5 December 2012, World Cafe

1 The Souljazz Orchestra – Conquering Lion (Strut)

Hailing from Ottawa, the six piece The Souljazz Orchestra get their warm fuzzy retro sound by recording on an old Tascam 8-track tape machine bought from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s stash of surplus stock.  Their new album, “Solidarity”, steals liberally from the Caribbean, West Africa and Brazil and the US.  “Conquering Lion” is a regal reggae brass celebration carried away on the sharpest of funk undercarriages.

2 Chillo Trujillo – Gran Pecador (Electric Cowbell Records)

Sounding a lot like a natural extension of Peruvian cumbia fusion called chichi, Chillo Trujijo is from the Valparaiso Region of Chile.  In “Gran Pecador”, the title track of their new album, they combine forces with the Andean folk and cumbia collective, Banda Conmocion. 

3 Ondotropica – Locomotora Borracha (Soundway)

Earlier this year, this large collective, both veterans (10 of the members are over 70) and newbies, came to together in the historical Discos Fuentes studios in Bogota under the direction of Mario Galeano and Will Holland.  (We sampled Will Holland’s sublime collection of old style Columbian cumbia at the beginning of this year.  Check out the January 2013 show for a smaller project of his).  What came out is an epic celebration of classic Columbian Afro-Caribbean sounds.  Their album is also called “Ondotropica”.

4 Mexican Institute of Sound – Es-Toy (Nacional Records)

Heading off over the Caribbean, Camilo Lara, a Mexico City based DJ, is another great fusionist, although he patches together his creations electronically using samples –  usually classic Mexican sounds from anytime between the 20s and 60s.  “Es-toy” comes from a recent album called “Politico”.

5 Prince Fatty – For me you are (Mr Bongo)

Prince Fatty aka Mike Pelanconi with the wonderful Hollie Cook.  They’re doing the old Yiddish song that the Andrew Sisters made famous, “Bei Mir Bist Du Schon” (To Me You're Beautiful").  The song was originally written by Jacob Jacobs and Sholom Secunda for the 1932 Yiddish comedy musical, “I Would If I Could”.  It’s from Prince Fatty’s new album “Prince Fatty versus the Drunken Gambler.”

6 Dennis Bovell – Cross to bear (Pressure Sounds)

You might know Dennis Bovell as the bass player on and producer of probably all of Linton Kwezi Johnson’s albums.  But he’s also put out a bunch of classic dub stuff under the name Blackbeard.  Luckily for us his had occasion recently to dig into his archive of unfinished work having been forbidden from playing bass following neck surgery.  He’s come up with some awesome dubs which he put together in the Mad Professor’s studio – very much in the old school stylee.  The new collection is called “Mek it run” out on Pressure Sounds, the British label that specializes in this sort of thing.

7 Lo’Jo – La Marseillaise en Creole (World Village)

French global band Lo’Jo, who’ve been going for 30 years now and who actually graced our shores in the late 90s, calling for multiculturalism in France. It’s from their new album, “Cinema el Mundo”.  Lo’Jo is based in the countryside near Angers and is keyboardist, Denis Paen, two Algerian sisters, Yamina and Nadia Nid El Mourid, and violinist Richard Bourreau.  

8 Banda Olifante – Spanish Town featuring Matt Darriau (Felmay)

Banda Olifante is a 15 piece brass band from Romagna around Bologna carrying on the Italian Banda tradition but cutting it with all kind of styles.  On their latest, “10 000 Migrants”, they combine with a number great guest players, including, on “Spanish Town”, Matt Darriau, the alto saxophonist from the Klazmatics and the Paradox Trio.

9 Els Berros de la Cort – Aissi cum (Nu Folk)

Els Berros de la Cort are from Catalonia and play a bunch of double reed instruments and percussion in a mélange of medieval and peasant music.  “Los nostres vices e pecats” (Our vices and sins) is their latest and it’s built on Catalan texts from sometime between the 12^th and 14^th centuries. “Aissi cum” is a recipe for medieval Viagra.

10 Debo Band – Yefeker Wagengene (Sub Pop)

Debo Band off their debut album with some klezmer infused Ethiojazz.  Sousaphonist Arik Grier and fiddler Kaethe Hostetter have actually played in klezmer bands. 

11 Bester Quartet – The Magic Casket (Tzadik)

The Bester Quartet used to be called the The Cracow Klezmer Band and they’ve always delivered a mean, klezmer infused virtuosic take on Neuva Tango.  “The Magic Casket” is off their new CD, Metamorpheses.  Jaroslaw Bester is the lead composer and plays the bayan, and relation to the bandoneon.  They’re double bayan band – the second one is by Oleg Dyyak who also plays the clarinet and duduk. 

12 Rapunzel & Sedayne – The Innocent Hare (Folk Police)

Repunzel and Sedayne are English duo playing traditional music.  “The Innocent Hare” is from that fine collection we sampled last month “Weirdlore: Notes from the Folk Underground.”

13 Sam Lee – On yonder hill (The Nest Collective)

Londoner Sam Lee has come up one of great English folk albums of the year, “Ground of its own”, in which he takes fairly obscure songs from the folk canon –– and envelopes them in stikingly unfamilar arrangements. He is an enthuiastic song collector, which believe or not, is still something someone can do in Blighty and there abouts apparently amongst Romany Gypsy and Irish Traveller communities.  “On yonder hill” features a hang sounding a lot like a prepared piano and muted trumpet.  The austere atmosphere that he’s able to conjure up probably has a lot to do with his tutorlage with the great veteran Scottish singer, Stanley Robertson.

