''l'Afghanistan"

 

''L'AFGHANISTAN"

MUSIQUE DE LA ZONE INTERDITE DU NOURISTAN 

 MUSIC FROM THE NOURISTAN FORBIDDEN ZONE

Barclay, 1968, 920 086

Afghanistan as Nepal or India drew a multitude of travellers and adventurers in search of a powerful experience. This was possible in the sixties and seventies before the Russian invasion. And a number of them made recordings in the field throughout the country for Afghanistan was so rich in traditional and popular music that any kind of recordings could do for a good album. Yves Sommavilla was one of them and is presented as a ''keen traveller'' along with François Denis who spent time together in Afghanistan in 1968.
Now, what is really interesting in this album is the music and songs they managed to record in what is called now Nuristan formerly known as Kafiristan the land of the heathens in the north-east. This region was islamised at the end of the nineteenth century only by the emir Abdur Rahman Khan who conquered the area and changed its name.  It was probably difficult to go there even in the sixties and this looks like a ''tour de force'' but they don't explain why Nuristan was forbidden. Although the inhabitants are officially Muslims they nevertheless (at that time anyway) managed to keep some of their ancient beliefs.
There are six tracks : three about Nuristan and three from different parts of the country (Kandahar, Kabul, Chaga-Saray). The most amazing tracks are instrumental music on the flute ''tula'' backed by framed drums. The tula player is excellent and the sound recording is good. Sommevilla says that they recorded this music at night at the Waigel pass (4800 m above sea level). It was then outside  at night in a remote place but the festivities were stopped by the local imam. The Nuristani like the related Kalash had still the custom of singing songs to ancestors when one month after a death the body was replaced by a wooden effigy (track A3).
The others tracks are less exotic with surnay and dohol music, hashish-smoking house music with a singer, a harmonium, two tabla and dambura. The last track was recorded in a hotel in Kabul where  ghijak and zerbaghali players performed for tourists.
Text in French. 

 download.wav

Tunisie

  

TUNISIE  23 

Musique du Monde, ?, 21-500-42-2

This album  looks like it was a kind of catalogue or special product for the French public or tourists. All the photos being from the Tunisian National Tourist Office I believe the music was also recorded for this Office. All the musicians are anonymous. The French text speaks about the fact that tourists are usually cut  off from the real culture of Tunisia since they all spend their holiday time in special resorts with faked or half-faked displays of music and dance specially made for them so that in the end the tourist goes back to France with a distorted picture of Tunisia and its culture.
So the music provided here is purely instrumental which is a bit strange when we know that singing is quite dominant. But as the text says the goal of this album is not to give details that only ethnomusicologists would enjoy. There is a presentation of the instruments recored here : gasba, zokra, kamun, mezoued, ney and darbuka. Some names of the instruments are badly spelled like ''sitar'' for ''cithare'' or ''nail'' for ney !

This disc bears number 23 in that collection  but  this is the only I have so I don't know about the other references in that collection.
It was distributed by ''Compagnie Française BASF''.
But thanks to Leonidas here is the complete list of all the albums issued in this collection :

https://www.discogs.com/label/263651-Collection-Musique-Du-Monde?page=1

download.wav

Rabah Driassa

 

DRIASSA A L'OLYMPIA

في الأولمبيا 

 Les Artistes Arabes Associés, 1975, 72600

 R. Driassa (1934-2021) was a very famous singer and composer in Algeria. He was also a painter. He sang between 1953 and 1990. In 1953 he had the possibility to sing one of his own songs for a radio broadcast in Algiers. Then he began his career at the time of Algeria's independence. He sang diffenrent types of songs from patriotic ones to Bedouin and Sahraoui. Some of his compositions were national hits like ''El Goumri''.
Here he was in Paris at the Olympia a place which saw plenty of  French stars but also foreigners like Driassa who sang for the important Algerian community in the Paris area at a time where some of the Algerian working for Renault or other big industrial plants lived in shanty towns in the suburbs of Paris. Obviously the public was exclusively Arabic speaking only since all Driassa's talking was in Arabic. It was the first time that immigrant people had the opportunity to listen to one of them in that venue.
All the songs were new ones all composed by him except for one. He was backed by a typical orchestra with five violins, a luth, a ney flute and the rhythmic section. But the sound was also enhanced by the use of a quarter-tone  accordion; there is also a bouzouk, a double bass and a small choir.
Frequently singers like to link two songs together; here Driassa links songs on tracks Al and A2, A3 and A4, B1 and B2.

