Spontaneous Stillness: Guitarist Brad Hammonds and his Group Turns the Present Moment into Acoustic Power on Greene Street

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Brad Hammonds plays in the moment.

That freshness and spontaneous vitality reverberate on Greene Street, a beautifully textured acoustic instrumental album with rock drive. Joined at his intimate downtown studio by close friends and wildly creative collaborators, Hammonds exhibits his trademark depth and flair for thoughtfully deployed technique.

With top improvisers and interpreters Will Martina (cello; Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber), Mathias Kunzli (percussion; Regina Spektor) and Jason DiMatteo (bass; Burnt Sugar), Hammonds explores rolling Celtic lines inspired by Led Zeppelin, Middle Eastern beats, and flamenco flourishes. The band revels in modal lines, shifting time signatures, and expansive solos, without losing their musical momentum.

Hammonds’ quicksilver fingers and percussive playing range and rove, but the New York-based musician and composer never strays from the center: the grounded stillness of a calm, open mind. “I always come back to the interesting fact that all thought is elusive,” Hammonds, a trained psychologist as well as crack musician, reflects. “We just have this moment. I try to get into that space before writing.”

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The drums were Hammonds’ first love and his first instrument growing up, a fact that has shaped his approach to the guitar. “A lot of the time signature shifts and techniques I use come from studying the drums,” Hammonds explains with a smile. “I’m trying to play the drums and the guitar at the same time. I break a string nine times out of ten when I play.”

But in a good-natured sibling rivalry with his guitar-wielding twin brother, Hammonds decided he would take up the instrument, too. Yet instead of learning other people’s tunes, he dove into writing his own. He listened to everything—from Ani DiFranco and Shakti to Metallica and Tool—and took it all in.

But what came out was unexpected: “It’s bizarre,” Hammonds laughs. “I don’t know where it comes from. I’m a white guy from Delaware, but I write world folk-rock.”

Hammonds put this unanticipated tendency to good use, touring the U.S. college circuit as half of the passionate Brazz Tree, playing gig after gig and perfecting his craft. But after several years, Hammonds was ready to work on his own solo material without the stress of life on the road or internal band politics.

Greene Street came about after Hammonds decided to engage more with the instrumental he loved. The pieces came easily, sometimes simply flowing out of an open tuning or snatch of melody. “It was the most seamless project I’ve ever done, in terms of getting material down,” Hammonds notes. “It wrote itself.”

The complexity of the compositions belies that ease. “If This, Then That” is a blazing, multi-part romp that moves fluidly from rootsy, upbeat grooves to pensive, open moments peppered with sharp percussion. “Ryan the Lion,” a tribute to Hammonds’ young son, is a merry mix of British Isles nimbleness and Mediterranean grit. “Stomp” pulses like a reel, but with bluesy slides and an engaging percussive wallop.

The vitality and sparkling energy of the tracks are a product not only of Hammonds’ clever composing, but also of the group’s esprit de corps. Recording live at Hammonds’ Greene Street studio, the quartet avoided overdubs and edits whenever possible. “We really didn’t want to edit too much. We wanted a nice live feel,” says Hammonds.

Though some of the pieces provided true challenges—“Further East” and “The Fly” took dozens of takes to get just right—the band came together naturally, in a spirit of genuine camaraderie. While Martina’s cello adds a lyrical richness to the music, Kunzli flew off into fanciful places, using everything from Tibetan bells to vocal percussion, as DiMatteo easily fell into the sweet, grounded pocket.

The result has both depth and whimsy, with Hammonds’ intense playing at its grounded center. Like the fleeting path of thoughts, Greene Street’s songs may run and leap, but they never lose their core focus. “It’s a good way to practice music, to step out of that regular mental space and to just have fun,” Hammonds muses, “to take a couple seconds and come back, be present, and watch my thoughts. It all flows from there.”

Migratory Funk: The Celebratory, Border-Free Back-and-Forth Sounds of LoCura on Semilla Caminante and on Tour, Spring 2012

Drive down a barely noticed dirt road, in the shadow of Mt. Tamalpais or deep in the hills of gold rush country. Turn right at Granada, left when you hit Havana, and you’ll find there’s a party going on. There’s a bike-powered sound system, a friendly mosh pit, blasts of bright brass, skanking bass, flamenco flourishes, and a big slice of madness that’s simultaneously the musical cure for alienation and loss.

At the center is San Francisco’s LoCura, a band that crafts upbeat anthems and chronicles the round-trip travels of Latin and American sounds. Movement between continents informs the lush variety of LoCura’s tunes on Semilla Caminante, inspired by ida y vuelta, the notion in flamenco of musical forms that have traveled to the New World and returned transformed.

“We mix everything from funk to son cubano into our own songs, to show how diverse our communities have become and to show the common roots these different styles have,” smiles LoCura singer Katalina Miletich. “Semilla Caminante, the idea of ‘traveling seed,’ is a reminder of this movement, this interchange, and of the creative resistance that continues to transform our lives and is tangible in our musical expressions.”

LoCura’s jubilant sound of resistance and restored connections will be traveling up the West Coast this spring, as the group embarks on its first major tour of the region. Cities include San Diego, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Sacramento.

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LoCura may rock one of the more traditional flamenco palos (“Desde las Entrañas”) or a full-on, punked-out ska anthem for occupiers (“Squatter’s Song”). They can throw a party while celebrating the power and activism of Latinas (“Guerriller@s”) or toss out a growling, tongue-in-cheek critique of self-absorbed greed (“To’ Pa’ Mi”).

“One big inspiration for the ways we consciously and unconsciously connect different music is this idea that styles and rhythms travel from Africa and Europe to South America, Cuba, America, mixing with French, Italian, indigenous sounds, and then travel back,” Miletich notes. “Culture is alive in so many different ways, and shows up in different places to tell a story.”

LoCura’s members have experienced this transformation firsthand. Born and raised in Spain, Miletich landed in the small California town of Angel’s Camp to visit family, and was soon “at loose ends, not sure what to with myself,” she recounts. She had no idea she was about to become the lead singer for an eccentric local band. Though she had a background in theater, she had never done any singing or songwriting in her life.

Then one night, Miletich wound up at a wild party, way down a rural dirt road. “There was this band in these crazy costumes, these amazing, fun people,” recalls Miletich fondly. “I thought, ‘This is what I’ve been looking for.’” Before long, she found herself gripping a mic and free-styling in Spanish. The band asked her to join on the spot.

Guitarist and bassist Bob Sanders also happened to be playing with the band that night. A native of the Sierra foothills, he had gotten hooked on flamenco early. He met Miletich, and it was an instant musical connection. After the crazy night in the hills, he and Miletich struck up a close musical friendship. They eventually moved to the Bay Area. There, they founded LoCura.

Miletich and Sanders found inspiration at the intersection of Bay Area bohemia and the active, outspoken Latino arts community. They played packed arts spaces and Occupy camps with bike-powered speakers. In this fertile community of artists, they found Flamenco dancer Stephanie Narvaez, renegade klezmer/reggae bassist Izzy, "el Rumbero de la Mission" Sergio Duran, San Francisco native and trumpeter extraordinaire Danny Cao, and, most recently, drummer Carrie Jahde.

