the duke, surrounded by “african flowers” — google img search, 1 sept 2010
I was really thrilled with the reception of my “Galangs” mashup last week. To see the video get passed along by the likes of the Village Voice, NY Mag, & NPR, and especially to get this sort of response from SFJ, was really unexpected and delightful. Most of all, that Vijay himself dug it made it feel pretty justified. (Word is out on whether MIA gives a shit. I’m guessing no.)
As it happens, this week a new Vijay Iyer album came out, Solo. And it just so happens that for the recording Vijay decided to take on one of my absolute dearest jazz compositions. (He also plays through “Human Nature” and “Darn That Dream,” two cheeseball songs I find quite endearing; it’s like he’s daring me to make more mashups!) Vijay’s “African Flower” reworks Duke Ellington’s “Fleurette Africaine,” which I know (&love*) from the sublime session with Charles Mingus and Max Roach that yielded Money Jungle.
Considering that Ellington and Mingus are, for realz, my two favorite jazz composers — & that each cultivated unique voices on their instruments (as did Roach) — the album has long held a special place in my life / collection. Mingus’s fluttering bassline, and then his melodic moaning during the B section of the composition, make my heart ache. And I love the idea, as widely reported and fairly audible, that the session had its share of tension, with Mingus playing almost aggressively “out” while Ellington maintains composure, Roach’s tuned-toms knitting it all together.
As a solo take, Vijay doesn’t have to contend with any bandmates playing at cross-purposes, but somehow, one imagines, he needs to sublimate the engaging energies of Money Jungle into his own performance. (Or maybe not. I suppose we’d have to ask him whether the composition itself served as his guide, or whether his experience hearing Duke&co. play the tune has indelibly stamped it.) To my ears, Vijay’s version is at once reverent and distinctive, as the process of lining these up demonstrated to me in great detail — and hopefully as this mashup will suggest to you.
About the process: while the making of “Galangs” was relatively clear cut, the very same procedure in this case presented some serious technical and ethico-aesthetic challenges. MIA’s “Galang” is, of course, rather metronomic, since it moves to a drum-machine / programmed / quantized beat, and since Vijay & his trio-mates attempt to emulate that consistency, it was neither difficult, nor IMO problematic, to warp the two recordings and line them up. With “African Flowers,” however, there was no such steadiness; rather, Duke & co., although pretty odd-swingingly propulsive, are rather elastic in their relation to each other and the pulse, and Vijay, playing the tune solo, takes some rubato liberties to be sure.
So even though both recordings have palpable pulses — and indeed, Mingus and Roach, for all their outtitude, still play rhythm section — it felt a little odd / wrong to snap them onto a grid. But there’s no making a mashup without that level of correspondence, unless one wants cacophony, and that does not a good mashup make. So I made a deal with the Ableton devil and disciplined each to a click-track.
One thing I (re*)learned while warping them is that “African Flower” is not as straightforward as it sounds. Despite its stately sadness and surface simplicity, it contains some surprising twists, including one place where a measure seems to skip a beat. Grappling with this through Vijay’s performance, and then again on Duke’s, I was thrilled to hear, in the end, that they generally lined up.
But while they shared the same underlying form, the process of juxtaposing the two also brought to my attention some remarkable macro and micro differences. In the end, I again struck a compromise with regard to whose performance I would “subordinate” to the other. I decided to favor the brevity of Duke & co.’s rendition, so I chopped off the latter half of Vijay’s performance, essentially a repeat run through the changes, with all the signal differences one expects of a great jazz musician. At the same time, I decided to loop Duke & co. in order to leave in tact Vijay’s creative stretching of the form whereby he repeats the first section (12 bars) of the tune (after a 4-bar intro), as you see in the screenshot below. In the end, just one splice a piece, essentially –
Once I started mucking around with the snap-to-pulse stuff, certain dilemmas arose with regard to what degree of manipulation I would employ. Sometimes the whole point (of jazz, etc.) is that the musicians play a chord or a figure a little before or after the beat. As much as possible, I wanted to maintain the individual approaches of each performance, so as to bring them into greater relief when combined. In the end, I did my best to strike a balance between preserving the original feel of each while letting them line up when not too coercive a procedure. Perhaps only Vijay, or an astute mashup-analyst, will discern the micro-tweaks of tempo and articulation.
Even though I’ve done some quasi-violent clobbering of an occasional gesture, I’d like to think, as with any of these endeavors, that the mashup I’ve made justifies its existence as more than an exercise in arithmetic, but rather, as living up to the new math of the form.
But that’s a question I’ll leave to y’all.
Here’s the mashup, again in video form to help listeners track the changes and the degree of overlap / departure. One thing I’ve done in this case is to split the audio in the stereofield (Vijay on the left, Duke & co. on the right), to aid with hearing them in tandem. I’ll offer two different audio versions for your listening pleasures, one stereo-split and one centered/combined. It’s nice to hear Vijay playing on a nearby platform, but also to hear two pianos on the same stage. (Because the effect was so helpful, edifying even, I’ve gone ahead and made a stereo-split version of “Galangs” as well.)
vijay iyer + duke ellington, charles mingus, & max roach, “african flowers” (w&w mash)(stereo-split MP3 | centered MP3)
* Incidentally, just in case you doubt my longstanding admiration of the composition, here’s a version of “Fluerette Africain” which I myself put together — programmed note by note, using FruityLoops! — way back in 2001:
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When I was in Mexico recently, I gave a lecture-demo on how one might express ideas about music through music. (Readers of this blog will be familiar with these approaches, especially via my excursions in riddim meth0dism.) Although I want to keep the concept as open as possible, believing there are myriad ways to do so, in my presentation I explored two principal methods: the mashup and the mix.
With regard to mashups, I talked about two different sorts of uses, which I termed the “analytical” and the “aesthetic” (even though the whole point of music-about-music is that the aesthetic and analytical modes merge). Essentially, I was trying to draw a distinction between using mashups — i.e., the vertical / simultaneous juxtapositions of two or more tracks — to 1) demonstrate certain correspondences between recordings; and 2) embody a kind of “poetic justice,” a critique of the relations between two or more works that one can attempt to encode by choosing to “discipline” or “subordinate” one track to another (whether in terms of form, pitch, tempo, or the like). These lines really do blur, inevitably even, though certain examples I offered were rather cut’n'dry and could prolly safely be consigned to category #1.
I played a bunch of mixes and mashes from the W&W oeuvre, but I also tried my hand at making one on the spot. And I’d like to share that one here (especially since one of the mashees, Vijay Iyer, saw my tweet about it and told me he’d like to hear it).