Text in French.

 download.wav

        

 

Juan Vicente Torrealba

 

CONCIERTO EN LA LLANURA (Música Tipica Venezolana)

LOS TORREALBEROS - Al Arpa : Juan Vicente Torrealba

VOL. 1

CONCERT IN THE PLAIN (Tipical Venezuelan Music)

On Harp : Juan Vicente Torrealba

Discos Banco Largo,  ?, QBL - 1204

J.V. Torrealba (full name + Perez) (1917-2019) was considered as the father or one of them of the classical Venezuelan harp music. This volume is the first of a series of three on this label. My father brought it back from Caracas in the early seventies.
The formation is the traditional one with harp, cuatro and maracas; here a double bass is added to double the basses of the harp. Torrealba's playing is quite polished and a bit withheld compared to traditional players in the plains where the strings of the harp are really beaten in a wilder style. But his music is nice nevertheless with a lot of his compositions (eights tracks out of eleven).
Side A has a majority of pasajes with two joropos while side B has what is called caprichos all composed by him.
Eight tracks are part of a compilation published by Gilmar in 1990 but three of the present  tracks were not reissued : B2, B4 and B5. So I hope  fans of Venezuelan harp music will be happy with this post. 

                                                                        download.wav

Chants à danser de Haute-Bretagne

 

BOURDIN MARCHAND DAUTEL

CHANTS A DANSER DE HAUTE-BRETAGNE

DANCE SONGS FROM UPPER BRITTANY

Dastum, ?, ? 

 These three singers are well known in Brittany especially Erik Marchand who was part of the famous band Gwerz. Gilbert Bourdin passed away in 2022 at the age of 75. He was also a poet and writer but he was a psychologist by trade. Christian Dautel and G. Bourdin have known each other for a long time since they were neighbours in Rennes for their studies. Bourdin was from the area of Pluherlin (near Rochefort-en-Terre) department of Morbihan which is divided between a Breton speaking part in the west and a French speaking part in the east. Along the French language a dialect called Gallo is also spoken; a romance dialect, it is like Breton  less and less used daily.
The repertoire is from Pluherlin with four different types of dances : the ''ridée'' (6 or 8 beats), the ''rond'' (the circle) which is the Gallo equivalent of the Breton ''an dro'' musically but danced a bit differently, the ''pilé-menu'' (to mash finely) a very simple dance that was used to flatten the ground made of earth in a new house/farm and the ''hanter-dro'' (half an dro); all these dances were danced in a circle traditionnally.
These singers have the right kind of voice powerful enough to lead the dancers for hours.
There is no date on the cover but I found 1982 somewhere on the net while somebody tells me it could be 1986.
Note that they figure on a LP ''Chants à répondre de Haute-Bretagne'' with a different programme. 

download.wav

Flûtes Orientales Sacrées

 

FLÛTES ORIENTALES SACREES
DES DERVICHES TOURNEURS
enregistré en Turquie

SACRED ORIENTAL FLUTES OF 
THE WHIRLING DERVISHES
recorded in Turkey

Vogue, 1970, CLVLX 542

I suppose that each of you was struck/fascinated by  some records in his/her youth. This album is one of them. I think I was twelve years old when I got this record as a present.

