Stellamara’s Sonja Drakulich
Photo by Trinette Reed
courtesy of Stellamara
August 2005
World Roots
Music From Zanzibar to Zydeco
by Larry Kelp
Musical innovators love to take what’s already there and put it into new contexts, which is what musical fusion is really about. Forget the usual definition of the term, which conjures thoughts of electronics and bastardized indigenous music. Instead, let’s look at what’s going on in the fertile fields of World Fusion by reviewing some exciting recent recordings and one reissue.
These recordings range from Zanzibar to zydeco and from solo singer to full orchestra — albeit a hybrid African-Egyptian orchestra. They communicate a lot about our constantly evolving world cultures because the recordings provide a context for their content. As cross-cultural fusions, they came easily and naturally to the musicians.
Two years ago, when the Culture Musical Club of Zanzibar invited Taj Mahal to collaborate on a project, the US bluesman said, “Sure, but what are we going to do?” He was told: “Whatever you want.” The result, which put one of the greatest American Roots artists together with a band of Africans who play Arab instruments, is a delight.
For the little-known but brilliant Bay Area band Stellamara, its second CD, “The Seven Valleys,” fine-tunes the ensemble’s gift for creating timeless beauty from a blend of Balkan, Arabic and Medieval musics. Likewise, in the recent movie, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Brazilian singer Seu Jorge abandoned his amped-up studio approach to new millennium samba, to sit cross-legged strumming a guitar in the rigging of Zissou’s boat. He was the movie’s recurring joke, but he also made the soundtrack a hit album by fusing bossa nova with glam rock, performing David Bowie songs in Portuguese, as if they had been penned by Antonio Carlos Jobim.
While these are new projects, the just-reissued 1965 album by Clifton Chenier, Louisiana Blues and Zydeco, shows a unique American fusion at its birth, the formal creation of zydeco music and its introduction to the world outside the bayous and byways of Louisiana and South Texas. And finally, for those who need the whole world in one neat package, there’s the appetizing Putumayo compilation, Music from the Chocolate Lands.
Taj Mahal Meets the Culture Musical Club of Zanzibar: Mkutano (Tradition & Moderne 031)
Berkeley-based Taj Mahal has made a career of never actually having a hit, yet doing whatever inspires him while maintaining a loyal audience. He once fronted a band that included four tubas. On another occasion, he led a quartet of Native American and Oklahoma musicians in a romp through the Rolling Stones’ film, Rock & Roll Circus. He has worked with Hawaiian and African partners, Caribbean steel drummers, and symphony orchestras. So, while his new CD, Mkutano, may explore new territory, it isn’t much of a stretch. Two years ago, when he was invited to Zanzibar to record an album, Mahal found himself off the East Coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean, in a country that has been a historic cross-road for visitors and settlers from Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. The resulting recording features Taj on guitar joined by Africans playing instruments associated with Egyptian and Persian orchestras (ouds, violins, neys, accordions). The music is exotic, down-to-earth. The Arabic-African modes fit with the blues modalism of Mahal’s banjo and guitar playing and singing to produce the darkest version ever of “Catfish Blues.” On “Muhoga wa jang’ ombe,” Mahal follows the band, adding only banjo accompaniment. On other tracks, he sets off sparks on electric blues guitar, and leads some songs he wrote for the occasion, with lyrics that comment on music as a universal experience.
Stellamara: The Seven Valleys (Hearts of Space HOS-11417)
Stellamara, a local fusion union composed of singer and multi-instrumentalist Sonja Drakulich, string wizard Gari Hegedus and some musician friends, creates an exotic aural world through music that is less earthy and more mysterious than Taj Mahal’s. Stellamara’s style is rooted in Balkan and Middle Eastern tradition, as well as Medieval music. It would be difficult to find an ensemble anywhere boasting a more haunting or seductive vocalist than Drakulich, who grew up in the Armenian community of Los Angeles before moving to the Bay Area. The music on the new CD, The Seven Valleys, feels timeless, like an echo from some now-forgotten culture lost to the veil of the centuries. There is an occasional melody or poem borrowed from the past, but the combination of minor modes, hand percussion, spare instrumentation of voice and strings — including viola and oud — creates a sound that is never less than engrossing. The music makes for truly intimate and personal listening. The echo-laden, cloudy atmospherics are the product of various electronic additions that enhance Stellamara’s seemingly acoustic dream world. They lend a sense of mystery to the songs. Imagine stumbling upon an Eastern European mountain village that had evolved around a monastery with millennium-old religious chants, a place where Middle Eastern musicians had settled alongside Bulgarians, and everyone pooled their musical roots; this new music would be Stellamara. While Drakulich’s bell-clear soprano is the focus, her voice comes and goes in the instrumental arrangements to haunting and beautiful effect. (Stellamara’s CD’s can also be ordered online at www.stellamara.com/recordings.html )
Clifton Chenier: Louisiana Blues and Zydeco (Arhoolie 9053)
Singer and accordionist Clifton Chenier, the late king of zydeco, would seem to be in a different world from Stellamara, but the music on his first nationally distributed 1965 album Louisiana Blues and Zydeco, has a similar history. In spite of sounding like it was always around, the zydeco recording that went on to set the world on fire was born in a small Houston, studio, the result of producer Chris Strachwitz and Chenier’s differing viewpoints of just what this record would be. The original album was a mono mix and the reissue of this classical album marks its first appearance in true stereo, which delivers an added spaciousness to the very tight and sweaty sound.
