CHARANGO CUZQUEÑO

 CHARANGO CUZQUEÑO
JULIO BENAVENTE DIAZ

Pérou L'aventure du monde par les sons
Otros sonidos para descubrir el mundo

GREM, 1985, G1504

CHARANGO FROM CUZCO/JULIO BENAVENTE DIAZ
Peru Different sounds to discover the world

Julio Benavente Diaz was a well-known charango player from Cuzco recorded by Xavier Bellenger in Cuzco. Diaz sings as well in Quechua and is joined by guitar players Raul Borquez and Daniel Dickez and singer Isabel Vargas Diaz. If you are fan of this kind of Peruvian traditional music this album is a must with the great talent displayed by Diaz and his lovely Cuzquean style.
This LP is perhaps less known than the other one issued by Ocora Radio France and available on CD. The charango is well spread now from the center of Peru to Northern Argentina but was originally a creation by  Peuvian people probably as soon as the 17th century. It's a brillant adaptation of the Spanish vihuela brought by the Spanish colonists after the conquest in 1532. The notes in the album give some information about it and the tunes.
X. Bellenger was a very good ethnomusicologist (he died in 2020) who produced several nice CDs on Peruvian musical traditions. This album is part of a series ''Musical Cultures''. The label GREM seems to have disappeared and was a very interesting one focused on extra-european cultures. 

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Dutar melodies

 MELODIES ON DUTAR/DUTAR MELODIES

from the musical  heritage of the Uzbek people

ДУТОР НАВОЛАРИ

Ӯзбек халки музика меросидан

Melodiya, 1983, M30-44639-40

This monophonic LP is a didactic recording the kind of album Melodiya used to produced about certain musical traditions in Central Asia. It's like a lecture with somebody reading a text (here in Uzbek only) illustrated by musical parts. Seven dutar players including one female player are featured here with recordings made previously between 1956 and 1982 hence the bad sound quality of some of these tracks. I had to make 18 tracks myself out of the two sides in order to separate the oral presentation from the music so that you can skip the text unless you understand Uzbek. The text on the cover is in Russian though which I suppose is a sort of summary of what is read.
There are no titles on the cover but they are sometimes mentionned by the reader. The names of the players are listed on each side. I tried to follow the names of each player in order to identify the musical tracks but I'm not sure about what I'm able to hear so if you know better you are welcome !

If you don't know it, the dutar has only two strings (from Persian dotar = 2 strings), one for the melody the other one for the drone which can change at times according to the melody. It might seem dry and difficult to listen to but it is an exciting and highly rich music as is the whole Uzbek-Tajik musical culture. 

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John McKenna

 JOHN McKENNA/HIS ORIGINAL RECORDINGS

The John McKenna Traditional Society, no date

John McKenna (1880-1947) is considered as the first Irish traditional flute player to have established the concert flute in the 20th century. He was as famous as Michael Coleman and he came from a flute-fiddle area ie Co. Leitrim and he emigrated to the USA in 1911.
Here we have 18 sides of 78rpm recorded between 1921 and 1937 made for different labels such as Columbia, Decca or Gennett. These sides were remastered by Harry Bradshaw a man of great importance in the preservation of old recordings. The notes are made up partly of interviews with several people who knew McKenna and partly of biographical information by Jackie Small.
Other musicians played along with him : Michael Gaffney on banjo, James Morrison on fiddle, Barney Conlon on fiddle and Eddie Meehan on flute, all hailing from Co. Sligo, Leitrim or Roscommon. All the sets are backed by a piano as it was the custom at the time.
Needless to say that the repertoire is entirely ''local'' so if you are a fan of that part of Ireland you must know about this tape. Great music by a great player. 

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TOMMY PEOPLES

 

TOMMY PEOPLES

AN EXCITING SESSION WITH ONE OF IRELAND'S
LEADING TRADITIONAL FIDDLERS

Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, 1976, CL 13

Tommy Peoples (1948-2018) was one of the most respected musicians in Ireland and abroad for his style, his quality of playing and his love for Irish music. All his LP albums have been reissued on CD except for this one that was his first LP recorded in public between October 1974 and January 1976 in Dublin. He was joined on some tracks by the discret guitar player Finian de Brun.
This album is really exciting and we can fully appreciate his style mixing some Donegal fiddling with a personal approach to Irish music.
Another LP (reissued on CD) he made with Matt Molloy and Paul Brady was so outstanding that it is still influential with Irish music lovers in Ireland and beyond. For more information about his career you can see this site https://www.tommypeoples.ie/biography/

