About four years ago, when I was rooting around for Chinese music videos, I was sent a charming animation from a band called Shanren. The song “30 Years” was about the trials and tribulations of moving from the country to the big city to look for work. This is a motif that resonates with all working folks, and I won’t even go into the hundreds of great songs dealing with this from the West’s Industrial Revolution right through to today. “30 Years” describes what is going on in China currently, as its rapid industrialization is causing a vast shift in population from rural to urban centers. I was therefor already interested when I was contacted by the band’s publicist, informing me that they would be playing on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, at Pianos.

The band comes from Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, with members from the Wa and Buyi minorities. The name Shanren means “mountain men.” During a chat with James Pang, the band’s Chinese manager, he mentioned that the people of these minorities live up in the mountains, are kind of wild living, like to brew their own liquor, and dance. Being a lover of country music and bluegrass, I could not help but start drawing parallels between some of the characteristics of our own folk heritage and what I was about to see and hear. I was not let down. Listen to this music and tell me that you don’t hear something that sounds remarkably like our own “Old Timey” music, with its trance-like repetitions. People like banjoist Abigail Washburn have been mining these parallels for years, and you can hear why. (The band even uses something that looks mighty like a banjo!)

The song is called “Left Foot Dance of the Yi”
The Yi people, as I mentioned before, are one of the ethnic minorities of southwestern China. There’s a family of songs called left foot dance songs (“kind of Yi party music” their manager Sam Debell writes). This is the band’s own arrangement of a very well known left foot dance song. It’s usually a circle dance, but the band adapted it, so they do it in a line (in a circle it must look positively Balkan….but I’m not going to get into that, at least not here).

A sample of the lyrics (xianzi is a stringed instrument)–

-Brother play the xianzi.
-Sister sing the song.
-The moon is already risen.
-And we’re waiting to dance.

And something from our own repertoire:

“Late in the evening about sundown
High on a hill and above the town
Uncle Pen played the fiddle, lordy how it would ring,
You could hear it talk, you could hear it sing.”

To contact the band:
Sam Debell (Asia) at unitysam@gmail.com and +86 152-1027-0868.

Douglas Lora and Dudu Maia (whom I have covered previously) were in town, this time at the Caffe Vivaldi and with Douglas’ brother Alexandre playing tambourine. The room was packed, so I only got this one good take out of it. But it’s a sweet one!
Choro is a kind of urban folk music that grew out of a merging of European and Brazilian sensibilities, and it calls on the player to be agile, inventive and swinging. The emphasis on improvisation makes people compare it to jazz, but if one is going to do that, let’s specify that it’s a lot more Django than Miles. It’s accessible music in every way.
Lora is a classically trained and plays a seven string guitar, and Maia also plays an altered instrument, a mandolin (called bandolim, in Brazil) with 10 strings, as opposed to the usual 8. Both are well respected musicians back home, and part of their tours generally consist of choro workshops. They are also part of a full-out band called Caraivana, so look out for that aggregate as well.

Performance during APAP week at Scandinavia House.
The Swedes continue to impress me with their superb musicianship, taking their heritage into uncharted territory.
This trio made so much music, and in particular the cellist knocked me out. He held down the rhythm and played absolutely arousing melodic lines. Okay, call me crazy….I find that sort of thing to be arousing.

From an entire night of a capella magnificence and magic at DROM.
Here are Svetlana’s notes on the song:
“The song in honour of Serbian Scientist Nikola Tesla, made by my old godfather Milan Bilbija from Cirkin Polje, Prijedor, Bosnian Krajina.  He died in 2008. Melody made by Svetlana Spajic”

The brief shot of the overhead image of the gusle, the Serbian instrument upon which the epic singers (guslars) play, with image of Tesla, is the property of multi-instrumentalist Darco Macura, who I finally met face to face along with Svetlana, in Belgrade in 1997. I had used several of his musical performances in a compilation of music I was producing. He was also Svetlana’s first mentor.

lyric translation by Svetlana Spajic:

My soul is in pain, but I sing this song, I sing the song from Nikola Tesla

Oh Nikola, brilliant and smart, you invented electric power, magnetic waves and transformers

Oh Nikola if you’d lived longer, you would have made electric power from the sun.  Where are you now?

Where are your New York doves? Does the new America remember you?

Scientists don’t care for monuments; yours, Nikola, stands at Niagara Falls.

