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Artist:
Abaji
Title: Origine
Orients
Label: Absilone
Music
ans-Mediterranean Blues in Five
Languages
and the Instrumentarium of Abaji
“I
just can't play a new instrument,” laughs Lebanese-born multi-instrumentalist
and singer-songwriter Abaji. “I always fall for the old broken
ones. It's like one broken heart speaking to another, and I feel I can
transform these old instruments into the sounds I hear in my head.”
These sounds and the adapted, revived instruments that make them reverberate
on Origine Orients (Absilone Music; November 10, 2009), as Abaji re-imagines
his lost-and-found trans-Mediterranean roots and draws on a wildly inventive
“instrumentarium,” a deep sense of the global blues, and the
five languages and traditions that shaped him.
For the young Abaji, “Everything was music. When I was ten or eleven,
I got really involved with sounds. Not just the guitar, but the sounds
themselves,” the special sonic melting pot of Greek and Turkish
his family spoke at home, the Arabic he used in public, and the French
he used at school. From a musical family-Abaji's Armenian grandmother
played the oud (lute), his great-grandmother the kanun (zither), and
his six maternal aunts were all passionate and contentious musicians-Abaji
started playing and experimenting on an inexpensive Chinese-built guitar
alone in his Beirut bedroom, listening to Cat Stevens, Credence Clearwater
Revival, and Bob Dylan while strains of Oum Kaltoum and Turkish music
drifted in the window.
However, his musical education began in earnest on his fateful first
day in Paris, where he fled when conflict erupted in Lebanon in the
mid-1970s. “I was saved from war, but war also saved me,”
Abaji reflects.
He had lost paradise, the peculiar mix of languages and the dozens of
musical styles that echoed on the streets of his native land. It was
something the rock-and-blues-loving teenager had never grasped while
still at home. Yet at the same time, he realized that music was his
calling and began studying percussion with an inspiring Brazilian player,
soon moving on to voraciously explore dozens of other instruments. “I
went through a whole life of instruments,” Abaji muses. “I'm
still buying instruments. Sometimes friends tell me, 'Hey, you don't
know how to play those instruments! Why did you buy them?' My answer:
Because I don't know how to play them! ”
Abaji's passion for instruments-and he has more than 250-stems from
his deep desire to take the sounds he began to hear as a young man and
turn them into uniquely vibrant, uniquely personal music. As he devoured
everything from the bouzouki to the Colombian bamboo saxophone, however,
he saw he needed to more than just play them; he had to reinvent them.
“I always have a sound in mind, and one question: How can I bring
it to life through an instrument? I had to talk to instrument builders
and get them to change things, but I didn't have a dime to my name,”
Abaji recalls. “I had to find solutions with luthiers that weren't
so expensive.” This frugality-forced creativity breathed new life
into old instruments on their last legs, transforming them into cross-cultural
amalgams.
The result: one-of-a-kind hybrids like the resonant sitar-guitar or
an invention that appears on Origine Orients, the oud-guitar. “It
made perfect sense. I took an old classical guitar headed for the trash,
removed the frets so I could play quarter notes, and doubled the nylon
strings to have the lute effect,” Abaji explains. “It was
my first step back into paradise. I'm not Spanish. I'm not Lebanese.
I'm a Mediterranean guy whose ancestors traded along the Silk Road,
the missing link between the two, and the oud-guitar is my double.”
Another missing link unites Abaji's diverse roots and musical visions:
“Everything is related to the blues. People say the blues were
born in Africa, but really, they appeared when humanity was born.”
For Abaji, the blues is a worldwide phenomenon, a sonic trade route
stretching from Afghanistan to the U.S. “The blues are everywhere:
Before America, it came from Africa, but in Africa, it came from the
Eastern people who arrived with Islam,” he explains. “People
talk of the banjo coming from Africa. But before that came the rebab
from Afghanistan, the great-grandfather of the banjo.”
Abaji has worked to capture his own trans-Mediterranean brand of the
blues, not only by creating new instruments, but by developing a unique
approach in the studio. For Origine Orients, he decided he needed to
record all his songs in a single take playing all the instruments himself,
without overdubs. Abaji turned himself into a global one-man-band, in
part thanks to the acrobatic aplomb and grace he developed as a tai-chi
instructor. He began playing piano with the Colombian sax (“Origine
Orients”), or oud-guitar with stomp boxes and rattles (“Min
Jouwwa”), singing all the while in a deep voice reminiscent of
one of Abaji's favorite folk-blues performers, Greg Brown.
On “Desert to Desert,” he recounts, “I had the bouzouki
on my lap like a lap steel guitar, with my right hand on the strings.