Strachwitz is the head of El Cerrito’s Arhoolie Records, the company that, for more than 20 years issued most of Chenier’s recordings. Strachwitz wanted to record a spare and simple session, with just accordion and percussion and Chenier singing in French. Chenier, with dreams of rock stardom, envisioned an electric band with guitars and full drums. They compromised on Louisiana Blues and Zydeco, sticking to duo and small group settings.
Until 1965, Zydeco had not been widely known outside its home turf. It was the outgrowth of Louisiana French-Cajun accordion dance music that was picked up by Creole musicians who mixed it with their blues, rubboards and drums. But the Arhoolie album took zydeco to a new audience. It was Chenier’s ticket to world fame, or at least the foot that got him in that door. It gave him the radio play he needed to begin touring outside of Louisiana. As his popularity soared, Chenier added electric guitars — and even horns — to his sound. But his music’s soul always was his singing and hard-pumping accordion playing. And with this reissue one can rediscover the joy of the first zydeco recording to get serious world attention. With that boost, Chenier’s Creole accordion music found its voice and an audience that moved from backwaters and tin shack dancehalls to prestigious jazz, blues and world music festivals in New Orleans, San Francisco and Montreux, Switzerland.
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Original Soundtrack, Hollywood 62494)
The fusion approach usually involves Western musicians borrowing from Third World cultures for inspiration. But in the case of Brazilian singer Seu Jorge and his role in Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou the reverse happens. As with Anderson’s other movies ( Rushmore, Royal Tenenbaums ), the soundtrack album is an inspired mix of rock oldies (David Bowie, Devo, Scott Walker) with world sounds such as Paco de Lucia’s flamenco — all as asides to the main twist: Seu Jorge’s Brazilian deckhand who sits around in shorts strumming his guitar and singing something in Portuguese that sounds strangely familiar. It turns out to be a mad mix of David Bowie songs such as “Rock N’ Roll Suicide” and “Rebel Rebel” — bossa nova Bowie, but musically valid. Unlike Jorge’s rocking Carolina and Cru CDs, there’s no high-tech production, just Jorge and guitar, accompanied by ocean waves and other nature sounds. In his low-tech approach, Jorge has revolutionized the art of bringing in something from the outside world and reinventing it.
Music from the Chocolate Lands (Putumayo 230-2)
When Putumayo had its artistic office in Berkeley back in the ’90s, Jacob Edgar, the genius behind their eclectic compilations, would often visit Down Home Records and listen to CDs for hours at a time, searching for that one special track on someone’s album that would fit with whatever concept he was whipping up. The high-spirited dean of compilation discs, Putumayo Music has given us such fun concept projects as several volumes of Music from the Coffee Lands and Music from the Tea Lands. Now it offers one of its best: Music from the Chocolate Lands, a sweet confection with not one downer track amongst the dozen tracks from India, Brazil, Hawaii, Belize, Cuba, Peru and, of course, Switzerland.
Most of the musicians play acoustic instruments, and the selection (by Jacob Edgar) plays as if everyone had collaborated to make one cohesive album. It begins with all-star trio Toto Bona Lokua’s “Lisanga,” a lilting, unforgettable song whose lyrics are sung in an imaginary language pooled from the group’s three countries of origin (Richard Bona is from Cameroon, Lokua Kanza from the Congo, and Gerald Toto is from Martinique). The result proves — even more than Seu Jorge’s non-literal Bowie-isms — that music remains the universal language. Along the way, the Mexican-American pop band Ozomatli adds some accordion to its “Aqui no Sera”; Peruvian diva Susana Baca’s contributes “Valentin”; and the CD ends, appropriately, with Cuban-born trumpet great Chocolate Armenteros’ salsa party, “Chocolate Sabroso.”
These entertainingly original recordings all share a sense of identity and musical integrity. All of this music sounds as if it’s always been around, proving that the best music comes when its roots are showing — when there’s a musical trail back to the ancestors and to our primordial need to coo and howl and bang on things and call it music. It’s not so much a return to the primitive as just getting in touch with ourselves, whether it’s done by plunking Taj Mahal into the heart of Zanzibar or just sticking Clifton Chenier in a recording studio as he tries out different ways of playing the music he grew up with.
Lary Kelp hosts KPFA’s Sing Out! Wednesday’s at 10pm. He teaches and writes frequently for CG about American Music.
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