Although mashing up Vijay’s version of “Galang” with the MIA original doesn’t really offer much opportunity for much in the way of ethico-aesthetic statements (unlike otherexamples), it does offer a pretty classic case where the simple act of juxtaposition brings out some interesting points of coincidence and departure. Before I tell you more, let’s let the sound speak for itself –
I’m not sure what emerges as you listen to and/or watch this yourself, but one thing that you’ll hear&see if you try again is that I’ve only made two small cuts to the MIA track, suggesting that there is a great deal of correspondence between the two. In the process of lining these up, I learned — after noting that Iyer & co. remain faithful to basic issues of key and tempo — that the trio skips 14 bars at one point, at the 33rd measure to be exact (i.e., after two clean 16-bar “choruses,” in jazzspeak), bringing it back for one more trip through the refrain before getting to that ya-ya-hey-ya-ya-ho part at the end (which, interestingly and mercifully, they riff on for 4 fewer measures than she). Deciding to cut here rather than extend, I followed Vijay’s lead and snipped those 18 total measures from the MIA track, which brought them right in line. I like how the mash brings out the ways that the trio traces and accentuates MIA’s vocal lines (and driving, angular accompaniment) while, at other times, departing in some fanciful ways, as Vijay takes off on some small spiky solos. I also quite like the resulting chaos and density, matching key for keyb.
…
While I was in the process of getting back into the cover-song mashing practice, I decided to do one more (now back at home, not on-stage in Mexico). I’ve really had Nina Sky’s refresh of the Cure’s “Lovesong” in my head for the past few weeks, so I figured I’d whip up a little tribute in the form of a “duet.”
Notably, as with the Galangs above, I didn’t have to alter pitch or tempo in either case here, showing the new version to be faithful to the original in its basic parameters (and making it easy on me). Once again, though, there were some small differences in form that I had to reconcile, and it’s always hard to perform such nips and tucks without thinking about the act and what it effects, symbolically speaking. (This is where aesthetics and analysis necessarily intersect.) Why should I favor this one over that? Is there a poetics here that might guide this choice? Does the sonically “right” choice imply an aesthetic position, or suggest a poetics, that I hadn’t myself premeditated? What’s the best choice in terms of both sonic and symbolic outcome?
In the end I decided to compromise. Rather than totally warping one to work to the other, they take turns leading the way. Because the Nina Sky version features a far briefer intro (2 measures vs. 8) — & such a lovely vintage drum machine loop — and I didn’t want to start right in with any incisions, I decided to loop it (and make it loud enough to compete with a rock band) until they were ready to sing together. From there, as you’ll see, I’m pretty hands-off. I make only two small cuts to the Cure version, excising the guitar solo (yeah, yeah) and inserting a brief pause after measure 45 in order to match the newer version’s terser form and awesome little breakdown. In general, I also have the Nina Sky version a bit louder in the mix so that we get more contemporary bump than 80s midrange grind. Any rockist lawyers out there can sue me. We neither cease nor desist, yo –
In Mexico I demonstrated less in the way of mixes, though I did do a brief rundown of the Zunguzung meme, zipping through 20 or so examples at a rapid clip. And I discussed a few organizing themes I’ve employed in my more “lessony” mixes, such as pursuing particular rhythmic threads or vocal lines, though I neglected to mention (doh!) the two swipes I’ve taken at my home soundscape, the Boston Mashacre and Smashacre. I also overlooked a great number of stellar efforts by other folk which do exactly the thing I’m talking about — i.e., the forms and contents of the mixes themselves, without requiring additional explication, possess the power to represent some rather interesting things about music, sound, and the relationships between particular works.
There are a growing number of these and, indeed, already a rather massive number that might be counted. Plenty have been mentioned on this blog before. We might think of Dr. Auratheft’s suggestive series, devoted to everything from fairly straightforward collections (“Calypso War Songs”) to philosophically provocative assemblages (“Post-European Dialogues in Sound”). Or El Niño’s recent Reggaespañol mix or John Eden’s Boops Specialist compendium. Or attempts to gesture at the range of global hip-hop, world house, Indian house, or — one of the all-time greats of the meta-genre — the history of English MCs. Or take the (not one but) two vocoder mixes that have emerged alongside Dave Tompkins’s magisterial vocoder opus; notably, they need not be taken as supplements but as sonic (non?)fictions of their own.
But my favorite example in recent months — maybe of the year — has to be Nguzunguzu’s Moments in Love. I sorta slept on it for a while, but I’ve been listening to it weekly just about all summer and it’s just so good. There’s something really deep about those Art of Noise synth stabs, and their hauntingly simple melody, that makes me happy to hear them over and over again. But it’s also the engrossing, downright amazing way that one hears the riff take on new life, rising and falling across the various permutations and recontextualizations that Nguzunguzu string together. Beyond anything else, I love how this mix demonstrates the utter pliability — and yet resilience — of one little riff, weaving it through all kinds of club music, hip-hop, r&b, cumbia, you-name-it. It’s an audible trip through the remix age. Bravísimo!
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The first few times I listened, I almost couldn’t believe that the riff had been repurposed by such an incredibly wide range of producers. Indeed, I started to suspect that Nguzunguzu must be mucking around a little, throwing the riff in at times in order to keep the flow going and not caring too much about playing with the musical-historical record. Now, even though that might not be quite as “cool” as if all the tracks actually contained the riff, I wouldn’t really have minded at all. No need to be too strict about this stuff. It is music after all, which is to say, at least in this case, art (& craft). And I’m happy to grant Daniel & Asma all the poetic license in the world. It would make the mix no less enjoyable, IMO. And that’s an important dimension of musically-expressed-ideas-about-music: they need not be held to (and indeed intrinsically resist) the same standards of comprehensiveness or authority or transparency that we expect from, say, academic or even journalistic writing; rather, such creations offer gestural and sometimes personal engagements with some musical or sonic subject. That is all. From there, feel free to entrain and entertain me. Edification is a bonus.
Anyway, I had to get to the bottom of what was happening in the “edits” noted in the tracklist. Turns out, rather than superimposing the riff, Nguzunguzu were doing the exact opposite: adding drum tracks to beatless versions of the Art of Noise song! Tres cool. Via email –
Actually yes, there are two instances that “mash-up” an awesome drum beat with an already made remix of art of noise.
LIke many classical musicians would remake moments in love with a whole orchestra or bells, and we would find these recordings and put
them to a dance break as with:
MACHETE MOMENTS: ERIDSON VS. LUCIFER (NGUZU EDIT)
and
ART IN MOMENTS: DJ QUEST VS. LIEBRAND (NGUZU EDIT)
(Lucifer and Liebrand made the more ambient/ classical renditions)
hope that helps, and we would be delighted for you to post about it,
im glad to hear people are still listening to it!
We are always finding new remixes and are thinking of making a vol. 2
of moments in love mixtape! there are just so many!
I for one would welcome that!
I’d also like to hear a Vijay Iyer Trio version of the whole damn thing ;)
Keep on, all — and do send any worthy contenders my way.
[Here's another repost for the archives. These are by no means my most accomplished etudes in this vein, but I think they suggest some fun and useful possibilities, especially for pedagogy. As usual, I've updated some links below. This was originally published way back on 17 February 2006.]
in my class on electronic music, i generally use ableton live to play through – and more importantly, to play with or manipulate – the various musical examples for each week. sometimes i simply like the way live allows me to zoom in and out of a musical example with ease, focusing in on particular moments or sections. sometimes i use live to loop a particular section in order to examine it more closely. and sometimes i use live to tweak the selections in some way or another, which can range from simple to more radical transformations.
often, as with my mashes of cover songs, i juxtapose two (or more) tracks with each other in order to draw out relationships and highlight connections as well as divergences.
one such mix that i created for a recent class was a version of bob marley’s “concrete jungle” that segued back and forth between the “released” and “unreleased” versions (as collected on the catch a fire reissue “deluxe edition”).
