July round-up
Soar is the keenly anticipated second album by the duo of Welsh harpist Catrin Finch and Senegalese kora player and singer Seckou Keita (whose most recent other collaboration, Transparent Water, was also reviewed in the July 2017 world music column). Finch and Keita’s first collaboration, Clychau Dibon (2013), was a big hit, and this disc continues in a similar vein. It features the addition of vocals in Mandinka and Wolof by Keita – whose charms as a singer were first revealed on his lovely 2015 debut solo album 22 Strings– and a spoken word passage in Welsh by Finch. Her classical training is crystal clear in the excerpt from the Goldberg Variations that commences the key track ‘Bach to Baïsso’ before moving into a fluidly rhythmic passage typical of the music of Senegal’s southern Casamance region, for which Keita is renowned (Bendigedig BENDI2; ★★★★★).
A Bach chorale also features on Everybody Loves Angels, a delightful solo piano disc from the Norwegian jazz and classical based pianist Bugge Wesseltoft. Recorded in the Lofotkatedralen – his country’s largest wooden church – the programme ruminates imaginatively over his improvised interpretations of well-known songs by Lennon & Mccartney, Paul Simon, Jimi Hendrix, Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan and others, as well as dipping into Norwegian tradition. It’s just the kind of dazzling brilliance you might expect from him. (Act Music ACT 9847-2; ★★★★★).
For Recreatio, the sequel to his hypnotic 2015 album Angel’s Blows, Italian saxophonist Dimitri Grechi Espinoza used another wonderful acoustic space, the Cisternino di Pian di Rota museum in Livorno, for its incredible reverberation and modulations. He bases his mesmerising melodic sequences on his knowledge of western classical music and various other musical cultures, including Congolese. It’s an enchantingly relaxed album, and the perfect thing for an early morning listen (Ponderosa Music & Art CD 141; ★★★★★).
As a chaser for that, you could happily reach for a re-issue of Gal Costa’s classic ‘post-tropicalia’ album Índia, banned by Brazil’s then far right military dictatorship on its initial release in 1973 – perhaps in response to the racy cover image. Costa is a versatile singer with a generally soft, subtle vocal manner, and she covers a fair stylistic variety, ranging from the triple time of forro, a jittery accordion-based style synonymous with Brazil’s Nordestina (north eastern) music, to the bossa nova classic ‘Desafinado’ (Mr Bongo MRBLP149; ★★★★).
It’s not often we hear music from Botswana, but I’m Not Here To Hunt Rabbits is a compilation of various artists playing guitar and folk styles that sound not unlike those of neighbouring South Africa. ‘I’m here to play my guitar’ is the remark that clarifies and concludes the enigmatic title, and it’s printed in the sleeve note booklet, which also features a photograph of one of the artists with a segaba, the indigenous bowed instrument you can hear on two tracks. The singers’ unique four-string guitars include a bass string, and the unusual way they play them – reaching their left hand up and over the guitar’s neck, instead of from behind and underneath – became apparent from the viral Youtube video phenomenon that prompted the idea of recording this album (Piranha Records PIR3165; ★★★★★).