LoCura’s roots also lie deep in the literary, innovative voices of San Francisco’s Latino artists, writers like multilingual poet Agustin Palacios (who penned the lyrics that became “Manzanilla) “Being raised bicultural by an American father in Spain and learning my own form of Spanglish, it was impacting to arrive to California and find validation and common experiences in Chicano culture,” Miletich muses. Her lyrics dance between languages on soulful songs like “Préndela.”

The band itself has traveled between scenes, between packed art venues and major festivals, between Mission street corners (where they’ve debuted songs like “Te sigo”) and storied plazas in Granada, where they traded licks and lived with Gitano street musicians. Marked by Miletich's infectious voice and way with words, the band has grown from a trio to a bumping seven-piece band. Channeling the genre-defying, Latin-rooted spirit of musicians like flamenco innovators Ojos de Brujo or bold songstress Lila Downs, LoCura has shared the stage with everyone from reggae scion Ziggy Marley to the global bass music masters Beats Antique. They have sold out Bay Area venues like The Great American Music Hall and The Independent.

“LoCura's music is filled with a sense of longing and hope. We want to evoke a world without borders, a time where we begin to recognize each other and our common grounds,” Miletich reflects. “With our music we hope to bring people from diverse experiences together in one space of celebration and reflection, and open up dialogue.”
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The Smiling North: Frigg’s Expert Playfulness and Nordic Exuberance Return to North America, September and October 2011

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Dour Scandinavians? Don’t make the Finnish and Norwegian folk virtuosi ofFrigg giggle.

“The overall picture people have of Scandinavians has very little to do with the music,” Antti Järvelä, fiddler and Frigg founder explains. “People think Finnish music in particular is melancholy and minor. But if you look at tunes from before World War II, seventy percent are in a major key. They are happy.”

This neglected joy—the good times of Nordic parties, dances, and weddings— inspired the seven-member group with deep folk roots to breathe fresh life into their ancestors’ wild and merry tunes. The result: the string-bending, tongue-in-cheek genre of “Nordgrass.”

On Grannen and on stages from Malmö to Malaysia, Frigg bursts with an energy and freewheeling fun that belies their intense musical training. Veteran international performers with decades of touring under their belts, Frigg return to North America this autumn for an extensive tour that will spread the sheer pleasure of Northern tunes across the Upper Midwest and several major festivals (Chicago, Albuquerque, Bloomington, IN).

