The best releases from all around the world
As usual it’s never possible to cover everything in our year-end lists as we attempted in last week’s edition of Fast Forward Weekly . Accordingly plenty of our lists neglected world music and as that scene — if you can call it that — goes 2010 was another border-bending year as big-name acts from America to Angola stormed the thresholds of gospel and ghetto-beat to claim the patchworked flag of intercontinental grooviness.
Embodying the melting-pot heat of NOLA’s indomitable music scene power jazz ensemble Galactic answered the call and rose to the occasion offering Ya-Ka-May a rich audio-stew of hip hop blues funk swing rap rock and electronica served up Cajun street-style with a plastic fork. Meanwhile Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy produced Mavis Staples’s watermark album You Are Not Alone and elevating the spiritual singer’s already legendary status to that of divine entity.
The rhythms of Africa carry on in the heartbeat of Bassekou Youkate and Ngoni Ba whose I Speak Fula (Sub Pop) showcased superior guitar and choral arrangements that deserve the same attention as the soundtrack to the critically acclaimed Broadway production of Fela! Likewise Konono No.1 and the Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars both produced highly entertaining and culturally compelling albums in the form of Assume Crash Position (Crammed Discs) and Rise & Shine . In contrast to Konono’s car alternator magnet microphones a healthy dose of modernity was injected into the genre thanks to the tech-savvy beat-making of Vancouver’s Delhi 2 Dublin whose Planet Electric makes a good case for introducing the likes of Infected Mushroom and Gogol Bordello into the genre.
Precedent-setting festivals such as the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal and our own Calgary Folk Music Festival confirm the increasing flexibility of the definition of a “world” or “jazz” musician and evidently the audiences drawn by said musicians are just as unpredictable. Take for instance the nostalgia of Cumbia Beat Vol.1: Experimental Guitar-Driven Tropical Sounds From Peru 1966-1976 and compare it to The World Ends / Afro Rock Psychedelia in 1970s Nigeria (Soundway) both multi-artist compilations that sound as relevant today as a cassette carved from one of Kanye’s front teeth. Oh you didn’t hear that one? I believe the MP3 is available on Wikileaks.
Anyway consider the rest of the planet’s perspective on Woodpigeon. And wouldn’t it too qualify Die Stadt Muzikanten (Boompa) as Canadiana and therefore “world” music just as we revel in the exoticness of Balkan Beat Box and its Blue Eyed Black Boy (Nat. Geo./Crammed Discs)? Regardless of how you slice it there’s something to be said for cracking a Red Stripe along with a dose of Dubmatix’s System Shakedown (Renegade Rocker) Darryl Jenifer’s In Search of a Black Judas (ROIR) or Capelton’s I-Ternal Fire (VP). As Peruvian-influenced Canucks Pacifika confirm on their muse-ical Supermagique (Six Degrees) world music is the kitchen party of the millennium — because if you’re standing at the centre of the universe you’re “Close to Everything.”