Recorded in Turkey by Jean-Claude Chabrier with the help of Turkish musicologist Rusen Ferid Kam these recordings were like listening to something from another era. At the time sufi music or rituals were not at the forefront of world music. The text by Chabrier is in French and gives some basic information about Turkish sufism which was useful nevertheless back then. In 1979 he published some fascinating (again) albums in a series called ''Arabesques'' (see my posts) with plenty of information about maqams analysing what the musicians played on discs. Here we don't know about modes and other specificities.

One of the interest of this album is the presence of two great masters : one of the greatest neyzenler Hayri Tümer and vocalist Münir Nurettin Selçuk. Tümer plays four pieces one tekbir and three improvisations. Selçuk sings on his own on track A4 the ''na't'' in Persian and leads the ceremony on track B1 with the neys, the percussion and choir. There is also a short "ezzan'' (Turkish prononciation of the Arabic ''adhan'') and a pesrev led by H. Tümer. According to some connoisseurs Tümer is quite forgotten nowadays. He was recorded solo by Chabrier in the series I mentionned above. I shall post it.

My copy being not in the best shape due to frequent listening,  I used the sound of another source found on archive.org. The original sound recording is not great with some distorsion in ensemble playing but all solos are just gripping. 

 

download.wav

Field recordings in Gyimes

 

FIELD RECORDINGS MADE IN GYIMES

(picture not related to the tape)

  This a tape I got from a Hungarian friend who lives in France; I got it approximately at the beginning of the 90s. There are no names or places mentionned. I don't know who made these recordings either. This tape is of course a copy of a copy etc... so there is some noise but the music is clear enough. All tracks are songs mostly a cappella; some are backed by a fiddle and a gardon; the last track is a march.
Gyimes is csángó country in eastern Transylvania nearby Moldavia where the main Csángó population lives. 

download.wav

Brenda Wootton

 

BRENDA WOOTTON/LYONESSE

RCA France, 1982,  PL 37656

 

Brenda Wootton (Brenda Ellery 1928-1994) was THE voice of Cornwall and still is maybe. But she also had a voice that everybody loved.
She was born in London to Cornish-born parents but lived in Cornwall when she was six months old onwards. She started singing in school in chapel choirs and village halls; she was involved in the Cornish scene in the early sixties. Then she started singing in Cornish (kernewek) thanks to Richard Gendall  who composed two songs for her to compete at the Killarney Pan Celtic Festival in 1973. That's how she became the singer who represented Cornwall everywhere in the world. She was regularly in demand at the Lorient Festival and became quite famous in France.
This album combines live recordings in France with studio work. The main instrument is the acoustic guitar played by David King. The repertoire is quite large with only one traditional ... a blues. All the other songs are compositions by R. Gendall mainly as long with John Lennon and Paul McCartney's ''here, there and everywhere'' and Mick Jaeger and Keith Richards' ''Honky tonk woman''. There are two songs in Cornish; Cornish is the Celtic language closest to Breton. The last native speaker of Kernewek died at the end of the eighteen century. A linguistic revival occured at the beginning of the twentieth century and in 2010 Unesco decided  to remove Cornish from the list of extinct languages.
The title ''Lyonesse'' refers to King Arthur's kingdom at the Western tip of Cornwall where Land's End is (the cover picture was taken there). It is said that his kingdom is now in the sea but we can sometimes hear the bells of immersed churches ...
Text in French with lyrics in English and Cornish with French translation.

 

 

download.wav

 

YÖRÜK KIZI

 

DAVUL ZURNA ile ZEYBEKLER / ''YÖRÜK KIZI''
Germencikli BASRİ EĞRİBOYUN ve ARKADAŞLARI

 Seda, ?, 008

This tape was bought  in Paris at a local Turkish shop. This is one of the many tapes about the dance and music called zeybek usually associated with the Aegean Sea region but which is present in other parts of Turkey. The title ''the yörük girl'' refers to a nomadic population originally, the Yörüks, whose name means ''those who walk''. Closely related to the Turkmens they claim to be of pure Türk descent. They are almost all settled now and are quite numerous in the Taurus area.
As usual there is no information about the tunes or the performers.
The list of tracks shows 19 tracks but there are only 17 according to what I can hear. Now I don't know about the titles of the two extra tracks in the list. This is the reason why I didn't put any title in the audio file. Maybe real connoisseurs among you might sort that out.

