The drummers’ drummer keeps it strictly Afro-beat

Such is Tony Allen’s currency within the more open-eared members of Western pop music’s glitterati, you’d be blamelessly justified in thinking that Secret Agent would be a backslapping, open-invitation affair, one with a cast-list that would overshadow the music. But no. The drummer’s first record for World Circuit is a somewhat surprisingly star-free zone. Most surprisingly, even Allen’s The Good, The Bad & The Queen team-mate Damon Albarn fails to make a cameo.
This is all to Secret Agent’s advantage. Allen instead employs his diamond-hard touring band in order to stay unerringly on target, never veering from that Afro-beat blueprint he and Fela Kuti drew up 40-odd years ago. From the moment that the opening title-track is unleashed from the traps, resistance is futile, with the razor-sharp riffing from horns and electric piano creating an indomitable united front. Even when unusual innovations are brought in, such as the sumptuous accordion on ‘Busybody’, it’s always an enhancement, never a distraction.
A limited singer, Allen confines himself to lead vocals on two tracks, delegating the remainder to a quintet of Lagos-based vocalists. While this makes the message behind the music less overt than those diatribes of his old partner Fela, this causes no problem. After all, as he says: “he wrote like a singer. I write like a drummer”. On Allen’s records, the groove always takes precedence. In upholding this fundamental doctrine, he has made Afro-beat’s most direct, most thrilling record since Femi Kuti astounded us more than a decade ago with the brilliance of Shoki Shoki.
Nige Tassell

Palm fronds, turquoise seas & a whole lotta soul

Subtitled Latin Sounds, Cumbia Tropical & Calypso Funk on the Isthmus 1967-77, this follow-up to 2007’s Panama is a similarly enticing slice of musical life from that tiny strip of Latin America, where American hegemony has fought with indigenous liberty for decades. Salsa might be the dominant music in Central America these days, but cumbia, calypso, soul – and countrified musica típica – were the most popular rhythms in the late 60s. On tracks such as ‘Tamborito Swing’ by Los Silvertones and Skorpio’s tongue-twisting ‘Te Toca Tocar La Tumba’, we hear a summertime sound that manages to be both naive and pretty cool. It’s worth recalling that Panama’s urban crowd used to provide NYC label Fania with a testing ground for their funky vibes: the label would send advance copies of albums to Panamanian DJs to gauge reactions – if they liked it, then US audiences probably would too. It’s not all Panama City dance floor material on this disc though. Papi Brandao’s band rework Willie Colón’s classic `La Murga’ as an accordion-led, folksy number with lots of típica turns. Then we get cumbia-funk from The Exciters, twangy Afro-calypso from the smoky-voiced Lord Cobra and a big-band Latin jazz blast from Los Papacitos.
Panama was always a melting pot and a busy crossroads – for trade, drugs, politics and music. Panama 2! is a celebration of diversity, dancing and the fact that a small country can boast such massive talent. A word of congratulation to compiler Roberto Ernesto Gyemant. This is the sort of album you get when you research and trawl the archives: two years and 20 visits have definitely paid off.
Chris Moss

More missives from China’s alt-country punk scene

This is the second Chinese ethnic minority CD to hit the UK this year, following hard on the heels of the post-punk Chinese-Mongolian folk band Hanggai. Like Hanggai, Mamer comes out of the Beijing rock scene, and is being promoted as a spearhead of China’s alt-country movement, or ‘Chinagrass’. As with several recent Chinese groups, the music’s emphasis is on revitalising traditions. The album opens with a recording of short-wave radio, neatly evoking China’s north-western Xinjiang region – Mamer’s home – with a burst of Chinese opera and a news report in a Turkic language. Like the electricity cables pictured crossing the steppe on the album cover, it serves to orient listeners within Mamer’s contemporary multi-layered reality. The mix on the album continues this theme, with Mamer on vocals and Kazakh dombra (two-stringed lute) and guitars, fleshed out with a range of acoustic sounds from the Kazakh kobyz (lyre), Jew’s harp and sybyzghy (end-blown flute). Neighbouring traditions of Mongolian throat singing and Uyghur maqam are investigated, and there’s a great dombra and banjo duel between Mamer and Grammy-winner Béla Fleck.
This Chinese Kazakh album is worlds away from the Kazakhstan revival of the extraordinary shamanic kyl-kobyz fiddle introduced by Raushan Orazbayeva. But it nevertheless has the strong backbone of a more folky Kazakh tradition, with some wacky rhythms and renditions of the terme epics, through which the Kazakh bards dispense moral wisdom. It’s music that suggests vast open spaces and free-wheeling horses; the Chinagrass label really makes sense with ‘Celebration’, the track featuring Fleck. Another indication that the regional sounds of China are becoming cool.
Rachel Harris