In my left hand was a Balinese bamboo flute I was using as a bottleneck.
That meant I could also use it as a flute. And while I'm at it, why
not use this as a stick to bang on the daf drum?” Abaji laughs.
“After I recorded the track, I thought I was in deep trouble-that
I'd never be able to reproduce it!”
Along with unexpected instruments and intuitive techniques, Abaji also
intertwines all the languages that have shaped his life: the Turkish
of heated family discussions and secret maternal cursing; the Greek
of parties and celebrations; the French and Arabic of everyday life;
and finally, the Armenian of Abaji's long-lost roots, a heritage that
he was not aware of until his brother did some genealogical digging.
This rediscovered language forms the heart of the album, and the song
“Menz Baba” emerged from a bluesy exploration of Armenian's
sound and the life of Abaji's Armenian grandfather. “When I started
working on this song, I began to write some words in Armenian with help
from an Armenian friend,” Abaji notes. “Then she taught me
some words. I asked for a translation of certain words, choosing words
by the way they sing. Because the words sing, not only the voice.”
Even after regaining paradise, the search for the ultimate soulful sound
and deep link to the past continues for Abaji. “Sometimes you are
happy because you think you've got it, that this is just the thing.
But you always have to improve. In my head, I'm always searching, opening
doors, going left or right. It can be a bit tricky to live with sometimes,”
Abaji chuckles. “But I made this album exactly the way I wanted
it, totally and completely, and hopefully now people can understand
my music totally.”
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Artist: The
Black Seeds
Title: Solid
Ground
Label:
Easy Star Records
Aotearoa
Dub: The Black Seeds Plant New Zealand's Roots Sounds on U.S. Soil
The Lord of the Rings put New Zealand's beauty and creative spirit on
the pop culture map. Flight of the Conchords revealed New Zealand's
unique wit. Now reggae/funk sensations The Black Seeds-Conchord friends
and former band mates-are ready to take listeners one step deeper into
the Other Down Under, with infectious grooves, slamming brass, and booty
shaking beats on the group's first North American release, Solid Ground
(Easy Star Records; released exclusively on iTunes September 15; everywhere
else September 29, 2009), and on their debut US tour with John Brown's
Body this September.
Down-and-dirty dancehall and the deep throb of dub may sound like a
Kiwi novelty, but New Zealand's sparkling beaches and green, rolling
hills proved the perfect place for transplanting Jamaican sounds. Reggae
has been a passion for New Zealanders since the 1970s, marked by a pivotal
Bob Marley concert in 1979 and the growing support and struggle for
Maori cultural and political recognition in their native land of Aotearoa,
the Maori name for New Zealand.
The Maoris' battle for their rights and their land was mirrored in classic
reggae's socially conscious lyrics, and Rastafarianism resonated with
young Maoris and European-heritage New Zealanders alike-New Zealand
even boasts a Rastafarian MP, the Green Party's Nandor Tanczos. The
music and lifestyle flourished in the laidback island vibe of Wellington,
the country's small coastal metropolis with its village feel, vibrant
arts scene, and penchant for jazz, dub, and hip hop.
“It's all about the island sound,” laughs The Black Seeds'
guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter Barnaby Weir. “Speed ukulele,
church choirs, the rhythm of the Samoan log drum. After all, if you
live on the island, are you going to put on AC/DC?”
Departing from the keyboard-heavy underground scene of the 1980s, today's
New Zealand reggae, thanks in part to bands like The Black Seeds, has
dug into 1970s-flavored funk and soul, and spawned popular reggae festivals,
#1 hits, and multi-platinum album sales. “New Zealand reggae is
not strictly reggae. We have our own sounds. It's been a small but influential
scene for a long time, and as a teen, I remember going to hear big sound
systems,” Weir recalls. “We've been playing parties for something
like fifteen years. But the scene now has hit a popular phase. It's
almost a trend in a way. Being from an underground band, I've watched
it really come into its own over the last five years.”
Coming into its own has also meant hitting the world stage, as audiences
and critics across Australasia and Europe have embraced The Black Seeds'
brand of Aotearoa dub. Along with going double-platinum in New Zealand
for previous releases and earning strong reviews worldwide for Solid
Ground, The Black Seeds regularly sell out shows in Europe and perform
at major festivals such as Denmark's Roskilde, London's Lovebox, Holland's
Lowlands Festival, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, as well as playing
on popular television music shows like France's Canal Plus. Now, North
America, home to its own burgeoning home-grown reggae scene, will finally
get a taste of New Zealand's increasingly popular reggae vibes.