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as you can see from squiggly red line in the picture above, i generally go slowly back and forth between the two versions (every couple of bars or so, at least until the end), in order to draw out the comparison. it really is remarkable how different the two versions sound, especially right next to each other. in contrast to the kingston version’s acoustic guitar and heavy low-end (on bob’s voice and the rest), the london version adds some flashy rock instrumentation and filters bob’s voice to leave only the high-mid range. the filtering of the voice seems to odd to me, since the original has such presence, but i suppose the decision was made to keep the song’s frequencies relatively unmuddled and to create a greater degree of instrument/voice separation. not sure it’s a money move, though. (ok, actually it was a money move, so what do i know.)
perhaps even more telling is that bob’s third verse – which, in classic reggae style repeats the first – was excised for wayne perkins’s clapton-esque guitar solo wankery. sure, it’s a wicked solo by pop-rock standards, dripping with the southern style perkins was known for, but i prefer to hear it mixed under bob’s voice. at any rate, i play with the panning/crossfader a lot here, and the ultimate goal is not so much about creating something aesthetically more pleasing but simply to draw our attention to the songs’ differences. (btw, i think this also reveals that, despite the lore around blackwell’s remixes, the “officially released” version includes a different vocal take than the original – though, yes, it’s still highly filtered/EQ’d.)
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another example of this sort of approach can be heard in my attempts to draw out the ska-like rhythms that emerge at various points in steve reich’s “it’s gonna rain” – a classic tape-piece and one of the first shots in the phase-process approach of the minimalist movement. one of the great things about the piece is how it subtly shifts accents, creating various “aural illusions” (as ethnomusicologists often call them, especially with reference to such traditions as shona mbira music or ewe agbekor), as we tend to hear different collections of strong and weak beats and thus impose various patterns on the sounds. this can be a difficult thing to demonstrate to a class as it largely involves one’s own perception and imagination rather than something objectively observable in the music itself.
i wanted to provide a bit of a suggestive hearing of the reich piece by showing how at certain times one could hear ska-like patterns of alternating downbeats/upbeats in the phased-out vocalizing of reich’s preacherman. in order to do so, i looped a couple of these moments and then mixed them with a segment from prince busta’s ska classic, “al capone.”
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funny sounding? yes. and, i’d say, definitely no improvement on either of the originals. but that’s not the point here. again, i’m simply seeking to demonstrate some musical relationships through the wonderful possibilities of mixing and mashing and tweaking and looping.
///
finally, i present you with a “standalone” version of my mix’n'mash of jazz pianist jason moran’s “planet rock” with the original as performed by afrika bambaataa and the soul sonic force (w/ the assistance of production/keyboard wizard arthur baker). after i saw that rio rocket posted a follow up on moran/bam, i decided it would be worthwhile to show how much the two versions actually correspond/diverge outside the context of a mix.
originally, i thought that i might perform a few additional edits on the piece to better “line them up” and show how amazingly accurate moran’s interpretation is. but then i noticed that not only are the two tracks almost exactly the same length (bearing in mind that this is a shortened version of the original) but by juxtaposing them largely unchanged it really serves to highlight moran’s distinctive touches. rather than having the two play in unison on later verses/sections, i prefer the way they seem to anticipate and echo each other. and once moran begins soloing on the materials, i like how the combination brings out the out-ness of moran’s homage.
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I’m happy to report that tomorrow today I’m headed to Mexico City yet again. At this rate, I’ve been telling people, I expect to be relocating there permanently sometime in mid-October. I joke, but I do feel like the place keeps calling me.
Si escribir sobre música es, como algunos han propuesto, el equivalente a bailar acerca de la arquitectura, tal vez “musicar” sobre la música ofrece una manera más directa de contar historias, definir relaciones, y enfocarse en características particulares. Incluso si no es exactamente más directo, tal enfoque ofrece modos ricos y evocadores de análisis y comunicación sobre música. Desde el mashup a la mezcla, el software contemporáneo de audio permite plantear preguntas sobre las obras musicales a través de la yuxtaposición vertical y horizontal, mientras que un procedimiento tan simple como la disminuir la velocidad de algo puede ofrecer inimaginables formas de escuchar y entender. En esta conferencia-demostración se ofrecen algunas técnicas y ejemplos del uso de software de producción digital para contar historias sobre la música y la cultura.
I want to thank Eric Gamboa (aka Elebleu) for extending the invitation. Along with Majadero (aka Lauro Robles), who knows the form (and has been ustreaming it up), we’ve been plotting to perhaps do another little session at some point in the next few days — more like a live mashup clustermix than anything vaguely academic.
When I was last in town I had the pleasure of sharing a bill with Majadero, the first guy I’ve seen wield an iPad in the DJ booth. What was wild was that this was the second time I’d shared a bill with him (the time before was last November). What was crazier still was that I realized back in November, while talking to him, that I had been playing his&crew’s leftfield dub tracks in my Beat Research sets for a couple years already (having stumbled upon them looking for “Mexican dubstep” or something like that). All of these encounters happened independent of Lauro and I ever being directly in touch. Mexico City is a huge place, but it sure can feel like a small world sometimes.
Also, apropos of nothing but my own vanity, I want to take the opportunity to thank Eric again, a bit belatedly, for taking some of the coolest photos of me, like, ever.
I was surprised and delighted to learn last week (h/t Rizzla) that everyone’s favorite pair of singing Boricuas from Queens, Nina Sky, have released a handful of new tracks, all for free DL (long as you give them your email address, which, in this case, seems a fair exchange). Apparently, the release comes in response to finally getting out of their contract with a label that was simply sitting on their work. Adoring fans should obv let Nicole and Natalie know how much we appreciate.
Readers of W&W may not know this, but we sure <3 us some Nina Sky over here. They jumped on the Coolie Dance riddim when it was still simmering and worked up a breakthrough hit, they led the flag-waving chorus on the first reggaeton song to crack English-language playlists, and they’re just so damn cute. (And I mean that in the most unpatronizing way possible, if that’s possible.)
The first three tracks of the EP are a really strong start. They manage to sound new and unlike much else right now, even while incorporating cherished breakbeats and hints of hip-house (funk dat!). But while they synthesize so many currents in pop, r&b, and club music — and the EP is even tagged, hilariously, with “happy hardcore” — what I really hear running through this, and through Nina Sky’s whole oeuvre, is the spirit of freestyle, which these girls are keeping alive and, oddly enough, autotuned! (I love the stuttered vocals on the title track, which really do seem like a nod to classic freestyle freakiness.) Above all, they sound like they’re having fun, all up in the mix and loving it.
For me, the EP sorta goes awry when it starts to sound like Madonna trying to sound like Kylie Minogue. These girls should stick to their “happy” “hardcore” New York dance steez, all sorts of syncopated synth-stabs and popping percussion — and forget about trancey arpeggio presets. Anyway, as a saving grace of sorts, the second half of the EP does feature this gem, a cover of the Cure’s “Lovesong” that is equal parts Ace of Bass and Lil Jon, none of which am I mad at.