“Frigg is on the new edge,” Järvelä smiles. “And we are making very happy music.”

~~~

Though they now play more abroad than they do at home, Järvelä and several fellow Frigg players have deep roots in Nordic tradition. They hail from one of Scandinavia’s roots-music hotspots, Kaustinen, a small Finnish town of 5,000 which boasts literally hundreds of fiddle players. After decades in training at folk music sessions, guided by exacting relatives and musical elders, Järvelä and company felt it was time explode tradition wide open. And they have a blast doing it.

“In the old days, we did things very particularly,” reflects Järvelä, who’s played with fellow Frigg fiddler Esko Järvelä since the two were barely out of kindergarten. “We really learned lots of details and were required to stay in the form of our teachings. Basically, when you smiled then, it meant you had made a mistake. Now when we smile, it has nothing to do with mistakes.”

Frigg departs from those hard-learned bounds, absorbing the rollicking reels, rippling triplets, and lonesome loveliness of the British Isles and American bluegrass—and makes them sing. “Maple Cake Farm” recalls a glorious day the group spent as guests in New England, as the mandolin suggests the rolling contours of American folk melodies. Party tunes like “Rajrajraj” (a Norwegian exclamation of good times) would be equally at home at an Appalachian front-porch jam or a good old-fashioned Irish céilí.

Yet the band is at its brightest when bringing innovation to the traditions of Scandinavia. The reserved grace of the Norwegian traditional tune “Grannen” or the upbeat savor of “Potatisvals,” composed by Swedish folk icon and musical mentor Ale Möller, open up into sliding solos, merrily brandished bows, and experimental wavelengths. “Amurin tiikeri,” part of an unexpected collaboration Frigg undertook with Norway’s top military marching band, ropes in drums and horns, taking tradition into anthem territory.

Though steeped in tradition and highly trained, Frigg’s vibe remains strikingly spontaneous and democratic, on stage and off. Members shift, changing the energy of the  group, and everyone brings in old gems or new ideas to try out.

“Someone will remember a good tune or come up with a good idea,” Järvelä explains, reflecting on the band’s creative process. “We try it out then and there, and if we feel there’s potential we leave it for a while, then come back to it. We build an arrangement up from the feeling we have in that moment.”

This easy-going, happy-go-lucky feel leads to moments of barely controlled chaos live, but Järvelä loves every minute. “There are some tunes that are hard to play on stage, old rocking waltzes and such. We go over the edge. We even lose track of where we are in the music,” Järvelä recounts. “But so long as someone keeps the tune going, it doesn’t matter. Different characters emerge from behind the instruments. And the audience goes crazy.”

Life’s True Roots: The Invented Language and Eastern European Soul of Dikanda On Debut U.S. Tour, September 2011

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Ask Poland’s Dikanda what they play, and they’ll answer in a word: Truth. It’s that wellspring of deep emotion that can just as easily arise at village kitchen tables as in global sonic hitchhiking. To reach it, the six-piece band invents languages, re-imagines traditional Eastern European songs, and commits utterly and refreshingly to every performance.

Americans will have their first taste of Dikanda’s lively intensity in September 2011, as the group tours the U.S. for the first time. Hitting world music festivals and venues in New York, Chicago, and Minneapolis, the band brings Polish mountain hollers and Kurdish melodies, rollicking dance beats and searching ballads together effortlessly, in an ever-changing interplay of acoustic musicianship and soulful, soaring vocals.

“Dikanda is about this expression of death and birth, longing and loneliness. Our concerts are not something set apart from the rest of life,” explains singer, accordionist, and group founder Ania Witczak. “People in the audience may not understand what we sing, but they’ll often break into tears. Or into wild dancing.”

***

Witczak calls the coming together of the band “miraculous.” Hailing from Szczecin, an industrial port on the Baltic with mixed Slavic and Germanic roots, the group has long stood out in a music scene dominated by standard-issue pop. Witczak and guitarist Piotr Rejdak teamed up as cash-strapped students to finance a hitchhiking foray to Western Europe by busking. Before they knew it, one jam session and lucky encounter led to another, and Dikanda was born.

They became more than a mere band; they became a tight-knit group of friends—the group’s name stems from an African dialect word for “family”—and that intimacy shows on stage. “When we play a concert, we try to keep the truth of the matter,” Witczak reflects. “In every moment, we hear these voices inside us, the voices of our forefathers and mothers, and then we return to our own voices.”

These voices speak though tight rhythms, swaying fiddle, bouncing upright bass. They also speak their own uncharted language, which the band has dubbed “Dikandish.” For Witczak, it flows from children’s universal habit of making up sounds and remains a way to get beyond the bounds of everyday speech into a deeply personal yet widely comprehensible world of feelings and stories.

“I get a story in my head, and I want to tell it. But I’m not in the right frame of mind to use language,” Witczak says. “When I start to sing, words just come.”

Along with intensely intuitive originals, the group draws on Witczak’s bountiful collection of traditional songs. A life-long singer, Witczak crisscrossed rural Eastern Europe as a young woman, hanging out with elder musicians and learning songs that stuck with her. She never took notes, but remembers hundreds of songs from across the Balkans and Carpathians, songs that Dikanda has transformed together, adding new rhythms and fresh harmonies.

“Our music comes from traditional music, but sometimes it comes from nothing, out of nowhere,” laughs Witczak, “while we sleep or peel potatoes.”

Dikanda’s tour is co-presented by the Polish Cultural Institute in New York.

Milkshakes and Brimstone: Guarco’s Afro-Uruguayan Beats, Raw Rock, and Searing Irony Brings Fresh Edge to Latin Sounds

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Don’t get Guarco wrong: He’s crashing on the couch to plot a revolution. He’s seen the world end in a carnival flourish, and watched life continue despite it all. He may wink at The Pixies, Lee “Scratch” Perry, and Caetano Veloso, but his heart beats with Afro-Uruguayan Candombe.

The Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter’s long-simmering debut Fiebre (“Fever”) bursts with these tensions. It moves frenetically between pissed-off revolutionary and blasé hipster, between worldly sarcasm and magical realism, between Spanish and English. It shakes, questions, and burns, with help from producer, engineer, and friend Ben Kane (D’Angelo, The Roots, Blitz the Ambassador).

Fiebre will be offered via Guarco’s Facebook band page to fans, the first use of the social networking platform’s apps for independent commercial music distribution. (The app is being built specifically for this project.) As part of this innovative use of Facebook, purchasers will be able to name their price for the album. This distribution approach will make the music accessible to all, and puts its value in the hands of the listener.

***

In “Immigration Papers,” Guarco—born Marco Fernando Guarino—sings, “I’m just helping the world put up its fences.” Yet he sits squarely between two lives.

In Uruguay, Guarco spent months perfecting his percussive guitar style, playing Afro-Latin percussion with a family of drum builders, and laying down rough tracks of his songs in Montevideo. In Brooklyn, he spent months in living room studios, using 4-tracks to make crazy loops, channeling the ghosts of CBGBs and spaced-out realms of dub, mixing the crunk of urbane irony with the feral rock philosophizing of The Clash.

Guarco’s dual sonic identity means a straight-ahead rock band shares the stage at his live shows with members of Lubolos Macu, a Candombe ensemble from New Jersey. Guarco re-connected with Candombe, a musical form he grew up with, after a mentor in Uruguay told him to phone an old friend in Elizabeth, NJ. The phone call turned into a regular gig.

“We performed for the first Uruguayan carnival in the U.S. last summer in Elizabeth,” Guarco recounts. “And they all really like my music. They dig it. Dig it hard.” Which is why the multigenerational group of drummers often joins Guarco for songs like “Se termino el carnaval.”

Though rooted in serious Afro-Latin grooves, Fiebre runs the gamut. Blithely plucked ballads with a samba beat (“Monster”), fist-pumping rock anthems (“Rey del la Selva”), and Latin-inflected dub (“Que Paso”) all sprang from Guarco’s in-between vibe. With Kane playing the audio wizard to Guarco’s many-headed muse, songs incubating for over a decade took funky, wild shape.

“I like working with Guarco because of his unique perspective of the world,” Kane explains. “My task was to take his ideas and the mood of the songs and make sense of them musically. We wanted to push the sonic and musical boundaries with this album, while still presenting something people could really sink their teeth into.”

Kane worked to highlight Guarco’s lyricism, with his chimerical visions, sense of irony, and clever turns of phrase, which owes much to the Latin tradition of magical realism. “Que Paso” takes inspiration from Brazilian Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, and uses allegory to impart a message about the need for deep personal change. “Viracocha llora” imagines the weeping of an Incan sun god, while “Se termino el carnaval” evokes the poetic end of the world as we know it and rings with the chaos of a sampled street protest.

