Past Programs
Audio
Thursday 08 January 2009
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After years of her music being banned by Mauritania’s military government, Malouma now speaks through her new role as one of the country’s 56 senators and through her new CD, Nour, which brings the desert blues of Mauritania into the 21st century.
Born in the sand dunes in the south of the country into an artistic community, with a father whose musical tastes were wide-ranging, Malouma raised controversy at the age of 16 with a song she wrote and sang which criticised polygamists and the way they married ‘younger and more charming’ wives and turned the old ones out into the street. Opponents of her views threw stones at her and she was unable to go out alone, have her music played on State media, perform anywhere local, or even to take a permanent address. Still, she continued to write songs criticising the government, performing them overseas or at opposition political rallies. One of her party’s political missions is to unite currently divided Moorish and black Mauritanians. One of her personal crusades is to keep alive the Moorish music of her childhood and on her new CD (which means ‘light’), she does this by mixing the traditional sounds of her ardin (A Mauritanian harp played only by women) with more modern, electronic sounds.
Wednesday 07 January 2009
Listen Now - 07012009 |
Alma, the debut CD of Belgian two accordion, percussion and oud or flamenco guitar instrumental group Dazibao, shines sunnily as it journeys between North African, Musette and flamenco sounds.
Young accordionist Sophie Cavez, a mainstay of the Belgian and French folk music scenes, wrote most of the pieces on the album. No accordion jokes, please.
Tuesday 06 January 2009
Listen Now - 06012009 |
On their second CD, Danças, Jogos e Canções (Dances, Games and Songs), Sao Paolo super-group Orquestra Popular de Cãmara expand their vision of a Brazilian national music that encompasses jazz and folk forms.
With fine vocalist Monica Salmaso, her husband Teco Cardoso on flutes and saxophones, Benjamim Taubkin on piano, 3 percussionists and 6 other members, they play into being a new Brazilian sound with this CD designed to highlight the compositions of their founding members.
Monday 05 January 2009
Listen Now - 05012009 |
On her CD Divine Inspiration, frill-free, wide-ranged and distinctively-toned popular Carnatic singer Aruna Sairam explores the songs of 9 poets from different eras and regions in India, all belonging to the Bhakti movement.
The songsters’ different backgrounds give the album lots of variation in language, structure, mood and texture but, although they speak in many tongues, they unite in their denunciations of paying heed to the distinctions of caste, creed, gender and narrow-minded rituals of worship. Aruna is adept at singing the language of love, floating above a pleasing churn of South Indian percussion and violin.
During Summer Season, we'll enjoy some of the best of the Daily Planets of 2008 but we won't have a CD of the week.
Friday 02 January 2009
Listen Now - 02012009 |
Newly remastered and now widely available, David Bromberg Quartet’s Live New York City 1982 captures Bromberg and a red hot acoustic band playing and singing a typically eclectic mix of Appalachian music, Blues, Western Swing and Gospel.
David and his band are obviously having a good time at this concert (at a well known concert hall whose name can’t be used in the packaging or advertising). His guitar pushes its limits on a 10-minute fiddle tune medley and the audience is totally simpatico. We’ll also hear tracks from Bromberg’s recent CD Try Me One More Time, his first studio album since 1990.
Thursday 01 January 2009
Listen Now - 01012009 |
On Westringing, Scottish fiddler/composer and former lawyer Ian Hardie has recorded an all-solo CD of his own compositions, influenced by Appalachian fiddle styles, all in altered tunings.
Ian, a founder member of the seminal Scottish band Jock Tamson’s Bairns, has been deeply involved with the Scottish music revival since the 1970s, contributing many of his own compositions in traditional styles. For many years he combined music with practice as a lawyer, but since 2001 he has been exclusively involved in music and in the enjoyment of life in the Scottish Highlands. In 2003 he participated in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival which featured the music of Scotland and Mali and music of the place where they came together - Appalachia. Exposed to Appalachian old-time fiddle music, he became fascinated in the connections to the repertoire of Scotland and Ireland and followed up with five study and playing trips to the Appalachians. Impressed by the plethora of tunings in this tradition, he played all of Westringing’s (subtitled ‘Scotland Meets Appalachia’) pieces in alternate tunings.
Wednesday 31 December 2008
Listen Now - 31122008 |
We continue exploring Guinea’s ‘Authenticité’ era with the excellent double CD of one of the country’s premier bands, Balla et ses Balladins. Today we focus on CD 1 (1968-1972) of their album, The Syliphone Years.
Australian Graeme Counsel produced and annotated this fine collection of music. Particularly sweet are Sekou ‘Le Docteur’ Diabaté’s lead guitar and their song Sara ’70 - a longer, groundbreaking piece that well and truly begins to incorporate West African sensibilities into their music.
Tuesday 30 December 2008
Listen Now - 30122008 |
Beijing group Hanggai’s leader, Ilchi, was fronting a punk band until he heard Mongolian overtone singing and formed a new group to perform the traditional music of Inner Mongolia, his father’s homeland.
He enlisted Han Chinese drummer Chen Kun and guitarist Xu Jingchen, and Hugejiltu and Bagen, Inner Mongolians who were studying music in Beijing. Except for one track that hints at East/West fusion with a Spaghetti Western guitar, the CD is all-acoustic, the morin khuur (two-string horsehair fiddle) and the tobshuur (strummed two-string lute) at its centre. The singing is like Tuvan singing, with its deep overtones, rumbling sounds and whistling harmonics. Robin Haller, who was hosting a weekly show on China Radio International about Chinese folk music and always struggling to find some, ran into Ilchi at a small bar in one of central Beijing’s oldest hutongs and became the album’s producer, setting up a small studio in his home. ‘Hanggai’ is an ancient Mongolian word describing an idealised grassland landscape of mountains, trees, rivers and blue skies.
Monday 29 December 2008
Listen Now - 29122008 |
Julien Wilson’s trio’s live CD trio - live is full of the warmth and grace that we’ve come to expect of this unusual trio of tenor sax, nylon string guitar and piano accordion.
Recorded at Bennett’s Lane as part of ABC Classic FM’s Jazztrack’s 30th Anniversary Concert, all compositions are by Julien except for Milton Nascimento and Lo Borges’ Clube Da Esquina #2 and one by Bjorn Meyer, Julien and the group’s guitarist, Stephen Magnusson’s bandmate in their other group, SNAG. Stephen Grant’s accordion completes the group’s tasteful instrumentation.
During Summer Season, we'll enjoy some of the best of the Daily Planets of 2008 but we won't have a CD of the week.
Friday 26 December 2008
Listen Now - 26122008 |
For a Boxing Day surprise, Mic Conway (pictured) comes into the studio to play the satiric and jug band music that led him astray from becoming an art teacher. He’ll also play a menagerie of ‘non-musical’ instruments.
Mic will explain the unusual circumstances in which he first heard the jug band and satiric songs that he has combined in his long career as entertainer, from his high school group, the Jelly Bean Jug Band, to Captain Matchbox and to his current group, Mic Conway’s National Junk Orchestra. He’ll also play an assortment of home-made instruments - a gum leaf, a drinking straw bassoon, a jug, a toothpaste carton, the tin can banjo and the musical saw - and play a song that’s the perfect antidote to consumption fatigue in the silly season.
