) The group's performance was one of the highlights of GlobalFEST, and I'm glad I got a chance to catch it on video, even with the uneven sound, and video quality attendant on these kinds of situations. . .note the shattered glass sound from the bar. . .oh well.

Each player brought so much of their own culture along that at times it seemed more like the music was "jazz enabled," with that form giving the musicians a more liberal harmonic matrix and greater freedom to fly. But the end result was something unusual and hard to classify; I guess "world music" as a term still has its uses.

This is the last installment on Taiwanese music, and it seems very fitting. On a chilly and rainy day I visited the mountaintop home of the Guqin Society, where after a bit of a steep climb, Yuan Jung-ping was waiting for me with hot tea and sweets. He proceeded to play a calming and lovely song about bidding goodbye at a station. The guqin (pronounced "chin"-- I HATE the Pinyin spellings!) is an instrument that may date to 4000 years ago. Playing it is as much about meditation as music. The song is from the 12th century, with Jung-ping's arrangement, and it is spare but beautiful. Like my first posting of Nanguan music, it rewards the person who really listens to it, bringing them into a still place.

The music was punctuated with the now light, now heavy sound of rain falling on the roof. Farewell, Taiwan.
Farewell to the hospitality, rainy season, amazing food and wonderful music.

Jazz has traveled the world and I had definitely planned to check some out when I was in Taipei.  I had invites to hang at the various clubs in town, but ended up too weirdly jet-lagged to partake of any nightlife (25 sleepless hours of travel will do that...). But I had heard about Sizhukong, a jazz ensemble featuring two Berklee grads, Yuwen Peng on keyboards, and Toshi Fujii, who plays bass here in my video, but who usually plays the drums. I was able to make a daytime appointment and went to see them during one of their rehearsals. I found the combination of traditional Chinese instruments and jazz sensibilities to be surprisingly successful, thanks to thoughtful arrangements and good material.

A quick note: Yuwen Peng was born and raised in Taiwan, and returned there after graduation from Berklee with a mission to create a jazz with Taiwanese character. The composition "I Remember Formosa" was written while she was at Berklee. It's easy to imagine her recalling the modalities she was raised with to write the piece, and it's lovely to hear it now, arranged for Erhu (violin), Dizi (flute) and Ruan (lute).    

I recently returned from a trip to Taiwan, where I checked out the local music scene. Taiwan has a very layered cultural history; when I was growing up the country was called Formosa, a name given to it hundreds of years ago by Portuguese sailors. Taiwan was colonized by the Japanese, who left a profound mark, and most obviously, there is a huge Han Chinese population there that migrated in two major waves, one early, beginning in the 1600s, and another later during the 1940s and 50s under Chiang Kai-shek. There is also an aboriginal population, and although they have been marginalized like many of the aboriginals of the world, their music is increasingly being sold and enjoyed.

For my first installment, I'm going for the throat -- with an à cappella performance by a Nanguan singer. (Usually this music is performed with an ensemble of string, wind and percussion.) I had been told that there was a very adventurous Nanguan singer named Wu Hsin-fei who was doing all kinds of collaborations with western and aboriginal musicians. When I set up my appointment to videotape her, she requested that it be in the studio of a master ceramist, so we drove up into the mountains (Taipei is surrounded on three sides by mountains, the fourth side being a harbor) and I found myself in another world.  I hope you will see and hear what I mean. So much of how we perceive music is learned, so you may need to "reset your brain" when you listen to this.  But I also think that her performance is so riveting, and I was able to get so close up, that you will be drawn into this very special experience. Personally, I find that it calms me immensely.

One of the artists I interviewed said that Taiwanese (or in this case, Chinese in Taiwan) music is about time and space. I tend to agree with that, and will go one step further: it has been so refined over the hundreds (sometimes thousands) of years, that it has retained only the most abstract essence of music. For me, it was akin to listening to a Western minimalist piece. And all you singers out there -- check out her tone production!