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GODCI IZ RESIJE

 GODCI IZ RESIJE

GRUPPO FOLKLORISTICO VAL RESIA

LIVE FOLK MUSIC 

Druga Godba, 1988, DG 005

The Val Resia is a valley in Italy at the Italian/Slovenian border and inhabited by people speaking an old Slovenian dialect. It is part of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region.
The fiddle (citira) and the bass (bunkula) are still used by traditional musicians for dance music while the accordion replaced them in other places of that province. This music is rarely recorded and this tape is a good example of the revival in action there.  Silvio Buttolo ''Pala'' plays fiddle and sings as Elio Micelle ''Klit'' while Antonio Buttolo ''Pala'' plays the bunkula a kind of bass the size of a cello with 3 strings. The word ''folkloristico'' could lead us to think of a band with dancers in costume etc... Although the picture on the cover shows that these 3 musicians wore a costume during that concert, their music is as closed to the tradition as can be.
I thank a friend of mine, Yves, a Frenchman who lives in Northern Italy for this tape quite rare I believe.
The brief notes are in English, Italian and Slovenian. Only the English bit is available here.

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TATAVLA

 TATAVLA / ΤΑΤΑΥΛΑ

Olympic, 1969, BL 1026

The  Greek ''sub-title'' on the cover means : dances and music from the famous Constantinopolitan neighborhood with laterna, accordion and folk orchestras. 

Constantinople/Istanbul has kept some of its Greek inhabitants since the fall in 1453 to the Ottomans until now. I don't know how many Sambuliots from Greek extraction still live there, probably a few compared to the numbers estimated in the 19th century (20 000) when this area was known as a Greek-Armenian neighborhood. I believe a good part of the community left the city in the 1950's after pressure and harassment from the Turkish government. Anyway, it was a great place for Greek culture and very important for the Greeks living in the country who came to Constantinople for economical reasons. The Greek text of this album compares Tatavla to the Piraeus near Athens for is role of cultural and economical pole. The Turkish name for the area is Kurtuluş (meaning ''liberation'').

This album is entirely instrumental with a duet accordion and a plucked strings instrument I don't identify (a mandolin or a baglama ?), violin in Oriental style, electrified bouzouki. To me the tracks A5 and B2 are the best with some laterna playing echoing the atmosphere of Tatavlian streets where this mechanical piano was very much appreciated around 1900.  This tradition still exists in Istanbul with Turkish-Greek repertoire and in Athens. Track B6 is a hot tsifteteli with clarinet, violin, qanun solos.
The duet with the chromatic accordion reminds me of Klezmer music at times and the repertoire sounds a bit Romanian. Maybe the influence of Askenazi Jews fleeing the pogroms in Tsarist Russia at the end of the 19th century who choosed to go to Istanbul rather than migrating to Western Europe. 
A bit more information about the composers and musicians on https://www.discogs.com/Various-%CE%A4%CE%B1%CF%84%CE%B1%CF%8D%CE%BB%CE%B1/release/8340364

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MUSIQUES POPULAIRES DU PEROU

 MUSIQUES POPULAIRES DU PEROU CENTRE ET SUD

Documents sonores inédits recueillis et enregistrés au Pérou par David Rothstein

Rothstein, 1974, DR 78 06 01

FOLK MUSIC FROM PERU (CENTRE AND SOUTH)

Unpublished audio documents collected and recorded in Peru by D. Rothstein

David Rothstein was a Frenchman who travelled in Peru  between July and September 1974. He produced this album himself as well as the distribution. This is a recording in the field type of album in order to present the ''real'' music of Peru played by ordinary people young and old. The information are minimal about those people. Some tracks are more interesting like track A3 with a song in quechua and a ''pampa piano'' which is a harmonium with bellows operated by the musician's feet or the tracks with some students  of the university of Ayacucho. The tracks with the peruvian harp are nice too.

My first real instrument was the kena at the end of the 60's and I liked this kind of album as well as those made by famous bands (Los Incas, Los Calchakis ...). So this blog is a bit like a trip to memory lane for me.

