WORLD
Top albums include vocal music from a ‘forgotten’ south Russian village; plus cellist Jean-guihen Queyras joins Persian zarb drummers
It isn’t just the confusing liner notes, it’s the whole caboodle of VOXTRA’S The Encounter of Vocal Heritage
which leaves one disoriented. Because although this group eschews ‘fusion’, claiming that the very different musics it represents remain clear and distinct, one really doesn’t know where one is as they deliver their songs. But since those songs are marvellous, that’s OK by me. They came together in Belgium, but their backgrounds span the globe: Albanian iso-polyphony, Sardinian cantu a tenore, beko blues from Madagascar, Finnish yoik singing, and Belgian recit chanté.
The Albanian and Sardinian forms provide a rock-solid foundation over which singers from the other regions add their effects, and the whole thing has a remarkable integrity of purpose
You know precisely where you are with UZBEKISTAN: SPIRITUAL AND SUFI CHANT. Against a background of contrasting lute timbres, plus
spike-fiddle, ney flute, and simple percussion, two of this Central Asian country’s leading cantors deliver ecstatically devotional songs. This art form may now only have a small following in its own country, but it speaks out of a culture whose roots go back many centuries, and which is one of the most gracefully civilised manifestations of Islam
The explorer and composer David Fanshawe (1942-2010) left many musical legacies, of which African
Sanctus is the best known, but the most significant one consists of thousands of hours of indigenous music which he recorded during his ten-year odyssey through the islands of the Pacific. Many tracks on DISCOVER MUSIC FROM THE
PACIFIC were recorded by him: welcome rites, entertainments and celebrations, often laced with the sound of the sea
The folk music of Russia remains surprisingly little explored, given its richness: communism in China eradicated forever huge swathes of indigenous music, but not so in Russia, which is still full of little local traditions. And it’s thanks to a dedicated group of Polish ethnographers that we now have what are probably the last recordings of the muscular polyphony of women singers in the south Russian village of Podseredneye. They made many visits to establish trust, and the music they brought back foreshadows the impending death of that tradition, as young people have no interest in it. WARSZAWA WSCHODNIA’S Laweczka represents a most constructive tribute: alongside the Podseredneye singers’ tracks are the Poles’ own renditions, which they now perform on tour
We end where we began, with two further examples of genuine fusion, the first led by the Iranian
kamancheh maestro Kayhan Kalhor. The opening track of HAWNIYAZ was recorded without any rehearsal, the morning after a concert at the Morgenland Festival in Osnabruck, and it’s a lovely melding of piano (Salman Gambarov), tenbur lute (Cemil Qocgiri), song (Aynur), and spike-fiddle. These superb musicians weave a very powerful spell
As do cellist Jean-guihen Queyras, lyra-master Sokratis Sinopoulos and zarb drummers
Bijan and Keyvan Chemirani. THRACE: SUNDAY MORNING
SESSIONS reflects a truly inspirational coming-together of French avant-gardism, Macedonian fiddling, and Maghrebi rhythms Michael Church