An old-timey head on young shoulders

Rachel Harrington’s epiphany, upon being introduced to the work of Loretta Lynn at the age of 12, has stood her in good stead. Her voice carries the same weight of emotion as her heroine’s, and this album more than delivers on the promise of her 2007 debut, The Bootlegger’s Daughter. Like Gillian Welch, she seems to have inherited some kind of throwback gene that makes her blend of bluegrass and old-timey storytelling sound like it could be a release from the Depression years. As she states herself, the story comes first, and in the case of City of Refuge the stories are fascinating. They tell of irascible mountain men (‘Truman’) and the whores of the Yukon gold rush (‘Karen Kane’) and there’s even an ode to fellow Oregonian Raymond Carver (‘Carver’). The main themes are loss and abandonment and there’s a rare poetry at the album’s heart: ‘A Housewife’s Lament’ is a heartbreakingly poignant study in disappointment.
Ably backed by Zak Borden on mandolin and guitjo (a six-string banjo with the neck of a guitar), as well as Tim O’Brien on fiddle and Mike Grigoni on dobro, Harrington displays equal dexterity in covering both traditional material and covers. Bobbie Gentry’s ‘Ode To Billy Joe’ sounds like it could have been written for her voice alone. For fans of Welch or the Be Good Tanyas, this album marks the appearance of a major new talent. You’d be well advised to catch her on tour in Europe this summer.
Chris Jones

A few fresh faces in the OVV camp

Having endured a trio of body blows with the loss of singer KT Tunstall and founders Sophie Solomon (violin) and Lemez Lovas (trumpet), Oi Va Voi have regrouped brilliantly. Travelling the Face of the Globe finds them recapturing the spirit that a few years ago earned them a brace of nominations in the BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music and proves that the vision that originally inspired the group remains more important than the individuals who have passed through it. That vision, of course, involves the fusion of modern dance beats with their Jewish cultural heritage and rhythms drawn from Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean and beyond. Here that vision is not only intact but is expressed with a clarity and focus that eclipses even 2003’s Laughter Through Tears. Since the high-profile departures, the remaining trio of guitarist Nik Ammar, drummer Josh Breslaw and clarinettist-vocalist Steve Levi have recruited astutely. In singer Bridgette Amofah, they’ve discovered an extraordinarily versatile and expressive voice, while new violinist Anna Phoebe and trumpeter David Orchant prove they can fire up a feral Balkan Gypsy storm every bit as effectively as their illustrious predecessors. Levi also emerges as a total star, both as an instrumentalist and a haunting singer who understands the profundities of the cantor tradition but renders the form thrillingly fresh and new. The vocals of Hungarian singer Agi Szaloki on the chilling but wonderful ‘S’brent’, an old Yiddish song about the burning of the Warsaw ghetto, are an added bonus. A truly great return by the mighty Voi.
Nigel Williamson

Blues-rock meets Indian modes

Although I didn’t realise it at the time, the first world music album I ever bought was a record by John Mayer and Joe Harriott’s Indo-Jazz Fusions more than 40 years ago. In the years since, John McLaughlin and others have continued to fuse jazz and Indian music in highly imaginative fashion, but there have been far fewer attempts to explore the common link between Indian music and that other great musical product of black America, the blues. Step forward the British-Asian singer Najma Akhtar and the American guitarist, Gary Lucas, formerly of Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band. On his album The Edge Of Heaven, Lucas reinterpreted classic Chinese pop tunes with a bluesy edge and Akhtar has famously worked with Page and Plant, so both are used to pushing the boundaries of their default styles – which may begin to explain why their collaboration here works brilliantly. The concept is at its most obvious on Skip James’ ‘Special Rider Blues’, a magical journey from Memphis to Mumbai and back again.
Yet in many ways the rest of the material, jointly composed by Akhtar and Lucas, is even more interesting. Their guitar-vocal duets are accompanied only by tabla and, occasionally, violin. Some of it has a very 1960s hippy, free-festival feel: ‘Naya Dhin’ even reminded me improbably of early acoustic Tyrannosaurus Rex. As for Akhtar, her voice is a heaven-sent gift. If she had made this album with that other noted blues aficionado, Robert Plant, it would surely sell a million and win a Grammy.
Nigel Williamson

Harrington and co look to the East

A seductive Middle Eastern tango opens this powerful Kronos album, one of their most assertive statements in years. Most of the tracks are arrangements of traditional or popular songs, largely from the Middle East, which gives the varied collection a musical coherence. The opening ‘Ya Habibi Ta’ala’ was a 1940s Egyptian hit, full of swooning melodies and cheeky ‘um-cha’ accompaniments, but it’s followed by the quartet’s version of the edgy ‘Tashweesh’ (Interference) by the contemporary Palestinian group Ramallah Underground. It sounds like a soft lament, but one aggravated by electronic static and uneasy percussion. Like a balm comes the gentle ‘Wa Habibi’ (Beloved) – not a love song, but a Christian hymn for Good Friday, famously originally sung by the Lebanese singer Fairuz. Another highlight is ‘Lullaby’, originally recorded by the group Jahlé for Andy Kershaw’s programme in Iran and then finally licensed for the Rough Guide to the Music of Iran, which is how Kronos heard it. Their point, however, is not to simply recreate traditional music with a string quartet, but to create adventurous new pieces reflecting the flavour of the original repertoire. With other pieces featured here from Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iraq, India and Ethiopia, you can see why Kronos’ violinist David Harrington came up with such a varied playlist for Songlines #44. ‘Hold Me, Neighbor, in this Storm... ’ is a 22-minute work by Serbian composer Aleksandra Vrebalov. It begins with Harrington playing the one-string gusle fiddle followed by church bells and what could be Sufi chanting. According to Vrebalov, it’s about the multiple layers of identity that make up her native land, although I’m not sure about their excursion into the Romanian Gypsy showpiece ‘The Lark’. Most spectacular is ‘Getme, Getme’ in which Kronos are joined by father and daughter duo Alim and Fargana Qasimov from Azerbaijan. With voices and strings intertwining, it is an ecstatic performance, recorded live at last year’s Ramadan Nights at the Barbican. It’s the first live recording they’ve ever released, in over 30 years, and the glorious music takes Kronos into an exciting new world.
Simon Broughton