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AN FHIDIL SRAITH 1

 AN FHIDIL SRAITH 1 

THE FIDDLE ALBUM 1

Gael-Linn, 1978, CEF 068

This is the first album in a series of three dedicated to young fiddlers. These 5 musicians were under the age of 20 when they recorded their bit and were all All-Ireland Champions in different age categories. Martin Hayes was the youngest (16 years old) and shared the 20 tracks allocated to them with  Séamus Glackin, Maurice Lennon, Seàn Montgomery and Séamus Thompson meaning they had 4  tracks each to display their talent.
This kind of  album is interesting because it reminds us that Irish music is first a soloist affair. In France the session aspect is very strong and rightly so for it is part of the Irish way of life in some areas but I think that  the pleasure of playing this music is the freedom we have when playing on our own. These 5 fiddlers were the next generation after big names like Paddy Canny, Patrick Kelly, Padraig O'Keeffe, Séan Ryan, John Doherty among others and they had to respect a certain tradition but also to forge their own way. It is what is called style that is really exciting in Irish music : the choice in the ornements and how to use them, the tempo, the swing and the variations in the melody, all things you can't do (a little bit though) when playing in a session of more than 3 or 4 musicians. I think  solo playing is like a test : if you can't listen to it you probably don't like Irish music in the end.
Hope you'll be attracted enough to those young fiddlers; some of them have reached international fame with albums, concerts, TV and radio programs etc..

Gael-Linn is one of the major companies in Ireland and the production is very good both technically and editing wise. 

 

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FINBARR DWYER

 

FINBARR DWYER
Ireland's champion traditional accordionist

Outlet, 1977, SOLP 1032

F. Dwyer (1946-2014) was part of a family of musicians from Cork. He was known also as a good and prolific composer along with his brother Richard who played the box also. Most of the time musicians who won some competition were sought after by big companies. This is not his first album. His style is the style which dominated Irish box playing at that time and reminds me of Joe Burke and others.

Outlet was a Belfast-based label, now disappeared, and was notorious enough for its poorly recorded LPs.
It is the case here; first the piano well played by Teresa MacMahon is almost totally inaudible and seems at times out of place because of the reverberation; second there is some light wow  due maybe to a poor moulding. Items of the Outlet catalogue are available on CDs but not this album according to http://www.irishmusicreview.com. 

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THE RAYES MOHAMMED ELMARRAKCHI

 THE RAYES MOHAMMED ELMARRAKCHI

Sawt el Ahbab, no date, 24

Moroccan artists have recorded a huge number of tapes over the years reflecting the great diversity of this culture between Arabic and Tamazight speakers. Here we have a good example of music from the Souss  area where amazigh culture is still very strong musically and linguistically. One feature I like is the dialogue between the male singer and the women typical of this music. Those voices and the way of singing are really exciting along with the rabab and lotar playing. The whole thing being backed by a very solid section of percussions as usual. Too much reverberation characterizes many tapes but we get used to it after a while. The sound quality is not great in general but what a music !

Being unable to read the cover, I asked the help of a friend, Julien, who speaks and writes Arabic but he told me that the titles of the songs being in Tamazight mostly it was difficult for him to give me an accurate transcription.  There are 5 songs mentionned but there are 6 tracks...  If somebody has a better comprehension I'd be glad to modify the following :

أدي بيد ربي أزمزن أوالي يالان - Adi bid Rebbi azemzen awali yalan

وريد أو اوريد - Werid aw urid

تنضامت - Tendamet

الرجاء في الله أدنيت - Al-raja fi Allah adnayt

آح يا احبيب - Ah ya hbib 

 

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CONCERTS AT THE REGHISTAN

 

CONCERTS AT THE REGHISTAN

Second international  musicological symposium  
''Samarkand-83'' (2)

 

SSR OF AZERBAIJAN

Melodiya, 1985, C30 22571 001

 

ΚОНЦЕРТЫ B PEГИСТАНЕ

ВТОРОЙ МЕЖДУНАРОДНЫЙ МУЗЫКОВЕДЧЕСКИЙ СИМПОЗИУМ

CAMAPKANД – 83 (2)

АЗЕРБАЙДЖАНСКАЯ  ССР

 This album is part of a series about that symposium held in Samarkand in 1983 (cf post published on the 12th of May).
I must say that the sound quality is bad enough; the recording was made during a concert and the music sounds ''far''; and there are occasional saturations when the singers go very high; I don't know whether it is due to a bad moulding or to my turntable. I post it all the same because we can listen to Alem Qassimov on track A2 and the great tar master Bahram Mansurov on B1. Hope you can enjoy it in the end.
I want to thank Sacha from Leningrad (at the time) musician and painter who provided me with nice Soviet LPs in the 1980's. This disc is one of them and others will be posted.

