Featuring: Sutari, Jrpjej, Erlend Apneseth Trio, Sourdure, Stick in the Wheel, Burd Ellen, Angeline Morrison, Cocanha, Leyla McCalla, Aronde, Maurice Louca, Piers Faccini, Khagaudzh Ensemble.
One of the most enjoyable aspects of running Folk Radio is going off-piste. By that, I mean ignoring the hundreds of emails and press releases and looking for music that is new to me. It beats covering the same music as everyone else, which inevitably leads to homogenous and bland listening – a little like the Top 40.
So, with that in mind, while this week’s show may feature a few familiar names, the end result has been spectacularly rewarding. Many of those featured have an outsider DIY approach to folk music that fits in well with my tastes. The show notes are longer than usual due to the unique nature of the artists and music featured.
The show opens to Sutari, a female trio from Poland who we’ve previously featured but whose original homemade folk music sets the scene perfectly for what follows. The trip features Kasia Kapela, Basia Songin and Zosia Zembrzuska – when we last spoke to them in 2018, they were getting ready to tour with the Dead Rat Orchestra under the banner of Free Folk in Brexit Britain. They told us, “We still work on both theatre and music projects. Zosia is a manager of culture, promoting contemporary Polish composers outside Poland. Basia is a storyteller, and she performs with two music duos: Mehehe and Kuso. Kasia has a family-based band, Kapela Timingeriu, who play gipsy and klezmer music.
“We are from different cities and have diverse educations, but it is this diversity that we try to bring together as an ensemble. The place where we met was the alternative Theater Academy run by Gardzienice theatre, in the Polish countryside. It is a place with a very creative approach to music and art, and after we’d finished there, we decided to work together.
“Our name is Lithuanian. We were inspired by the old feminine songs, Sutartines, and the idea of common sound in the polyphony, so we called ourselves Sutari, which means to resonate, to agree.”
The first of two tracks from the North Caucasus band Jrpjej follow, taken from their recent album Taboo: Songs of Love & Death. While all band members grew up listening to Western rock, pop, or experimental music, they have since become immersed in the Circassian tradition. The Circassians, Cherkess or Adyghe are an indigenous Northwest Caucasian ethnic group and nation native to historical Circassia. Two of their members are Punk Ethnographers Bulat Khalilov and Timur Kodzoko, who also run Ored Recordings.
For over a decade, Bulat Khalilov and Timur Kodzoko have been recording local sounds of the North Caucasus. They are based in Nalchik, the capital of the republic of Kabardino-Balkarian (see map below), and I have immense respect for what they do. They call themselves DIY Ethnographers as they have no academic qualifications in this field but don’t let that fool you. Sub Rosa issued one of their releases on vinyl a while ago, which is how I came to hear of the label. You can find them on Bandcamp here. After chatting to Bulat recently, he told me he was friends with Lankum and Stick in the Wheel (who we also feature in the mix with The Cuckoo from their new album Tonebeds for Poetry) – what a wonderful small world it can be.
A track from Erlend Apneseth Trio‘s recent release, LOKK gets a welcome look in. Thomas Blake recently described their influences as covering a huge range: “wide-eyed, cultish freak-folk rubs shoulders with musique concrete, archival recordings flirt with modernist composition and traditional dance tunes coexist with wild and unfettered jazz.”
He concludes: “As experimental as Lokk is, it is also surprisingly approachable. Melodies weave in and out of each track, guided by the propulsiveness of the rhythms, and there is something different and aurally arresting at every turn. It’s rare to hear a band creating genuinely new music with a basis in traditional forms, but Apneseth’s trio have managed it on more than one occasion. Their latest album is their most vivid and satisfying reinvention yet.”
Some of the music in the show this week hails from France, and Sourdure turns French folk on its head, taking the traditions of Auvergne—a region in the mountainous Massif Central, deep in the centre of France—and augments them, implanting electronic textures and foreign aesthetics. Read a Bandcamp feature on them here.
Another French band is Cocanha, who perform polyphonic songs to dance to. They sing in Occitan, a Romance language spoken in Southern France, Monaco, Italy’s Occitan Valleys, and Catalonia’s Val d’Aran; collectively, these regions are sometimes referred to as Occitania. In their own words: “In a centralist French state with a strong colonial past, silencing the languages that inhabit it and formatting the accents, Cocanha chooses to sing in Occitan”.
The language has had something of a revival in the music scene of Toulouse, the historic Occitania’s capital, where there are also bilingual French-Occitan schools. Although this female trio is steeped in the Occitan tradition, their influences are vast, and they filter these modern styles through their music, using both voice, hand and feet. Their website states:
Cocanha cultivates minimalism, the sincerity of an acoustic sound supported by amplified percussions, engaging the bodies in the dance. The Occitan language is their playground for exploring unique temperaments and sounds.
Cocanha draws on the traditional Occitan repertoire, sets archives in motion and replaces them in the thread of orality. Some words are rewritten, others invented, emanating from a common imagination in the open air. The characters in the songs re-appropriate their desiring power and affirm it.
Another French band is the four-piece Aronde, who hail from Pau in southwestern France. To quote them:
Aronde to balance two strong identities, strong musical universes, respectively from traditional Auvergne and Gascon repertoires. Merge two courses which seem perpendicular to each other, Aronde, which brings them together with style and without artifice. And if the painter Dali might have seen in it an illustration of his series of catastrophes, Terry Riley would not have denied the loops thus created, repeated and repeated again, as if to better appreciate the outlines without ever losing focus. View their foundation. Bandcamp.