A very good tape anyway if you like davul and zurna music in its traditional aspect.

download.wav

L'Orchestre folklorique roumain

 L'ORCHESTRE FOLKLORIQUE ROUMAIN

Benone Damian Nicolai Pirvu Petre Marinescu
Ion Cirstoiu Ion Bata Stanescu Dumitru

Pajtás

Stoof, 1977, MU 7439 

Zamfir was not the only one to play the nai as there was a school for that, I think created by Fănică Luca and many good players were trained there. Maybe N. Pîrvu went to this school; he was a great player who passed away in 2021.
The present band was formed by violin and accordion player Benone Damian in 1970. He started with classical music and the switched to folk music; his first album was in 1951; He died in 2012.
The music is the ''national'' Romanian music promoted by the Romanian state. So no musical surprise or originality but it's well presented and played. Side B is one track where each musician can display his talent on his instrument during the so-called ''parada''.
This album was recorded live and produced in the Netherlands for Electrecord.
Pajtás is a foundation whose purpose is to propagate the best of Hungarian and Romanian music. Pajtás means ''buddy'' in Hungarian.

Short text in English.

download.wav

GHEORGHE ZAMFIR VOL.3

 

L'EXTRAORDINAIRE FLÛTE DE PAN DE 

THE EXTRAORDINARY PANPIPES OF

GHEORGHE ZAMFIR VOL.3 

Déesse, no date, DDLX 37

Well, to celebrate the new year 2024 I chose another album by G. Zamfir. The original Romanian issue was published in 1977 so this French edition is probably of the same year. But there is an extra track here (A3) which is not on the original edition. So this is Zamfir with his different panpipes leading an orchestra as well. 

Happy New Year to you all and my best wishes for happiness and music !

download.wav

Penjab

SHEHNAEE MUSIC LIVE PART 3 

 HEERA STEREO, no date, H:789

This is a tape from Pakistan brought back by a friend  a good while ago. Penjab is divided between Pakistan and India but the folk music is the same. Here we have shehnaee or shenai music by a player anonymous to me. He's joined by two dohol players, two other players with small percussions and a scottish-like bagpipe player who provides  a drone mostly with a few notes between two shenai melodical lines.

download.wav

 

P. J. Motreff ha L. Ropars

A-BOUEZ-PENN GAND PJ. MOTREFF HA LOEIZ ROPARS

IN FULL VOICE WITH PJ. MOTREFF AND L. ROPARS

Coop Breizh, 1979, 1003

 

Loeiz Ropars was a very important man for the Breton revival. Everybody agrees that he was the ''inventor'' of what is called the fest-noz in its modern form. He became interested in the Breton singing tradition at the end of the thirties but mostly during the war because suddenly the old people with their culture were the only possibility of having some fun in the villages in a Brittany occupied by the Nazis. After the war he wanted to keep alive what he saw  during the occupation and he managed to convince some singers to take part in kan ha diskan competitions. the in 1955 he organized the first modern fest-noz in Poullaouen ie an evening of songs and dances in a hall instead the yard of a farm, with a stage for the singers, one microphone and a entrance fee for the public. He was himself fluent in Breton of course and a fine singer. He died in 2007.
Among the old singers he used to visit and promote was PJ. Motreff born in 1899 in a family of singers. He started singing in 1910 with his mother. The area is what is called Haute-Cornouaille in French (Kernev in Breton) where singing is still very strong for dancing and other occasions. The kan ha diskan (the lead singer starts the first line when the second singer ''replies'' by singing the end of the first line before singing it himself and so on) is also possible outside of dance.
Here what is mentionned as being three different tracks on side A is in fact one track; this the traditional set called gavotte (gavotten or dans-tro in Breton) with the first chain dance followed by a ''bal'' to get some rest before the second chain dance. So there are three tracks on side A. The two other tracks are one song about the first world war (inside the trench) and a song about a murder that happened in the 17th century.
On side B four songs including one composition by Ropars ''Son ar Distrujer'' (song of the destroyer) telling us about all the destruction that was brought by the state in the sixties when the craze was to erase embankments in order to get bigger fields for a bigger production. Now the reverse movement has started after it was obvious that this ''remembrement'' killed local flora and fauna, caused big floodings and didn't help much the farmers in the end. Ropars was very active against such an ''economic progress''.
Text in French by Donatien Laurent, a famous scholar and musicians who died in 2020.

