India I

 INDIA I 

A MUSICAL ANTHOLOGY OF THE ORIENT
Edited by the International Music Council under the direction of Alain Daniélou

Unesco Collection-Musicaphon Bärenreiter,  ?, BM 30L2006

This series about India has four albums made of recordings by A. Daniélou between 1949 and 1951 for this album. They are all supposed to have been reissued as CD by Auvidis or Rounder as read on some sites. But I never found any of them listed on the main platforms. So I'm posting them here until further notice.

Album I focuses on Vedic recitation and chant. A. Daniélou (1907-1994) wrote the presentation text. While he was considered as ''the specialist'' of Hinduism and Indian music between the 1930s and the 1960s in France, some musiclogists and musicians pointed out errors in his publications. Now many more recent works have a different approach and perception of Indian music. But I suppose most of the short introduction is reliable. He says that ''Vedic chant is probably the oldest known form of psalmody'' and thinks that this kind of chant has been preserved through very strict and complex teaching in spite of social changes and political events. But nobody knows for sure when this collection of texts has been drawn up; some say between 1900 and 1000 BCE, others 3500 BCE ...;  but although everything is written  the transmission has been orally done until now;   brahmans teach young children  through specific and very strict vocal techniques based on tonal stress, a unique way of pronouncing each letter, in order to keep texts unchanged.
Of course all this was based on the cast system that was praised by Daniélou who was much criticised on this subject.

Anyway it is an interesting document to listen to for this ''music'' long predates what is called Hindustani classical music and is believed to have been in practice even before the Aryans arrived in present India. Most of the Rig Veda is sung with three notes except for Sāma Veda which is considered more ''musical''. At least rhythm in Indian classical music is surely related to the Vedic Sankrit poetry.

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LES MENESTRIERS

 

LES MENESTRIERS  DOMINO 

 Disque du Cavalier, 1973, BP 2003

This is the third album recorded by this French group founded in 1969 (see my other posts for more details).
Again, side A is dedicated to tunes and songs from Northern France between the 12th and the 15th centuries. Side B is more european with Renaissance dances from England, Italy and France.
Among the usual instruments they used we can hear the jew's harp on track 5 something that was new at the time among early music bands.

 

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Mnong Gar du Vietnam

 

MUSIQUE MNONG GAR DU VIETNAM
enregistrements de Georges Condominas 

COLLECTION MUSEE DE L'HOMME

------

MNONG GAR MUSIC FROM VIETNAM
recordings Georges Condominas

COLLECTION ''MUSEUM OF MAN''

Disques Ocora, ORTF, 1972, OCR 80

This is the first volume of a series called ''Anthology of Proto-Indochinese Music''. As far as I know there was no follow up.
Georges Condominas was a French ethnologist specialized in South-east Asia. He was born in Haiphong (Vietnam) in 1921 and died in Paris in 2011. He started his field surveys in 1948 at Sar Luk among the Mnong Gar which he studied over a long period. From this experience he published a book (among others) in 1957 translated to English in 1977 : ''we ate the forest of the spirit-stone Gôo''. He was totally committed  to anti-colonialism, to promoting development that respects traditional cultures and he tried to warn the French public of  the Mnong Gar ethnocide. Unfortunately he was not really understood at that time. 

He wrote the texts introducing the music he recorded with enough detail to enjoy what we hear. The gong (that they don't make but buy from other people) is one the main instruments played in bands sometimes with the support of a drum. The mouth organ is in use too.There are songs for funerals, love songs or kind of mythological songs.
Some tracks were recorded in Cambodia among another population close to the Mnong Gar.
Texts in English (and French).

 

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Viet-Nam

             

         MUSIQUE DU VIET-NAM                                    MUSIQUE PROTO INDOCHINOISE

     interprétée par TRAN VAB KHE                           recueillie chez les Moïs des Hauts Plateaux
    MAI THU et Mme MONG TRUNG                                mission FRANTZ LAFOREST 

      Grand Prix du Disque/Académie du                                             BAM, LD 326
                     Disque Français

                       BAM, LD 365

These two 7'' vinyles were published by the French label ''la Boîte à Musique'' established in 1934 by Jacques Lévi Alvarès essentially to issue Jazz and Classical music. But there were also documents like these in their catalogue.
The first one ''Music from Vietnam'' is the work of Trân Van Khê (1921-2015) who was like Mister Vietnamese music in France where he settled in 1949. A musician and singer, a teacher and a writer he was a tireless propagator of his culture. He made several albums since the eighties. He plays here the dan-tranh, dan-co and dan-kim. Most of the tunes presented here were parts of his repertoire until the end.
I don't know the two other artists. 

