Holiday in Crete

 

ΚΡΗΤΙΚΟ ΠΑΝΗΓΥΡΙ μέ τόν ΑΛΕΚΟ KAPABITΗ

HOLIDAY IN CRETE with ALEKOS KARAVITIS

Minerva, 1977, 22047

 A. Karavitis (1904-1975) was born in the area of Rethymnon in Crete that was still part of the Ottoman empire. He started on the lyra as a child and then moved to Athens when he was 24 years old with his wife. He toured in Germany, Britain, France, Egypt ... with his own band. He became quite famous among Cretan lyra players. This album was released after his death; he performed with a small band  (the Traditional Cretan Group) with one laouto player and two female singers whose names are not mentionned. This is therefore authentic traditional music with the presence of those two singers who give a different sound to what I usually know as Cretan music. 

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JOZEF PEŠKO

 

JOZEF PEŠKO – FUJARÔČKA MOJA

JOZEF PESHKO - MY FUJARA

Opus, 1978, 9117 0635

This is a typical album issued in the seventies from a country part of the Eastern bloc. Czekoslovakia like Romania or Hungary during the Communist period followed the USSR in their cultural policy and issued tons of LPs about national or regional folk orchestras.
Traditional peasant music and dances had already become folklore  before World War II but it was the rule after 1945 to offer the public a new kind of folklore based on traditional material but re-elaborated by composers from the classical music circle.  However under the classical varnish it is possible sometimes to hear something more authentic. Here Peshko plays several types of flutes including the emblematic fujara seen on the cover. He met traditional musicians and instrument makers  everywhere in Slovakia in order to learn how to play these flutes and respect local ways of playing.
Peshko is accompanied by the Folk Orchestra of the Czekoslovak Radio in Bratislava.
Playback was used on some tracks where he plays several flutes (track A1 with three fujaras for example).
Text in Slovak, German and English about Peshko's full career.

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Macedonian folk dances

 

MAKEΔΟΗСКИ HAPOΔHИ OPA

MACEDONIAN FOLK DANCES

zurlas and tapans, chalgi and orchestra P. Atanasovski 

RTB, 1976, LP 1394

One of the many albums produced by Radio-Televison Belgrad. The LP starts with an excellent example of the dance ''teshkoto'' played on zurna/zurla by Mahmut Muzafer. There are other types of formations : the quartet gajda, tambura, kaval and tapan, the Turkish chalgi with violin, clarinet, kanun and the regular folk orchestra with accordion and clarinet. It's not clear but since no names are mentionned (except for the zurla players) I suppose the other performers are all part of Petse Atanasovki's orchestra.
text in Macedonian and English.

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cornemuses de France 2

 

CORNEMUSES DE FRANCE VOLUME 2 

BAGPIPES OF FRANCE VOL.2

Bretagne Gascogne Vendée Alsace-Lorraine Languedoc

Discovale, 1976, WM 12

 This is the second album about bagpipes in France from regions that are at the periphery of the country. As for volume one the players are all revivalists (see my September 5 post). Some of these bagpipes were well known as the biniou koz and the Highland bagpipe used in Brittany. But bagpipes from Alsace or Gascogne were already extinct at the time of the revival. The Alsatian bagpipe didn't benefit from it while the boha is now quite alive again in Gascony.

Note that track A2 was in fact divided in three tracks : so the ''suite montagne'' starts with a melody and a ton simple (a and b); then track A2 the bal (c) and track A2 ends with a ton doub (d). I prefered to keep the same name (A2) for these tracks for a better use of the information on the back cover. So instead of the twelve tracks mentionned there are fourteen of them. The editing generally speaking is not optimal due to five different locations for the recordings; some of the performances are stopped abruptely almost before the end of the tune.

The Flemish bagpipe is not part of this collection while it was already well known but maybe more in Belgium than in France. 

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Bombay S. Jayashri

 

KARNATIC CLASSICAL VOCAL / BOMBAY S. JAYASHRI

Sangeetha live cassettes, 1993, 6 ECDB 512

Jayashri Ramnath (Bombay is a nickname) was born in Calcutta in 1964 but her parents gave her some training in Carnatic music before she studied with Lalgudi Jayaraman and others. She also plays the veena and is the fourth generation of singers in her family. She was also trained in Hindustani classical music and got a diploma in Indian music at Delhi. She works with the cinema industry as a playback singer and composes as well for traditional dancing. A great artistic activity.

Knowing that she performed on stage first in 1982, this tape is maybe one her first commercial recordings (the discography I found goes back to 2000). She is accompanied by Vittal Ramamurthy on violin, Neyveli R. Narayanan on mridangam and A.S. Shankar on ghatam. She sings kriti-s by Thyagaraja mostly. 

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Cornemuses de France 1

 CORNEMUSES DE FRANCE VOLUME 1

BAGPIPES OF FRANCE VOL.1

Auvergne, Berry, Bourbonnais, Limousin, Nivernais

Discovale, 1976, WM 11

 When the revival started in France at the end of the sixties bagpipes and hurdy-gurdies were percieved as ''exotic'' instruments and young musicians were attracted to them and the musics that were played on them. France is also very rich in different sorts of bagpipes

This album presents bagpipes from the center of France while the second volume focuses on other regions.

These five regions or provinces here  are known for their great variety of bagpipes. All the players are therefore young ones, all involved in the revival of these fascinating (and troublesome) instruments by playing them, reconstructing them, discovering bits of old bagpipes in attics or local museums etc...

Bernard Blanc, Eric Montbel, Frédéric Paris, Jean Blanchard, Mic Baudimant and Bruno Dumontet play on their own or in duets with diatonic accordion, hurdy-gurdy or fiddle on three tracks. Most of them became essential in the dissemination and study of bagpipes through concerts, workshops, discs, books, ...

It was a very interesting album at the time as it was possible to approach the world of piping in France with two LPs.

Discovale was a French label active between 1976 and 1982.

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Danses de la cour et des villages

 

DANSES DE LA COUR ET DES VILLAGES AU XVIe SIECLE

COURT AND VILLAGES DANCES IN THE XVIth CENTURY

La Grande Ecurie et la Chambre du Roy
Florilegium Musicum de Paris
Jean-Claude Malgoire

Grands interprètes/Great performers

CBS, 1975, CBS 76183 

This ensemble was one of the pioneers in the new interest in Early music in France (see my post in February 2022).
This album was (for me anyway) a very good surprise with a range of instruments rarely used before. Hence a rich sound texture with rebec and viols, sackbut and trumpets, recorders, organ and harpsichord. The repertoire is French and German  from the XVIth century when printing helped to spread this music all over Europe including Hungary and Poland.
Track B4 is more medieval with a famous piece for organ by Conrad Paumann and two other tunes.
This is an instrumental album for, as it is said in the introductory text, instrumental music gained in freedom in relation to vocal music. Because of this new demand instrument makers created full families of instruments to compete with vocal music (for example from the sopranino recorder down to contrabass recorder that is over two meters long). 
The composers are Claude Gervaise, Michael Praetorius, Robert Ballard or Tielman Susato among others.
No names are mentionned  for the performers but Malgoire's who was both the leader and the bombarde (oboe) player.
Text in French only

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