In my best Sagat voice: Why is it that you haven’t downloaded this yet? Funk dat! Fix dat.
…
ps — after hitting the publish button, I ran across this new Q&A, which confirms what I was hearing –
The EP is definitely influenced by freestyle music. What are your favorite freestyle tracks?
Natalie: “I Wonder If I Take You Home” by Lisa Lisa. I love that song. It reminds me of being young and hanging out with my friends. We used to listen to mad freestyle music.
Nicole: I think mine would be “Let the Beat Hit ‘Em” by Lisa Lisa because it’s a freestyle song with more of a house feel. My mom used to play Lisa Lisa so much when we were growing up.
my friend alex, sporting a shirt made special for him in Paris’s 11th & inspired by this guy (see e.g.)
In yesterday’s re-post of a review, you might have caught the following barb-backed big-up:
Ayobaness! continues a line of releases from Outhere portraying African popular music that is, you know, actually popular (not just what might best fit outsiders’ expectations of African difference).
That teensy critique joins an ongoingattempt at course correction for the representation of African music (and by extension, Africa), especially when the enterprise is led by European and American middlemen.
It’s an important discursive battle — whether waged by bloggers or ethnomusicologists, &c. — but efforts like Outhere’s are, I suspect, ultimately more influential in terms of shaping people’s ideas about African difference, and sameness. I could talk at you for days about how not to think about Africa, but you’d just have to take my word for it. Better to hear and see for yourself.
Which is why I’d like to herald another important, awesome, intervening effort in this vein: the upcoming release (Aug 24) via Dutty Artz, curated by DJ Rupture, of a 17-track album by Ivorian crew CIAfrica –
Here’s a brief, semi-snarky run-down from the Dutty Crew:
Ivory Coast vocalists spit soul over futuristic beats that draw on dubstep and electro. This is forward-looking rap/dancehall/r&b for those who get bored listening to all that black-and-happy African music.
It’s true: when lots of folks think about African music, they think: “it’s dancey, it’s happy, nice melodies, very uplifting” or maybe they think about kuduro remixes or “hybridity”. But CIAfrica are abrasive, synthetic, angular, non-dancey lyric-driven music. Urban. Stubborn. Proudly themselves. Religious, sometimes.
It’s provocative, yes, but such a tone remains very necessary. Indeed, let me close with one more projectile utterance via Dutty Artz, which offers a fine riposte to that stupid Brian Eno quote about computers not having enough Africa in them:
Continuing my tradition of posting “director’s cut” versions of the reviews I freelance from time to time, here’s the latest: a review of a recent compilation from Germany’s Outhere records, Ayobaness!, which showcases the rich, vibrant South African house scene. This one was an interesting endeavor, as my editor, Derek, pushed me to foreground a discussion of the sound (understandably) while I was, as usual, a little more interested in the narrative framework (as offered by the compilers, and beyond). Both aspects are, IMO, crucial to how listeners and practitioners make meaning from these recordings, but short reviews don’t always permit an equal engagement with both. The “director’s cut” below contains two extra paragraphs that couldn’t make the cut for the print edition.
You can preview tracks, place an order, and watch some awesome videos over at Outhere Records.
Various Artists Ayobaness! The Sound of South African House
Outhere Records
House music’s big tent contains multitudes. And South Africans are no strangers to the show. An early local love of house, from about the same time the UK was embracing and reworking Chicago’s jacked-up disco-tech, famously paved the way for kwaito’s bridging of township rap and house rhythms, serving as suggestive soundtrack for post-apartheid jubilance and impatience alike. South Africa’s affinity for house qua house, however, continued unabated, and expanding access to production and distribution tools has given rise to a burgeoning scene that threatens to reabsorb kwaito, if not offer some course correction for house itself.
At a time when metropolitan house variants traverse a global network of labels, clubs, and DJs, South Africa’s convivial mix of soft synths, hard drums, and local vocals should find plenty of complimentary grooves to slip into. Ayobaness! The Sound of South African House, a new compilation from Germany’s Outhere Records, makes a strong case for South Africa as a hotbed for the genre. Thanks to YouTube’s projection of township youth cutting asphalt rugs, tracks by such standouts as DJ Mujava, represented here on the rollicking “Mugwanti / Sgwejegweje,” have recently enjoyed eager uptake abroad, mixed and remixed into the kindred forms of UK funky, dubstep, electro.
While some of the scene’s biggest tracks are off-kilter instrumentals with spooky synth leads and chunky percussion, Ayobaness! highlights vocal numbers. Male and female voices mix judiciously, as do the forms they take, from raspy rap verses to sweet, full-throated call-and-response choruses. In contrast to a lot of house tracks, even of the diva-propelled variety, the tracks collected here sound a lot more like songs. Spiky riffs, needling leads, and fuzzy washes interplay with snare drum cross-rhythms, bongos for days, and a panoply of voices. Take DJ Cleo’s “Nisho Njalo,” which dresses up house’s four-four kicks with a clave-shaped tom-and-piano riff, some laser beam skanking, interlocking synth melodies, and polymetric percussion rolls while kwaito sensation Bleksem recites coquettish rhymes to a skeptical chorus of women. This level of density and detail, conjuring local and global tropes all the while, is utterly typical.
Despite the music’s uniqueness, the sound of South African house is not so much a product of peripatric speciation as it is an aesthetic committed to local style while audibly attuned to contemporary currents in the wider world. The detailed liner notes boast that the scene has “deep, tribal, electro and minimal” sides, and discerning listeners will pick out nods to various tropes of the genre, old and new. The convivial mix of synths and skins is enough to win one over; no need to be cute and call this “shanty” house, or dub it the “most crazy house culture in the world” as it has been promoted.
Ayobaness! continues a line of releases from Outhere portraying African popular music that is, you know, actually popular (not just what might best fit outsiders’ expectations of African difference). From bongo flava to hiplife to roots reggae, Outhere’s compilations help to round out a picture of what contemporary urban Africa sounds like, including how much it sounds like the rest of the world. Amidst the ongoing Afrodiasporic jam across the Net Atlantic and a growing interest in African club sounds like kuduro and coupé décalé, the sound of South African house should resonate widely, but it’s best embodied on its own sure-footed terms.
This is the second post in a sporadic series here at w&w, an ongoing excavation, digitization, and interpretation of my wife’s grandparents’ record collection — i.e., the historico-musical profile of Seymour & Bernice. See here for the previous entry, and here for a note remembering Seymour.