All the phantasmagoric imagery isn’t about rapture and brimstone, however. It’s a way of talking about the daunting relationship between global North and South, between rich and poor.

“The North looks at the apocalypse as something that might happen. But for a lot of people in the South, the apocalypse is already here,” muses Guarco. “They are starving to death. They are affected by natural disaster. And we’re still here in New York living this lush life. We’re a part of it, by what we consume. We add to other peoples’ apocalypse.”

The difficulty of confronting injustice, of finding a way to real change and action haunts Guarco, who’s not above pointing the finger back at himself and his screen-hooked generation. It’s often the little things—the dreams of backyard barbeques, the curious name of a sweet treat—that spur his imagination and get at the core of the dilemma.

In “Esta Heavy Man,” Guarco uses double entendres to capture that sense of self-contradiction and shape-shifting world to which it belongs. “The chorus, ‘vamos a morir soñando,’ means ‘we’re going to die dreaming,’ It’s also the name of a milkshake,” he laughs. “While we were recording, we’d go to a Dominican restaurant where we’d order the milkshake, and we got the idea to juxtapose the name with its literal meaning.”

Such delicious ironies are not lost on Guarco. Packed with carnavalesque dualisms, growling calls for justice, and grooving dirges, Fiebre points to the fevers that plague us—and the bewildering joys. It’s all milkshakes and BBQ, fire and brimstone.

Anthems of Hope: The Lush and Gritty Grooves of St. Lucia’s Taj Weekes

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St. Lucian singer-songwriter Taj Weekes makes music that grooves like waves on a beach: seemingly gentle yet insistently powerful. On stage and on albums like the recent A Waterlogged Soul Kitchen, Weekes and his band Adowa unite a vibrant diversity of sounds with thoughtful, lush arrangements and a long-honed penchant for telling tales of hardship and hope.

This spring and summer (2011) will take Taj Weekes & Adowa on tour across the U.S., including performances at the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival (June 17), the Blissfest Folk & Roots Festival (July 8-9), and the River City Music Festival (August 28).

“I don’t sit down and write socially conscious songs. I write songs about where I place my focus,” Weekes explains. “I grew up listening to the power of the music, the lyrical content. That’s what matters.”

Weekes harnesses this power, using his gritty tenor as counterpoint to the lilting pulse of his guitar. He has reflected on the impact of Hurricane Katrina (“Rain Rain”), on the twisted tragedy of Darfur (“Janjaweed”), on the careless destruction of the Gulf oil spill (“Drill”). He knows how to sing with great tenderness (the subdued, poignant “Before the War”) or with wry firmness (“Anthems of Hope”), balancing elegant melodies with rich strings, purring percussion, bluesy harmonica licks, and funky, funky keys. He hints simultaneously at José González, Merle Haggard, Jimmy Scott, Tracy Chapman, Peter Tosh.

Though long hailed by reggae fans, Weekes defies simple genre formulas. His intuitive, intense songwriting ties together the many threads of his Caribbean heritage and honors his unflagging engagement with the world as a musician, philanthropist, and lecturer.

***
Weekes grew up tossing country tunes and jazz standards around the family kitchen with his father and siblings, learning how to speak truth to power from local calypso musicians, and watching his Rastafarian brothers take on a violently critical society. The young Weekes was also a DJ at a local radio station, absorbing and playing everything: classical music, hard rock, reggae.

Classic country and calypso were also big on St. Lucia, and both are about telling stories, a vital part of Weekes’ work. “We’re a storytelling people,” muses Weekes. Early calypso singers, as well as reggae performers, were the town criers of their communities, taking stands on local issues and calling out corrupt politicians. At the same time, country songs poured from the radio, and boot-sporting, cowboy hat-wearing music fans on St. Lucia couldn’t get enough of their real-life tales of heartbreak and faith.

Though deeply connected to the musical life of his island home, Weekes came into his artistic own while spending time in New York City, where he eventually gathered a group of musicians from across the Caribbean diaspora to form Adowa (named for the 19th-century battle when Ethiopians beat back an invading Italian army). Adowa has both serious reggae cred and rock-solid musicianship. Weekes and Adowa have played major jazz, rock, and global music festivals, like a recent headliner gig in front of nearly 30,000 fans at the Austin Reggae Festival, as well as garner critical acclaim from reggae writers and lovers.

Though well loved in reggae circles, Weekes has evolved his own approach to making music that combines genres and vibes, incorporating sounds from vintage Ethiopian funk jazz to roots rock, from Deep South blues to West African percussion. These diverse elements interweave in Weekes’ intuitive, reflective songwriting, often spurred by a single word or story.

As Weekes & Adowa were finishing up A Waterlogged Soul Kitchen, Weekes was reading a newspaper story about the BP oil spill. “’I stopped the session and told the guys I had a new song,” Weekes recalls. “And I starting laying down the guitar for ‘Drill’ on the spot.”  Weekes’ inspiration also struck guitarist Mike Pinera, who’s played with Iron Butterfly and Alice Cooper, who had dropped by the studio. Pinera was so enthused when he heard Weekes’ song that he dashed out of the studio to grab his guitar and upon his return blasted out a heartfelt solo for “Drill.”

Weekes also inspires live. An engaging performer, he learned early from his father that playing music was about talking to listeners one on one. “Since he taught me that,” Weekes notes with a smile, “I have always focused on reaching people, not just playing music.” And moving people extends beyond the stage, to the lectern, college classroom (where Weekes often shares his experience nurturing social responsibility through his art), and the streets of poor neighborhoods across the Caribbean.

Weekes founded his own non-profit, They Often Cry Outreach (TOCO), to provide everything from post-hurricane humanitarian aid to shoes and soccer balls to children in need across his native region. It’s a way of walking the talk of his songs’ messages. “I still play soccer when we’re on the road touring, at rest stops,” Weekes says. “It’s great stress relief, especially for children who face all sorts of problems. Their responsibility is just to play, and we help them do that.”

Named a Goodwill Ambassador by the International Consortium of Caribbean Professionals and recognized by a division of the United Nations, Weekes sees no boundary between his work as a singer-songwriter and as a benefactor and consciousness-raiser. “If the people suffer, no matter where they are—on St. Lucia, in Darfur, in China—we have to say it, ” states Weekes. “We all have to hold each other’s hand and walk the path together.”

The Stealth Clave: Roots Pianist Neil Pearlman Wakes Up the Latin and Funk in Traditional Scottish Tunes on Coffee and the Mojo Hat http://www.worldmusicwire.com

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 “There’s a clave hidden in Scottish music, if you look for it,” explains piano player, arranger, and composer Neil Pearlman. It’s a secret place where Robert Burns does the boogie woogie. And where salsa brass and Tower of Power bass sneak into the frenetic triplets of island dances.

Pearlman has found this sweet spot. The young freethinker of a musician unleashes Scotland’s unexpected grooves and Cape Breton’s unique piano style on Coffee and the Mojo Hat. Doffing his plaid cap for “mojo,” Pearlman gently but firmly expands on tradition, honing high-precision technique and finding uncharted rhythmic affinities.

The possibilities of the piano—Pearlman’s chosen instrument since he was four—were limited by what Pearlman humorously calls “the boom-chuck” style of most accompaniment for traditional tunes. But not on Cape Breton, Canada’s Celtic roots hotspot, with its thriving music scene and a piano style all its own.

Inspired by stride and boogie woogie, Cape Breton piano players held their own with the region’s acclaimed fiddlers at community dances. They broke out the broken octaves, setting the right hand free to hit all the burls—the traditional, fast-paced triplets—that make Scottish tunes sparkle. Pearlman fell in love with the approach, which he taught himself in his early teens by watching Cape Breton performers.

“The base of Cape Breton piano is the left hand, which was heavily influenced by boogie woogie and keeps a constant pulse,” Pearlman says. “It condenses the usual two-handed back-and-forth and opens up right hand to do syncopations. It’s a totally different world from the basic piano style you often hear in a contra dance or other fiddle music tradition.”

He comes by his sixth sense for rhythmic subtlety honestly. Neil grew up hanging out at his fiddler father Ed’s lively sessions and ceilidhs, hearing master players from Scotland and Cape Breton. At concerts and festivals Ed organized as the long-time head of the Boston Scottish Fiddle Club, young Neil would sit enthralled. He soon began playing along.

