Anthology of the Music of Niger

Niger is a large landlocked nation of more than 26 million persons in the northwester portion of Africa, bordered by Benin and Nigeria to the south, Chad to the east, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west and Algeria and Libya to the north.  Four-fifths of the country is within the enormous Sahara Desert, so most of its people, almost totally Muslim, reside in the southern and western sections, the Sahel, with its capital, Niamey, in the southwestern corner along the river that gives the country and its neighbor their names.

This recording, another from the many released by the Ocora label in France, which ruled Niger as part of its West Africa colonies, was made in 1963, just a few years after the nation's independence, and it features thirteen pieces from various portions of the country.  This is music pared down to its essence, with soloists and ensemble vocals, a few kinds of lute and flute-type instruments, and percussion including hand-clapping.  The works reflect a variety of aspects of life for varying tribal groups in Niger and are  highly immersive and very compelling.

Topics of the songs include elements of weddings, tribal epics, a eulogy of workers like camel-drivers, a tale of a renowned hunter, religion and magic, love, praise of various kinds and the last, a remarkable one involving a game called charaou, in which a young man from the Peul people who is publicly lashed with a whip and encouraged by those observing with music and chanting to maintain his courage.  Other tribal groups represented are the Sonrai, Djerma, Touareg, and Hausa.

The percussion is often rhythmically complex and rich in its variations of sound and the instruments are also of great interest, but, for this listener, the most fascinating aspect is the great variety of vocalizations, including some remarkable solos as well as the choral work by different sized ensembles.  It was, obviously, brilliant that this music was recorded when it was, just after Niger became a new republic, though like many African nations after European colonialism, political struggles continue and are compounded by the increasingly drastic effects of climate change.  

This amazing recording captivatingly captures a great range of what was performed by tribes throughout the country and exposes those far away to incredible sound worlds greatly removed from their own.

Gustav Mahler: Symphony #5

Another run in the last couple of days through the ten symphonies composed by the great Gustav Mahler and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Klaus Tennstedt was a treat, especially during these increasingly chaotic, unstable and troubled times.  An EMI boxset collects these works, albeit broken up in some instances, into an 11-CD set.

These lengthy, massive works are, for this listener, highly immersive, seductive sound environments that, for the occasional heavy intensity and bombast, also have sublime quiet passages and sections with achingly beautiful melodies that belie all that is troubled in our world.  The complexity, ingenuity and innovation of Mahler is on full display in the Fifth Symphony.

The piece is justly celebrated for its fourth movement, the Adagietto, with one of the most famous of melodies in all of classical music.  Mahler worked on the symphony in 1901-1902, including during a period of recovery from a hemorrhage that nearly killed him, in a hut at a newly completed cottage in southern Austria.  Yet, the entirety of the piece is striking and memorable, from the funereal and stately first movement led off by a trumpet fanfare to the power and intensity of the second, the strength of the third and the rondo that marks the finale.

Again, there is not enough knowledge of the technical points of music for this blogger to try to weigh in on the value of the Fifth Symphony from that standpoint.  Fortunately, we have liner notes and Kenneth Dommett provides a useful quote from the composer's wife, Alma, also a composer as well as a writer and who commented "I heard in it the relation of adult man to everything that lives, heard him cry to mankind out of his loneliness, cry to man, to home, to God, saw him lying prostrate, heard him laugh his defiance and felt his clam triumph."  Dommett summarizes the movements, noting the keys, but also the feelings expressed from cries of distress to outrage to affirmation of life to triumph.

Naturally, an untutored listener doesn't need to know the structure, the keys or how color and texture are established.  The sheer range of emotion, as well as the use of the full resources of an orchestra with its huge sound but also the lighter touches found everywhere in Mahler's symphonies, are thrilling and the brilliant performance by Tennstedt and the London ensemble pulls you into this deep, rich and rewarding musical experience, a badly needed tonic just now.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse: Rust Never Sleeps

Fans of Neil Young will undoubtedly cite earlier albums (Harvest, Tonight's the Night, or others, while the compilation Decade is stunning and will be featured here in the future) as the best of his remarkable body of work, but, for this listener, hearing this music for the first time as a young teen, Rust Never Sleeps has the most significance.

