Those of you who tune in regularly to Treasure Nest on Rhubarb Radio will know that Soesmix and myself are of the opinion that hip hop is folk music, and folk music is hip hop. DJ Fabia, a lady who won this little bird’s heart way back, for sharing real sounds on Sensei FM, seems to be of a similar opinion, as her gorgeous hip hop / folk set shows.
Fabia also interviews Dizraeli just after a live set heavily influenced by British folk, showcasing his latest work Engurland: City Shanties. He knows hip hop and folk go hand in hand: “Hip hop is pretty much folk music for the modern age, it’s everyday people telling everyday stories in their own accents.”
Listen in to DJ Fabia and be healed kids, this stuff is gold dust!
Geneticists agree that the common ancestor of all human life came from Africa, and the presence of music as a cultural imperative in all human cultures across the globe, however isolated, suggests that our forebears first made music on African soil, before their dispersal across Earth began about 50,000 years ago.
These facts do not directly translate into the affirmation, “all music comes from Africa”,-google that phrase and see how much anger comes up! The infinitely complex dance of nature and nurture over countless generations has borne an unknowably vast musical spectrum, as rich and diverse as humanity itself.
The important question is not in a music’s origins, but in the strength of the message it transmits, the way it tells its intricate story, and most importantly, how it speaks to the listener’s soul. Perhaps for that reason, the influence of African music is so far spread today.
This edition of Treasure Nest celebrates the sound of the musical African diaspora, from Fela Kuti’s influence in Brooklyn and Chicago to Malian musicians in France and Nigerians in London, Congolese jazz in Switzerland and afro funk electronica in Spain. There’s also a healthy dose of some of the finest sounds coming out of Africa right now- hip hop from Burkina Fasso’s awesome Waka Tibio and South African jazz from Simphiwe Dana.
Malian musician Youssouf Karembe is doing great things to further awareness of music and culture from his native Dogon Country. Currently living in Paris, he’s playing all over the city at the moment so if you’re round those ways, make sure to check him out. In fact, if Karembe hasn’t yet jammed with Lessazo, the fates will surely unite them. This Parisian outfit have been mixing French and Malian sounds for years, and while Lessazo Trio tour France this summer, over in Mali the larger group Lessazo Angata are putting the finishing touches to their acoustic set, with a Malian bass and rhythm section of balafon, tamani, jembé and calebasse. For free Lessazo downloads, just look them up on Last FM.
A massive thanks goes out to all those who tuned in live this week, and to all the musicians who contributed to the show. Don’t forget to spread the word about Rhubarb Radio, all shows are available for listen again for a couple of months.
On this week’s Treasure Nest, we’re getting in touch with our inner animal – sliding back down that evolutionary ladder, reawakening all the wee beasties of our past existence. So take off your clothes, get down on all fours and set yourself a-howlin’, this treetop shrine is primal.
Ladies and Gentlemen, on last week’s Treasure Nest, the pitched battle between conflict and protest left the Rhubarb Radio studio spattered with blood and feathers, and both Soesmix and Magpie had to have a little weep after handing over to Whomanity.
This edition of Treasure Nest, by contrast, is calm and twinkly, just like the first day of Spring, and Persian New Year, should be.
The sweet, sultry rebellion of Sarah McQuaid’s The Chickens They Are Crowing, is the opening number not only to this week’s Treasure Nest, but to her dreamlike album I Won’t Go Home Til Morning. Once, suffering from work induced exhaustion in the back seat of a National Express coach from Stansted Airport, temporarily flightless, Magpie fell asleep to this track and dreamt her way home with McQuaid as the soundtrack- it was a profoundly soothing experience.
Soesmix provided a soft pillowed cloud of slumber in the form of three tracks from The Planet Sleeps, and that’s just what we did in the cosiest corner of the studio we could find, before rousing the airwaves gently with Danish electro magician DJ Disse, Mexican voice of the poets Carmina Cannavino and Alpha Blondy. Loveliness as standard.
This edition of Treasure Nest is all about conflict and protest. Magpie Brown took care of the conflict, with the delightfully passive aggressive My Name is George by George Thomas and The Owls: “Don’t mess with me/My name is George/And I was once the heavyweight champion of the world!”. For those of a military bent, there was kooky Quebequoise marching dub strangeness from Michel Faubert. Staying in Quebec, we played Mata Hari by the gorgeous Caracol- named after Dutch exotic dancer who was executed by firing squad during World War I for espionage- an accusation that is argued over by historians to this day.
Soesmix took care of the protest, with Scroobius Pip‘s salutary Letter From God To Man, UNICEF approved legend Melanie’s Lay Down and, of course, Bob Dylan’s Masters of War.
There was a dirty raw guest mixtape from Tommy Digital featuring kuduro breakbeaters Buraka Som Sistema, and we also launched the GIANT ROBOT competition- more details coming soon, so watch this space!