As an accompanist and as a member of Highland Soles, the Pearlman family band, Neil has been moving to and making Scottish music professionally for more than a decade. A step dancer from toddlerhood, Pearlman learned the complex footwork that accompanies Scottish tunes from his dancer mother. He danced as part of Cape Breton fiddler Natalie MacMaster’s touring group at the tender age of 11.

“On a very basic level, this music is dance music, just like jazz, funk, and lots of Latin genres,” notes Pearlman. “To really understand the Scottish music tradition, you need to understand the dance tradition. You know where strong points in melodies fall if you’re dancing. That’s a point you jump or land. Especially in some of the more stylistically complex tunes, the dance phrasing is crucial to music phrasing.”

This phrasing is vital in traditional strathspeys, powerful dance tunes unique to Scotland. Whether composing his own (“Alison House”) or taking on tradition (“Highlanders”), Pearlman found the strathspey delightfully complex to arrange for piano without losing its distinctive feel. “Although in a strong 4/4 time signature, there is a subtle undercurrent of triplets, which is a difficult thing to work with if you don't want to lose the sharp drive,” explains Pearlman, “but if it is approached right, you can accentuate, rather than detract from thestrathspey feel.”

Triplets are not the only undercurrent in Pearlman’s music. There’s a quiet pressure of Pearlman’s other musical fascinations: Latin music (he played trombone in a Cuban band); funk of the likes of Tower of Power and Earth, Wind, & Fire; and jazz. Though Pearlman knows traditional ballads (“Monymusk Lads”), airs (“Mill Mill O”), and Robert Burns songs (“Afton Water”) like the back of his hand, he hears them with brass parts and bass lines.

“Even when I’m not performing in a band setting, I don’t play totally traditionally,” Pearlman states. “I’ve been bringing in all these influences anyway, for years. In fact, I put this project together so I could flesh out these other possibilities with other musicians who could play them.”

Along with conga player Javier Ramos (who first helped Pearlman feel Scottish music’s stealth clave), Pearlman works with drummer Alex Cohen, who has precise chops honed by years playing heavy metal and jazz, and bassist Doug Berns, who gets seriously funky on tracks like “Butterfly.” Pearlman has also brought in his father, fiddler Ed Pearlman, whose poignant playing graces “Mill Mill O,” renowned fiddler Alasdair Fraser, and guest vocalists who navigate the edge of tradition and jazz with a beautiful lightness.

The natural, playful way seemingly divergent sounds unite means Pearlman’s pieces keep to their original spirit: the Scottish vibe, and the dancefloor joy. “I want people to take it intellectually, but sometimes if you start talking about melding styles or about fusion, people start thinking too hard,” Pearlman states. “It should be about the groove, about enjoying what you’re hearing.”

Notes from the Yugoslav Dub Underground: La Cherga Rocks the Mic and the Diaspora with Pan-Balkan Funk

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Founded by a former Croatian punk turned dub DJ and infused with pop sensibility, La Cherga knows how to organically meld hip-hop MCs to Macedonian Gypsy brass, booming bass and eerie flute melodies, post-Cold War irony with optimistic uplift. Don’t let the crazy-quilt of descriptors fool you. La Cherga is no hybrid band.

The Austria-based, pan-Balkan crew is the product of natural musical evolution, the defiant, hard-hitting energy of a Yugoslav dub underground that spans from small-town Bosnia to the jazz conservatory of Graz. Revolve (Asphalt Tango Records; June 14, 2011), goes beyond the band’s party-hardy dubbed out past into deep funk, rock, and soul territory, guided by the unquenchable spirit of Sarajevo.

In Bulgarian, cherga is a quaint term for a rag rug, a reflection of the band’s love of sonic recycling. Yet it has other resonances as well: “In Romany, ‘cherga’ means a bunch of people, often wandering around without a purpose or direction,” La Cherga founder and producer Nevenko Bucan explained in an interview. “You could say it describes the Gypsies themselves, but we in the band are now immigrants, too. There are definitely links between the choice of that band name and the course of our lives."

The course of La Cherga runs through a vibrant musical diaspora, a fraught world formed by civil war, economic displacement, and a bubbling sense of irony. La Cherga waltzes and skanks through these complexities like a Roma band kicking out the jams at a Jamaican dancehall. Singer and lyricist Adisa Zvekic whispers poetry one moment, channeling Nina Simone, and raises hell like Ari Up the next.

The sultry sway of “Melaha,” backed by a wild lashing of beats and Gypsy brass, bleeds into hardcore defiance, calling for change (“One”)—or at least another round of drinks—while rocking the mic Yugoslav-style. Hints of Augustus Pablo and Bettye Lavette swirl around pop hooks and introspective jazz horns (“Rise Up”). Tales of immigrant life’s boozy woes (thanks to Croatian MC Killo Killo on “Votka dot kom”) alternate with calls from Zvekic’s rebel soul for peace, love, and an end to nationalism and conflict.

La Cherga came together accidentally on purpose. Bucan became a fixture on the Graz music scene, gaining a reputation for his seamless mix of dub, drum & bass, and rootsy grooves from the former Yugoslavia. But Bucan wasn’t satisfied with the DJ-centric approach of Austrian avant-dub, a scene led by producers like Kruder & Dorfmeister, who put Bucan’s work on their label’s compilations. “There was something missing,” Bucan reflects. “The scene needed live bands.”

Serendipitously, Bucan met Bosnian guitarist Muamer “Muki” Gazibegovic, who was studying music at the university in Graz, a magnet for young musicians from across the former Hapsburg realm. Regular jam sessions, which soon involved Macedonian horn players Kiril Kuzmanov and Trajce Velkov, turned into an album and a live touring band.

But dub and reggae have deep roots for La Cherga that extend beyond the cool Central European club experiments. Zvekic, who got her start as a teenager MCing with her brother and close friends as part of Bosnia’s Dubioza Kolektiv, grew up on dub, thanks to a community of music fans in her small home city of Zenica, Bosnia. People of all generations traded cassettes and exposed each other to anything and everything. “The dub approach is my roots. It’s something very natural that already is inside,” Zvekic notes. “It’s natural and spontaneous because I listened to a lot of music for a very long time.”

Putting odds and ends together has long been the cultural norm for musicians like Zvekic and in cities like Sarajevo, where, despite a decade of war, that spirit remains. That Bosnian vibe—a curious mix of cultural diversity and local distinctiveness—powered much of Revolve: Bucan worked with producer Nino Skiljic at a studio there, and Zvekic recorded with Dubioza’s MCs at a home in nearby Zenica (“One”).

“Sarajevo is a very old town, and its spirit carries on, sometimes despite its people,” Zvekic muses. “Its spirit reflects the efforts of cultured people who wanted to save its true values.”

Bucan summed up these values perfectly: “Nationalism and patriotism are so passé!” he exclaimed with a laugh during a recent interview. “In a way, we're like the orchestra on the Titanic. Everything around us is going to hell, but we keep on playing. We're just trying to create our own micro universe.”

Down Home in Bamako: Boubacar Traoré and the Mischievously Subtle Guitar Blues of Mali Denhou

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Boubacar Traoré took his guitar and strode out into the fields outside of Bamako, Mali. There, in the country quiet, he wrote a dozen new songs in a month. “Town is too noisy. And I didn’t go to the bush, but I left my guitar here, on my farm. Because I know here, I’m on a leash,” Traoré told a recent interviewer.

That leash, that connection to land and family, resulted in Mali Denhou. On Traoré’s first studio album in six years, the kindly, gritty voice of the veteran Malian bluesman intertwines with wonderfully idiosyncratic, cascading guitar. Wistful and pensive, Traoré exhorts, gives thanks, and reflects on love, history, and duty, with a deceptive simplicity and a deep, subtle knowledge of Mandingo tradition and West African vintage pop.

A legend in Mali since his groundbreaking hits of the 1960s, Traoré—possibly the eldest internationally-touring guitarist from Mali—has been around. He knows exactly what he wants. He insisted that if he was going to do a studio album, he had to have his longtime friend, the nimble French harmonica player Vincent Bucher, play with him. Bucher’s rich, pure tone moves in and out of Traoré’s succinct phrases and unexpected rhythms effortlessly on tracks like “Mondeou.”

Traoré doesn’t fuss with his music in the studio: He’s known for whipping out one or two stunning takes and then heading back to the farm. Recorded live at Studio Moffou, the cozy recording venue designed by Malian star Salif Keita specifically for acoustic African projects, Mali Denhou beautifully presents the spirit of an African blues master, in the way vintage jazz and blues recordings captured the masters of the Mississippi Delta.

“For Boubacar, it’s not about being a virtuoso. He may only play a few notes, but they are all important,” reflects album producer and friend Christian Mousset. “Like Muddy Waters or Robert Johnson, he has a style all his own. He wasn’t taught by anyone, and doesn’t sound like anyone else in Mali. It’s always been a mystery to me, where Boubacar’s sound came from.”     