While this young listener was more drawn to the primal closer "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" and the other harder-rocking tunes on the record, the blogger decades later can now see the tie to Bob Dylan's 1965 classic Bringing It All Back Home, in that the first side (of the LP, of course) is acoustic and the second electric.  "Thrasher" is a remarkable tune with some of Young's most impressionistic and yet pointed lyrics about the artistic quest, while "Pocahontas" is another rumination on the terrible treatment of indigenous Americans by whites and "Sail Away" is a great song apparently about escaping from modern pressures.

"Powderfinger" is an exceptional song, as heavy as Crazy Horse, which hadn't recorded with Young for a few years, often was, and the lyrics are simultaneously direct and vague, with respect to the fact that they tell a story of an attack by a boat on a river, but don't indicate where, when or why—then again, Young often wrote with that kind of tension of laser-sharp specifics and broad ambiguities.

"Sedan Delivery" tells another story with some striking details of pool halls, a bizarre dental appointment and erotica among the stars, though the lines "I'm makin' another delivery / Of chemicals and sacred roots," seems clear enough.  As for the closer, it definitely brings back memories of hearing the song on the radio way back when—and when I probably assumed "Johnny Rotten" was a character from the songwriter's imagination. 

Rust Never Sleeps, which was recorded in concert with most of the audience noise scrubbed, was, says the liners, "a loose-knit concept album" with the broad idea "that an artist's reach must always exceed [their] grasp," otherwise they would face "stagnation and irrelevancy."  Reportedly, inspired, at least partly, by the revolutionary effect of punk rock, Young's reference to Johnny Rotten in the bookend tracks was an acknowledgment of what he saw as the fact that rock artists "needed waking up."

Lastly, there seems to be a clear lineage between the album and the grunge movement that, after the pop/electronic sheen that permeated much of the music of the Eighties, including Young's, brought about the likes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, Soundgarden and many others.  Whether or not Rust Never Sleeps is the best of his many albums over a long career, it is one that had a strong impression way back when.

Ornette Coleman: Free Jazz

Having first heard this 35 years ago (on vinyl) in the earliest explorations of jazz (along with classical and world music, to broaden listening horizons) and only having the barest of understanding of what was involved with improvisation and its relationship to harmony and rhythm, especially in that world in 1960, Ornette Coleman's 37-minute Free Jazz, recorded in one take and no editing, was really a jarring experience, but a fascinating one.  The leader stated that the goal "was for us to play together, all at the same time, without getting in each other's way, and also to have enough room for each player to ad lib alone—and to follow this idea for the duration of the album."

One of the elements of the recording that immediately stood out was the placement of four musicians on each channel, with the leader, trumpeter Don Cherry, drummer Billy Higgins and bassist Scott LaFaro on the left and bass clarinetist Eric Dolphy, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Ed Blackwell on the right.  That way, especially with headphones, you can hear the differences between the two quartets, even as the processing of the octet as an ensemble is taking place.

Coleman called Free Jazz a collective improvisation because he only wrote out the parts played by the horns prior to each solo; otherwise, the musicians had that freedom to play whatever they wanted to complement or supplement what the soloists were playing.  That meant that the excellence of the individual musicians had to be sharpened as part of this collectivity and all eight of them were masters.  

As someone who tends to focus on the rhythm sections as the underpinning of the music, it is especially fascinating to hear the differences between but commonalities among the bassists and drummers.  LaFaro had the toughest assignment, as Haden, Blackwell and Higgins were experienced participants in the leader's unusual sound world.  The soloing of these duos is also fascinating, while it's the continual driving pulse the holds all of this together.

Regarding the horn players, the varying styles are clear, but so is the ability of them to be part of that ensemble as the other support the given soloist.  Having Dolphy, moreover, play clarinet adds a richness and depth, as well as variation, in the performance, while Hubbard, a more traditional player, seems to easily adapt to this freer environment, in which, of course, Cherry and Coleman were deeply absorbed.  Also very notable are the ways in which the other wind instruments engage with the soloist.

Those having the late 1990s CD version can also hear "First Take," which is less than half the length of the originally released recording and it is very interesting to listen to it and compare and contrast it to the fuller version.  Though Free Jazz was reviled, as well as hailed, by many when released in September 1961, it encouraged to future efforts like John Coltrane's Ascension (1965) and influenced a great many jazz musicians to open themselves in terms of what was viewed as necessary or required in the music.  