Here is some background information about the artist:
"Ms. Wu Hsin-fei has had formal training in Nanguan music and has performed with traditional Nanguan ensembles. Over the past few years however, she has started to sing some of the most famous ballads of the repertoire à cappella. More recently, for her new CD, she has chosen to sing Tang dynasty poetry - till now not part of the Nanguan repertoire, together with solo instruments such as pi'pa, flute, guqin and Arabic oud."

I can't wait to hear that CD!
In the coming weeks I will be posting performances and interviews with Taiwanese musicians, journalists and record people and I hope that you will find it to be as fascinating as I did.

Are you starting to get an idea of how incredibly varied WOMEX is? Here is yet another taste of one of the showcases, this one by the Chinese zheng trio, San Chuan. First off, apologies to all Chinese (Mandarin) speakers who will know right away that my subtitles are not quite in order! But in this case, I think the music speaks for itself. And I think each of these women has such a distinct personality that even my little Flip camera "loves" them.

To fill in a little bit of background on the trio, they were friends to begin with, all studied in the same conservatory and all studied under the same teacher, which made them particularly compatable in every way.

WOMEX 09 Part 4 brings us another performance from this substantive musical event. Yves Lambert and Le Bebert Orchestra turned in a great, tight show -- the band (Olivier Rondeau, Tommy Gauthier, Robin Boulianne and Jean François Déry) was a well-oiled machine, barreling through dance tunes and songs with verve and professionalism.

Lambert himself is an almost legendary character in Quebecois music, having been a mainstay of La Bottine Souriante for years; you can see from his spoken interlude he is larger than life. (And if you are going to play the Stomach Steinway, it helps to have a stomach!) I just wish I had kept the camera rolling a little longer, to catch the rest of the great song that followed that instrumental...

One of the real hits at WOMEX was the band Kenge Kenge. They rocked the hall with traditional Kenyan party music based on the Benga beat. With the exception of the electric bass, it was entirely acoustic, with sweet harmonies and two hot dancers. Hang in till the end of this clip-- it just gets better and better, and you'll be grooving in your chair before you know it!

Yours truly had been requested by management to videotape the whole performance, and I had a perilous perch: just on the apron of the stage, straddling a five foot drop, with one foot on a walkway with rotating spotlights on it, and the other on an inclined plane. Taking a step backwards or forwards meant taking my eye off the band, hence the charming ceiling shot...

Link TV viewers may already be aware of the band Deolinda from their video "Fado Toninho." I was impressed with their CD "Canção ao lado," so I made it a point to video part of their showcase at WOMEX. Although it is tempting to say that the group comes solely out of Fado, as I reviewed my footage I was also reminded of Madredeus, the Portuguese super group -- even though front woman Ana Bacalhau sings in a deeper register than Teresa Salgueiro. (Still, there is something quite bel canto about the sound of each of these songbirds.) The band performed the songs from their CD with precision and sensitivity, and Bacalhau had the audience in thrall. I actually like this rendition better than the one on the CD, perhaps due to the exquisite sound at the venue (provided by the Roskilde festival) which enhanced Bacalhau's rich low resonances.

And of course, my usual apologies for the shaky camera work...it's tough to hold your hand up steady for long periods -- especially when you are getting jostled by the audience!

Just as you can never see every single showcase at WOMEX, it is almost equally hard to take in every booth at the trade fair. Each one has something special to offer: new music to discover, friends to greet, connections to be made, and (yes) parties to attend, because there are lots of little celebrations going on throughout the day. This is the first time I tried to blog the fair, and I have to admit it is only a small sampling of what was going on. But hopefully it does give some feel for the event. It's lively, it's fun and you never know quite what to expect. I decided to give a "most cool booth" award only AFTER I encountered the winners (Country & Eastern)! I thought they were such interesting folks, and their offerings were heartfelt, diverse and original. I think you'll agree.

A symphony of crickets. Now THAT'S world music!