mudd up!

today’s radio show: special guest Sasha Frere-Jones, pop music critic for The New Yorker. info & google-oracular screenshot here.

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in other news, Dr Auratheft follows up his excellent Doabi Gypsies mix with a new one: The Gypsy Trail Revisited, a nice soundtrack to the whirled music discussion at Wayne’s World.

Auratheft writes: ” I just want to show – in sound – that identity is a problematic and ideological discourse. And it’s dangerous to think there’s something like a Judeo-Christian Foundation of Europe. There are many roots and routes, tracks and trails, narratives and stories, texts and contexts. Let’s make our own atlas, folks. This is what we share. Or expressed in sound and music: listen & learn.”

all this talk of identity makes me think on the following Charles Simic poem, from The World Doesn’t End:

 

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There’s a gorgeous, gentle album which fits into these discussions — apparently I wasn’t the only one who brought it to Auratheft’s attention after hearing Doabi Gypsies. ‘Imagined’ by ney player Kudsi Erguner, the full title is: Flamenco & Musique Soufi Ottoman: L’Orient de l’Occident: Hommage à Ibn Arabi, Sufi de Andalucia.

أبن عربي

L’Orient de l’Occident – El Alba de la Unión

(my scanner put in those waves, it must be as heat-fatigued as i am)

Today’s song is the title track from Gaâda Diwane de Béchar’s album Ben Bouziane. The France-based musicians hail from Béchar western Algeria, btwn the Sahara and the Atlas (mountains), natural setting for their afro-Maghrebi sound. Usually i’m burnt-out on anything that could be considered gnawa fusion, but Gaâda, at least on this cassette, nail it consistently with crisp original arrangements and tight playing (“le groupe a conçu son monde autour d’une relecture moderne de presque toutes musiques africaines” explains their MurdochSpace blurb).

Which reminds me: anybody know of a good cheap place to take French lessons in NYC? I’m tired of bluffing my way thru francophone websites & conversations…

Gaâda Diwane de Béchar – Ben Bouziane

They namecheck Nass El Ghiwane & Tinariwen as influences (Tinariwen also namecheck NeG as an influence), partaking in north Africa’s excellent tradition of what you could call ‘cosmopolitan roots’: bands repping the local (one amazing travel web writes “Béchar is the largest town in the western part of Algerian Sahara, and the administrative centre of the Saoura region. That’s more or less it. A place to stop, use as a base, stock up on food. But there is nothing at all to see here.”) while doing a self-conscious ‘relecture moderne’ (modern rereading, right?) of various relevant musical traditions, played on acoustic instruments, but wired into MySpace & the French world music market.

Local is good, but French concert revenue and arts funding is better. These are non-exclusive entities, and we are the richer for it.

(Homage to Germaine Tillion, Southern Algeria, 1938-39, Dr John 2005 creativecommons flickr.)

Also check his Migrados series, “A current project documenting the experiences of migrants in Spain, the spaces they occupy, their journeys, and the traces that they leave behind”. from which comes the following, Immigrant Wall Drawing, Madrid, Spain, Nov 2003. Lavapiés no less:

the special guest on Mudd Up! radio tonite will be my DJ mixer. The special guest next week (June 27) will be DJ Eddie Stats! upcoming guests in July & August include Caroline Bergvall, Sasha Frere-Jones, Kalup Linzy (& possibly Taiwan), and Heatwave.

Needless to say, I/we are psyched.

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here’s a bootlegged official-unofficial CD i picked up in Barcelona this weekend. The artwork lists 6 tracks, but the CD only has 4. What got lost?

The shop didn’t have any Dahmane el Harrachi so they gave me this instead. Presumably lifted off cassette, this is a old recording of classic Algerian chaabi. (Right? I could be wrong — clarifications welcome.)

Algerian chaabi track 3, 9:20

since i couldnt find Dahmane in the shop, i went to youtube. they got him. He strides against the seashore in a wash of nostalgically saturated colors, intimations of l’immigritude heavy in the salty air.
Gulls cry, waves crash, boats and planes keep pulling people out of their homes.

“Don’t ask me about any of these Berber cassettes,” said Rachid’s asssitant at Nassiphone (BCN’s best shop for Maghrebi sound) as he hefted a milkcrate from behind the counter. “I know as much as you do.” Meaning: very little.

the cover of this cassette depicts Mr Tamount seated, a capoed & fretted banjo loose in his hands. The orange photoshop blur behind him anticipates vocoders and drum machines coded into Berber patterns. Imazighen.

Idriss Tamount – ? (Box Music)

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For those who prefer less processed roots…

Amazigh band and dancers in the Atlas foothills, scattering timeless sound into the air with generator-powered amps. I enjoy watching the notion of a mainstream dissolve into a trillion scattered data-bites. Let’s dance on a red rug in wilderness!

The best part about YouTube is the impressionistic quality of its compression algorhythms… YouTube is always more storytelling than documentary. Suggests, does not inform.

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In this clip, a string player & vocalist the size of Godzilla perform over a rich evergreen forest while alien geometries intersect the landscape. Visuals a strange but not unsatisfying partner for the ensemble’s Berber folklorix.

in next weeks’ news– my band Nettle will perform at Berlin’s Transmediale this wednesday jan 31., with renaissance badboy Daniel Perlin on joining us on video.

the night, Crossings, looks promising:The A-Trio (with everyone’s favorite Beiruiti cartoonist/blogger/free improv musico, Mazen Kerbaj), the Sublime Frequencies crew (why yes, SubFreq used my friends’ music and images on their Radio Morocco CD with no attribution or permission or payment whatsoever!), and the Staalplaat Soundsystem.

& i’ll be in Hamburg on Feb 2 (golden pudel. w/ DJ Nron), and Barcelona on Feb 3. Reboot party @ Can Kadena.

here’s a song from Sublime Frequencies’ Choubi Choubi! Folk and Pop Sounds from Iraq compilation. The blown-out cassette compression/distortion gives it a raucous, strangely solid sound. For fans of Muslimgauze! Muslimgauze’s Bryn Jones orientalized the Middle East, yes, but he also fetishized the poor (re)production quality of its cheap tapes, re-creating that sound quality obsessively. The two activities seem related. Ventriloquism. Distortion & distance, tapes loops & tiny strings. I’ve been guilty, too.

Bawn – Ya Binaya Goumi

beautiful light outside so i can’t stay in, but here’s the song you can take it with you & meet me there. Words, a dusting of context, come later.

Gacha Empega & El Hillal – Laridom