The Black Seeds have ridden this rising reggae tide, working out of
a studio dubbed The Surgery that the band converted from a once condemned
Wellington karate dojo. A maze of halls, rooms, and nooks, it's practice
space, recording studio, and funky spiritual home all in one. “The
Surgery is a fairly humble but well-used studio. It's our headquarters.
It's not flash. But it's f*ckin' good!” Weir exclaims.
The Surgery has incubated a shifting sound over the years that the band,
tight from months of touring when they recorded Solid Ground, wryly
calls “future-retro.” Strictly roots, molten bass and punchy
brass collide with edgy funk beats (as on “Rotten Apple”)
and what Weir calls the “spacey textures” of tracks like “Slingshot,”
all with a gently optimistic Kiwi twang.
The new reggae rage in New Zealand rose from the grassroots, much like
its counterpart scene in the US, as groups like The Black Seeds and
John Brown's Body spend years pounding the road with hardcore touring.
Now with support of renegade label Easy Star-the devious masterminds
behind Dub Side of the Moon, Radiodread, and Easy Star's Lonely Hearts
Dub Band-unconventional reggae groups like The Black Seeds and JBB are
creating a new generation of devoted fans hungry for the music and the
spirit reflected in the Seeds' name: the legendary panacea of Black
Seed Oil and the roots that remind humanity of our common origin.
“We are all from the cradle of civilization in the Congo, and it
all developed from there and migrated all the way to the islands of
the South Pacific,” muses Weir. “We made it down here. There
are African rhythms in every music, and we believe you can find the
journey of the rhythm all the way down to New Zealand.”
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Artist: Kitka
Title: Cradle
Songs
Label: Diaphonica
Recordings
A Cosmic Dreamscape: The Haunting, Intimate World of Eastern
European Lullabies Unfolds on Kitka's Cradle Songs
The mother, the cradle, the voice, and the universe. Melodies born on
dry slopes and in deep boreal forests to the joys and sorrows of families
from villages in the Russian Far North to Armenia and Greece. This is
the lullaby as revealed by America's preeminent Eastern European vocal
ensemble and creative collective, Kitka. Kitka's latest album, Cradle
Songs (Diaphonica Recordings; Nov. 3, 2009), is an unexpected, gentle
journey through the traditions that shaped young dreams along the eastern
edges of Europe and a song-cycle that embraces the ensemble's personal
sonic memories of childhood.
The pastel smiles and hush-a-bye ditties many in the West associate
with lullabies and children's songs are a world away from the pensive,
magic-steeped, and sometimes dark songs sung over the cradles in Slavic,
Balkan and Caucasian cultures. “These songs were not only about
putting a baby to sleep. They summon something bigger, something cosmic,"
muses Kitka singer Shira Cion. “We wanted to create something different
than a purely sweet and sentimental album. We envisioned an album that
captured all the depth and dimensions of motherhood.”
This quest for a different kind of lullaby project was sparked by Kitka's
audiences, who urged the group to record a collection of the most elemental
genre of woman's songs. The project took flight in a series of serendipitous
meetings with the extraordinary Armenian singer, Hasmik Harutyunyan,
who unveiled an entire landscape of lullabies that departed from the
cute and cuddly. “The Armenian lullaby texts have stunningly beautiful
poetry, with a lot of powerful, natural and cosmic imagery. But there
are also lyrics that convey intense sadness and longing,” Cion
explains. “The songs tell histories of children and parents lost,
of cultural genocide. In many Eastern European lullabies, the mother
pours out all the grief, fears, and hopes in her soul when she sings
to her child. Our close friend and mentor in Ukrainian folk song, Mariana
Sadovska, even jokingly refers to some of the cradle songs from her
native tradition as 'sadistic lullabies.'”
"At first, I found these lullabies really challenging,” reflects
Kitka singer Janet Kutulas, whose Greek family sang her one of the songs
the group wove into “Nani, Nani, Kitka Mou.” “They seemed
almost inaccessibly dark. But the more you listen to them, the more
and more beautiful they become. They aren't your stereotypical tra-la-la
lullaby.”
As Kitka mined libraries and recordings, worked with traditional singers,
and summoned early musical memories, they discovered more striking melodies
that went far beyond simple, purely innocent tunes. The Georgian lullaby
“Megruli Nana” harkens back to the ancient goddess of light
and fertility, called Nana in Western Georgian languages, who is asked
to protect the infant as they drift into the dangerous liminal place
between wakefulness and dreamtime. Another Georgian song, “Es Ak'vani,”
is sung as a circle-dancing chorus ritually lays a baby in his cradle
for the first time. “Oj Jano, Jano,” from Macedonia, is almost
an anti-lullaby, depicting a young husband asking his wife why they
cannot conceive a child. The wife answers that when she was an infant,
her mother cursed her with childlessness because she slept all day and
wailed all night.