Of the many delights I’ve come across in Seymour and Bernice’s record collection, perhaps none is outweighed by the substantial number of kitschy, exotica-tinged, midcentury dance records. They reflect a time in American life when Afro-Latin forms such as mambo, rumba, samba became ballroom and parlor staples. The fact that these words all look and sound similarly is probably no accident. As Ned Sublette notes in Cuba and its Music –
The largest number of African words that have come into the common Cuban vocabulary are of Bantu origin. Phonologically its legacy is instantly recognizable. Okra in Cuba is called quimbombó. That intervocalic “mb” cluster — the one that turns up in countless words like tumbao, mambo, bemba, bombo — is often (though not necessarily) a Bantu touch… (179)
But despite their semi-exotic origins (Cuba is not Long Island, though New York City was pretty Cuban by mid-century) and the way these dances and genres were marketed as ’spicy’ and ‘flavorful’ — terms which continue to narrate the circulation of Latin-Caribbean sounds — what is particularly striking about their appearance in the record collection of a Jewish family in Rockville Center is their simultaneous mundanity, their utter familiarity, their almost unremarkable commonplaceness. Already by the mid-50s, these styles had been carefully and pretty thoroughly domesticated and popularized — i.e., successfully marketed to a non-Latin/Caribbean audience — under the direction of the Fred Astaire Dance Studios (and, no doubt, companies of its ilk), which issued a series of Perfect for Dancing compilations via RCA/Victor, complete with how-to instructions and steps. Bernice and Seymour ended up with several –
and where, exactly, are the women’s steps? oh yeah…
Despite their somewhat campy and squarish presentation, the music collected on these discs is pretty damn good. The bands who popularized these styles were, after all, often led and staffed by seasoned performers from across the Afro/Latin/Caribbean diaspora. As you can see, the tracklist for the SAMBAS record features such renowned midcentury Brazilian musicians as violinist Fafa Lemos and singer Carlos Galhardo, as well as the likes of New York-based Cuban bandleader, José Curbelo. Not to mention — que nome! — the Carioca Swingtette (!), who may or may not be Brazilian; far as I can tell, this is their only recording.
I could choose lots of tracks to share from this odd but rad compilation, but for this particular post — and for reasons that will become clear below — I’m going to highlight Fafa Lemos & co.’s version of “Brazil,” aka “Aquarela do Brasil” (“Watercolor of Brazil”) — a song composed by Ary Barroso back in 1939, and no doubt a song familiar to many, whether due to Terry Gilliam, or Walt Disney, or any number of other eruptions in popular culture (just take a glance at all these “notable versions” and appearances in film of the tune). But it’s not simply beloved abroad: in 1997, it was named “Best Brazilian Song of the Century” by a jury of 13 “experts” convened by the Brazilian Academy of Letters.
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As with the rest of the Astaire collection, the arrangement here is on the schmaltzy side. But there’s a rather satisfying richness in rendered chicken fat, isn’t there? For one, you’ve gotta love that moony french horn (?) in the opening, and Fafa’s violin work is quite fun throughout, playing around the melody without straying too far. Also delightful are all the little details in the orchestration, offering sweet little responses to the soloists’ calls.
But I should be more frank: there’s an unexplainable personal affinity motivating this Brazil-ian excursion. Like certain friends (check the only comment on that post), I’ve long had a softspot for the song — I love the plaintive melody over the softly chugging samba rhythms — and I was thrilled to find it a recurring theme across Seymour’s and Bernice’s record stash.
// .. Digesting the World .. //
A similar treatment to the Fred Astaire / Fafa Lemos recording, for example, can be found on volume 8, side 2 (Latin Rhythms for Dancing) of an amazing/amusing 10 record collection called Popular Music THAT WILL LIVE FOREVER published by Reader’s Digest sometime in the early 1960s, I’m guessing. (Someone has taken the trouble of rapidsharing the entire boxed set, if you’re interested).
…
This being Reader’s Digest, the long-reigning “best-selling consumer magazine in the United States” before finally being unseated by Better Homes and Gardens in 2009, the packaging nods toward the (lightly) informative –
A closer look, however, reveals some pretty telling tropes, including a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too deployment of “culture” and “tribe” that primitivizes certain forms of dance music and elevating others while implicitly erasing the African heritage embodied by so many of the genres on display:
Dancing is a vital part of the lives of every culture. There are rain dances, fertility dances, war dances, marriage dances, death dances, harvest dances, and a few enlightened (or naïve) tribes even have dances with no purpose other than the pleasure of the dance itself.
The more primitive the tribe, the more primitive the music. It may only be a man beating two sticks together in rhythmic cadences. If his job is to provide an accompaniment for dancers, he is creating dance music.
Today’s dance music is considerably more sophisticated, but its essential quality is still the best — the rhythm. Underneath the melody of the mambo, the waltz, the fox trot, there is the drum — the direct descendant of the man beating two sticks together.
Nevermind that forms like mambo (elsewhere called “a musical half-breed“), included on this record, still often feature a man “beating” two sticks together (i.e., clave), or that the drum as we know it — and as it figures in this music — is basically African. The editors here draw a squiggly line from cavemen to sophisticates.
It’s not the only oddity in the notes. Ironically, for all the information proffered, the names of the musicians involved only appear in small print on the records themselves. Perhaps it’s because bandleaders like Martin Slavin, a British music director who worked in Hollywood for many years, don’t quite cut the right cloth for this sort of slighty salacious contextualization? At any rate, he whipped up a pretty entertaining version with “his orchestra” (whoever they were) –
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This recording is actually a medley, beginning — and mostly concerned — with “Brazil” but then moving into two other Brazilian standards of the day, “Tico Tico” and “Copacabana” (incidentally, if you’ve never seen Ethel Smith tearing up “Tico Tico” on a Hammond organ, supported by a gaggle of percussion playing kiddies ladies “hot” for some “South American jive,” it’s not to be missed). Whoever the musicians are, they smoke, and the arrangement is surprisingly whimsical. I love the piano tinkles, the ever-present and fairly foregrounded percussion, the unexpected and repeated quotation of that ol’ circus theme song, the jazzy guitar lead, and so on. The segues are pretty damn smooth too.
…
I’ve wondered about what made “Brazil” so popular that it seems almost ubiquitous at the historical moment during which Seymour’s and Bernice’s record collection coalesced. Of course, there’s a strong romantic nationalism at the heart of the song, and, related to my thoughts in the previous post, I think there’s a very interesting way that such dreamy visions of foreign nationalism could serve simultaneously to shore up postwar US (not to mention US Jews’) notions of national attachment and belonging and identititity. It’s not too surprising that such a compelling portrait of another country would resonate elsewhere too. For some, conjuring a sense of national unity out of diversity and inequity is what the mystery of samba is all about.
…while the cartoon might well have served as a tourism promotion tool, it was actually part of much larger geopolitical machinations. Disney traveled to South America and received government backing to produce films lauding our new South American friends, products of the “Good Neighbor Policy” designed to keep them under the Allies’ sphere of influence. In addition to Saludos Amigos, the American viewing public also got 1944’s The Three Caballeros. In a disappointing linguistic blunder, both chose Spanish titles even though the Portuguese-speaking Zé Carioca was a main character in both and Carmen Miranda’s younger sister features in the latter. Carmen Miranda, meanwhile, was an in-the-flesh Latin promotion effort, a story told probingly in the documentary Bananas is my Business. The symbolism and imagery of these efforts to promote Brazil to the American public were naturally one-dimensional, especially having a lily white (and Portugal-born) chanteuse singing samba, which a scant generation earlier was derided as too African.
Of course, the kind of samba being promoted was itself far from the spontaneous, impromptu tradition from which the music sprang. “Aquarela do Brasil” was a samba-exaltação (exaltation samba), patriotic in purpose and serving the interests of the dictatorial and quasi-fascist Vargas regime. It was Vargas who had institutionalized the samba parade in Rio during the 1930s, turning it into a tool of nationalist pride, making it rigid, orderly, an almost military processional. The state, in essence, co-opted a cultural form — or at least one major manifestation of it — steeped in resistance to the dominant order.
