ѲЗҺАЛ MУҚАМИ

 

УӢҒУР  ''OH ИККИ MУҚАМИ''

                                                           ѲЗҺАЛ MУҚАМИ

                    THE  TWELVE  UYGHUR MUQAMS/MUQAM ÖZHAL                 

               Melodiya, ?, S30-13725-26 - S30-13727-28    (2 LPs issued separately)

There is a small Uyghur community in Uzbekistan  (less than 20 000 in the 2000 census) but some say that this figure is largely underestimated as many Uyghur people declared themselves as Uzbek. What is certain is that there are no political uyghur organisations and critics toward China are forbidden. China and Uzbekistan have even signed an extradition agreement. So the Uyghur in Uzbekistan can express themselves only culturally. There are programs in Uyghur on Uzbek TV several days a week. That is more or less the situation now; back to the mid-eighties the picture was probably different.
I got these two albums around 1986 from a friend in USSR.
At the time in Tashkent some musicians and scholars worked on the restoration and promotion of the Uyghur muqams by publishing series of LPs. Özhal (ئۆزھال مۇقامى, Өжал) is the sixth mode in the series. It seems that that corpus was stabilized during the sixteenth century by Amannisahan who was a concubine as well as a poetess and musician.
The first album starts with an introduction by singer Abdurahim. Ahmadiy ans sator player Sultanmurad Razamov who was also the musical adviser for this project. Then the orchestra and male and female choirs alternate with ''dastan nagme'' and ''dastan margul''. The lyrics are based on the poem ''Garib and Senem''; each vocal dastan is associated to a specific tune played by the orchestra (dutar, sator, flute, tanbur, chang and daire) led by Hakim Helamov. They are Uyghur musicians and singers part of the Uzbek Radio-TV Orchestra at Tashkent.
The second album is the following of the first one with the poems ''Garib and Senem'' and ''Yusuf Ahmet''. As the muqam was completed by the beginning of side 4, two folk pieces were added.
The sound quality is not optimal but the melodies are great evoking sometimes India, Afghanistan and even some Western Europe traditions.
Brief text in Uzbek and Russian.

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musique populaire marocaine vol.1

 

MUSIQUE POPULAIRE MAROCAINE VOLUME 1

Documents recueillis par Jean Mazel 

Grand prix national du disque

MOROCCAN FOLK MUSIC VOL.1 

Documents gathered by Jean Mazel

National record award

BAM-Edition AZ, 1975, BAM 5435 

Jean Mazel was a French ethnologist who specialized on Morocco. He published several LPs and EPs mostly for BAM. Some of the recordings issued on EP were reissued on LPs like this one. This is a reedition of the 1968 issue with a different cover.
Three regions are presented here : the Middle Atlas, the Chleu country and the Great Moroccan South.

As usual with this kind of album most of the tracks are excerpts of longer songs and dances. But these labels like BAM played an important role in the dissemination of music that was far removed from the musical knowledge of the general French public at the time. This LP gives a good picture of the diversity of Moroccan folk music.

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Kertalg '73

 2e FESTIVAL POP'CELTIC

KERTALG 73

Barclays, 1973, 920.452/920.453

The festival of Kertalg in Brittany was an important step in the gathering of all the  ''Celtic'' countries at the beginning of the folk revival in France. After the festival in Brest and before Lorient this festival lasted for three years only. For more details please see my post about the first edition (March 2022).
In 1973 the programming was much more ambitious than for the first edition. This why it is a double album but as said Gwenn Le Goarnic the organiser only a small part of the concerts was selected. Some of the artists were there in 1972 like René Werneer (then Alan Stivell's fiddle player), HappyTraum from the USA and the Goadec Sisters and the Skloferien from Brittany. That second year the ''stars'' were Planxty and Brenda Wootton.  Robin Dransfield was there too as well as two Breton groups Dremmwel and Diaouled ar menez (''horizon'' and ''the Devils of the mountain'' respectively in Breton).
Le Goarnic wrote that she wanted to favour Planxty and Wootton because she thought that they were a revelation to the French public thanks to their talent and personalities. There is a fiddle on some of Planxty's sets : it was R. Werneer who had met with Planxty in Britain at various festivals and who knew their repertoire well enough. That was Planxty's first visit to France; they were in Le Havre the following year as part of an Irish delegation invited by the City council to introduce the public to Irish history and culture. This event was recorded and broadcasted on France Culture (part of Radio France) the same year.
I must mention two other Irish guests who were known as ''Munroe'' (or Monroe) with Micheal O'Domhnaill and Mick Hanly who sang a scottish ''mouth music'' song that became part of Bothy Band's repertoire soon after.