The second record is totally different and features field-recordings made in 1955 by Frantz Laforest, Louise Berthe and a small crew. Entitled ''Proto-Indochinese music'' it is a beautiful example of good field-recordings although all tracks are short enough. The Moïs are  one of the first inhabitants in Central Vietnam near the Annamitic Cordillera. Moï is in fact a generic name which is rather pejorative for different people like the Jaraï , Banhar, Sedang etc... These people have different instruments like ''xylophone'', jew's harp and the amazing gong bands. The tracks are well introduced but in French only. 

I suppose that these ''tribes'' were living a relatively peaceful life at the time of the recordings. Their environment was then certainly affected by the war and now by modern development in Vietnam in particular with the ongoing deforestation which reduces their living possibilities.

 

     

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These two discs were reissued together by BAM under the title ''Musics of Vietnam''.

Chants et danses des montagnards du Viet-Nam

 

CHANTS ET DANSES DES MONTAGNARDS DU VIET-NAM

RICHESSE DU FOLKLORE N°14

SONGS AND DANCES OF THE VIETNAMESE MOUTAIN PEOPLE 

A WEALTH OF FOLKLORE N°14

Riviéra, 1967, 421.075 P 

This very short but exciting album was made by Maurice Bitter a French ''globe-trotter'' who was active in the sixties and the seventies. At that time France had several men (as it was the case then) who used to travel to very remote lands in order to record local music unheard by French ordinary music lovers. There was a name for them, ''chasseurs de sons'' or ''sound-hunters'' and sometimes they had the opportunity to present their findings on national French radio programmes. Bitter had a programme called ''beyond the seas" that I listened to, late in the evening when I was a kid in the early seventies. He was also a journalist, a writer and a televison producer. He died in 1997.

Here Bitter was very fortunate to have been able to make that trip over to the high plateaux of central Viet-Nam. But he precises that all side B was recorded in difficult conditions although he doesn't specify them. Civil war between North and South Viet-Nam had already begun in 1959 and from 1965 the USA sent massive numbers of GIs and bombed North Viet-Nam heavily. Caught bewteen were the mountain people made up of numerous ethnic groups. Bitter gives no information about their situation when he was there. It was peaceful enough according to the quality of the singing and the playing by these people. In fact we don't know when these recordings were made.
The technical quality is not great though but Riviéra had the right reaction to publish these recordings for a large audience. All the tracks are great in spite of noise interference.
Note that tracks BIII and BIV are together.
Short text of introduction in English about the disc and the tracks.

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Fest Noz Nevez

 

FEST.NOZ NEVEZ  INEDITS

NEW FEST.NOZ    UNPUBLISHED

 

Arfolk, 1974, SB 320, SB 321 

 

Arfolk is one the oldest Breton labels founded in Lorient in 1967 by Jo Gragnic. Following its primary goal the promotion of Breton music  the label recorded different  artists and genre : the traditional kan ha diskan and binioù & bombard music as well as bagadoù, the Breton pipe-bands. When the revival started in Brittany launched by Stivell among others Arfolk also  recorded plenty of folk bands.
Here we have a double album with traditional or so singers and musicians as well as folk groups. There are no information about the songs and tunes or the people. If we believe the label all these tracks are unpublished and were made especially for this album.
The sentence on the cover means ''Breton music is''.
So to help you to follow and enjoy the music I list below what types of dances are presented  here.

disc 1 :
A1 the Pennec brothers play a three-part set from the Fisel country made of fisel-bal-fisel
A2 the Pennec brothers play a particular gavotte from the Pourlet country
A3 Yann Vikel Bourdieg sings a laridé in Breton from the Vannes country with the band           called an Trouzerion Goh (see my earlier post)
A4 Ar Penseerien (the shipwreckers in Breton) play one gavotte from Inner Brittany

