While talking over our favored music from last year, Mali’s Tinariwen came up. Their 2009 record, Imidiwan (Companions) made two of our three top lists. In this group, we don’t let discrepancies like this alone. The holdout stated Imidiwan ’sounded like their other records.’
Sure. I replied, “If Sophia Loren had an identical twin sister, she’d likely be as beautiful as her sister. You wouldn’t say, ‘oh she’s just a repeat of her sister’s beauty.’ ”
To which my muso bud replied, “Oh, I don’t think Sophia Loren is that beautiful.” Jeezum! He offered Jennifer Connelly as exemplar. I offered, again, my analogy. (Tinariwen home)
Here’s my top list of African music from 2009. I could add a bunch too, given reissues and other worthy candidates not listed. It was an extraordinary year because just about every African artist I closely track put out new music last year. Abdullah Ibrahim would top this list if his superb Bombella–my favorite single record of 2009–didn’t already top the improv list.
+Amadou & Mariam – Welcome to Mali
Baaba Maal – Television
Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba – I Speak Fula
Culture Music Club – Shime
Extra Golden – Thank You Very Quickly
Fanga – Sira Ba
Ghana Special –Modern Highlife Afro Sounds Ghana Blues
Jimi Tenor and Tony Allen – Inspiration Information 4
Kimi Djabate – Karam
Mulatu Astatke & The Heliocentrics – Inspiration Information
+Orchestre National de Barbès – Alik
+Oumou Sangare – Seya
Salif Keita – La Difference
+Staff Benda Bilili – Tres Fort , Tres Fort
+Tinariwen – Imidiwan:Companions
Tony Allen – Secret Agent
Blog has been on hiatus due to technical problems with the hoster. This happened just as I was putting together my favorite tune o’ 2009 compendium. Such a task is formidible simply because I don;t go about my listening habit with much sense of what came out when, besides tracking the handful–no, two handfuls– of artists I follow closely.
Steve Lacy, (Wikipedia) who passed away in june, 2004, is one of those artists. In fact, I’d like to hear every note he ever played. (Steve Lacy @Senators.fr)
Via a tip on the Pedal Steel Guitar forum, here a video of–I believe–Eddie Fulawka making a pedal steel guitar. At one point in the incredibly concise clip from the Discovery Channel’s How It’s Made, the narrator mentions that in getting the pick-up level, “There’s no room for error.”
Hmmm, there’s not a lot of room for error elsewhere. The modern pedal steel guitar is a wonder of craftsmanship, and with the top-of-the-line guitars, each is the product of a lot of handcraftsmanship.
VI. Noise. In terms of music, personally, it’s not a mean distinction. It was 30+ years ago that I heard very late period Coltrane. At the time I didn’t understand, nor do I today, why it was termed free jazz. Then came Evan Parker and Peter Brotzmann. Sonny Sharrock. It goes on. Peter’s son, Caspar Brotzmann. Mersbow. Charles Gayle.
It goes on: over there. Actually, when I hear the word ‘noise,’ I think of Jacques Attali; Noise: The Political Economy of Music. It’s one of the essential books about music, but it’s not about noise, really.
What is noise? One can’t say, ‘I know it when I hear it.’ This doesn’t make sense as a report about a coherent act of listening. Still, the actual received—heard—bandwidth, streamed into cognitive apparatus, then inferentially extracted to either ‘feel’ or (some) named perception, is variable “in the subject” but defines nothing more than the available slice. This slice is allowed by the consequence of evolution. Listening is actually very hard to do.
The extremes of this slice might hold some fascination.
quiet becomes
lifeless, short
of this, thumping
passes over
silence
The most intense noise I ever heard was the sound world available while floating in an isolation tank. Beautiful.
About Sunn O)))
SUNN 0))) is the heavy rock equivalent of an institutional-size dose of Largactyl; when you finally get down, you stay down. SUNN 0))) makes sounds of weather formation size meditations, as monolithic as a brick of monosludge. SUNN 0))) music is huge and simple, like a future race of technologists who forgot how to build microchips so had to return to factory-sized computers. Its shamanic appeal is considerably enlivened by the sub-bass disfigurations caused to all bowels in the immediate proximity, whilst the lead guitar clings to your torso like a butter knife spreading Philly Lite first on a piece of toast, then on the bread board, then across the counter over the fridge and up the walls into adjacent rooms.
Ha ha. . .Philly Lite? I guess lava would hurt. Anyway, SunnO))) and Double Leopards figure into my sense, although, the heaviest drone I’ve churned through and out, Low Mera, didn’t make Slidemare.
