Insight into Link's musical offerings, reports on concerts, and interviews with musicians. http://www.linktv.org/worldmusic/blog en-us Sun, 21 Mar 2010 20:58:35 -0700 http://www.linktv.org/worldmusic/blog/post/387/josh-norek-on-the-intersection-of-music-and-activism 8efb100a295c0c690931222ff4467bb8 I first met Josh Norek about ten years ago when he sent me a low budget video of his Latino-Jewish band the Hip Hop Hoodíos. It was a song about Chanukah sung in Spanish and English, and there were plenty of surreal shots of the "Bagel Babe" - a hot young thing wearing a bra made from that circular staple - even in a Jacuzzi! I sensed there was an unusual mind behind this.   Further down the road, Josh sent me an email about a new event: the Latin Alternative Music Conference (LAMC) that he was co-organizing in New York City. I wished him well. He continued to send me press releases about bands I had never heard of but which were pretty damned good. I started to trust his taste.   Five years ago, he helped Tomas Cookman launch the company Nacional Records. Between them, they had tons of experience managing and promoting "Rock en Español" acts, and soon they began aggregating the strongest roster of Latin Alternative Music extant. Then, prior to the past presidential election, Josh sent an email around, saying he was taking a sabbatical (or should that be shabattical?) from the music biz, and donating significant time to his favorite grassroots organization, <a href="http://www.BeCountedRepresent.com">Voto Latino</a>, working to register and activate young Latinos in battleground states to get the vote out. Since then he has also gotten his radio show "The Latin Alternative" up and syndicated. So when I heard that Josh was going to be in town, I jumped at the chance to interview him. His time as usual, was tight; we had just half an hour, so we plowed into it despite the noise from construction on an adjacent floor.   No matter where we fall on the immigration issue, the undeniable fact is that the burgeoning Latino population is changing the face and culture of the USA. I wanted Josh to talk about this, to reflect on the relationship between music, demographics and activism. He did that and more; his conversation was so far ranging that I may have to present those parts of it that dealt specifically with Rock en Español, Nacional, the LAMC and the state of the music industry in general, at a later date.   Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:00:00 -0700 Link Media, Inc. South America North America Central America http://www.linktv.org/worldmusic/blog/post/384/st-patricks-day-preview-from-cara-dillon 0584ce565c824b7b7f50282d9a19945b 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.    Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:00:00 -0800 Link Media, Inc. Europe http://www.linktv.org/worldmusic/blog/post/379/nguyn-ls-saiyuki-at-globalfest-a-jazzworld-mashup-with-an-eastern-bent a02ffd91ece5e7efeb46db8f10a74059 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.   Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:00:00 -0800 Link Media, Inc. Asia http://www.linktv.org/worldmusic/blog/post/376/no-they-are-the-world 142949df56ea8ae0be8b5306971900a4 I have nothing against the idea of the latest fundraising video for Haiti because the cause is certainly a great one; it's just that I tire of the usual bevy of First World entertainers belting it out. That's why it's refreshing to meet someone like Mark Johnson, one of the founders of Playing for Change.  By now you've all probably heard about this organization through the widely seen globetrotting video of "Stand By Me." The first time I saw it, I thought it was pleasant enough, but what was it for, what was the next step -- what was the substance? Mark clarified it all for me in an eloquent interview, in which he laid out a vision for using music as a catalyst for social change. I've heard my share of pie-in-the-sky blah blah about using music for this or that, but Mark's ideas are not dreams -- they are based on solid reality and hard work.Can any of us deny that one of our greatest achievements to date is our unprecedented technological connectivity? Playing for Change is not just about making pretty videos. It's about connecting a global community where access to medicine, education, and mutual respect are a given.   I had a conversation many years ago with Christoph Borkowsky, one of the founders of the World Music Expo, WOMEX. At the time he said to me that the music of every nation should be treated as a natural resource. He chafed at the lack of market exposure great world artists got, and was certain that significant revenue streams could result from a level, truly international marketplace. Now that a new generation can access global content with ease, perhaps the idea finally has the proper soil in which to grow. And perhaps the next great musical outpouring of support for a cause will well up spontaneously, from another part of the world, and have a truly international face and sound.   