B1/B2/B3  the Coulouarn sisters sing  a set (plin-bal-plin) from the Fanch country

B4 the Kergosien brothers play two an dro (the circle). The first an dro  is a peculier one;
      the tune sounds identical to ''estolisan to sperveri'' a wedding song from the Greek island       of Rhodes. I knew the Greek song before getting this album and it stroke me                          immediately. Is it possible that a Breton tune from the Vannes country be more than          similar to a Greek tune without any contacts ? or did these ''sonneurs'' adopted this                wedding song that can be danced to like an dro ? The Greek song is performed by a               traditional female singer and choir with a lyra and a laouto players who were members          of a folk ensemble set up by Simon Karas the great musicologist on the album named in       French ''Voyage en Grèce-Simon Karas'' published by Le Chant du Monde in the 1970s.       I added this track to this album.
B5 the Kergosien brothers play a laridé

 

disc 2 :
A1 Sonerien Du (the Black Pipers/Musicians in Breton) play a set of gavotten-tamm kreiz-         gavotten (ar menez)
A2/A3/A4 the Coulouarn sisters sing a gavotten-tamm kreiz-gavotten
A5 the Pennec brothers play perhaps a set of ''ronds'' from Loudéac with a bal between
B1 the Kergosien brothers play an an dro
B2 the Coulouarn sisters sing a set of gavotten ar menez with a tamm kreiz (litteraly the bit       in the middle) between
B3 the folk band Kouerien Sant Yann play two laridé (round dance from the Vannetais                 country)

Globally this compilation is not the best one but not the worst either. Although Sonerien Du have been one of the big folk bands for decades I'm not that gone on them. To me the best part is the track by Kouerien Sant Yann (the Peasants from Saint John) with an interesting approach to music played by solid musicians. They had three albums out on the Arfolk label. Unlike Sonerien Du the band disbanded in the eighties. Their albums were reissued on different CDs. Alain Pennec was also a member of Kouerien.

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Musique Gouro de Côte d'Ivoire

 

MUSIQUE GOURO de CÔTE D'IVOIRE

Anthologie de la musique populaire

GOURO MUSIC FROM THE IVORY COAST 

International folk music council

Ocora, ?, OCR 48

Here is the 300th post on this blog; I still have time to wish you  the best year 2025 possible and to thank you for following this blog.

This is another LP that is not part of Ocora's catalogue. These field recordings were made in December 1968 and January 1969 by Michel Vuylsteke. The Gouro are located in a region of forest and savannah. As usual the music and the population are  described so I won't say much except that this music is rare enough and of great quality. Like almost everywhere in Africa, every moment of social life is a moment for music-making (encouraging farmers, funeral songs, grinding grain, ...)
Text in English (and French)

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Musiques du Pays Lobi

 

MUSIQUES DU PAYS LOBI

MUSIC FROM THE LOBI COUNTRY 

Disques OCORA/ORTF,  1970, OCR 51

This is another album that didn't make it to the present Ocora catalogue. Charles Duvelle (1937-2017) recorded these musics in the field in 1961 in what was called at the time Upper Volta now Burkina Faso.
Side A focuses on Lobi music with three tracks of elong xylophone and singing plus one track with women singing. Side B presents some Gan, Dagari and Birifor music.
As usual the notes are informative enough to understand what's happening.
A very nice album with some exciting and powerful  music on the xylophone well recorded.
Text in English (and French). 