download.wav

Souleymane Sidibe

 

SOULEYMANE SIDIBE/BADEYA FOLI

no label, no date, GD052

One of  thousands of tapes in circulation in Mali's music shops and markets. It was brought back by a friend.
There is absolutely no information about this tape. Surely Sidibe can play the kamele n'goni is holding on the cover and he's the main singer. The mixing of old traditional instruments with synthetizers and other Western instruments has been the rule for a lot of singers/musicians. The kamele n'goni (the ''instrument of young men'') is mainly played in the Wassoulou region and is now very present in what is called the revival of Wassoulou music. 
There are in fact eleven tracks but only eight of them have a name. 

download.wav

SATANAZET

 

SATANAZET / AN DURZUNEL 

Vélia, 1973,  n° 2230004

Satanazet (the Devils in Breton) was one of the first band in Brittany to mix Breton and Irish repertoires. The band was the gathering two brothers,  Patrig and Dominig (Breton spelling) Molard and four other musicians. Dominique has passed away while Patrig is still in activity on the scottish bag pipe or the uilleann pipe. In 1973 there was no Irish pipes; Patrick got his own set some years later; another member was the accordion player Alain Le Hégarat who was also an uilleann piper later. Among the two musicians who are guests there is Alan Kloatr on wooden and classical flutes one of the first French musicians to have got an English flute used in Irish music.

Seven tracks out of eleven are Breton, two are Irish, one is mentionned as Irish-Appalachian and a fourth one is of Scottish inspiration. All the tunes are traditional except for track B1 (an dro elfenn) a superb composition by Le Hégart who was also member of a bagad and pipe band and track B4 by Youenn ar Mao which is a mixture of Scottish music and American bluegrass.

I must say that most of the second melodic voices played on fiddle or mandolin are not great (often too ambitious in relation to the instrumental level) but this is an interesting document about the Breton revival in the early seventies; Kloatr on flutes is very good as well as the tin whistle, bombard and bagpipe played by P. Molard.
P. and D. Molard as well as A. Le Hégarat were members of Ogham afterwards.

An durzunel means the partridge in Breton and is the name of a song played on B5

This second hand album is not in a top state but  it's not desperate either ...

download.wav

Кыргыз Күүлөрүнүн Антологиясы 3

   

Кыргыз Күүлөрүнүн Антологиясы

Биринчи бөлүм

ANTHOLOGY OF KYRGYZ MELODIES (PART ONE)

Melodiya, 1974, M30 35583, 35584

This the third album of that series with the title ''Епостук дастан күүлөр''. All the tracks are instrumental ones with outstanding komuz players like Sherkulov or Madazimov. Like the two previous LPs this one is a copy made in 1986 and at that time I didn't keep the presentation tracks in Kyrgyz. So the first track is missing (E1).