Everything has to come from somewhere, and music is no exception. This edition of Treasure Nest is dedicated to music and messages of specific cultural origin, artists who perpetuate or revive traditional tales, rhythms and genres, and the power music has to spread the word, whatever that word may be! Enjoy.
On the very last day of January 2010, Treasure Nest (your favourite treetop shrine to audio joy) was dedicated to all those lovely ladies in Cardiff who went to Tescos in their pyjamas. Magpie Brown wore her slippers to the studio, and Soesmix Edan brought chocolate cake. After a few weeks of tripping around the world, playing tunes from far and wide, Treasure Nest took was warm and cosy, so tuck youself up on the sofa under a blanket with a cup of tea and some biscuits, and enjoy!
Nina Simone’s I’m Going Back Home is the perfect place to start a journey into the corners of your own nest. Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina, her home was always filled with music, but her mother Mary Kate’s job as a maid in a wealthy white family’s home was the first step along her journey to a hugely successful career and international recognition.
Moving from Atlantic City to Philadelphia and New York, Nina became an icon of the Civil Rights Movement, and many of her songs- most notably To Be Young, Gifted and Black- are now synonimous with the struggle for racial equality. Simone felt herself very much the target of racial prejudice, and consequently left her home country in the early 1970s. This departure may also have had something to do with her unpaid US tax bill – something dealt with by her manager and husband until their divorce in 1971.
Over the course of her life, she moved further and further away from her birthplace, living in Barbados, Liberia and Switzerland, eventually settling in France, where she died in 2003. I’m Going Back Home is a sweetly revealing work- a joyful celebration of Tryon, North Carolina, and the idiosynchracies of the place she first knew as home.
Miss the rooster crowing at the break of dawn
Yes it all happens where I was born
Miss the fried chicken colored greens
Miss the hot biscuits and the lima beans
Miss the prayer meeting where the people pray
With the drum beating till the break of day
Remember you can tune in live to Treasure Nest every Sunday from 6-8pm on Rhubarb Radio, or listen again whenever you wish!
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Just a few months after pecking my way out of my egg, I took flight with my parents to live in a place called Sainte Rose du Lac, on the prairies of Manitoba. I was far too young to form any memories of the place that I can recall, instead I have appropriated stories from my family. Dad skiing to work, Mum wrapping us kids up in so many layers that we could hardly move, stuffing us in cardboard boxes and dragging us in sleds across frozen lakes to feed bears peanut butter sandwiches in the Riding Mountain National Park, before singing us to sleep beneath the wailing of the Northern Lights.
All the half imagined memories I’ve been fed over the years have woven together with vague conceptions of Canada’s vast landscape, so now beyond the Atlantic, just above the USA, lies a dreamlike expanse of windswept plains, fragrent pine forests and endless, bitter cold lakes.
Although this may bear some resemblance to parts of Canada, I’m sure it’s a laughably naive description to anyone who actually knows the place. The variety and cultural blend of music played on this week’s Treasure Nest gives the lie to this romantic silliness. Nonetheless, the gorgeous, atmospheric sounds of The Wilderness of Manitoba have plucked at my memory’s heartstrings since the moment I first heard them, making me long for recollections of a childhood lost in Canada before my brain began to record.
Anyway, enough reminiscing, back to Treasure Nest, Canada style! This particular treetop shrine to audio joy is lined with varied rhythms from across the country. There’s Quebecois folk, both traditional and new, from the slightly unhinged, stridently sexy a cappella harmonies of Galant, tu Perds ton Temps to Bette + Wallet’s punk accordian lament about squeegee kids in winter.
From Toronto there’s Cuban licked jazz in the shape of Jane Bunnett. Canada’s first lady of saxophone and flute, as well as being an award winning composer and musician, is a social activist whose work to spread cultural understanding between Canada and Cuba has earnt her the official recognition of her home country in the shape of The Order of Canada. Bunnett’s music is an incredibly rich blend, challenging and vital in its layering of rhythmic culture upon culture. Her latest project, Embracing Voices, is a perfect example of her imaginative, boundary breaking approach.
There’s also a healthy dose of lo-fi shoestaring from Alberta’s Chad Vangaalen, who’s EP is available for free download from his Myspace, and a heartbreaking lovesong from Montreal’s Leif Vollebekk. Add to the mix Canadian heavyweights Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, and three super slick kinky lounge pop numbers from coquettish chanteuse Caracol, a few non Canadian crepes to layer between the maple syrup, some rambling from this little bird, and Treasure Nest’s good to go.
NB If you’re having trouble listening from here, click this link then choose ‘play in your desktop media player.
This week’s show is a hot water bottle, to slowly melt the ice and warm your bones. We’re travelling from cold lands and ice bound, clinking sounds, through to more temperate climes, then on to the tropics and Sub Saharan Africa. Those of you familiar with hypothermia will know it’s dangerous to warm up too quickly, so we’re taking it just a few degrees at a time. I’ve given each track a temperature based on its origin, starting off in Russia.