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Ethiopia II : Cushites

 

 

ETHIOPIA II - CUSHITES

AN ANTHOLOGY OF AFRICAN MUSIC / 5
Edited for the International Music Council by the International Institute for
Comparative Music Studies and Documentation 

Musicaphon Bärenreiter/Unesco Collection, 1970, BM 30 L 2005

 

 This is the second album of the Anthology of African Music dedicated to Ethiopia. These are field recordings also made by Jean Jenkins in 1965. This time she focused on black tribes in South-West Ethiopia near the Kenyan border in the provinces of Gomu-Gofa and Sidamo. This part of Ethiopia is the home of Cushitic-speaking peoples a linguistic family  but whose different variants are sometimes far removed from one another. This and the nature of terrain (no real roads, rivers impossible to cross after rain, mountains...) helped the tribes to preserve specific character especially in music. The people she visited were the Gidole, Konso, Burji, Kaffa, Dorze, Sidamo, Soddu, Kumama and Darassa. Most of the tracks are about singing (in group or individual); the instruments we can hear are horns, flutes ensembles (one man one note), and the indigenous lyre (called krar in Amharic).

Since the sixties other musicologists worked on these populations notably Bernard Lortat-Jacob who spent time with the Dorze and their mighty polyphonic singing. He died last summer in July.  You can listen to some of his unpublished recordings here :
https://archives.crem-cnrs.fr/archives/collections/CNRSMH_I_1975_004/

Texts in English (French and German).
This being the first post in 2025 let me wish you all the best to you.

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Troubadours des Hauts-Plateaux

 

MUSIQUE AFRICAINE DE BURUNDI
LES TROUBADOURS DES HAUTS-PLATEAUX
enregistrés par Roger Barbaglia
--------

AFRICAN MUSIC FROM BURUNDI
THE TROUBADOURS OF THE HIGH PLATEAUX
recorded by Roger Barbaglia

 Vogue, 1969, CLVLX 296

The French label Vogue disappeared around 1972. It covered various musical genres including field recordings like this album. In fact this is the soundtrack of a film entitled ''le royaume des 1000 collines'' (the kingdom of 1000 hills) as Burundi is sometime nicknamed. I don't know who Roger Barbaglia was but he was lucky or he knew the country well enough to get the music he wanted.
This album is quite amazing (not the sound quality though) with some examples of rare singing at least at the time of the recordings. One of the highlights of the album is the songs from the kraal a house more or less large where women stay with infants and cows. These women (quite young here) have their own corpus of songs they sing between them, songs that were not supposed to be heard by strangers. Barbaglia talks about the freshness of these songs.
Most of the tracks feature singers young girls and boys as well as men. Tutsis, Hutus and Twas (Pygmies) have several tracks each.
Barbaglia wrote the text in French only with a good introduction to the country and its ethnic groups.
Now there are some discrepancies between what is mentionned on the back cover and what we hear. The first track on side A features a likembe player which is not on the list of tunes. So I named it track A 0.
On B4 the ''2nd harper'' is not the musical arc player mentionned but the same inanga player and singer as on B3. The musical arc player appears on B5.
Then when I copied this album I put tracks B7 and B8 together (I borrowed it from a library).
This LP is a great witness of the diversity and richness of the cultures present in Burundi before the chaos of the 90s. 

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Ethiopia I : Copts

ETHIOPIA I  COPTS

AN ANTHOLOGY OF AFRICAN MUSIC / 4
Edited for the International Music Council by the International Institute for
Comparative Music Studies and Documentation 

Musicaphon Bärenreiter/Unesco Collection, ?, BM 30 L 2304

 Jean Jenkins (1922-1990) was one of the best ethnomusicologists who worked a lot in the field. Among the countries where she went the most Ethiopia certainly comes first. All her albums are excellent (here recorded in mono) and Ethiopia has a diversity like no other.
Jenkins wrote the text with some historical information and then a description of the liturgy.
 The Ethiopian Church is monophysite like the Armenian Church or the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch.

Set apart from the other Western and  Eastern churches  for centuries (except the Copts in Egypt) the liturgical chant remained close enough (as far as we know) to the original chanting in the Near East with perhaps some traces of the Jewish chant in the Temple and other features kept by the  early Christian church. When I listen to the debtera who is in charge of the chanting I can hear the same approach as in the old Gaelic way of singing (the sean-nós singing) which was also called  ''the singing of the monks from ancient times''. Maybe it is a coincidence we'll probably never know for sure.
An exceptional document recorded around 1963.