Check out brilliant interview with him on: http://www.propergandaonline.com/propermusic-com-podcast-42-sam-lee/

And his website: http://samleesong.co.uk/about-sam/

14 Emily Portman – Hatchling (Cadiz Music)

The title track of Northumberland-based singer Emily Portman’s new album.  One of her tricks is write new songs which sound like they’ve been handed down orally from centuries ago.  Rachel Newton, the harpist we listened to last month, is in her backing trio. 

15 Celestine Ukwu and His Philosophers National – Ejim Nk’onye (Philips Nigeria)

We played the late great Nigerian highlife guitarist singer and composer Celestine Ukwu on this show a few years ago. Ejim Nk’onye is the title track from a mid 70s album from him sounding fairly battered.  Apparently he was the first to introduce pedal steel into Nigerian music – before even King Sunny Ade. 

16 Janka Nabay & The Bubu Gang – Kill me with bongo (Luaka Bop)

Bubu is an old style of music from Sierra Leone not heard much outside of the country.  That was until one of the stars of scene, Janka Nabay, who moved to New York to escape war. Luckily he managed to team up with a bunch of hipster musician types in Brooklyn while working as a fry cook.  They’re calling themselves Janka Nabay & the Bubu Gang and what they’ve come up to me sounds at times like a grittier version of the kind of electro funk the Tom Tom Club were peddling in the 80s – and that is not a half bad thing.

17 Staff Benda Bilili – Osali Mabe (Crammed Discs)

Darlings of the world music press at the moment, Staff Benda Bilili from Kinshasa off their new album, “Bouger le Monde”.  The press is not always wrong – this is a good one.

18 Ba Cissoko – Nimissa (Cristal Records)

Ba Cissoko is a fabulous kora player from Guinea with a penchant to stick electric pickups on his instrument and wigging out to some outrageous kora wah-wah and feed back.  “Nimissa”, the title track off his new album, does not escape.  Check out the frenetic pace and dense over the top horn arrangements on this. 

19 Preservation Hall Jazz Band featuring My Morning Jacket, etc – St. James Infirmary (Rounder)

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, that great institution of New Orleans jazz parade music, turned 50 a few months ago.  One of the things they did to commenorate is throw a concert at the Carnegie Hall with a stellar cast of guests.  We’ve listened to a version of St James Infirmary they did with Jim James from My Morning Jacket a while back.  This one has the whole of My Morning Jacket, plus Trombone Shorty thrown in there.   The album’s called St Peter and 57^th St – Carnegie Hall’s address.

20 Shovels and Rope – Birmingham (Dualtone)

Cary Ann Heart and Michael Trent call themselves Shovels and Rope.  I’m not sure where they’re from originally but they seem to have paid their dues in Birmingham, Alabama, if this song off their album “O’ be joyful” is anything to go by.

21 Hurray for the Riff Raff – Ramblin’ Gal (Loose)

Alynda Lee Segarra from the band “Hurray for the Riff Raff” is originally from the Bronx but has been holed up in New Orleans for a while now.  “Rambin Gal” is apparently Segarra’s answer to Hazel Dickens’ “Rambin Woman”, in turn an answer Hank Williams’ “Rambin’ Man”.  It’s from Hurray for the Riff Raff’s fine new album “Look out mamma”.

22 Dicky Williams – Tee-Na-Na (Ace Records)

New Orleans produced a bunch of classic rock and roll in the 50s and 60s, quite a bit of it put out on Johnny Vincent’s label Ace Records, which was based in Jackson, Mississippi.  Dicky Williams came up with one of the most well known of these songs, “Tee-Na-Na”.  You can find that on the recently released “The Ace Story Volume 4”.

23 Rangda – Majnun (Drag City)

Carrying on in the fine tradition of rock star fascination with North Africa, Rangda has come up a math rock version of desert psychedelia. Rangda are Sir Richard Bishop, the great enthological forger and guitarist from the Sun City Girls, Ben Chasny from Six Organs of Admittance and Comets on Fire, and drummer Chris Corsano who seems to be able to do anything.

24 Ochestre National de Barbes – Mariama (Samarkand) --- track 12

One of the attractions for rockers of North Africa is surely is gnawa, the hypnotic trancey music the Moroccan Sufi brotherhoods.  Paris based Orchestre National de Barbes, a pretty well known longish standing fusion band drawn from across North Africa definitely like gnawa fusion.  But Aziz Sahmaoui wrote this unadorned gnawa piece for their 2000 album, “Poulina”. 

25 Mohammed Rouicha - ? (Masterone)

Mohammed Rouicha died in January of this year at the age of 62. He’s extremely well known in Morocco and plays a style called Izlan. Largely sung in the Berber language Amazigh, it’s the music of urban migrants from rural villages of the Middle Atlas - although this is a suped-up Izlan.  He’s turned the traditional accompanying instrument, the three-string loutar, into a solo instrument by adding a fourth string and spending 15 years developing his style before daring to record any of it, and absorbed a bunch other regional styles.