// .. Italians do it .. //
The final example brings things back home in a funny but apt sort of way, as Hollywood nationalism, Ausländisch stereotypes, and American exceptionalism all seem to congeal in Dick Contino’s swingin’ romp through the tune’s familiar strains:
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The Latin-ate percussion is here subsumed into jazzster kit drumming, and, in contrast to the other ensemble versions above, this one seems arranged more principally as a showcase for a supposedly showboat soloist. Contino’s relatively understated performance, however, hardly rises to the level of the liner notes’ incredible superlatives –
“ever heard anywhere” … “never been matched” !!! — then again, even on his own current website, Contino is called “The World’s Greatest Accordionist” — & he does seem to inspire a certain admiration, strange story and all:
Dick Contino is an icon of cool. Dick Contino plays the accordion. These are not contradictory statements.
It helps that he is probably the best-looking guy to ever play the accordion for a living, handsome enough to have had his own groupies back when hardly anyone except Sinatra had groupies, handsome enough to have appeared in a few movies–and without an accordion. It also helps that he had enough scandals and brush-ups in his career to earn his tough guy merit badge. And it helped to have crime writer James Ellroy come along and mythologize Contino just about the time when he might otherwise have become a forgotten nostalgic act.
Contino’s father bought him his first accordion when he was seven, but he didn’t really take it seriously until he was 12. Within a few years, he had become so proficient, he was travelling to San Francisco, 180 miles away, for regular lessons. His big break came in 1946, when he competed on bandleader Horace Heidt’s “Youth Opportunity Talent Show.” Contino gyrated around while his fingers flew through “Lady of Spain” (condemning that song to accordion hell forever after) and won the night’s show. He returned to win the show’s grand prize for the season, and soon, he was a star in his own right, with his own string of fan clubs around the country.
Unfortunately, a couple of years later as his career was hitting full-stride, he received notice that he was being drafted to serve in the Korean War. For reasons he’s never fully explained, he ignored the notice and wound up being jailed for six months. Although he did eventually enlist and serve honorably in Korea, the “draft dodger” label hung over him for years and knocked him out of the ranks of the top stars for good. It also later provided Ellroy with the raw material for his story, “Dick Contino’s Blues,” which appears in the collection, Hollywood Nocturnes.
Contino lost his movie and recording contracts with Paramount and RCA Victor, and although he was picked up by Mercury within a year or so, his movie career dropped down to the realm of B-movies. Ironically, this raised his tough guy status significantly, for one of the few roles he got after his discharge was the cult B-movie, “Daddy-O.” Playing a badass rock ‘n’ roller and part time drug smuggler, Contino did his own driving for one of the earliest showcase car chases, doing a little Evel Knievel number to get past a roadblock. “Daddy-O” is certainly not great cinema (“That thing was like a class Z picture,” Contino said), but it ranks up there with “The Wild One” as piece of 50s rebel iconography.
This places his recording of “Brazil” — which I believe was made in the late 50s — in the second-wind of Contino’s career. And I have to say, while I wouldn’t apply such superlatives myself, I find his playing perfectly passable, tasteful even (to commit a revealing Bourdieuian sin), and the arrangement sure keeps up with the other big bands we’ve heard above. It’s pretty darn brash, really — peppy even, offering a nice contrast to the more stately, “exalted” march of other interpretations.
But beyond the inflated prose and other obvious points of interest in the liner notes — e.g., the array of (European, if incl “gypsy”) peoples who are, ahem, “doing it” — I want to call attention to the twice-used italicized phrase all yours. That sentiment, of course, is a central myth of the midcentury recording industry: that the music encoded on this slab of vinyl can in fact be possessed by the owner. This claim is distinct from earlier attempts to sell musical commodities. As Tim Taylor outlines in his excellent article, “The Commodification of Music at the Dawn of the Era of ‘Mechanical Music’,” the makers of player-pianos and player-piano rolls initially took great pains to assure consumers that they were in fact still the players of the music, that they retained control and power, that they remained central to the process of filling one’s home with music. We see by this point, however, that the rhetoric has firmly shifted: it’s not about possessing the ability to make music, it’s about possessing the music itself.
By extension, we might wonder what it means for a song like “Brazil” to become one’s possession by virtue of buying a somewhat schlocky dance record by a had-been like Dick Contino. Listening to these three instances of “Brazil” in Seymour’s and Bernice’s collection, I have to surmise that the song must have felt, in some way, as if it was all theirs, at least as long as it could also be made one’s own by their friends and neighbors and others in the (imagined) communities or various publics created/addressed by widely-circulating records like these — no doubt, markers of a certain sort of cultural distinction, an everyday worldliness available even to a modest middle-class family living out on Long Island.
At least, that’s how it sounds in my imagination. We’ll see what my daughter’s daughter’s son-in-law, should he ever exist, thinks of that.
and hence we commence our sonicultural adventure, a trip across (real) time and (imagined) space, a journey into the middle of the last century, into a middle-class home, into the middle of long island.
you may be surprised, if reminded, that the middle stands between near and far, high and low. it mediates these extremities, quite literally.
but we’re not interested so much in the literal on this voyage (at least not at this point). we’re interested in the symbolic, in the narratives that music mediates and which themselves animate musical meanings. but let’s begin with some literalities, if simply to couch the symbolic in a more meaningful, relatable context.
seymour and bernice are my wife’s maternal grandparents. they’re not my own grandparents, so i don’t know all that i should know to attempt such an excavation as this, though i hope to learn much by way of listening. recently, as becca and i visited her grandparents, seymour and bernice offered me their record collection. they haven’t had a record player for years, and bernice just got an ipod nano, so who needs a few big, heavy boxes of vinyl sitting around? i guess i do, since i accepted their offer without hesitation. there was something just too tantalizing about all those records, not just for their hidden gems and samplables, but somehow for the sum-total of their expression of a life of record collecting. what would these records say about my in-laws and their lives and the way society and culture looked and sounded to them? i had to find out.
when we returned from long island, i unpacked the boxes, went through each and every one, putting the records in piles according to the imaginary maps in my head, listening to any that caught my eye, putting aside a stack of favorites, and attempting to come to terms with the collection and what it expressed. some of the records seemed rare, some utterly common. there was more classical (and opera, specifically) than i had hoped for, but this was significant in itself (and a fine collection in its own right). the records mainly represented the era in which they were collected (i.e., the 50s and 60s), with relatively few big surprises and a fair number of delights: plenty of swing and standards, pop and dance records, a good whiff of exotica, lots of neo-folk stuff (a la pete seeger), but then a fair amount of jewish music, from the kitschy to the cantatorial, russian and yiddish folk songs to jazzed-up klezmer and israeli nationalist anthems. mostly 12s, a few 10s, and a handful of 78s. i was told that some records (mainly the russian ones) were inherited from an aunt, and that some were probably the kids’ (one of whom, my mother-in-law, will no doubt be gassed to hear the records released by her childhood summer camp — limited pressings indeed, and for good reason).