Text in English (French and German) 

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Fleadh Ceoil '75

 

FLEADH CEOIL '75

Dolphin Records, 1975, DOL M.5013 

This album features some of the musicians who took part in the 1975 edition of the All-Ireland Fleadh in Buncrana co. Donegal. Some musicians are quite famous like Jackie Daly or Jim McKillop. Michael Flatley (yes the future Lord of the Dance himself) was there too on flute.
Already some foreign musicians came over but maybe  not in huge numbers like it has been the case since the eighties. Among them a Dutch trio was recorded with metal flute, mandolin and guitar. It looks like they were appreciated as they were given three tracks on this album. Their name King's Galliard sounds quite English to me but they probably played other types of music as well. Two Breton musicians were also recorded on bombarde and scottish bagpipe : Daniel Corcuff and Alan Kloatr respectively. Kloatr was already quite famous as an uilleann piper and flute player. He was a member of Alan Stivell's band. He died in 2018. Here they played a ''gavottenn'' which ends abruptely followed by a Breton march.
It is difficult to know how or where all these musicians were recorded; I'd say in studio, not on stage.
Special mention to Joe Harris on A5 who won the lilting competition.
The work on the titles is very poor with lots of mistakes or approximations; for example on B3 McKernes reel is McKenna's reel; on B9 Jackie Daly's Fancy is in fact the four-part jig the Gold Ring. The title itself is wrong for it should be Fleadh Cheoil (na hÉireann).
Nevertheless there are some good moments especially if you like Irish trad music a lot. 

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Vielles et cornemuses en Europe

 

VIELLES A ROUE ET CORNEMUSES EN EUROPE

HURDY GURDIES AND BAGPIPES IN EUROPE

Alpha, 1975, 34 5016-17

When the folk revival started in Western Europe, in Britain in the sixties and in France, Belgium and Italy mainly in the seventies American music was the trigger that launched it. But at the same time young people were interested in their own tradtions if any and hurdy gurdies and bagpipes because they were both exotic in a way and within reach in certain areas attracted more and more players.
This double album is a good example of what was at work in the early seventies. It was recorded on the occasion of the European reunion of hurdy-gurdy and bagpipe players at Nederokkerzeel  in Belgium. It was a good way to understand the richness of these hurdy-gurdy and bagpipe traditions in Europe. Musicians from Sweden, France, Belgium, Czechoslovaquia and Italy (Sicily) took part in the event.
Some of them (if not all) played a very important role in the preservation or the revival of different instruments. The case of Charles Alexandre is interesting : he was from Brittany but worked and lived most of his life in what is called ''la montagne noire'' (the black mountain) between the French departments Aude and Tarn north of Carcassonne. There between 1965 and 1975 he worked as a scholar and collector on the local bagpipe called ''bodega''  or ''craba''. He was in fact the first one to bring the instrument out of oblivion. Here he plays the bodega and the cabrette à bouche from Auvergne. After him associations and individuals started to make bagpipes, collect tunes and teach the local repertoire.
Note that Irish, Scottish or Breton pipers were not part of the event.
Alpha was a label based in Brussels. I suppose it has disappeared since. 

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Fest Noz in Pederneg

 FEST NOZ IN PEDERNEG

 After ''Klask an Ton'' left a comment about the LP ''Peron ha Gwennegou'' saying he was quite impressed by Yann Peron's talent I proposed to post some more music by Peron; this recording was made in April 1975 in Brittany in the town of Pederneg during what is called a fest noz.
Fest noz can be found anywhere in Brittany now where people pay for dancing to live music.
Originally a feast to conclude hard works  on a farm with some neighbours it became quite something else around 1955 thanks to Polig Montjarret who wanted to preserve what was left of the Breton singing which was quite declining. He managed to convince some Breton speaking farmers to sing again and take part in small evenings; later it became a kind of show with bands along with traditional musicians attracting hundreds of dancers.

Here only ''sonneurs'' (bombarde and bagpipe players) and singers were present. I recorded some parts of this fest noz where the noise made by the dancers is quite present. But it's part of the event.
Unfortunately there are only two tracks with Yann Peron playing with Yann Le Bars on binioù kozh. The other musicians were Daniel Le Noan on bombarde and Philippe Petitpain on biniou bras (scottish bagpipe). There is a track with unidentified sonneurs and a track with singers Bastard father and son.
The two dances which were danced were the ''fisel'' a variant of the gavotte and the plin and almost nothing else. 
Y. Peron died in October 1975; the three others died recently enough barely in their sixties.
D. Le Noan was also a famous reed maker for bombarde and bagpipe. He was very influenced by Peron as we can easily hear.

