Sunday at Bob's #29 - How Do We Get At It First?

Welcome back for yet another magic hour with Sunday at Bob's! I would like to begin by addressing the few additions that I made to the blog last week. I had been talking about it for a while and I finally got on with it, the list of cool blogs I was preparing is here, on the side. I might add some later on but this is already a lot of exciting material to explore. I also added on top of that a link that shall remain permanently towards an discussion I had the honour of having a few weeks back, which I mentioned in the last post. Last but not least, we have ourselves a new banner paying tribute to the beautiful Fanitullen. That being said, let's begin.

I only heard last week about the immense monument of Afro Beat, drummer Tony Allen, leaving us and thought some sort of tribute imposed itself. I won't talk too much about the great career (for lack of a better word) of this amazing musician. Rather I would just like to remember these shifts where his albums played one after the other in the lobby. One time I played the whole masterclass he did with Moses Boyd (who was featured here months ago) and confused the guests who were chilling on the couches. It was worth it. So I thought we would begin with an extract from this master class and a short exchange between two great drummers of their own generation. A bit like Jean Gabin and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Un singe en hiver. A bit. It is followed by a song from his album Secret Agent.

Fantastic Man William Onyeabor was only a few years younger than Tony Allen. He left us in 2017. It has been some time I wanted to talk about him on Sunday at Bob's and I think now is the moment. Because he has in common with Tony Allen an impressive and innovative discography, but a life path rather different. Both are from this musically inifitely fertile earth that is Nigeria. Onyeabor is still to this day a mystery to most and I would like to link you to this short film Noisey made about him and the story of his rediscovery instead of trying to sum it up. I just thought it could be an interesting parallel to draw between the two giants.

We go on with Manu "Papagroove" Dibango. Also refered to as Papa Manu, he does us the honour with a song I like to think of as the Cameroonese version of La ville s'endormait from Jacques Brel. A musical transcription of an evening at the village.

I am not sure we heard Bugge Wesseltoft here before, although he released a very cool album with Prins Thomas a couple of years back and was always in the back of my head for the playlist. If I am not mistaken, in the song we have here the trumpet is by my compatriot Erik Truffaz. I started to listen again to Wesseltoft prior to going to Norway, when I asked myself the usual pre-travel question: Do I know any musician from there?

It is followed by one of the good surprises of the past weeks, the album Snoopy by CS + Kreme. I don't know anything about them and so I won't expand but in the past weeks I have been looking into a genre I am very much stranger to and have been enjoying it a lot. These electronic fumes and vapors with little melodic twists that keep you hanging are exquisit and, if it was never my cup of tea, I am starting to fall in love.

For some reason I think Erik Satie just slipping in makes so much sense, I wouldn't know how to explain it but here is a transition dipped in honey. Him and Barbara are two enormous monuments of French music (music I have been researching in the past weeks and prepare yourself for some cool gems to come is all I can say) both in their respective fields. Barbara sings for us the lament of someone witnessing the love of their life take the train to Amsterdam with someone else. It is a song written by Jacques Brel and it is not common to succeed so magnificently an interpretation of a song wirtten by Jacques Brel. But then again, it is Barbara we are talking about.

Beloved of the wandering minstrels of yesterday, the genuine indian violin, Sarangi is one of the most popular instruments in the north Indian musical system. It is a short, stocky instrument whose 3 main strings are of animal gut while 35 metal strings acting as resonators give a vibrant richness to each note. The Sarangi is played with a bow, but the peculiarity of the instrument is in the way different notes are produced. There are no frets and instead of stopping the strings with the fingers as on the violin, the finger nails slide along the strings producing a continuous range of mellifluent notes. (…) The plaintive melody of the Sarangi has a haunting beauty all its own and in the hands of the master it weaves a magic spell that cannot fail to bind anyone. (source)

We close this shift with a magnificent piece by Sariza Cohen. It kills me not to be able to find more music from her. I would like to draw a link between this plainte (lament), and the quote from C.King we saw two weeks ago about Alexis Zoumbas and Blind Willie Johnson.

Here is a link to an interesting article about her, from a blog you can find in our new list.

That is all for today, I hope you enjoy and I see you in two weeks!

Check out time is now an idea, but it remains 10h30.

The receptionist

Playlist:

1. Tony Allen & Moses Boyd - Masterclass Boiler Room x Guardian Gateways
2. Tony Allen - Pariwo
3. William Onyeabor - Better Change Your Mind
4. Manu Dibango - Soir Au Village
5. Bugge Wesseltoft - Breed It
6. CS + Kreme - Saint
7. Erik Satie - Pièces Froides (Cold Pieces), 6 Pieces Pour Piano: Airs À Faire Fuir I
8. Barbara - Je ne sais pas
9. Ram Narayan - A Treasure from Solomon's Mines
10. Sariza Cohen - Plainte (Chekoua)