~~~

An elder statesman of the Malian blues made famous by performers like the late Ali Farka Touré, Traoré is a natural. His songs and musicianship flow from an intimate, intuitive connection with his instrument, as well as with his beloved land.

As a young teenager, he would sneak into the room of his older brother—a music teacher who studied for eight years in Cuba—and play his Italian guitar. The guitar was off limits, but Traoré couldn’t help himself: He had to play. When his brother finally caught him in the act, he was amazed to hear Boubacar playing riffs taken from Mandingo music for the kora (West African traditional harp).

“When my brother found where I was hiding, he asked me, ‘Who taught you that?’” Traoré recalls. “I said, ‘No one.’ And he replied that if that was how I was starting, I was going to be world famous one day.”

Traoré continues to draw on deep roots unselfconsciously, using the legendary stories of Mali’s past, like the conversation between the king and his child retold in “Kankan Baro.” He pays tribute to Mali’s great leaders, stretching back to the great empires of the 12th century, on “Mali Tschebou,” a personal update to a long tradition of praise singing.

Songs like Traoré’s cover of a West African guitar classic, “Minuit,” show how roots and pop-influenced styles meld for the guitarist. As the lyrics contrast the prowling vampires, yowling cats, and sweetly nursing babies of midnight, Traoré navigates between fable and comforting fact, between upbeat guitar licks and a philosophical undertone.

The fame Traoré’s brother foretold came to the young Traoré in a newly independent Mali, where Traoré’s early recordings—songs like “Mali Twist” and “Cha-cha-cha 63”—became big hits and unofficial anthems of a youthful, enthusiastic nation emerging from colonialism. Though drawing on international pop dance crazes, Traoré’s songs were far from frivolous; they called on Malians to work for the good of their transformed homeland. They were played every morning on national radio; almost fulfilling the role of a national anthem. Traoré continues to remind Malians and Africans, especially those in power, to respect and dedicate themselves to their communities, in songs like “Farafina Lolo Lôra” and “Mali Denhou.”

Traoré’s star faded after his burst of pioneering success, as Mali suffered political turmoil. After returning to a quiet life, Traoré soon faced great difficulties himself: the death of his beloved wife and the harsh realities of a stint as a migrant laborer in France. But it was during this period abroad that sympathetic producers encountered the middle-aged Traoré and brought his music into the international limelight.

Traoré remains a charmingly reluctant figure on the global music scene. “He’s a country guy at heart,” muses Mousset. “He loves connecting with audiences and performing—I’ve never seen him have an off night on tour—but he’s very tied to his land and his family,” whom he greets lovingly in “N’Dianamogo.”

Though he spends as much time as possible on his farm with children and grandchildren, Traoré has calmly and confidently carved out a reputation for his straightforward sounding yet mischievously complex guitar work. “Justin Adams, Robert Plant’s guitarist who is a big admirer of African music, told me that when he first heard Boubacar, he imagined his songs would be easy to play, but he couldn’t get the groove,” Mousset recounts. “Bill Frisell also used to perform Boubacar songs, and thought his style of composition was unique. The songs seem naïve, or light, but are actually very difficult to play.”

This mix of long experience, unique style, and quiet complexity have won Traoré the respect of young Malian musicians—several joined him in the studio, adding n’goni (traditional banjo-like instrument) and balafon (traditional wooden xylophone) to Traoré’s songs.

Yet the most striking collaborator is Vincent Bucher, who first met Traoré at a festival in Canada where the two were thrown together in a jam session that blossomed into a decades-long musical friendship. Now treated as a member of the family—“Vincent is like Boubacar’s adopted son,” Mousset notes—Bucher understands how to slip seamlessly into Traoré’s guitar parts, sometimes in counterpoint and sometimes grooving right along.

Though their collaboration sounds rehearsed, it came together, like all of Traoré’s musical endeavors, with startling speed and deftness. “Boubacar is not a huge rehearser. When inspiration comes, he takes his guitar and makes music,” Mousset states. “He has his universe, his own world, and once you connect to it, it all feels incredibly easy.”

Cuban Brass, Honey, and the Void: The Sensual, Spiritual World of Pedro Luis Ferrer on Tangible

Cuban Brass, Honey, and the Void: The Sensual, Spiritual World of Pedro Luis Ferrer on Tangible

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In the sheltered inner rooms of an old Havana house, an earthy philosopher plucks melodies and rhythms from the air and from Cuban music’s rich soil. Working alone or with close friends and relatives, he turns dances from the sugar cane fields and troubadour trills into magical realist declarations of liberty, as grandchildren dash in and out, and chicken grills out on the veranda.

This is the sensually philosophical world of Cuba’s maverick musician, Pedro Luis Ferrer, whose latest album Tangible continues the renowned singer-songwriter’s transformation of Cuban traditions into a vibrant cry for free thinking and intellectual liberation.

“When a human being is capable of conceiving the transformation of the surrounding world, an inevitable change begins. The spiritual world is as real as stone,” announces Ferrer.

Though roaming happily in the rarified realm of the spirit, Ferrer keeps his sound and his images firmly planted on traditional ground, drawing inspiration from the changüí of the mountains around Guantanamo, from the ballads of Cuban son, and increasingly on the brass arrangements of jazz masters such as Pérez Prado and Beny Moré.

Ferrer has long relied on guitar and the related Cuban tres as the rough yet resonant heart of his songs. Tangible adds brass sections and sinuous keyboards to Ferrer’s soulful vocals, skillful frets, and Latin percussion. The title track, “Tangible,” sparkles with bursts of horns, inviting listeners to dance while they consider God, innate love, verdant Reason, and the startling void. It’s a mix of the seen and unseen, the abstract and tangible, reflected in the music.

This shifting mix is Ferrer’s specialty. Ferrer, once a major figure in Cuba’snueva trova of the 1960s, has created his own distinctive and dynamic palette of Cuban sounds, which he has dubbed changüisa, a feminine word playing on changüí and a pithy challenge to Latin musical machismo. It became a vehicle to engage tradition without slavishly following what Ferrer dismisses as “the old formula” in Cuban music.

“Changüisa is always changing,” Ferrer explains. “The concept of changüisapresupposes transformation. I created the term to describe the free intention to tackle tradition, the transformative intention. It assumes both closeness to the changui and to creativity, a concept that both unites and reconstructs traditions.”