Oh Nikola, from the village of Smiljan, the gusle is adorned with your image.

Oh Nikola, it doesn’t matter that you are a Serb, the generations of the world will remember you!

From a performance of a capella folk music from Serbia, Dalmatia and Bosnia at DROM.

I first contacted Svetlana in 1995-6 when I was putting together a compilation of music from formerly Soviet countries, called “Unblocked: Music of Eastern Europe.”

At the time it was very difficult to get recordings from these areas, as faxing was frequently hindered by poor telephone systems and modem connections, and email was not widespread there to say the least. Dead of night telephone calls were the most common ways to connect. Svetlana was introduced to me by Bojan Djordjevic, organizer of the Ring Ring festival in Belgrade. She in turn helped me to get some wonderful tracks from her mentor, Darco Macura. When I visited them all in Belgrade, in 1997, Svetlana was my guide and hostess for much of my stay. She was just starting out in her career dedicated to studying the folk songs of Serbia, but when she sang to me, I could hear an extraordinary voice that was perfect for the music. I was very happy to have the opportunity to shoot her group at WOMEX, and her solo show at DROM, here in NYC.

About the song, from Ms. Spajic’s notes:
“”I would sing but I have no leading one, I would dance but I have no shoes.”
Ancient “prostrelica” (mountain shaking singing) of wife and husband Stana and Nikola Kostic from the village of Gustovare, Western Bosnia. The photo projected above is of Duka and Durica Radmilovic, from the village of Zegar, Dalmatia parents of 13 children. ”

For them, solitude must have been precious..

I heard the band Ffynnon performing this song at the Sharq Taronalari Festival in Samarkand, and thought it had one of the most lovely roller coasters of a melody; one that is a joy to sing and to harmonize with. When I visited Wales a few months later, I made it a point to videotape the band. I was particularly happy that they decided to perform this song as one of their chosen two. My only regret is that it is a very rough shoot, pretty much the only fancy equipment we had were some lights. So there are times when Lynne Denman’s fine voice is not that easy to hear. But I think she is so special, so I’m glad we at least have this. You can also hear the band performing a beautiful ballad here.

I first heard Oran Etkin and Kelenia (pronounced kel-en-EE-ya) at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City, opening for Yemen Blues. I was struck with the freshness of their sound, and wished my footage had come out better. So regardless of the hazards of shooting in a crowded converted conference room at the Hilton, I figured it was worth a try capturing them again when they played at the APAP convention in NYC.

The brainchild of John Kruth and Jeff Greene, TriBeCaStan is a whimsical melange of timbres, textures and tunes (Oh my!) and a very fun outlet for all the musical eclecticism of its founders.
During APAP week I ventured to the East Village to the Duo Multicultural Arts Center, which has a historic old theater in the East Village, where Greene (who  has a mural restoration company) had snagged a night to showcase the band. The wine flowed, folks schmoozed and we were treated to a high energy night of musique trés intérresant, complete with dancers.  I’ve chosen the first song “BedBugs” to present here, even though it got off to a bumpy start –and apologies for the camera’s audio, there isn’t much sound separation.  But as I like to say, “Ya can’t make chowder without a clam or two, but oh my my it’s a tasty stew!”  You’ll get the idea.

for more on the band visit: www.tribecastan.tv

To see a TriBeCaStan tango, visit http://inter-muse.com/blog/2012/01/10/tribecastan-plays-jovanka-a-tango/

TriBeCaStan is John Kruth Jeff Greene, Claire Daly, Todd Isler, Kenny Margolis, Boris Kinberg, Chris Morrow, John Turner, Dave Dreiwitz and Mike Duclos

Here is a lovely piece of music written by Calliope Tsoupaki, a Greek composer living in the Netherlands, whose performance I caught at the Dutch Classical Meeting. She has written this especially for the supple tenor voice of Marcel Beekman, and you will see
immediately that there is a special musical rapport between these two. That is another thing which makes this video special Ms. Tsoupaki does not usually perform her works personally, having scored them for choruses, orchestras, and chamber ensembles. But this stripped back presentation serves to enhance the architecture of the composition and even those of you who may shy away from modern classical music will find extraordinary beauty and lyricism in this piece. I personally find it haunting, lovely, and very Greek in essence.
Part of that essence stems for the lyrics themselves, which are a poem by Kafavi, called “Thimisou, soma” (Remember, body) in which the poet, now an
old man ruminates on his youth and early erotic experiences.