the music i plan to share with you as i go on these travels with seymour and bernice will mainly be those tracks or records which caught my attention, those that are most curious to me — and, of course, those that sound best. all things considered, this will undoubtedly be a strange trip, and i will acknowledge at the outset that it may well ultimately express my own musical imagination more strongly than it expresses anything that might relate to seymour and bernice, or their family, or mid-twentieth century long island, new york america. but that, i hope, is what might save this exercise from being the sort of thing that should be confined to one’s parlour (if one has a parlour these days). i hope that my role as curator or interpreter or whatever-you-wanna-call-me makes these travels not just bearable but enjoyable — perhaps even something in which you can participate.
i envision this venture/project/travelogue as taking a road somewhere between pace’s L.O.V.E. and jace’s vinyl rescue service (as well as the seemingly defunct stickershock). i see it as another way that riddim = method, which is to say, another way that music can express ideas, can open up into broader conversations, can provoke us to think, to contemplate, to make sense of the world. it seems that this medium’s (i.e., the internets’s) ability to share and revise, discuss and debate, tag and archive media is unparalleled in its power, and i hope to tap into that — if only partially, suggestively — to tell this story. i invite you to build the narrative with me, to riff off of it, and to start your own. i’ll lend you my ears if you lend me yours. so many record collections, so little time. but worlds upon worlds to discover. and this is as good a way in (and out) as any…
// i wish you L.O.V.E. //
the first track i will offer is from a record that caught my eye on that first day home, partly because of the stereotypically gay-parisian scene (and thus its kitsch potential) and partly because of the shiny sleeve. the song is a midcentury french pop standard, “que reste-t-il de nos amours?” — written by charles trenet. it appears on living strings at a sidewalk cafe, an LP issued in 1963 by camden RCA, whose other releases included living strings play henry mancini, the shimmering sounds of living strings, and where did the night go with the living strings. (i’ve left the telltale, and cherished [by us hip-hop folk], vinyl static around the song so as to frame it with reminders of the sound’s original material form.)
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right away, i’m struck by the sentimental, if not outright schmaltzy, strings — typical of pop arrangements of that era and hallmarks of what came to be known as easy listening music. the second thing that grabs my attention, though, is the mellow, latin-ate percussion. one thing that emerges from the experience of listening across many of these lounge-y records from the 50s and 60s is the degree to which latin styles permeate the parlourscape of the period. after a certain point, such signs are not exactly exotic anymore, and it’s interesting to hear the way american music absorbs various “foreign” currents to the point where they become so ubiquitous as to seem utterly unremarkable, utterly american.
after these initial impressions, i find myself following the melody, finding pleasure in tracing its romantic contours. the arrangement erupts into wonderful little surprises, however scripted, as when the flutes bubble-out their transitional riffs or when the accordian takes up the melody, giving it a decidedly (if imaginatively) french sound. (the hanging vibraphone arpeggio that concludes the song is just the sort of thing that amon tobin might employ to end one of his sample-based epics.) the song’s swelling grandeur, while predictable, is not only audible and visible (see below), it’s downright palpable — and that’s a sign of affect accomplished.
france here appears both foreign and familiar, dressed in the dulcet tones of international pop and yet fairly exotic too. the sounds themselves, and the record sleeve’s promise of “music to whisk you away to cafes international!“ express both a longing and an affinity for the foreign, perhaps even a cosmopolitanism that we might hear as progressive. but is it articulating an individual’s desire to experience different senses of place? or a generation(s)-removed nostalgia for the old world? or, perhaps, an international alignment — e.g., NATO — that may have seemed appealing in post-WWII, cold-war-era
the language of escape and difference, fantasy and distance running through the sleeve notes would seemingly point us more toward nostalgia and desire (e.g., to go abroad — a relative novelty given the recent advent of mass air travel), at least as far as the marketing team was concerned. here’re the notes from the back of the sleeve:
It’s the Cafe de la Paix in Paris, the Caffe Doney in Rome, the Cafe Demel in Vienna, and a state of mind and wistful dreams anywhere at all. This is the sidewalk cafe, a relaxed, alfresco world of wicker chairs, marble-top tables and aproned waiters – part club, part meeting place, alive with laughter and talk.
Here is the music of the sidewalk cafe – gay songs, sad songs, songs of memory.
From Germany, music of love and the warm atmosphere of “Gemutlichkeit”: Du du liegst mir im Herzen (“You Are in My Heart”); Auf Wiederseh’n, Sweetheart; You Can’t Be True, Dear from a German Hit called “Du kannst nicht treu sein,” and the classic Lili Marlene, adopted as a world-wide favorite by American G.I.’s in World War II.
From Austria the lovely waltz Vienna, My City of Dreams.
From France, I Wish You Love (“Que reste-t-il de nos amours”), written by the French idol Charles Trenet; another French favorite, J’attendrai (“I’ll Be Yours”).
From the U.S., three lovely hits which have become sidewalk cafe favorites the world over: Play, Fiddle, Play, an entrancing waltz; My Heart Cries for You, one of the big hits of 1951, and the enchanting Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo from Leslie Caron and Mel Ferrer‘s movie hit “Lili.”
it’s interesting to me that germany, austria, and france have been so thoroughly recuperated in the american imagination by this point (“warm atmosphere”?!), as well as how these particular european places don’t necessarily seem to matter so much at all. indeed, one could have one’s “wistful dreams” anywhere at all if one wants. and, what do you know, there is a direct reference to WWII and the way that europe came home, and went ‘round, with the boys. finally, the comforting notion of american global influence rears its head in the last paragraph and yet, interestingly, it appears alongside the explicit acknowledgment of the french actress who popularized the song to which they refer and of the composer, the only american composer mentioned and a man with a conspicuously cuban name.
so, i’m thinking “ambivalence,” but that’s a no-brainer. this is obviously more complex territory than that, and the decades between its production then and its reception here, as an mp3, will obviously make our hermeneutical endeavor that much more tricky (if fun).
listen again: what does it sound like to you?
// tighten your beltz //
the second example i offer you is from another record that grabbed me at first sight. again, it something about the design, rather than a verbal description of the contents, that caught my eye. the bold lines, the simple color scheme – it recalled for me various jazz records from that time, especially the modernist blue note sleeves. of course, the barry sisters are a handsome pair as well. and when i looked closer and saw the yiddish titles, my curiosity was piqued.
i put the record on immediately, and the first song proved to be the most arresting of the LP, a collection of yiddish folk/popular songs released by cadence records in the 1960s (no exact date found) under the unassuming title, the barry sisters sing.