“Dzurk, Dzurk,” a lullaby of the Komi-the Finno-Ugric peoples
of far northwestern Russia-mimics the sound of the birch cradle creaking
as the baby is rocked. The ancient song came to Kitka as a serendipitous
gift facilitated by 21st century technology. Kutulas discovered the
melody in an old book, and with Cion, tried to learn more about the
unfamiliar language. The key to unlocking the mysteries of the Komi-Zyrian
language came via email, when one of Komi's most beloved singers sent
mp3s of herself singing the song as she recalled it from childhood.
“Here's this woman we've never met who somehow had access to a
digital recorder,” Kutulas gushes. “We were so enamored with
the soundbites she sent that we seriously considered putting them on
the CD.”
Yet the stark beauty of the Komi singer's performance and the other
lullabies the group had gathered presented a unique challenge to Kitka:
how to transform songs traditionally sung by a single mother's voice
into pieces for an eight-voice ensemble that would capture listeners'
imaginations and not lull them deeply into dreamland.
“We really grappled with the idea of what the album would be like,”
Kutulas explains. “A lot of people had come up to us at concerts
and said, pointedly, 'I hope you are making a CD we can put on so our
child will go to sleep.' We said, 'yeah, sure, sure.' But when we thought
about it, we wondered if we really wanted make an entire CD of slow
sleepy songs. We went through a whole exploration, and settled upon
a more varied, dreamscape-like collection of songs”
The process unfolded over several years. The group sought a variety
of creative solutions to the solo lullaby-vocal ensemble challenge.
Kitka even commissioned an original by Bay Area composer Dan Cantrell:
“Slow to the Dawn,” based on Sephardic lullaby texts. New
arrangements of traditional melodies were created, some involving weaving
lullabies from different regions together. Three of Hartyunyan's lullabies
became a hypnotic tapestry of songs in “Three Armenian Lullabies,”
in which three Kitka soloists overlay individual melodies above an ensemble
vocal drone that recalls the warm, soothing, plaintive timbre of the
traditional Armenian double-reed instrument, the duduk.
Sometimes, finding the right arrangement meant playfully intertwining
songs from Kitka members' families with unexpectedly related traditional
tunes. “Butterfly Songs” unites a joyful folk song singer
Caitlin Tabacay Austin had learned in Bulgaria and a fluttering, hocketing
duet composed by Kutulas' five-year-old niece. “Bedtime Story”
combines Russian and Ukrainian lullabies with a pleasant meandering
mix of folk and fairy tales, a spoken-word first for the group.
Other arrangements emerged in surprising moments of play. The ensemble
discovered a whole new side of one of Cion's favorite childhood lullabies
that forms the heart of the opening track “Cradle Song,” a
Russian Jewish tune sung as a round. “We were going to record it
in its original form,” recalls singer and co-producer Briget Boyle.
“Janet and Caitlin found a toy piano and Fischer-Price glockenspiel
in the studio lounge. We decided, just for fun, to record them jamming
on the Komi lullaby melody. It turned out creepy and interesting. When
we came back to record the Russian lullaby, four or five of us simultaneously
realized, 'Hey, that toy-instrument track would work really well with
the Russian-Jewish lullaby!'”
Kitka did discover several lullaby genres that were polyphonic. In Georgia,
Cion discovered why some folk lullabies are sung by multiple voices.
“I was in a centuries-old house in the high Caucasus,” Cion
recalls. “These dwellings are built around a hearth, and because
winters are incredibly cold, the extended family sleeps together around
the fire. When a baby won't sleep, it's a whole-family issue. So Granny,
Mama, Auntie and the sisters lull the child together, often in luscious
three-part harmony.”
Another selection that showcases a lullaby traditionally sung by an
ensemble is the startlingly bold “Nanourisma” from the Greek-Albanian
mountain region of Epirus where multi-part lullabies in primeval-sounding
pentatonic scales produce a mesmerizing effect.
The nature of lullabies dictated that even with innovative arrangements,
the sequence of songs would spell the difference between an evocative
soundscape and an overly soporific CD. “We came up with a balance
between the soothing and the edgy that we hope will encourage kids to
sleep and adults to relax,” smiles Kutulas. “We put a lot
of consideration into which songs would follow which, so people could
easily move in and out of the different moods.”
“Everything had intention. Before recording, we had 60 songs to
choose from. The ones that made it on the album had so much purpose
and thought behind them,” Boyle adds. “The weaning down was
the most challenging part. There were so many beautiful lullabies we
all loved. Eventually, it became about what we needed to do to create
the most compelling dreamscape.”
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