Burd Ellen, a Glasgow-based project featuring Debbie Armour (Alasdair Roberts, Green Ribbons) and Gayle Brogan (Pefkin, Electroscope), is no stranger to these pages. Their experimental approach seems to fit in perfectly here. Mother, Go and Make My Bed is taken from their new single The High Priestess and the Hierophant – order it via Bandcamp here.
Angeline Morrison (Rowan/Morrison, We Are Muffy) also features with an early demo offering of Unknown African Boy (d.1830, Isles of Scilly). This is one of two demo songs she recently shared from her forthcoming project, The Sorrow Songs : Folk Songs of Black British Experience. She explains:
“‘The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience’ album is a work of re-storying. In wondering why, despite a historic black presence in the UK, we don’t seem to have a body of folk song equivalent to that of the Spirituals of the America – in other words, a body of folk song that articulates black experience – I wondered if I could begin to research historic black lives in these islands, and story them into song.”
The demo offers a small taste of what to expect from the album planned for October 2022, so it’s very much a work in progress. The demos are available via Bandcamp for a limited time only. Order it here.
Another familiar name to many will be Leyla McCalla. Fort Dimanche is her new single, named after the former Haiti prison notorious for the interrogation, imprisonment, torture, and execution of dissidents and suspected dissidents during the reign of François Duvalier, aka Papa Doc, the President of Haiti from 1957 to 1971. Leyla is of Haitian heritage, and she was inspired to write the song after researching the prison. Throughout the song, you can hear interviews, including one who recalls her uncle and cousins being killed. Order it on Bandcamp.
Bidayat is taken from Saet El-Hazz (The Luck Hour), the latest offering from Maurice Louca (featuring A Trio, Anthea Caddy, Khaled Yassine, Christina Kazaryan), one of the most gifted musicians and composers on Egypt’s thriving underground music scene. The album is released on Belgium’s Sub Rosa label. It draws voraciously on Arabic music, psychedelic folk. The title Saet el Hazz is a coded saying in Egypt to refer to a good time and usually implies a great deal of debauchery. “When you mention to someone that you’ve had a saet hazz, there are no questions asked. It is what it is.”
The initial spark for Saet El-Hazz (The Luck Hour) was Louca’s desire to collaborate with ‘A’ Trio, the Lebanese improvisational group featuring Mazen Kerbaj on prepared trumpet, Sharif Sehnaoui on prepared guitar, and Raed Yassin on prepared double bass. ‘When the three of them come together they create a sonic cosmos entirely their own. I started by composing music that I wanted to have exist within this sonic world— at times in harmony, or clashing with it, and all the emotional ranges in between.’
Brussels-based trio Las Lloronas also seemed to fit the mould of this mix; Bukra is taken from their Soaked album, which we reviewed here. To quote Richard Hollingham’s review: Las Lloronas are a Brussels-based trio of Sura Solomon, Amber in ‘t Veld and Marieke Werner, their combined backgrounds bringing together several parts of Europe and a bit of the US thrown in for good measure. They also have a shared background in activism and art, something that is a central thread through this album.
Piers Faccini is another Folk Radio familiar – this man produces so much great music and champions many other artists as well. He tells us:
5 songs in a Romanesque church: I live in the Cévennes region of southern France and one of my favourite things to do is go and sing and play when I can in these wonderful acoustic spaces. Sometimes there’s an audience, like when I play the Route de la Voix concert series, but other times it’s just for my own pleasure.
The album is available to community subscribers on his Bandcamp page along with many great albums here: https://piersfaccini.bandcamp.com/community.
Khagaudzh Ensemble is an offering from the aforementioned Ored Record label. Songs of Caucasian War was released in 2017 and marks the 21st of May – the Circassian Day of Mourning. This refers to the Russo-Circassian War (1763–1864) and the Circassian genocide by the Circassians – the Russian Empire’s systematic mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and expulsion of 800,000–1,500,000 Muslim Circassians (minimum 80–97% of the total population) from their homeland Circassia known as the Tsitsekun. Despite the atrocities that were carried out, it has still not been officially recognised as mass genocide, and many still march today seeking that recognition. According to Wikipedia: “…Russian generals such as Grigory Zass described the Circassians as “subhuman filth”, and justified their killing and use in scientific experiments, allowing Russian soldiers to rape Circassian children and women.”
In the words of the label: We could not but react to this significant date in the history of our region. On the 20th of May, Ored Recordings and Khagaudzh Ensemble held a live broadcast on the State Radio of Kabardino-Balkaria entirely dedicated to the songs about the Circassian resistance to the tsarist troops.
Six songs represent different episodes and plots of the Caucasian War, as well as various regional singing traditions: the Eastern Adyghe, the Western Adyghe, and the style formed in the Circassian diaspora in Turkey. More here on Bandcamp.
Music Played
Sutari – Swaty / Matchmaking
Jrpjej – Сэрмахуэ
Erlend Apneseth Trio – Fuglane
Sourdure – L’Escribòta
Stick in the Wheel – The Cuckoo
Burd Ellen – Mother, Go and Make My Bed
Angeline Morrison – Unknown African Boy (d.1830, Isles of Scilly)
Cocanha – Suu camin de Sent Jacques
Leyla McCalla – Fort Dimanche
Aronde – Dessus la rota de Lonzac / A tot l’entorn de l’om
Maurice Louca – Bidayat (Holocene)
Las Lloronas – Bukra
Jrpjej – Абдзах нысэишэ
Piers Faccini – Dunya
Khagaudzh Ensemble – Хьэгъэудж гуп – Тушетым и шу
Aronde – Se ieu sabia
Cocanha – Cotelon
Sutari – Piję Winko