Sunday at Bob's #43 - Les racines au bistrot

 Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of your faithful almost-bi-weekly musical hour, Sunday at Bob's. I hope you are well. These days are great, very productive, much fertile and somehow it has affected my thirst for new music. I have been going back a lot, journeys in old usb sticks, in browser's history and favourited youtube links. An event in my life led me to re-discover a world I had put aside for a couple of years, French rap. You will have a little taste of that today, but not only, far from it. I did make pleasant discoveries too, often in fields we are not accustomed to have here (maybe we will at some point?), but we are here to learn, at least I am. Anyhow here is our latest playlist, it goes in various directions but I hope it will be of good companion to your sunday.

 

We begin with a song that a very dear friend showed me last year. It somehow manages to depict with great accuracy periods of my life my memory fantasised, through several lyrical tricks and personal references, while at the same time describing a very specific period in which I didn't exist in a specific place I have never been. Bernard Dimey sings the nightlife of Paris in the 1950s and 1960s. And he makes you feel like you were there. It is probably helped by the way his songs are recorded, it feels as if the recordings take place in the very room mentioned in the poems being recited. As if he sings about the Lux bar, inside the Lux bar and the accordeon you hear belongs more to the background music of the bar than to the instrumental of the song he sings. It is a very beautiful way to merge poetr and music, almost as if the music is the poem's frame, or pedestal.

We go on with a Franch rap band who I like to consider as heir of universes such as Dimey's, at least on their album Sans Chantilly, they later on pursued their career towards something different with which I have less connections but I do respect (I should be less categoric as today's track is taken from their album OVNI which came right after Sans Chantilly). This band is called Odezenne and I used to be a big fan. I discovered Dave Brubeck, Seul contre tous and more gems through their first album and am forever grateful. Here is a little bonus, a video of them spitting fire surrounded by the hottest freestylers of the early 2010s.

Then we have a song by the great Suzanne Kraft, on a magnificent duo album with Amsterdam based multi-instrumentalist Jonny Nash. It has been a while since I have the project of making a series of playlist which would consist of songs picked by painters based on what they listen to while painting. I have been harrassing a couple of friends whose work I love and who I know it would be very interesting to hear from, but so far it hasn't been fruitful. Howeve, if I had to make one myself, Suzanne Kraft would most definitely be on it.

We go on with a musician I sumbled upon thanks to W. Kandinsky's On the spiritual in art, Modest Mussorgsky, here interpreted by the great Brigitte Engerer. 

Pictures at an Exhibition (...) is a suite of ten pieces (plus a recurring, varied Promenade) composed for piano by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky in 1874. The suite is Mussorgsky's most-famous piano composition, and has become a showpiece for virtuoso pianists. It has become further known through various orchestrations and arrangements produced by other musicians and composers, with Maurice Ravel's 1922 version for full symphony orchestra being by far the most recorded and performed. (...) The composition is based on pictures by the artist, architect, and designer Viktor Hartmann. (source)

 

It is followed by a very cool recording of a Kulning (herding call). It is a kind of singing from certain parts of Norway and Sweden used to call back herds of cows, goats etc. from mountain pastures after a day of grazing. As I understand, different songs call different type of herds. It dates back to medieval times. I find them very beautiful, it reminds me of these whistled languages from islands around Spain I believe.

When a call is made in a valley, it rings and echoes against the mountains. The animals, a number of whom wear bells tuned so that the livestock's location can be heard, begin to respond to the call, answering back and the sound of the bells indicates that they are moving down the mountain towards their home farm. The kulokks can belong to an individual, but are sometimes family-based and are handed down so that a family's cows know they are being called and thus respond. A number of calls contain names of individual (sometimes the "lead") animals, as herds are not very large. (source)

 

Then we have a beautiful guitar piece by Robbie Basho who I find interesting for his Indian influences. He is followed by the great Galcher Lustwerk, one of my favourite contemporary musicians, the song we have today is slightly off in his discography but in a very cool and smart way. 

 

After that we enter a more festive part of our playlist with Kenny Dope and his remix of Bobby Hutcherson's La Malanga from the classic compilation Blue Note Revisited. It continues with the very peculiar associtation between Israeli band Sababa 5 whose music reminds us of Aris San who we are already familiar with, and the Japanese singer (bellydancer/derbuka player?) Yurika.

 

Amabano was a group of ten musicians hailing from Burundi and Congo. Active from the late ‘70s to the early ‘90s, they were the most popular and influential band in Burundi to date. Their innovative blend of styles, musical craftsmanship, and vision of a unified Burundi are still remembered today. In 1987 they released their only international album in the Soviet Union in limited numbers. (source) 

 

Also about Amabano, here is an interesting article.

We go on with Ethiopian legend Gétatchéw Mèkurya who has been played at Bob's many times and always brought light to this dark lobby. We have talked about Ethiopian music here many times and for now I don't have much to add except that it is always a great pleasure to hear it.

Then we have another star band from Batov Records (so were Sababa 5 & Yurika) El Khat. It is a band from Tel Aviv, all with different backgrounds – Iraq, Poland, Morocco, and Yemen. After them comes a jazz song from a band I know nothing about, but I found their album on one of my usb sticks and I really liked it. They are called Sitka Sun and their album is called All the Way West, I really recomend it. Then we have Mexican jazz legend Tino Contreras with a composition taken from his latest album La noche de los dioses. We end on a dancing note with a song from a fantastic compilation released recently on Analog Africa: Space Echo - The Mystery Behind the Cosmic Sound of Cabo Verde Finally Revealed!  

 

That's it for today I hope you enjoyed as much as I did, and I will see you in two weeks hopefully! In the meantime take care of yourself and your loved ones, much love.

Check out time is 10h30, beware.

The receptionist

Playlist:

1. Bernard Dimey - Au lux bar
2. Odezenne - Taxi
3. Jonny Nash & Suzanne Kraft - Inside
4. Brigitte Engerer - Pictures at an Exhibition: II. The old castle
5. Marta Myhr - Get och fårlock
6. Robbie Basho - Khatum (Instrumental)
7. Galcher Lustwerk - Thermonics
8. Kenny Dope - La Malanga
9. Sababa 5 & Yurika - Nasnusa
10. Amabano - Nteramajane
11. Gétatchéw Mèkurya - Shellela
12. El Khat - Balagh Al Achbaab
13. Sitka Sun - Dauntless
14. Tino Contreras - Malinche
15. Fany Havest - That Day