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DYNAMITES

 DYNAMITES - ΔΥΝΑΜΙΤΕΣ

Panivar, no date, PA 40007

I know that this tape was reissued as a CD but according to the main Greek site for the sale of CDs studio52.gr it has been unavailable for a good while meaning nobody knows whether it will be published again or not. So I decided to post it here because it is a good compilation of Cretan great artists like Skordalos, Skoulas, Vardoulakis among others. There is one bagpipe solo (askomandoura) by Manos Grilos. So it is like dynamite indeed !
Panivar label was founded in 1967 by Panayotis Vardoulakis (who figures on the tape) and released many LPs, tapes and CDs.

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CRETAN PAGES

 CRETAN PAGES

KPHTIKEΣ   ΣΕΛΙΔΕΣ

traditional music from Crete

Μουσική παραδοσιακή Kpήτης

Psiloritis, no date, psil 119

One of many tapes produced in Crete. Another one of them ! would you say. But if you enjoy Cretan music you would want to listen to it anyway. Here we have Manolis Alexakis on lira, Manolis Saloustros on laouto and Yioryos Doulyerakis on guitar. They play throughout each side of the tape with the vigour that characterizes Cretan dance music.
Crete is another example of some places in the world where a small amount of people produces a huge lot of music due to the vitality of their culture. It's amazing how strong a tradition can be in spite of mass tourism, under developement in some cases, bad management from local administration, etc...

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STEPHEN BALDWIN

 STEPHEN BALDWIN ENGLISH VILLAGE FIDDLER

Leader, 1976, LED 2068

S. Baldwin was a fiddler from Bishop Upton, Herefordshire. He was recorded on 22 June 1954 by Russell Worley at the local primary school because there was no electricity in Baldwin's house. It is possible to hear children play and other noises from the people taking part to the session.
Baldwin was born at the beginning of the 1870's and died in 1955 so shortly after those recordings. He was old enough in 1954 and his playing was somehow impared for this reason. But we can hear that his bowing was still very good; he used to play for dancers in his youth and the tempo and rhythm are very important to them. All the tunes are played one after the other without any real break so I had to make tracks out of it.
The repertoire is typical I guess of any English fiddler of the time with a lot of hornpipes and jigs, waltz, scottisches, polkas etc ... Some of these tunes or settings are probably local so this album is interesting for that reason too. Note that B11 and B12 are on the same track.  Finally, records of English fiddle music before the revival is not that common.
Leader was a very good label founded by Bill Leader in 1969 along with the label Trailer. He was very instrumental in the British revival in the 60's and 70's with the publication of the works of Woody Guthrie, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Pentangle, The Dubliners, etc ...

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DANCES AND SONGS FROM PONTOS

  DANCES AND SONGS FROM PONTOS/ANGEIOU (TOULOUM)

ΠΟΝΤΙΑΚΟI XOPOI KAI TPAГOΥΔΙΑ

AГГEIOΥ (TOΥΛΟΥΜ)

Vasipap, 1975, TC-LVAS 206

 This is one the many tapes produced in Greece for the Pontic community by Pontic Greeks whose parents or grandparents came from Anatolia in 1923 when the war between Greeks and Turks led to the formation of the Republic of Turkey. According to a nationalistic vision (coming from the Western world !) Atatürk decided to expulse all the Greek people who were on the Egean coast, in Cappadocia and on the Black Sea coast in order to have a homogeneous country. The refugees from the Pont were settled by the Greek gouvernement mostly in Macedonia to replace Slavic and Muslim people who had to leave the area as well. Since then the Pontic Greeks became part of the Greek nation but kept some of their traditions especially music. This music could be very old knowing that Greek settlements could be found 7 or 8 centuries before our era on the Black Sea. But I suppose that what is sung and played today couldn't be older than the Ottoman period. Some tunes and rhythms remind me of Thracian music (mostly modern Bulgaria and Northern Greece). This kind of music is still alive in Turkey played by Laz/Turkish people on the same instruments.
Here due to a lack of information I suppose that the singer is also the bagpipe player : Ioannis Kalpatsinidis. All the tracks have some drumming from a darbuka-like percussion. Note the term ''angeiou'' for the bagpipe while ''touloum'' is the Turkish name.
I'm very fond of that kind of music and solo touloum tapes and LPs are rare enough.  

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