A barracking from some awkward squaddies

Half a minute into ‘The Jolly Broom Man’, with its gentle guitar chords, minimalist percussion – sounding like the knocking of a guitar – slightly sinister bass and harmony singing, and you know you’re in the company of accomplished, interesting musicians, and that Mawkin:Causley are a class act. Their debut album is a collection of tunes and traditional songs linked thematically by conflict and danger, about going to war and returning from it – or not. ‘Drummer Boy for Waterloo’, a tale of a soldier who is no more than a boy and who is shot before he does anything much, conjured images for me of those who on D-Day didn’t even make it to the beach. The title-track is about another squaddie who, despite his military ineptitude, feels destined to kill Bonaparte. Heartrending as these are, the album is ultimately uplifting because the characters are drawn so vividly and the music, while diverse, is consistently brilliant.
Jim Causley sings wonderfully, with a rough edge to his rich voice, and the band – two squeezeboxes, fiddle, guitar and bass – approach these old songs with a modern sensibility and international outlook. There is even a tinge of Cajun to ‘Cropper Lads’, a Luddite song. The arcane and ancient ‘Cutty Wren’ was sung during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 and is punctuated here by great wedges of today’s contemporary sounds. There is singing in Spanish and French and, throughout this outstanding album, a theatricality that hints of chanson, and which fits the material perfectly.
Julian May

Puts her previous albums in the shade

On her 2006 album, M’bem di Fora, it felt as if Lura’s verve was being tempered by the need to sound a bit like Cesaria Evora. But the subsequent success of Mayra Andrade and Sara Tavares has allowed her, and a whole new wave of Cape Verde musicians, to find their own sound. Eclipse will fit neatly into anyone’s ‘Cape Verde nova’ collection alongside Andrade’s Navega, Tavares’ Balancê and Tcheka’s Lonji. It’s every bit as rich, varied and satisfying. And it’s the first Lura record to capture the vivacity and variety of her sparkling stage show.
The album is rooted in tradition without being lost in nostalgia. Even wistful mornas like the title-track (a B Leza classic) are garnished with stylistic flourishes from Portuguese and world music and filtered through contemporary production. There is also, of course, plenty of modern Cape Verdean music here: ‘Na Nha Rubera’ typifies the arse-wiggling funanás that are all the rage in the islands nowadays; ‘Orfelino’ is a morna-tinged ballad; and uptempo numbers like ‘Libramor’ and ‘Mascadjôn’ recall coladeira. The album closes with Teofilo Chantre’s delicious, goose-pimpling tango ‘Canta Um Tango’, recorded in collaboration with Armani-suited Neapolitans Kantango. It is surely destined to be a cocktail-bar hit. Lura’s voice is magnificent throughout; at times reflective and mournful, at others as euphoric as a carnival samba.
Alex Robinson

Aussie islander takes on Celtic tunes

This is an album that celebrates the musical ingenuity of the mandolin and the deep resonant poetry within traditional Irish and Scottish music. With no melodic or harmonic backing – just the fine percussion of James Mackintosh – Luke Plumb displays a blistering virtuosity right from the opening track, ‘The Ladies’ Pantalettes’, a song as delightfully wanton as its title suggests. It’s followed by the breathtaking ‘The Snuff Wife’ and ‘The Drunken Landlady’, animated by the mandolin’s double-course strings. They pay testament to this instrument’s capacity for expression, to Plumb’s creativity and to his love of the genre. He’s a regular with Scottish band Shooglenifty, who he joined after a chance meeting in his Tasmanian home. He subsequently learnt their entire set, flew to Devonport to meet them and surprised one and all by joining them on stage for the whole gig. But he insists that this album displays a resolutely Australian take on these traditional tunes.
It is certainly thick with the true poetry of fine folk music. ‘Ashtray on the Altar’ has the feel of a frenetic Sunday morning bar crawl, funded by money that should have dropped into the church coffers. ‘Battle of the Somme’ speaks of hope planted knee-deep in the mud of the trenches, set to the military thrum of Mackintosh’s bodhrán, while ‘Beauty Spot’ sets you twitching in the direction of the dance floor. A Splendid Notion – it certainly is.
Matt Swaine