Folk Radio is still very much focussed on music discovery, so I naturally still spend a lot of time looking for new music rather than relying on automated mailouts, press releases etc. to find music to write about. Six Picks is just a simple way for me to highlight some of the music I’ve recently come across which you may enjoy. If you like my mixes (like the latest one here) then you may enjoy these editorial bite-size eclectic selections as well.
These are not reviews and they are not bound by genres, labels and other human trifles…
I picked up my vinyl copy of Om Shanti Om via the good folk at Cafe Oto which was released last year on Black Sweat Records. An amazing document of the life experiment that was the Organic Music Society. This super quality audio, recorded by RAI (the Italian public broadcasting company) in 1976 for television, documents a quartet concert focused on vocals compositions and improvisations. Here, Don Cherry and his family-community’s musical belief emerges in its simplicity, with the desire to merge the knowledge and stimuli gained during numerous travels across the World in a single sound experience.
Don’s pocket-trumpet is melted with the beats of the great Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, the Italian guitar of Gian Piero Pramaggiore, and the tanpura drone of Moki. A pure hippie aesthetic, like in an intimate ceremony, filters a magical encounter between Eastern and Western civiliziations, offering different suggestions of sound mysticism: natural acoustics in which individual instruments and voices are part of a wider pan-tribal consciousness.
A desert Western landscape marries Asian and Latin atmospheres. Indigenous contributions with berimbau explorations find fossil sounds of rattles and clap-hands invocations. Influences of Indian mantra singing are combined with eternal African voices or with folkish-Latin guitar rhythms , while flute and drums evoke distant dances. In the Organic Music everything becomes an act of devotion and love, an ecstatic dwell in the dimension of a sacred free-rejoice.
My copy included a beautifully written introduction by Gian Piero Pramaggiore (guitar, flute) who recalls a story related to the opening track Luna Turca – they were playing Parco Lambro festival in Milan and when they started, the atmosphere was very tense due to the previous gathering. He recalls having to keep stopping due to the mood and Don told him “Sing Luna Turca man, play Luna Turca’. “I closed my eyes and started to hum the song, alone. It slowly took shape, and when I opened them again, I saw an ocean of little flames wavering above the huge audience (of 90,000). From that moment on it was pure magic. We had gone from interruptions to ovations.”
Aoife O’Donovan – Live from the Church of the Sacred Heart
Just after the first lockdown in March 2020, Aoife O’Donovan released a gorgeously warm live album titled An Evening of Songs Performed at Home. She followed this in October last year with another live album that was recorded at Black Birch Vineyard in Hatfield, Massachusetts. This latest offering is another intimate solo show, performed for Dreamstage Live at the Church of the Sacred Heart on September 20, 2020 in the Hudson Valley of New York. As well as featuring music from her three solo albums she also treats us, for the first time on record, a cover of Hiss Golden Messenger‘s song “Father Sky”.
Cameron Knowler – Live @ the Eastman House (Houston, TX) December 29, 2018
Released on Philadelphia label ‘Dear Life Records’, this is an intimate house show taping (around 37 minutes) recorded in 2018. It features Cameron Knowler who has just co-released a new album with Eli Winter (Anticipation) – it was in fact recorded at the end of a tour with Winter. The tour started in Dallas, winding along into Far West Texas, the duo honed a repertoire of solo and duo material. Arriving home in Houston, they were greeted with a packed house of familiar faces, making the din both confidence-inspiring and fragile. We feature the opening set of tunes in our latest Lost in Transmission show (No. 69).
The fifth release from the mysterious Borg as the Swedish musician takes us on another journey into medieval woodland. The deep drones of the opening track will be enough to dilate your pupils before we settle down for the tranquil remainder. The album is strangely ancient and modern…archaic folk music which, for a solo project, will delight and astound in equal measure.
Shovel Dance Collective – Offcuts and Oddities
Jacken Elswyth, the London-based banjo player also responsible for Betwixt & Between Tapes, is joined by 8 other South London based musicians, all involved in various other projects, that snowballed into existence at the end of 2019. Recorded variably on field recorders and phones.
All tracks recorded at Lewisham Arthouse, Fidelma’s living room or the solitude of viral quarantine.
A new release on Chicago’s Mississippi Records introduces us to the musical world of Shem Tupe Andayi who lives in a small house with a tin roof in Bunyore, Western Kenya. The surrounding hills, crowned by sacred glacial boulders, roll down to Lake Victoria. The River Yala traces their valleys. Its banks are home to a disproportionate number of Kenya’s great guitarists.
Music has taken Shem across Kenya, throughout the region, and even briefly to Europe. But he always returns to Bunyore, where he was born in 1938. For two days in May 2016, Cyrus Moussavi sat with Shem, his wife Jessica Andayi, and a rotating cast of family and friends, recording music and stories about the unique acoustic style he helped define.
In the late 1960s, Shem Tupe, Justo Osala and Enos Okola formed Abana Ba Nasery (Nursery Boys), a trio characterized by cascading dual-guitar melodies and vocal harmonies in a pure Luhya style. These songs have been digitized and restored directly from Shem’s personal collection of 45s, and have never before been issued outside of Kenya. This release includes a PDF with liner notes and photos by Cyrus Moussavi, who traveled to Bunyore, Kenya in 2016 to meet, interview and record Shem Tupe. Originally released on cassette in 2017 with all proceeds sent to Shem Tupe and Enos Okola, the surviving members of Abana Ba Nasery. Sadly, Shem Tupe passed away in February, 2021. A second edition of this cassette is being made available as a fundraiser for the family of Shem Tupe, and to help keep this beautiful music alive and appreciated.