Les musiciens de la forêt

 

GABON / LES MUSICIENS DE LA FORÊT VOL. 1

THE MUSICIANS OF THE FOREST 

Ocora, 1981,  558569

 Ocora had several series including this one entitled ''living traditional music''; and in this series there were several categories here the first one entitled ''music from the oral tradition''. 

Gabon is a small country  with less than 2,5 million people in 2023 (9 inhabitants per square kilometre). But as it is often the case in Africa the population is quite diversified with mostly bantu groups like the Fang, the Punu-Echira, the Vili or the Myene; the only other non-bantu people are the Pygmies who settled there before the Bantu.
This album is the work of Catherine Oneto and Hugues Poitevin, two people who fell in love with the locals. They recorded some ritual music sung and played with the eight-string harp ngombi by Nzé Menvié (seen on the cover) a Fang farmer, sculptor and crafstman in his sixties at the time of the recordings. So this ritual music was not performed during a religious ceremony. Part of this repertoire belongs to what is called bwiti that the Fang have adopted from the Tsogo at teh beginning of the twentieth century only. But the aim of Oneto and Poitevin was to help Menvié and the villagers in agricultural and cultural terms. For that they created an association which is helped by the Gabonese government. 
This is not a an ethnomusicology record so the notes are brief.
These recordings were made in 1979 in mono but published in stereo.
Text in French only. I don't think that this volume 1 was followed by a second one. 

 


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La vina de Balachander

 LA VINA DE S. BALACHANDER

 Prestige  de la musique extra-européenne l'Inde vol. 6

 Disques Espérance, 1978, ESP 165 510

This album was recorded with the help of the Association Française des Amis de l'Orient. This association used to organize lots of concerts during the seventies and the eighties in Paris at the Musée Guimet. Indian artists were the most numerous and some of them started their European career there.
That was not the case for Balachander who was born in 1927 and gave his first concert in 1943. He's a master of the South Indian vina or veena but he started music on the  kanjeera and tabla, then the sitar before discovering the vina.
He plays the raga mayamalavagaula (15th melakarta in the Carnatic system) corresponding to the Hindustani raag bhairavi.
Side B is dedicated to the kriti ''meru samaana'' composed by Tyagaraja in the same raga.
 R. Krishnamurthy joins Balachander on this kriti set to the tala adi.

Text in French only.

 

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Tereza Tarouca

 

 OS MELHORES FADOS DE TEREZA TAROUCA

 RCA, 1978, 098

 Tereza Tarouca (1942-2019) was born Tereza de Jesus Pinto Coelho Telles da Silva but she decided to take her great grand-father's name, Tarouca. She was a cousin of Maria Tereza de Noronha. Born to a musical family in Lisbon she started singing at the age of eleven then began singing fado when she was thirteen. She signed with RCA in 1962.
She always worked with prestigious composers like D. António de Bragança, João de Noronha, Alfredo Marceneiro, Pedro Homem de Mello, Maria Manuel Cid among others. Side A starts with one of her hits Saudade, siléncio e sombra. She was one the great voices of fado.
As the title says this cassette is a compilation and the accompanists are not mentionned.
There is also a LP by the same name with two extra songs.

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António Severino

 

ANTÓNIO SEVERINO

Discosete, 1986, C-379 

A. Severino was a famous fadista from Setubal near Lisbon. He died at the age of 84 this year. Maybe not the most famous here among other great fadistas like A. Rodrigues or Marceneiro he had a long career recording more than 300 songs, not all fados,  most of them dedicated to the sea and sailors. He had no family roots in fado though.
He's accompanied by Jorge Fontes a big name for the portuguese guitar and a small orchestra.

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INDIA II

 

A MUSICAL ANTHOLOGY OF THE ORIENT 

INDIA II

Edited fot the International Music Council by the International Institute for Comparative Music Studies and Documentation

Bärenreiter Musicaphon, ?,  BM 30 L 2007

This is the second album on India and the seventh one in this anthology with Alain Daniélou as General Editor.
This album is dedicated to the ''music of the dance and theatre of South India'' specifically the Bharata Natyam and only one track on Kathakali.
The Bharata Natyam is danced by women only to the singing and drumming of  several performers. Here the mridangam,the kartals, the flute, the violin and jew's harp are part of the orchestra. Although it's not mentionned I can hear a clarinet on track B2. Bharata Natyam is typical of Tamil country while Kathakali hails from Kerala.
What is quite surprising is that after a succession of different dances with plenty of drumming it is customary to conclude the Bharata Natyam performance with a shlokam where the dancer must follow and mime what's sung in the poem called tevaram on Krishna's love. No drumming but just one singer with his disciple and a shruti box.
Text in English (German and French)
All the albums of this series are mono-recordings.