With music this untethered to traditional approaches, immersion seems the only way to appreciate what this incredible album offers.  As Coleman remarked in the liner notes: "We were expressing our minds and emotions as much as could be captured by electronics."   

L. Subramaniam: In Concert

From one violinist, Laurie Anderson, to another, we turn to the astounding Lakshminarayana Subramaniam, whose Carnatic music from South India is a wonder to hear.  This scintillating live recording from the November 1983 Festival de Lille in France and released by Radio France's Ocora imprint through Harmonia Mundi, includes three tunes, two well over 20 minutes and the other a mere seven, as the master, accompanied by his late wife, Viji (niece of the great Ravi Shankar) on tambura and Varadarao Kamakalar Rao, who died last fall, on mridangam.

Known as "L. Subramaniam," the virtuoso, the son of musicians, was a child prodigy and studied under his father before he was five years old.  An uncle was vocalist Ramnad Krishnan, whose Vidwan album for the Nonesuch Explorer series became a favorite when purchased around 1990, while his brothers were also accomplished musicians, as are the maestro's three children.  He studied medicine and was registered as a general practitioner before turning to music, including advanced study in Western classical music, as his vocation.

He has recorded prolifically and this blogger's first experience with Subramaniam's music was his Karnatic Violin album, also released by Ocora.  The liner notes call him "the Paganini of carnatic music," and, whether referencing a Western violin master is apropos or not, it is also striking that the text says that he "embodies both the serenity of the Indian musician and the magnetism of a Western movie star."  Whatever this means, Subramaniam is quoted as saying that his development was done "unconsciously," though he added that, under his father, "we had a very severe daily routine," even as he stated that he and his siblings could not get enough music despite the intense study.

The master added, "I wanted to return to the sources of carnatic tradition" and "to change the function of the violin, to no longer limit its function to that of accompanying the voice."  Moreover, he set out to widen the range from two or three to five or six octaves and this meant playing longer ragas, so that "that is why I only play two or three compositions during a concert" as this was "much more satisfying. I can get totally immersed in my music."  So do we, as he follows tradition in terms of beginning a piece slowly, expressing themes and then improvising at great length, increasing complexity and expression and at frequently dizzying speed and dazzling proficiency.  In Concert is a stunning exposition of Subramaniam's sublime art within the time-honored Carnatic musical tradition going back thousands of years.

Laurie Anderson: Big Science

Why it took so long to get this album is another example of missing out for many years on an amazing landmark recording by a remarkable artist.  In this case, Laurie Anderson is both a musician and a performance artist and her 1982 debut (how she got a 7-album deal from a major label, Warner Brothers, is notable), unlike anything else that came out during that time, was a sampling of a massively ambitious project, United States, a sprawling look in four parts with nearly 80 separate pieces that examined technology, the post-industrial world and what some take to be something of a dystopian view of American life, expressed artistically, archly, ironically and presciently.

Big Science is a stunning collection that combines lyrics that are often simultaneously vague and highly personal, some seemingly critical of aspects of modern life and others that appear to be about lovers, while there are pieces that look to be about family dynamics, with a compelling palette of musical sounds including Anderson's main instrument, the violin, and keyboards, with percussion, horns, a bagpipe, electronics and hand claps.

The effects of these piece is mesmerizing.  While "O Superman (For Massenet" became a surprise hit single in England, largely thanks to DJ John Peel playing it frequently on his show, and is often cited as the centerpiece of the record, all eight tracks are excellent evocations of Anderson's unusual approach to songs.  This includes her vocalizations, use of effects, the unusual instrumentation, sense of arrangement, crystalline production, judicious use of space, and the convergence of what is often called avant-garde with popular music.

In fact, this last part may be the most impressive feat of all with Big Science; namely, that it is certainly experimental, experiential in its immersive qualities, but very relatable from a pop sensibility.  Hearing this amazing album now, moreover, it feels as if this is totally relevant as we've become more wedded to technology, displaced and, it feels, less human in our interactions (or lack of them) with each other.  As electronic as much of the record is, it has a warmth and sensitivity (as well as a good use of irony and satire) that is an especially humanizing experience.