King Sunny Ade: Live Live Juju

As stated here before, a true concert highlight, among hundreds, experienced by YHB was a 1984 pairing of reggae giants Black Uhuru and the Nigerian juju artist King Sunny Ade.  This was basically the first time hearing music outside of American and English sources and it was a powerful performance with King Sunny's ensemble featuring some twenty musicians and dancers and putting on an uplifting show, combining traditional African drumming and singing with Western instrumentation and grooves, including some spacey keyboard flourishes.

It is also hard to imagine more of a contrast than between the lighter, more playful sounds of King Sunny and the denser, funkier, angrier and more controversial work of Fela Kuti, whose work has been highlighted before.  The question isn't: who's better?  Rather, it is acknowledging (perhaps not unlike comparing Cecil Taylor and Keith Jarrett in the jazz world) the differences and appreciating the varied forms of artistry.

King Sunny had his heyday in America in 1983-84, when he toured to support releases on Island Records, but, by the time Live Live Juju was released in 1988 by Rykodisc from a Seattle show the prior year, his "fifteen minutes" had passed him by.  You wouldn't know it from this excellent album, though, as it features Ade and his band moving through a number of fine pieces, including "Ase," "Maajo," "Moti Mo" and a medley of "E Ba Dupe/F'Oluwa and Sunny Loni Ariya."

As noted in the liners, what this album (and the Live at the Hollywood Palace recording from a few years later) provides is the lengthier, funkier workouts found on Ade's Nigerian albums but edited and repackaged in ways more accessible, presumably, to Western listeners on his Island albums.  Particularly enjoyable in this sense, especially for those who love African percussion, are the longer drum workouts that resound with the intensity, volume and power that is well recalled from the concert that took place a full three decades ago.

By 1987, when this was recorded, King Sunny may have been dropped by Island and the wave that carried him to some notoriety had long receded back to sea, but his sound was still top-notch and Live Live Juju provides ample documentation of the greatness that he and his band possessed.  Long live the King!

Dzintars: Songs of Amber

This is another outstanding example of polyphonic choral singing, along with the more famed Les Mystere des Voix Bulgares, or the Bulgarian female choir variation, and the male Rustavi Choir from the Republic of Georgia.

In the case of the Latvian type, Dzintars, formed in 1947, performs both traditional folk music from a corpus that, according to the helpful liners, includes 1 1/2 million song texts and 30,000 melodies, as well as modern pieces.

Songs of Amber (amber is a symbol of Latvian identity and the word dzintar is the Latvian word for the fossilized pitch from the pine trees that are ubiquitous in that Baltic country) was another outstanding release from Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart's series of world music recordings for the Rykodisc label.  The album was co-produced by the Dead's late guitarist and vocalist Jerry Garcia and was recorded at the state-of-the-art, for 1990 and beyond, Skywalker Ranch, owned by Star Wars impresario George Lucas.

Traditional pieces include "Blow, Wind, Blow" and "The Sun Moves Quickly," with other tunes like "Breaking Flax" and "Christmas Masquerade" are latter-day interpolations of classic folk works.  Newer songs, described as "avant-garde" in the notes, include "Song of the Wind" and "The Tomtit's Message."  Finally, there is a sprinkling of pieces from Russian and Jewish sources.

Unlike the Bulgarian or Georgian choirs, this one is very large, including 76 singers, as well as 2 conductors, a pair of accompanists on piano and organ, two choir masters and a soloist from the state opera and ballet theatre.

Dzintars had just completed an American tour the prior year when they went to Marin County to record Songs of Amber and there is a photo, reproduced here, that shows the massive ensemble in their colorful and striking costumes at what is presumably the Skywalker complex.  Having had the privilege to see a performance of Les Mystere des Voix Bulgares at U.C.L.A. some years back, this blogger can testify to the palpable effect of both voice and costume on a live audience.  It would certainly be a concert-going highlight to see Dzintars perform if the opportunity were to come up.  One can hope.

This is breathtaking music, filled with gorgeous melodies, stunning arrangements, top-notch vocalizing and fantastic sound.  Nearly a quarter century after first hearing this amazing album, the effect has hardly diminished.  Songs of Amber is a marvel and well worth seeking out for those interested in choral music.

Nick Drake: Pink Moon

Nick Drake was almost completely unknown in his short lifetime, released three albums between 1969 and 1972 that were a particularly distinctive kind of folk-rock, if it could be called that, and then disappeared further into depression and died in 1974 at age 26 from an overdose of antidepressants.  As is so often the case with young sensitive artists, a cult developed around Drake that has remained small, but strong, over the years.