Always questioning, always advocating new avenues for individual creative expression, Ferrer has been often marginalized in his home country. But there is no bitterness in Ferrer’s music. Instead, he makes a sultry, visceral call to life, with all its entanglements, its longing, its lingering kisses and disappointments.

Even in hymns to the power of human imagination, Ferrer sings of concrete experiences, of sights, tastes, and smells. He draws on his childhood love of Cuban folk poetry, often filled with quirky images and mangled metaphors, and his penchant for Dada-esque playfulness, even in the face of great truths. In “Te hablo de un país (I Tell You About a Country),” cityscapes merge with the aroma of cedar, sweat, and honey, as the mind becomes a chisel knocking holes in walls. “The song speaks of a country that I imagine, a country of my dreams, the country that little by little I am constructing,” Ferrer muses, “and of another country I am going to leave behind.”

The vivid, pulsing moments Ferrer chronicles in his songs find their way very simply and spontaneously to the studio. With minimal overdubs and a relaxed atmosphere, Ferrer and a few friends and relatives gathered regularly to lay down tracks at Ferrer’s home. “I play and sing almost everything, and usually also acted as recording engineer. My brother helped with some choruses,” Ferrer recounts. “The fundamental things we recorded live, the marimbula(bass thumb piano), cajon (wooden percussion box), bongo and clave, and the tres, the guitar, the piano. This way we avoid losing the real spirit of live music.”

This sensuous immediacy, Ferrer insists, is a requisite ingredient for changüisaand an antidote to pop fluff and folklore pedantry. “I do not accept the aesthetic dictator of the past as the present, like a sealed and invariable dogma,” he states. “We forget that much of what today has become traditional and trite, was novel at birth.” Ferrer’s freewheeling songs find this freshness and return simply to the tangible.

Heaven and Earth: Musical Pioneer John Martyn’s Last Sonic Testament

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When the late British musical icon John Martyn sat down at the keys, veteran music producer and good friend Jim Tullio sighed. Martyn, an innovative guitarist and singer, had just finished a suite for the London National Ballet Company, which Tullio was mixing, but insisted he needed to lay down a keyboard part. Tullio prepared for hours of noodling, but Martyn made one pass and left. As Tullio incorporated the track into the mix, he was blown away.

“It worked perfectly,” Tullio recalls. “I learned a lesson then, to trust his instincts. John was a genius. He made music more naturally than anyone I’ve ever met, as effortlessly as the way you and I speak.”

Tullio is not alone in his assessment. Martyn, a cult-status musician’s musician, was admired by everyone from Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page to Lee “Scratch” Perry and Bob Marley. Martyn’s groundbreaking guitar technique, tape delay, and recording approaches inspired Brian Eno’s ambient sound and The Edge’s shimmering, delay-drenched strings. He was lionized by Bristol trip-hoppers and chill-out DJs.

After Martyn’s passing in early 2009, Tullio and co-producer Gary Pollitt put Martyn’s last musical testament in order, transforming rough-edged vocals, expansive takes, and complex guitar work into Heaven and Earth (Hole in the Rain; May 3, 2011). Martyn’s voice and striking songs reveal the depth and perception of a musical elder, with his signature grit and sprawling panache.

Several close friends and long-time musical collaborators—including Phil Collins—contributed elements to Heaven and Earth. But the heart of the album—felt on tracks like “Gambler” and “Bad Company”—beats in Martyn’s intuitive, idiosyncratic sense of the blues, filtered through his earthy feel for roots- and jazz-inspired songwriting and his raw voice.