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as the song begins, plaintive strings conjure a sense of melancholy which seems to hang in the air, heavy with dreadful anticipation, as the opening gesture comes to a rubato resolution. when the sisters’ voices enter along with the rest of the arrangement, they quickly confirm these intimations of sadness: they sound tormented by grief, like souls longing for another time and place. they embrace the tune’s minor harmonies, drawing deep pathos out of chordtones and semitones, slurring syllables and bending pitches around their heavy hearts. they sound — if i may — like jews with the blues, and that’s not meant to be a pithy cliche: on the contrary, it’s meant to describe the very sound and sentiment underlying “beltz.”
known early in their career as the bagelman sisters, the barry sisters were among the most prominent exponents of yiddish swing, a jazzed-up approach to yiddish folk songs that emerged in an era which produced swing ballads and ethnic novelties alike (and in spades), and a genre that found favor among (second and third) american jews looking for a modern expression of their cultural heritage. as you can hear, the MOR arrangement bears witness to the degree that this subcultural style partook in mainstream popular musical vocabulary (another ending on a hanging vibraphone?!), but there’s something unnervingly distinctive about the accompaniment all the same. those sweeping strings could almost evoke nat king cole or dean martin in their cartoonish sentimentality, but then, they’re a little too ominous, especially against the barry sisters’ voices. allusions to and uses of the yiddish musical vocabulary and repertory would seem partly, if not largely, to account for this elusive but qualitative difference between the music of the barry sisters and their easy listening contemporaries. and perhaps they explain why — despite the looming threat of kitsch — the song sounds, even today, not so much a curio as a hauntingly beautiful performance.
of course, it gets a little goofy in the middle, with some uplifting strains which still manage to sound fragile, fleeting. the middle section doesn’t resolve, it leads right back to the beginning, the sad refrain, the painful memories. and then, a dreamy instrumental chorus, allowing us to fill in the pictures before the sisters return at the bridge to take us slowly, (bitter)sweetly home.
as it turns out, the sisters are singing about a far-away place after all, a former home of sorts (if only in metaphorical terms), a place called beltz/belz — a small town in ukraine which was also home to a hasidic dynasty. but their song is a more generalizable tale. it is a story of mourning, of grieving for a childhood memory — of life in a shtetl — that is no more. again the historical context of the record’s production is crucial to guess at its range of reception and resonance: post-WWII, holocaust hanging heavy over the lieu de memoire that is the subject of the song. the shtetl could thus be heard as a metonym for a former life that has been destroyed, ruined, lost. i didn’t get all of this upon my first listening, but i do think the song’s power of affect evokes this sentiment rather well — almost precisely. the only words i really recognized when i first listened were “mein shtetl,” which were enough in themselves to suggest a few possible themes to me, especially when paired with the lyrics’ sorrowful setting.
the sleeve notes provided me with more grist for the mill, including no little astonishment at the strange sort of self-deprecation with which the author (identified by the initials S.D.) introduces his/her remarks. allow me to share some excerpts:
You are now reading the opening sentence of a rambling essay of some five hundred words covering the entire reverse side of this album. But, truthfully, even if you were to stop reading right now, you would still know most of the facts in the case. You have already seen the front cover. You have been advised that here are a dozen familiar and beloved melodies which have their origins in Yiddish folk and popular music. They are sung in the warm and flawless style of the Barry Sisters. Some of the songs have been composed, and all of them arranged and conducted, by Abraham Ellstein. So, then, why continue to peruse the rest of this less than immortal prose? Shouldn’t an album of music, any kind of music, speak, or, rather, sing for itself? It should. And this one does. But there is a reason for this writing. It’s a reason that has to do with a normal reaction to a new musical experience. When you hear a work of genuine beauty, stature and originality for the very first time, you just cannot let go of it. There’s that exciting urge to examine it, think about it, talk about it. And so we thought that perhaps you would care to know just a little bit more about the background of the songs and the singers since never before has there been an album of music exactly like this one.
In one sense these are melodies and rhythms that might be said to possess a definite flavor and feeling even though no two of the songs are exactly alike. Several of them are popular tunes written by well known composers but the origins of some of the others will always remain a mystery. Who knows how many thousands of years ago a Palestinian shepherd first played the original strains of Hi Hora on a primitive reed? How old is a folk song like Rozenkes und Mandlen, and who wrote it? We will never know. What we do know, however, is that each song in the album has undergone a remarkable transformation. While losing nothing of their original charm, they have taken on an illuminating and new dimension. They are still Yiddish songs but now they speak to us in the universal language of music. They belong to everyone regardless of speech or background. My Yiddishe Momma is now everybody’s Momma. Gesselle is now everybody’s street of heartbreak, nostalgia and unrequited love. Beit Mir A Bisselle and Abi Gesunt are as modern and as swingy as anything in the juke boxes.
Quite sincerely, we believe that these will be your conclusions after you have heard the album. You are probably asking yourself how was it done? Well, it didn’t happen by accident. It would be altogether accurate to say that this album has been years in preparation. It was made by people who grew up with this music, who have known it, nurtured it and loved it. First, we have the Barry Sisters, Claire and Merna. All right, they were born lucky. They discovered, quite early in life, that they had voices. Claire’s voice is high and beautiful; Merna’s is sweet and low. Constant study and arduous practise succeeded in producing the breath-taking and seemingly effortless blend that is so characteristic of their unique and lovely style. The songs in this album go back to their childhood. But even at the beginning, Claire and Merna heard these melodies in terms of other rhythms and other notes. They were born in New York and were raised on the popular music of America. From the very first, they brought a new world interpretation to an old world tune. For a while, as their many recordings, broadcasts, and club dates might indicate, they were the country’s leading exponents of what was termed Yiddish Swing. But the girls were proving something else to themselves and the public. They were demonstrating beyond any shadow of a doubt that good music can break any language barrier. Today, they are one of the country’s leading singing acts, at home with any type of song anywhere in the world. To them, this album represents a return to an early, never forgotten and still active love.
…
The result is music that is older than all of our ancestors and as new as this morning’s paper . . . music that springs from a single nationality, and is as universal as the United Nations.
yep, it’s pretty quaint stuff, couched in terms of newness and normalcy, of foreigness and familiarity. it describes the music as modern and “swingy” and yet timeless, as being of universal appeal — they belong to everyone — and yet “from a single nationality.” i wonder whether the universalist rhetoric was meant to appeal to non-jews or simply to jews ambivalent about their jewishness? or am i simply being naive about midcentury, metropolitan jewishness? it is interesting to me also that, apparently, zionist discourse had not yet divorced the term palestinian from any association with jewish heritage.
i could say much more, but this entry has already grown too lengthy. suffice it to say that this complex gem of a recording points us to what will inevitably be another thread running through our musical travels with seymour and bernice: the weirdness and wonders of negotiating jewishness in the post-war era, a historical moment in which israel loomed large, across which the holocaust cast its long shadow, and during which many american jews of the post-post-pogram generation (i.e., born to first- or second-generation parents), were going secular, embracing cultural notions of jewishness, and trying to figure out which traditions and values and symbols to maintain and which to let go.
or at least that’s what i imagine i hear, at least at this moment.
what do you hear?
btw, if you want to hear more from the barry sisters, stay tuned, as i will surely revisit their catalog in another installment. and for more music along these lines, check out the yiddish radio project from NPR as well as josh kun’s hippocampus. [update: see also, the idelsohn society for musical preservation, involved with such salutary projects as jews on vinyl.]
// . . . //
more perhaps than even this monstrous first entry might portend, i hope to unpack a great deal of this collection in due time, working through it and learning as i go. on the way, i hope to get some feedback from you, dear reader and listener, as well as from seymour and bernice, who will surely be tickled by all of this and who will hopefully be happy that i’m enjoying their records.
musicologist, internet annotator, and rapper-ternt-blogger.
