A street scene in Mumbai. (Flickr/Christopher John SSF)
I am going on vacation! Well, actually I am attending a conference first, and then I get to visit my husband’s family in India.
For the rest of the month, we will not be publishing any new content on Apsara, but thanks to my terrific friend Toby who is filling in on Twitter and Facebook, we will still be able to feature artists regularly.
Thank you, truly, for a wonderful summer (and infinite thanks to Rose for her great energy and copy editing skills)! I look forward to seeing you when I return from my travels!
Given that many of the seeds of American folk music traveled across the Atlantic Ocean with the country’s early European immigrants, it is not entirely out of the question then that some of the techniques and sounds that evolved over the past couple of centuries should eventually double back. On Remember, an album originally released in 2009 by guitarist Yair Yona, American folk music has traveled through the Straits of Gibraltar and found its way to Israel.
Reissued last year, Remember boasts 10 masterful (and musically witty) fingerstyle guitar melodies embodied with the spirit of American and British masters of the genre and, of course, Yona’s own wonderful creativity. The tracks consist largely of fingerstyle acoustic guitar, with a variety of other instruments and different styles of music joining in on some of the songs.
“Russian Dance”
On the track “Russian Dance,” for example, Yona conjures up the sound of a Russian folk dance. The instruments—12-string guitar, banjo, accordion, and mandolin (sounding like a balalaika)—blend perfectly here, with the banjo carrying much of the tune. Through the changes in tempo and intensity, it is not difficult to imagine the dance steps that would accompany the song.
“Floodgate Opens to Allow a Ship to Come Through (As It Carries the Passenger Fahey On It)”
“Floodgate Opens to Allow a Ship to Come Through” pays homage to late guitarist John Fahey, and is another song in which Yona’s talent for sonic imagery displays itself. Electric guitar builds the crescendo behind six-string acoustic guitar, signifying the floodgate opening and the passage of a large ship through it. As the melody winds down, the heavy gate closes and the ship continues on its path downriver.
Remember is by far one of the most original and enjoyable albums that I have discovered this summer. Listen to it for just a few minutes, and you will find yourself unconsciously tapping your feet and swaying your head in time to the rhythm of its pleasingly twangy melodies. Be sure to check it out, as well as Yona’s site, which contains samples of his forthcoming album due out later this year.
Canadian musicians Béatrice Martin and Jay Malinowski offer up five tracks of vintage-sounding pop evocative of 1950s and 60s western music on their February 2011 release Armistice.
Through their instrumentization and lyrics, the songs on this album are filled with nostalgia for driving through the lonely desert, stopping at remote diners and gas stations. Song titles like “Jeb Rand” and “Neon Love” hint at what the album offers. Los Angeles-based punk band the Bronx—in the guise of “Mariachi El Bronx”—provides the instrumental backing to Martin and Malinowski’s low-fi vocals.
Short and sweet, “Armistice” is fun but definitely not kitsch. It brings a smile and a warm feeling, like listening to Patsy Cline on AM radio or catching the closing credits of Rawhide.
After listening in early June to the “From Brazil with Love” episode of the excellent new NPR show Alt.Latino, I became hooked on the album Red Hot + Rio 2.
The three weeks’ wait for its June 28 release was well worth it. Now with thirty-three Tropicália-inspired songs loaded onto my MP3 player, I have a lot of music to enjoy and reflect upon during my daily train ride.
Red Hot + Rio 2 is the most recent compilation produced by the New York City-based nonprofit HIV/AIDS awareness and relief organization Red Hot. Here are two tracks that give just a small taste of the breadth of styles and artists on this expansive compilation.
“Um Girassol da Cor do Seu Cabelo” (“A Sunflower the Color of Your Hair”)
Inventive singer-songwriter Mia Doi Todd of Los Angeles and José González, an Argentine-Swedish folk musician, give new voice to this song by Lô Borges, a founder of the influential Clube da Esquina music collective.
“O Leãozinho” (“Little Lion”)
American indie-folk band Beirut produced this march-like rendition of a song originally by Brazilian artist Caetano Veloso, a noted Tropicálista. (This track is currently available for free download on the Red Hot website.)
I bought Blind Threshold (2010), the third and most recent album by the Oakland, CA-based roots-electronica group Beats Antique, well over a month ago and still listen to it almost every single day. If I had this on vinyl rather than in MP3 format, it would be worn out by now.
So what is so captivating about the album? The eclectic, almost indescribable sound.
The three members of Beats Antique—David Satori, Tommy Cappel, and Zoe Jakes—bring together a diverse and well-trained musical background spanning Western European classical to hip hop, with knowledge of music from Eastern Europe, West Africa, the Middle East, and other regions of the world. This comes through in the album’s fourteen tracks as a bass-heavy, richly layered melding of electronified strings, percussion, horns, and vocals. John Popper of Blues Traveler even lends his harmonica to the track “There Ya Go.”
“Egyptic,” the album’s opening track, is the ideal accompaniment to a tribal belly dance performance, and small wonder with Jakes’ background with Bellydance Superstars and Indigo Belly Dance Company. The song opens quietly, with a line of simple beats and melody, before building into a crescendo of bass, strings, and darbuka. Heavy electronic reverberations replace and also fill the space between the melody and percussion throughout the entire song.
“Rising Tide” features lush vocals by LYNX atop violins and banjo, with occasional forays into the pentatonic scale found in the music of North Africa and the Middle East. It is beautiful, unusual, and a little haunting with the lyrics:
With your altars made of trash,
the aftermath of disposable dreams.
You know that you were born,
for more than what machines provide.
Unlike most of Beats Antique’s other songs, which are largely instrumental, the vocals take center stage here before “Rising Tide” closes with the sound of fading violins.
If you have not heard it yet, Blind Threshold is well worth checking out, as is Contraption, Vol. 1, also with vocals by LYNX and a heavy dose of dub. And if you ever have a chance to see Beats Antique live, their shows are famous for their color and spectacle, as exemplified by this performance at the 2009 Sonic Boom Festival.
I bought Blind Threshold (2010), the third and most recent album by the Oakland, CA-based roots-electronica group