The Russian capital is the birthplace of Gregori Schechter and The Wandering Few. An incredible clarinetist with a heartfelt passion for Klezmer- Jewish celebratory music with an unclear history going back thousands of years- Gregory and his band are also literally available for weddings and Bar Mitzvahs.
Next we head to North America for a track from Montreal rapper Tor’s darkly atmospheric remix of an album by Detroit born producer Sufjan Stevens. Illionoize is available for free download here, and it gets better with each listen. Star of Wonder/None Shall Pass is gorgeous.
According to Swedish Treasure Nest listener Anders Falbe, the title of Sofia Karlsson‘s track Smält Mig Tilglod means ‘melt me into embers’, more or less. This is appropriate, as the young folk singer’s native city is the last in this playlist to shiver below freezing.
I recently had the priviledge of seeing Sofia Karlsson play a breathtaking gig at Vega in Copenhagen- probably the city’s most hygge live music venue. Karlsson’s band comprises fantastic musicians – especially percussionist Fredrik Gille, who played an intricate and totally unexpected tamborine solo while the others were preparing for the next song, and English fiddle player Emma Reid.
The audience at Vega sat hushed and expectant as Karlsson tripped delicately between Swedish folk infused ballads, frenetic toe tapping jigs and even a spot of yodelling. There’s immense strength and subtlelty in Sofia’s tiny frame, no wonder she’s won both Swedish and Danish Grammies.
What better way to melt than to the slow, emphatic build of Ben Capp‘s No 1? I could go on about this gentleman for ages, much better to let his work speak for itself. Check out his production at Reecho. A fascinating photographic insight into the 80s and 90s Bristolian subculture that spawned Tricky, Portishead and the trip hop tradition comes in the shape of Beezer’s Wild Dayz, and the accompanying exhibition continues at Bristol City Museum until March 2010.
Next up, Treasure Nest favourites Ffynnon with their haunting song Yr Adar Gwylltion. Last I heard, Ffynnon were touring a musical adaptation of a Mabinogion legend called Hunting the Giant’s Daughter. If their live performance at last year’s Wadebridge Folk Festival is anything to go by, audiences are in for something very special.
Statuesque, ethereal and supremely confident (justifiably so, I hasten to add), Carlou D was the highlight of the Womex 2009 showcases. He was visibly fired up by the need to share a heartfelt, political message about his country and culture, and the whole affair spoke of the way artists such as himself are often exoticised by the European music industry, rather than just listened to and engaged with on an intellectual level. Carlou D is represented by the wonderful Motherland Music, who are also looking after Suzanna Owiyo.
24.3°C – Brazzaville, Abidjan, Rabat – Sobe/ The Chance – Ya Tatchi
This track is taken from a newly released collaboration between Congolese trumpeter, composer and band leader Patrick Tatih, Moroccan guibri virtuoso Majid Bekkas and musicians from Ivory Coast. Fusing jazz, West African and Arabic rhythms, Jazz ‘n Bar is luxurious yet understated- perfectly uplifting during these cold, dark months.
Check out the brass section on this track- breathy, warm and deep as a canyon.
29°C – Rio de Janeiro – Se Não Avisar o Bicho Pega – O Rappa
This track is taken from a live recording for MTV in 2005. The exclusive concert was attended only by friends of the band and member’s of O Rappa’s official fan club, and included a special guest appearance by Maria Rita on Rodo Cotidiano.
This track is, in the parlance of hip hop hypsters the world over, HEAVY, as are Waka Tibio and Ali Diallo- the man behind Ouagadougou’s Waga Hip Hop Festival.
Last but by no means least- three more to get us up to a sticky 31°C. Firstly, I dare you to stay still to anything by Lindigo, who’s uber vibrant brand of traditional Reunionese Maloya is currently raising the rafters of several venues in France. La Folie O is taken from Melek’s album Inspirations . It’s a ridiculously infectious plea to embrace insanity in your day to day life- including lines like “J’embrace ma lady à la folie/Elle me dit, “cheri je t’aime!” à la folie!” Lastly, Nigerian legend and father of all things afrobeat, Fela Kuti. Fela fans can expect more releases from his back catalogue through Knitting Factory Records in 2010, and there are also rumours of a biopic.
Magpie Brown returned from Womex 2009 in Copenhagen with hundreds of new nuggets of audio joy stuffed between her feathers, and she begun playing them out on Rhubarb Radio this month. Thanks to Bryony and the lovely people at Womex for recommending Treasure Nest to those who visit the site
On this week’s Treasure Nest, we’re getting in touch with our inner animal – sliding back down that evolutionary ladder, reawakening all the wee beasties of our past existence. So take off your clothes, get down on all fours and set yourself a-howlin’, this treetop shrine is primal.