This final recording, Pink Moon, is extraordinary in its insular simplicity, but with Drake's accomplished acoustic guitar playing, his penchant for plaintive melodies, and his affecting but unaffected vocal style, the album has a powerful pull on the listener through the course of its eleven songs in just over 26 minutes.

Only the title track, which opens the record, has instrumentation aside from Drake's guitar and vocals, as he overdubbed some piano on the piece, and this spare setting and crystalline production is part of the immersive experience, particularly if listened to on headphones.  To this blogger, it feels as if the experience is like that of a concert performed with only the listener as the audience. 

"Know" has almost a bluesy riff in the guitar, while "Horn" is an extremely sparse instrumental with single note phrasing creating a hushed and expectant atmosphere.  "Place to Be" has a memorable melodic statement, as does "Things Behind the Sun."

"Parasite" is, to this listener, is the centerpiece of the record.  Its hypnotic guitar playing dovetails beautifully with Drake's impressionistic lyrics and straightforward vocalizing and is a mesmerizing performance.  "Ride" has some wonderful guitar strumming and picking with another distinctive melody and chorus.

The short "Harvest Breed" might be the strangest piece on Pink Moon with its lyrics all but indecipherable, but it provides an interesting contrast to the closer, the gorgeous, "From the Morning," a tune that almost seems like the coda to a brilliant, short career that ended with Drake's almost total withdrawal from a world in which he was never comfortable and unable to find a place.

Often, the most powerful and affecting musical statements are those that are stripped down to essences.  After the somewhat baroque presentations of the first two albums, Five Leaves Left and Bryter Later, which are excellent recordings, Pink Moon distilled Drake's unique aesthetic to its barest attributes—to the point where Drake is said to have uttered that, after finishing the album, he had nothing further to say musically.  It is a phenomenal record that doesn't seem dated at all, but has a timeless acoustic purity that will likely remain a cult favorite for a very long time.

Nick Drake:  Pink Moon (Island Records, 1972; Rykodisc reissue on CD)

1.  Pink Moon  2:00
2.  Place to Be  2:39
3.  Road  1:58
4.  Which Will  2:56
5.  Horn  1:19
6.  Things Behind the Sun  3:23
7.  Know  2:23
8.  Parasite  3:30
9.  Ride 2:57
10.  Harvest Breed  1:00
11.  From the Morning  2:25

Hariprasad/Zakir Hussain: Venu

This is a fantastic live performance from 1974 that was remixed and released again fifteen years later on the World 360 subsidiary of Rykodisc that was run by The Grateful Dead's drummer Mickey Hart. 

The North Indian bansuri (bamboo flute) master Hariprasad Chaurasia is joined by the great tabla player, Zakir Hussain, in one long raga, programmed into two tracks because of a change in tempo and style, showcasing the improvisational ability and melodic and rhythmic complexity of these awesome musicians working in a long and distinguished musical tradition.

The album title of Venu is a reference to the ancient name of what is today called the bansuri.  The Rag Ahir Bhairav has a beautiful melody played by the flautist with, on the first portion of the track, a drone provided by the tambura.  The uncredited liner notes observe that the piece was created "for the early morning hours" and has melodic origins with a mountain tribe's music that "evokes the expectant hush of the predawn hours."  Consequently, the piece serves to remind the listener of "a time when romantic thoughts of the night mix with a feeling of reverance [sic] for the daily return of life-giving forces."

It is certainly with a feeling of wonder that the listener hears the complexity of the variations of several themes (gats played by Hariprasad on the flute with such purity of tone and range of phrasing, both subtle and powerful.  During the last thirty-five minute section, Hussain's table performs a seven-beat rhythm but, as is typical with Indian ragas, the tempo and tension build to a point where both performers express extraordinary speed and control in a 16-beat cycle called teental, this form achieving some popularity with Western listeners because of its rapidity and energy.

The performance was recorded in northern California in a house with granite walls and state-of-the-art recording equipment for the mid-1970s.  The remixing fifteen years later utilized fairly new digital technologies for that era and the sound is remarkably clear, well-equalized, and crisp.

This was one of the first Indian recording YHB heard when exploring "world music" back in 1990 and it retains its impact and impressions nearly a quarter-century later and is a true favorite, not just of Indian music, but all music.  It is a spectacular experience!