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Enchanting all the way

 

USTAD VILAYAT KHAN / ENCHANTING ALL THE WAY 

TABLA ZAKIR HUSSAIN

EMI, 1980, ECSD 2857

Ustad Vilayat Khan (1928-2004) was with Ravi Shankar the sitar player the best-known and best-loved sitarist; both had an incredible career although quite different. Here is a site dedicated to his music : https://vilayatkhan.com/vk/
Two  raag are played on this album : mand-bhairav that he created himself and mishra mand which is first a Rajasthan folk melody which he elevates to the rank of classical raga.
He created other new raag like kalavanti or sanjh saravali.
This album is one of the many to his credit.

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DAGAR BROTHERS

DAGAR BROTHERS

KHANSAHIB NASIR MOINUDDIN DAGAR and
KHANSAHIB NASIR AMINUDDIN DAGAR

RAGA - DARBARI KANADA . ADANA
MRIDANG ACCOMPANIMENT . S.V. PATWARDHAN 

Club du Disque Arabe, 1965, EALP . 1291   

This is an album originally made in India for HMV/EMI in 1965; le Club du Disque Arabe (or Artistes Arabes Associés) was a French label based in Paris (125 bd Ménilmontant in the 11th arrondissement) founded in 1972 by Mohamed el Habib Hachlef which was part of the label Pathé Marconi. Of course 95% of the catalogue was made of records from North Africa and the Near and Middle East. But they also had some records from India such as this album which has the same cover and reference number as the original HMV. They just replaced the original stamp by theirs on the back cover.  This label disapearred in 1997.

Now, these two brothers were considered as the kings of dhrupad style. They sing the raag darbari kanada a night raag ''full of majesty and grandeur'' as the text says. Side A is for the alap and side B starts with a dhamar in the same raag followed by the raag adana; adana is also a night raag close enough to darbari kanada but  lighter in spirit and  the note ''ga'' is missing in the ascending scale. Those interested in Hindustani music theory should be happy with this site : https://tanarang.com/raag-index/

The mridang played by master V. Patwardhan is also called pakhawaj. 

The text is in English.

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ETREAMB-NI BAMBOCHERION

 

ETREAMB-NI BAMBOCHERION
BOMBARDE - BINIOU KOZ

 

BETWEEN US CAROUSERS

 

 BAS, 1979, BAS 307

BAS stands for Bodadeg Ar Sonerion or Assembly of Musicians association created right in the middle of World War II in 1943. Here the musicians are bombarde and binioù players. Polig Montjarret and other Breton people got the idea because traditional Breton music (and way of life generally speaking) was fast disappearing after World War I. People in Brittany saw traditional music as ''old stuff'' like the language and   it was time to go forward and be as'' French'' as possible. If the Breton language managed to resist in some parts of the country the fashions from Paris were too strong and attractive for young people to ignore.
So in order to preserve what was left musicwise that group of young musicians organized workshops, musical events, published a lot of score books etc...  They also invented the ''bagad'' or band of bombardes, binioù bras and drums based on the Scottish pipe band model. They have succeeded beyond all hope; BAS still exists and Breton traditional music has been thriving ever since. 

The title of this LP refers to a song for the dance called laridé; bambocherion is in fact  the French word ''bambocheurs'' which refers to people who like good food and wine, who like to party. Breton sonneurs had this reputation to drink too much and live out of the ordinary way of life which was not true most of them being peasants or craftmen; but some of them were certainly free thinkers. 

As the text in French says it was very difficult to choose some couples of sonneurs because there are so  many excellent players. Seven of them were selected including musicians from Lower and Upper Brittany with a good choice of dances, melodies and marches. 

The cover is a picture of the memorial to the sonneurs of Plozenet. 

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Rétrospective du Trophée Per Guillou

 

RETROSPECTIVE DU TROPHEE PER GUILLOU

Bombardes et binious de la Montagne

Chanteurs et musiciens de Bretagne n°9

---------

RETROSPECTIVE OF THE TROPHY ''PER GUILLOU''

Bombardes and binious of the Mountain

Singers and musicians from Brittany n°9

Dastum Kreiz Breizh, 1995, DAS-123

From this very good series we have here a sound sample of the state of couple music in central Brittany recorded during the tenth anniversary of this trophy. These recordings were not supposed to be commercialized but Dastum thought it was relevant after all. Over the years other instruments  appeared in addition to the bombarde-biniou but since Per Guillou was a ''sonneur'' it was decided that this tape would present bombarde-biniou music only.

Per Guillou (1933-1978) was one of the greatest musicians in his area and beyond. The area is what is called ar Menez or Mountain where the main dance is the gavotten danced in chains (before that it was danced in a circle) based on three parts gavotten/bal/gavotten hence the word ''suite''. Half of the programme here is made of ''suites'' along with five marches and only one melody or slow air.
Guillou who was first an accountant had finally given up this profession and became a sonneur with different partners including Yann Peron (see his LP posted earlier). He was very much appreciated and he played for dancing groups, fest noz, weddings etc.. He could also make instruments but using the old scale that was used by the ancient sonneurs he learned his music from. He also taught music to numerous young players over the sixties and the seventies. Everybody agrees to say that he had a major role in the preservation of the local culture while traditonal music was not as big as it is now. And this tape is a good example of this. 
Booklet in French.

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