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DON JACINTO PEREZ

 

DON JACINTO PEREZ / EL REY DEL CUATRO VOLUMEN II

THE KING OF THE CUATRO VOLUME 2

Discomoda, 1968, DCM-632

 Bought by my father during a business travel in Caracas, this is the second album of a series of three by the cuatro player Don Jacinto Perez. Born in 1900 to a modest family he moved to Caracas in the fifties where he became known thanks to a daily fifteen minutes radio program where he could demonstrate his talent and his new approach (with different tuning and technique) to a large audience.  His real name was Eduardo Azuaje and he changed it when he became famous. He died in 1974. He's considered by present time virtuosos like Cheo Hurtado as the man who brought the cuatro in the spotlight.
This small instrument with four strings (hence its name) has been part of the classical venezuelan trio with harp and maracas.The cuatro is played in villages and the country traditionally as a rhythmic instrument  accompanying songs and dances. It derives from the Spanish baroque guitar and is found also in the llanos part of Colombia.
Perez is backed by another cuatro, a bass, maracas and a guiro.
Some of the tunes on this LP are part of the CD ''el disco de oro de Don Jacinto Perez''.

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Musique à la cour de Chypre 1192-1489

 

MUSIQUE A LA COUR DE CHYPRE 1192-1489

MUSIC AT THE COURT OF CYPRUS 1192-1489

HUELGAS ENSEMBLE

Alpha, 1978, DB 264

When Guy de Lusignan lost his throne in Jerusalem he had the idea of buying the island of Cyprus from the Templar Knights in 1192. Another version says that it was Richard Coeur de Lion who gave Cyprus to Lusignan after he took it from the Byzantines. From that time the Lusignan family managed to keep Cyprus for itself until it was sold to Venice in 1489. The court was French in its language, habits and culture with influences from France (Ars Subtilior).
Some of the songs are in Latin for the religious ones and in French as it was spoken there during the15th century. They all come from a manuscript ''MS Torino'' in Turin which was written in Cyprus around 1412 and brought to France by Anne de Lusignan.
There are two Greek songs from the collection of Pieris Zarmas. The lyrics in Greek are provided in a Flemish transcription (for example toe mpaloe = tou ballou). Alpha being a Belgian label the presentation text is in French and Flemish (only the French part is scanned). 

The Huelgas Ensemble was founded by Paul Van Nevel in 1971 and had ten performers for this album. There are singers and rebec, recorder, shawm, sacbut players. This ensemble is well known throughout the world for the quality of its work.

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ТАНБУР BA CATO CAДОЛАРИ

 

ТАНБУР BA CATO CAДОЛАРИ

Ӯзбек халқи музика меросидан

MELODIES ON TANBUR AND SATO 

from the musical heritage of the Uzbek people

Melodiya, 1983, M30-44637-38

From the same series as the album posted in July 2021, this LP is dedicated to the lute tambur and his version played with a bow, the sato.
It is also a kind of didactic album with an introduction in Uzbek on the lute and the music. As no tracks are materialized I had to make tracks as cleanly as I could in order to separate the reading from the music.
Three players are recorded : Turg'un Alimatov on tanbur and sato, Riksi Rajabi and Marufjan Tashpulatov on tanbur. The recordings cover the period 1956-1982. Most of the musical examples are about the tanbur, only two tracks illustrate the sato. No titles are given and no names are explicited on the cover. In spite of a poor enough sound quality it is an excellent album with these three masters. Alimatov recorded in France in 1995 for Ocora. He died in 2008.
Text in Russian.

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