Mon, 22 Feb 2010 12:00:00 -0800 Link Media, Inc. Europe Sub-Saharan Africa Middle East South Asia Asia North America http://www.linktv.org/worldmusic/blog/post/372/taiwan-journey-part-6-a-meditative-farewell 24b16fede9a67c9251d3e7c7161c83ac 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. Tue, 16 Feb 2010 12:00:00 -0800 Link Media, Inc. Asia http://www.linktv.org/worldmusic/blog/post/369/taiwan-journey-part-5-pushing-the-envelope 0c74b7f78409a4022a2c4c5a5ca3ee19 This post covers a lot of territory: electronica, performance art and hip hop! Lim Geong was the first person I absolutely knew I wanted to interview when I went to Taiwan, because his work is right up there with the best electronica, and it always retains a strong Asian flavor.  His story is unusual too, in that he started out with huge success as a pop singing star, and rejected that role to, as he says, "go from the front of the stage to behind the scenes."  He has since scored many movies, and even appeared as an actor in quite a few. To me, he's practically a metaphor for what Taiwan has gone through: he expressed the freedom from martial law when he sang his big 1990 hit "Marching Forward" and then followed his star reaching out to the rest of Asia and the world, with music of the digital age. On the other hand, the gentle acoustic venture "A Moving Sound" is the baby of Scott Prairie and Yun-Ya Hsieh, aka Mia. Mia studied interdisciplinary arts with Meredith Monk in the USA where she met Scott, and together they have  brought the rather Western concept of performance art to the island, bringing dance, theater, music and plenty of audience participation together. Hip-hop is of course no stranger to Taiwan, but Kou Chou Ching are the pre-eminent conscious rap band there. I first learned about them through their <a href="/video/4673/world-music-kou-chou-ching-black-heart">wonderful video "Black Heart"</a>, a computer-generated animation based on Chinese puppet theater (still a high art in Taiwan) and flavored with both classical and traditional sounds. But the song is an indictment of amok capitalism that creates the black-hearted businessman, who in turn sends poisonous products into the marketplace. Kou Chou Ching is gradually tuning in Taiwanese youth to the need for more engagement with their world.   Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:00:00 -0800 Link Media, Inc. Asia http://www.linktv.org/worldmusic/blog/post/366/taiwan-journey-part-4-aboriginal-sounds-in-taiwan-with-inka-mbing-and-totem 5ef698cd9fe650923ea331c15af3b160 We tend to think of Taiwan mostly in terms of its relationship to China. But there are eleven different aboriginal tribes still dwelling on Taiwan, some going back 7000 years.  Amazingly each one of the tribes is distinctive from the others in customs and language. What unites them is their common marginalization, as various successive powers have attempted to "normalize" them into the ruling or majority culture. Many have held on to their identities, and still live in the mountains, valleys and plains of the island. Inka Mbing, an Atayal, was forced to leave her village at a young age in order to make a living in Taipei. But a lifetime later she is at the forefront of preserving the culture of her tribe. Her voice can be powerful and heartbreaking at the same time, and she is not without adventure, as I heard that she and the Nanguan singer Wu Hsin-fei (see <a href="/worldmusic/blog/post/353/taiwan-journey-part-1">Taiwan Journey Part 1</a>) have been known to jam, and wonderfully, too. By contrast, the rock band Totem is made up of young bucks from different tribes -- Paiwan, Ami and Taitung -- and they have an unapologetically commercial sound. That's okay, it's what they love, and the songs -- which can be about leaving home for the city, or the pleasures of tribal life -- also retain some of the melodic elements of their folk music. They've had some decent recognition at home, and won the music competition at the Ho Hai Yan Rock festival in 2004. In the lead up to that, they were part of the documentary "Ocean Fever." After listening to their records, which have quite the "wall of sound" production, I think I can safely call my video "Totem Unplugged."   There is no way that I could have covered all the different aboriginal music in Taiwan in the five days I was there. Suffice it to say that if any of this music piques your curiousity, there's plenty more to be heard! I recommend checking out the catalogues of Trees Music & Art, Wind Music, and David Darling's striking recordings with the Bunun tribe, "Mudanin Kata."My thanks to the very knowledgeable David Chen for his commentary. Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:00:00 -0800 Link Media, Inc. Asia http://www.linktv.org/worldmusic/blog/post/363/taiwan-journey-part-3-some-jazz-from-sizhukong 00411460f7c92d2124a67ea0f4cb5f85 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).       Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:00:00 -0800 Link Media, Inc. Asia http://www.linktv.org/worldmusic/blog/post/359/taiwan-journey-part-2-lin-sheng-xiang-the-woody-guthrie-of-taiwan c058f544c737782deacefa532d9add4c In 1999 on the southern tip of Taiwan, where the majority population of Hakka Chinese had settled, the government planned to build a huge dam. The Hakka farmers went to the capital city of Taipei to protest. The dam, they said, would destroy the ecosystem, and was a risky enterprise considering the earthquakes and landslides the area experiences. (I was there during an earthquake...not pleasant.) Lin Sheng Xiang, a Hakka from the village of Meinong, and pursuing a musical career near Taipei, became involved with the struggle to prevent the building of the dam. He moved back to his hometown in Meinong, and the Labor Exchange Band was formed, giving a musical voice to the movement, and the dam was never built. Although the Labor Exchange band is no more, Lin Sheng Xiang has continued to create thoughtful music along with lyricist Zhong Yongfeng. When I interviewed him in the bucolic south of Taiwan, he played a Hakka folksong, a charming song he wrote about his daughter, and a song (co written with Zhong Yongfen) from his latest CD,"Growing up Wild" the concept of which is songs about females.     I was surprised that Lin Sheng Xiang's name came up as often as it did when I interviewed musicians and record people. And although no one ever called it "protest music" everyone acknowledged the call to social responsibility and greater awareness that his songs contain. Our own Woody Guthrie's songs reach out to the heartland, touching on family values and love of the land. I think there is a brotherly resonance in the songs of Lin Sheng Xiang. Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:00:00 -0800 Link Media, Inc. Asia http://www.linktv.org/worldmusic/blog/post/353/taiwan-journey-part-1-the-nanguan-singing-of-wu-hsinfei 138bb0696595b338afbab333c555292a 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.   Mon, 11 Jan 2010 12:00:00 -0800 Link Media, Inc. Asia http://www.linktv.org/worldmusic/blog/post/350/yasmin-levys-ladinoflamenco-fusion 9de6d14fff9806d4bcd1ef555be766cd Ladino is the language of the Jews who lived in Spain for 1500 years until their expulsion in 1492 by Isabella and Ferdinand. After that traumatic separation, the Jews migrated to various areas, and the language incorporated words from countries all across the Ottoman Empire. Yasmin Levy's father was a Sephardic Jew from Turkey, and Ladino was spoken by her parents.  She learned to sing and loved the repertoire from an early age, but her incorporation of Flamenco into her interpretations has stirred controversy among purists. However, Yasmin is a charismatic and passionate advocate for the language and music, and feels that the best way she can help her beloved Ladino to survive is to make the songs more accessable.      When I was a kid going to a Jewish summer camp, we all had to learn a Ladino song, "Los Bilbilicos" (The Nightingales). It was a stately song, and very Spanish sounding to me. More recently, another Ladino treasure that has become popular among the cognicenti is "El Rey de Francia," a magnificent song worth searching out....but personally, I can't imagine a Flamenco treatment of it! Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:00:00 -0800 Link Media, Inc. Europe Middle East http://www.linktv.org/worldmusic/blog/post/340/globalfests-acomin 40008b9a5380fcacce3976bf7c08af5b Just as we start to take a nice deep breath from all that holiday partying, along comes globalFEST to rev up the energy again. For those of you who don't know, there are two major entertainment events that happen here in NYC in January: <a href="http://www.apapconference.org/" target="_blank">APAP</a>, which is where presenters and presentees gather from all walks of the performance arts, and <a href="http://www.globalfest-ny.org/" target="_blank">globalFEST</a>, a one night showcase of world music acts held at Webster Hall (125 E. 11th St.) on January 10th. So here's a little preview of what's going to be there (a very little but tantalizing one!) from Vietnamese jazz guitarist Nguyen Li and a capella group Concordu de Orosei.   I'll be blogging the whole thing when it happens, so for sure there will be plenty more about this! Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:00:00 -0800 Link Media, Inc. Europe South Asia North America http://www.linktv.org/worldmusic/blog/post/338/a-chinese-zither-trio-the-ladies-of-san-chuan 819f46e52c25763a55cc642422644317 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.   Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:00:00 -0800 Link Media, Inc. Asia http://www.linktv.org/worldmusic/blog/post/335/a-bit-of-quebecois-from-yves-lambert f9b902fc3289af4dd08de5d1de54f68f 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...   Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:00:00 -0800 Link Media, Inc. North America http://www.linktv.org/worldmusic/blog/post/329/womex-continues-party-down-with-kenyas-kenge-kenge 6faa8040da20ef399b63a72d0e4ab575 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...   Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:00:00 -0800 Link Media, Inc. Sub-Saharan Africa http://www.linktv.org/rss/linktv_rss.gif http://www.linktv.org/worldmusic/blog