Waiting for a printout at the Central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library last week, started browsing the eclectic-is-an-understatement "World" CD section and ended up carrying home almost a dozen records, including these gems.
Le Rail Band (feat. Mory Kante), African Classics (Canto 2007) This is what Salif Keita's famous band did after he left. And it's got some neat surprises even for those familiar with the Malian institution. "Walenumalombaliya" starts with a distorted guitar wail that would raise up Hendrix himself. And "Mariba Yassa" has what sounds to me like an African twist on yeyé psychedelia.
Brian Jones presents The Pipes of Pan At Jajouka (Point Music 1995) I used to own this record and ended up selling it, because the Stones guitarist's incursion into Moroccan music -- basically recording the Master Musicians of Jajouka at a village festival in 1971 -- while supremely influential, just didn't grab me. Now that I've heard a lot more Moroccan and gnawa music, I was able to hear a little more context around it. Plus I dig thinking of Ornette Coleman hearing the drone and translating it to his own playing.
Blond Blond, Tresors de la Chanson Judéo-Arabe (Buda Musique 2006) The cover fella is an albino Maghreb-Jewish singer, born in
Oran, Algeria, who worked in Paris in the late 1930s. As you'd expect, his songs are chanson, chaabi and a little cante jondo sounding stuff too. The whole al-andalus spectrum in one record.
Vieux Farka Touré, Self-titled (World Village 2006) I missed this debut record by Ali Farka Touré's son, as well as the gigs he played around town at the time. Bad, bad, bad. Because this record is a new classic, or should be. "Diabaté" alone, an instrumental with Malian master (and Vieux mentor) Toumani Diabaté on kora is worth a stack of blues records.
Rahim AlHaj, When the Soul is Settled: Music of Iraq (Smithsonian Folkways 2006) Aside from the kora, the oud is probably one of my favorite stringed instruments. As soon as I heard this, I ranked it up there with a Munir Bashir record I picked up on a whim in Paris (knew nothing about him, but heard it play in the store at the Institute du Monde Arabe and had to have it). Well, it turns out Rahim AlHaj was his student. AlHaj went into exile after the first Gulf War, first to Jordan and Syria and since 2000 to Albuquerque, NM. This is what "the enemy" sounds like.
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