E1 Кириш сөз = Вступительное слово = Introduction read by – З. Мамбеталиева E2 Чоң казат Dombra [Komuz] – Чалагыз Иманкулов* E3 Алмамбет менен чубак Dombra [Komuz] – Асанаалы Кыштообаев E4 Каныкейдин арманы Dombra [Komuz] – Кара Молдо Орозов* E5 Олжобай менен кишимжан Dombra [Komuz] – Жакшыбай Жээнтаев E6 Кожожаш Dombra [Komuz] – Жакшыбай Жээнтаев E7 Эр табылды жалгызым Dombra [Komuz] – Абдыкерим Мокоев E8 Курманбек Dombra [Komuz] – Болуш Мадазимов E9 Саринжи бөкөй Dombra [Komuz] – Болуш Мадазимов F1 Солтон сары Dombra [Komuz] – Болуш Мадазимов F2 Мендирман Dombra [Komuz] – Шекербек Шеркулов F3 Карагул ботом Dombra [Komuz] – Шекербек Шеркулов F4 Гүлгаакы (I вариант) Dombra [Komuz] – Курманаалы Калботоев F5 Гүлгаакы (II вариант) Dombra [Komuz] – Алтымыш Мундузбаев F6 Шырдабектин боз жорго Dombra [Komuz] – Асылбек Эшмамбетов* F7 Кет бука (I вариант) Dombra [Komuz] – Шекербек Шеркулов F8 Кет бука (II вариант) Dombra [Komuz] – Курманаалы Калботоев F9 Мырза уул менен ак саткын Dombra [Komuz] – Болуш Мадазимов
download.wav

 

OGHAM

 

OGHAM . BOKED EURED

Keltia 3,  1976, KEL 02

This Breton band was built around two families, the Sicard and the Molard. The four Molard brothers started to play together some Breton and Irish music when they were still living in Saint-Malo where they come from. The best-known of the four brothers is Patrick Molard who started by studying the Scottish bagpipe and its music including what is called piobaireachd. Then he played the Breton bagpipe, the binioù. At the same time he discovered the uilleann pipes and was one the first uilleann pipers in France. His brother Jacky on guitar here became a renowned fiddle player in Breton and Irish music. Dominique Molard is now a drummer but he plays the bouzouki on this album. The fourth brother Claude has since passed away and played bodhran and guitar. The other family is represented by Padrig on fiddle and whistle,  and Ronan on keyboards.
They wanted to play Breton music with Irish instruments (uilleann pipes, fiddle, flute, whistle, bodhran, bouzouki) or aesthetics, influenced by the Irish folk revival (Planxty, Bothy Band, Na Fili, the Chieftains ...). They were not the first ones to have this idea; the band called Satanazet recorded in 1973 but without any bagpipe. Dominique Molard was there also.   It is interesting to note that Keltia 3 was a label founded by Alan Stivell who wrote part of the notes in French.
So only two tracks out of eight are Irish and Scottish sets; Gloire ui Rodnaich (Rodney's Glory) is a set dance followed by a reel, the Hunter's Purse. The Scottish set is led  by the Scottish bagpipe. The six tracks left are Breton dance tunes and songs played on the instruments.
Ogham was an ancient writing system used by the Celts in Ireland between the IVth and the IXth centuries. This is what is on the cover.
Boked eured is a song sung at weddings and means ''the wedding bouquet''.

download.wav

Paucartambo - Indiens Q'eros

 

MUSIQUES DU PEROU/MUSIC OF PERU

Paucartambo Indiens Q'eros  

Ocora-Radio France, 1984, OCR 30 

Made in July and August 1965 these recordings are the work of Pierre Allard and Claude Koenig. Paucartambo is a village which lies at an altitude of  3500 m. P. Allard was there during the annual festivities for the Blessed Virgin Carmen between the 15th and the 17th of July. The whole process is described in the text in French and English and forms side A. Side B is music from the Q'eros Indians  who numbered only 240 at the time of the 1955 census. Their life style and environnent are well presented in the text. The flutes are the main melodic instruments especially the kena. On side A we can also hear a violin and a harp. A very interesting and nice album about indigenous societies in danger of disparition.
this album was never issued on CD and is absent from the current Ocora site and catalogue.

download.wav