Sounds like: the gritty yet sparkling last word from a neglected music legend who transformed rock, reggae, club music, and folk.

~~~

“John didn’t think about much until he was there doing it. Making music was a spontaneous process, not preconceived. He had a cool vibe,” reflects Tullio, a longtime fan and musical collaborator. They first met in Martyn’s native Scotland, thanks to a colleague from the band Supertramp. “We stopped in this village behind a church and knocked on a cottage door,” Tullio remembers. “And there was John. My friend had set it up and surprised me.”

Before long, Tullio became Martyn’s American connection, reuniting Martyn with old friends like Levon Helm of The Band (whom Martyn met during a late-60s sojourn in Woodstock) and working on several of Martyn’s albums and composition projects. Martyn hung out for months at Tullio’s home and studio in Chicago, making music and becoming practically part of the family. “The personal and musical weren’t separate for John, as they aren’t for most brilliant artists,” Tullio notes.

The personal was complex, and involved a tragic addiction to drink. Martyn lost a leg to alcohol poisoning, yet continued recording, performing, and pushing his music in new directions. An admirer of Pharaoh Sanders for decades, Martyn had a project with Sanders scheduled for early in 2009. But illness took him first.

Tullio and Gary Pollitt, felt they owed it to their friend to put together the pieces of his last works. Tullio had first-hand experience with weaving together the recordings of a talented musician who died before his time, having crafted a Grammy®-winning final record by Steve Goodman (of “City of New Orleans” fame).

His experience didn’t make the labor of love before him any easier emotionally, though he and Pollitt shared a sense of how Martyn approached arrangements and of how best to honor his memory.

“We didn’t do any editing. A lot of the tracks are long—even rambling—but we left them that way, as John last heard them,” explains Tullio. “We knew this was it, so we made a conscious decision to keep everything, every morsel.”

In addition to instrumental tracks and backing vocals by some of Martyn’s favorite backup singers, Phil Collins, a close friend and avid supporter of Martyn’s, sang background vocals on his song “Can’t Turn Back The Years.” Martyn covered Collins’s song, in part as a tribute to their bond, forged as the two men were both grappling with divorce in 1980. (Martyn crashed at Collins’s home for a spell.)

“John wanted to do one of Phil’s songs to repay him,” said Tullio. “After John passed, I spoke with Phil  and he really wanted to sing on the track. He said he had always wanted John to record one of his songs. You can hear the emotion in both their voices.” It’s a haunting feeling that pervades all of Heaven and Earth.

The Mother of Exile: Azam Ali Sings From Night to the Edge of Day

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“The birth of my son was bittersweet,” singer Azam Ali reflects. “He would never meet a large part of his family. And he was not alone in this: So many children are born in diaspora, so innocent in all this. Yet they suffer the consequences of turmoil in the world.”

 Ali unfolds the complexities of exile and love, motherhood and motherland in her striking, sophisticated exploration of Iranian, Turkish, Lebanese, and Kurdish lullabies, From Night to the Edge of Day. The Iranian-born, Indian-raised vocalist makes traditional and newly composed songs smolder with dreamy longing, with the grief of exile in a conflict-riven world, and with a keen edge of hope.

The first night of her son’s life, singer Azam Ali sat awake, stunned, until dawn. She began to sing. “I was in shock, staring at this little person,” Ali recalls. “I realized singing was the best way to communicate with him, without language. There’s something profound about singing to a child, which is why women have done it for thousands of years.”

This profound something is rarely about mere soothing. Traditional lullabies, with their latent darkness and emotional complexity, are not really for children, as Ali’s decidedly “grown-up” treatment of them testifies. They attempt to cope with difficult lives and the harshness and sorrow of the world, with loss, exile, and pain.

They scintillate under the influence of Ali’s unique vocal abilities and aesthetic, honed on three solo albums and during a career that has spanned all genres. Ali has collaborated with everyone from Mickey Hart to System of a Down, with musicians from Nine Inch Nails and King Crimson. She has appeared in film scores including 2007 box office smash, 300. She has taken global sounds in new directions as part of Niyaz, with help from producer Carmen Rizzo (Seal, Coldplay).

And as Ali sang to her son, cradlesongs became urgent pleas for an end to politically induced suffering in her native region. Lullabies flourish where the highly personal intersects the intensely political, flowing out in what Ali feels are “invisible waves” of quiet communication between adult and child. Ali kept singing the melody of that first night with her son, slowly crafting it into “Tenderness,” a bank of lush, warbling sound that rises from a dreamy drone and evokes love, loss, and longing.

Lullabies began coming to Ali out of the blue. Friends returning from Iran brought her a collection of traditional lyrics, including texts in Farsi dialects that became tracks like “Mehman (The Guest).” Other friends from across the Middle East sang her classic favorites (the Turkish favorite “Dandini”) and obscure gems (the rarely-heard traditional Turkish song, “Neni Desem”). Her close friend, Palestinian oud player Naser Musa, spontaneously wrote a stirring lullaby for Ali’s son, after speaking with Ali about her project (“Faith”).

Rich with strings, unexpected bursts of Middle Eastern percussion, and contributions from virtuosic players like Musa, Ali’s songs nestle dreamy layers of vocals in contemplative soundscapes that evoke both the softness and sadness of night. Yet this emotional and sonic world has a drive that goes beyond the pulsing drums of tracks like “Dandidi.” Ali has thoughtfully chosen lullabies from minority communities across the Middle East, such as Iraqi Kurds (“Lai Lai”) and the Azeris of Iran (“Shirin”), in a plea for peace and an end to conflict. “You go to the Middle East, and the West is blamed for everything. However, many of our problems stem from our own way of thinking, from cultural divisions, interethnic conflict,” Ali explains. “No matter what culture you are, we are all the same at the core. Lullabies communicate this. And that perspective alone can change a lot of things.”

“To do this project, I worked with Kurds, Azeris, a Palestinian Christian, Iranians from all over,” recounts Ali. “You could write a book about each one of them, about their difficulties in life and their diaspora. It was a profound experience for me as person.” Despite oppression, war, and exile, Ali heard “hope and the belief that good will always come out in the end” in the traditional songs and in the musical contributions of her friends.

It is this ray of light that gives Ali’s voice and arrangements their edge and elegance. “From childhood, we are fed all these ideologies that end up shaping the way we view the world,” she says. “If our parents and society could feed us more enlightened ideology from childhood, it would have such an effect on how we grow up and see people.”

WAITIKI 7 Captures the Vinyl Magic of High Fidelity Exotica on WAITIKI in Hi-Fi

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From egg-shaped plush chairs or towering cabinets carved like totem poles, hi-fi sound once poured over the conversation pits and cocktail hours of yesteryear. The warm tone and stop-and-listen vibe continue with exotica innovators WAITIKI 7’s latest venture, WAITIKI in Hi-Fi. The vinyl-only release of new material finally gives listeners—die-hard exotica connoisseurs, record collectors, or the merely tiki-curious—a chance to sit back and savor the group’s fresh look at a midcentury music in clear, rich analog.

Timed to honor the 100th anniversary of Martin Denny’s birth, the record pays homage to the exotica pioneer with whom several band members had the privilege to work with before his death. Thanks to Denny and many other highly skilled musicians, exotica’s tropical soundscapes, Latin dance grooves, and potent jazz chops became mainstays on turntables around the world.

Often misunderstood as kitsch, exotica was born in Hawaii’s vibrant postwar music scene and went mainstream when musicians like Martin Denny performed on national television shows like American Bandstand, Andy Williams, and Steve Allen. (Denny’s ’59 hit single “Quiet Village” reached #4 on Billboard’s charts, with his Exotica album eventually reaching #1).

The scene Denny helped spark found new life in the 1990s when groups like Combustible Edison took a serious new look at a funky old art form. Part of the lounge revival, which included renewed interest in neglected cocktail recipes, vintage technology, and midcentury pop design, the band spearheaded a movement that continues to flourish, thanks to a new generation of dedicated ensembles like WAITIKI.

A major figure on the East Coast exotica scene was (and is) Jack Fetterman, an architect with an ear for vintage sounds who hosted a legendary New York lounge party in the 1990s and still does cunning retro remixes, like his take on WAITIKI’s arrangement of the Denny classic “Similau,” exclusively available on vinyl. Fetterman, a long-time WAITIKI fan, approached the group about creating a hi-fi vinyl release, something exotica aficionados had been requesting for years.

The project was about more than retro recreation and pure nostalgia for the bygone days of LPs, however. Vinyl can capture the imagination, create a new kind of listening experience, and, under the right conditions, blow iPod addicts away with its warm, full sound.

Fetterman’s hi-fi system reflects how vinyl and analog systems can work their magic. “My set up has an elegance that you just can’t feel with something wireless, with a little box in the middle of the room,” Fetterman explains. “It doesn’t conceal what it’s doing, that sound is being pumped through these garden hose-shaped cables into the speakers. The pre-amp tubes glow and have to be replaced every couple years. But it sounds like nothing else.”

The sound and visual presence of a hi-fi still packs a punch, as do 12” records, with their big-format, bold artwork and potentially better sound quality. “You know when you listen to or look at a record that you are enjoying it exactly the way the artists meant it to be,” reflects WAITIKI bandleader Randy Wong. “Everything about this album is produced in super hi-fi fashion. I was surprised how much things opened up when I heard it. This is WAITIKI like you’ve never heard before.”

Supervised in part by Combustible Edison’s Brother Cleve, In Hi-Fi features alternate studio takes of rolling, lush tracks like “Flower Humming,” with all the sparkling color and depth of the vibes, flute, and Latin-infused percussion. A special live version of the Denny hit “Quiet Village” does beautiful justice to the piece’s animal calls and graceful melody, and brings out WAITIKI’s approach, which focuses on the bass line’s subtle drive.

While giving listeners a chance to hear WAITIKI’s exotica in all its glory, vinyl also encourages more relaxed way of listening, recalling the days when music formed the centerpiece of many a living room dance or cocktail party. “Man cannot live by earbuds or WiFi alone,” muses WAITIKI’s Tim Mayer, who plays reeds and flute with the group. “Here’s an example: There was as junk shop around corner from my house years ago, run by a guy who was a huge vinyl collector. In the summer, he would drag out sofas, lamps, and a 78 player from late ‘50s. Neighborhood people would stop by, listen for a while, and chat. That’s the irresistible allure of vinyl.”