Once again the sound quality is almost secondary to the general atmosphere with the music almost drowned in the dancers' noise.
The sets are not complete as they can last for 15 minutes or more.

Track 01 : set : fisel-bal-fisel by Y. Peron and Y. Le Bars
Track 02 : plin (idem)
Track 03 : set : fisel-bal-fisel by anonymous players
Track 04 : fisel by D. Le Noan & P. Petitpain
Track 05 : fisel (idem)
Track 06 : set : fisel-bal-fisel by Bastard tad ha mab
Track 07 : set : plin-bal-plin

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DEVENDRA MURDESHWAR

 

DEVENDRA MURDESHWAR FLUTE

EMI, 1972, ESCD.2713

The bansuri has been played since for ever in India but  it has emerged on the international scene fairly recently.  Until Hariprasad Chaurasia started to record and tour a lot the older flute players were  best known to amateurs and specialists. Among them Pannalal Ghosh who died in 1960 was probably the most valuable. Other players nevertheless left their marks on Hindustani music like D. Murdeshwar (1923-2000)  who recorded a few albums for EMI India. He was a disciple of P. Ghosh.

Some information about his apprenticeship and career are given on the back cover. But if you want to know more about this  subtle musician you can visit this excellent  site :
https://davidphilipson.com/music/devendra/

Here he plays raag kedara, raag jhinjoti and a thumri.

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Musica dell'Etiopia

 

MUSICA DELL'ETIOPIA

MUSIC OF ETHIOPIA

Original Ethnic Music of the Peoples of the World

a cura di Lin Lerner & Chet A. Wollner

Albatros,  1975, VPA 8230

Ethiopia is a fascinating country which attracted many musicologists and other researchers. This is an album recorded in the field by Lin Lerner and Chet A. Wollner about whom I know nothing since there are no information in the introductory text by Alberto Paleari.
It is about tribal music from the Wallano, Hanafa, Gamu, Tigre, Adjuran, Gidole, Borana, Burgi and Konso tribes. There is one track about the Falashas those Ethiopians of Jewish faith. Most of the tracks are about collective singing (weddings songs, bringing the cattle to water, greeting song etc...); musical instruments are also featured like cow horn and different types of flutes.
The recordings were made during the summer 1973 mostly south of Addis Abeba.
Text in Italian.
This is a second-hand album.

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Vive Henri IV

 

LES MENESTRIERS / VIVE HENRI IV

THE MINSTRELS / LONG LIVE HENRI IV

Disques du Cavalier, 1973, BP 2005

Unlike the records already posted here, this album by Les Menestriers is devoted entirely to music from the 15th and 16th centuries.
Most of the tunes are quite well-known with pieces by Phalese, Susato or Dowland. Songs are less well-spread like the album's eponymous song Vive Henri IV an anonymous song dated 1588 and here sung to the melody of ''Cassandre'' which was printed by Thoinot Arbeau in his famous Orchésographie. Henri IV was the king of France who put an end to the wars of religion between Catholics and Protestants; he was murdered in 1610 by a Catholic fanatic. This song praised Henri's ability to be a solid drinker, a fierce fighter and an ever-ready lover.
On track A7 is  another song rarely recorded (as far as I know) about a lady probably a wealthy one with a strong sexual appetite  who  ask everyday for Martin (a servant ?) himself feeling quite harassed in the end ... Typical of the French Renaissance which produced a lot of songs of a sexual nature. 

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Al-Hammami

 

AHMED AL-HAMMAMI 

''ancient folklore''

 

This  tape perhaps a commercial one which is a copy was given to me as such without any information or cover.
The Yemenite singer Al-Hammami plays the ud as well and is backed by a derbuka player.
 Ali al-Ansi cited al-Hammami as one of his greatest influences.
I hope Leonidas or whoever it is will manage to get useful information about him.

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