If I Was a Blackbird

How about a Scottish love ballad? I’m sure you must be tired of all these posts on people you already know about.  So therefore, Silly Wizard, a band I myself don’t know much about except that they were part of the British folk music revival of the seventies. While bands like Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention gave their arrangements of old folk songs a modern rock sound with the addition of electric guitar, Silly Wizard played in a more traditional style with more emphasis on banjos and fiddles. Consequently, they were less popular and today remain less well known. I understand that traditional folk music can be hard to get into, even when leavened with guitar solos, and the purity of Silly Wizard’s music may even be alienating to listeners weaned on drum machines. People tend to associate folk music (and especially the Irish variety) with all sorts of cheesy things from Riverdance to Ren Faires to movies starring Daniel Day-Lewis. Also, most of us here in America have trouble distinguishing the particulars of Irish, Scottish and English traditions. Still, it’s very much worth taking the time to explore, for the musicianship, storytelling and culture.

Idje-Idje

Epic. This is one of my favorite songs from Benin’s global music ambassador and all-around good-deed-doer Angelique Kidjo. It’s been a couple of years since she’s made a new album, but she tours all the time (don’t miss any chance you have of seeing her!) and of course stays very busy working for UNICEF, Oxfam, and her own Batonga Foundation, among many other good causes. Kidjo is just one of the ultimate examples of an artist who finds great success and then uses it to do everything in their power to make the world a better place. Makes you go all weepy thinking about it. Kidjo’s dearest cause is empowering girls and women in Africa, which Batonga does through financing and supplying schools and raising money for scholarships. A lot of stars on all levels of fame go through the motions of doing charitable work, but very few truly dedicate themselves to it. Kidjo is one of those whose humanitarian work is at least as big a priority as her day job, and certainly more important than maintaining a glamorous lifestyle or purchasing castles and yachts, or whatever it is rich people do to be conspicuous.

I Want To Fly

The beautiful late Ofra Haza, who introduced the world to Middle Eastern music. Her music was exotic yet accessible. She knew how to combine the traditional and the modern. Her album Desert Wind came out in 1989 and still sounds fresh. It’s not instantly recognizable as something made in the 80′s, or any particular time. Because good music is timeless, of course, and also because she was all over the map with her influences. She drew on everything from religious chants to Western pop. She was on the cutting edge at a time when the West was starting to develop an interest in world music of all kinds, and she’s right in tune with the times right now. If she were alive today, she’d likely be making great club hits. She would probably see kindred spirits in global-pop stars like M.I.A. and Shakira, who add exotic sounds to their records like musical magpies. Ofra Haza has been a huge influence on the globalization of pop, and it’s tragic that she isn’t around to continue the evolution.

I See Red

Haunting, atmospheric and all those other Celtic music cliches for you here. This is Clannad, right before they went through the dreaded awkward 80′s phase that nearly everyone of their generation had to go through. I’m not sure but I suspect it’s a generation thing, something to do with baby boomers and their egos, that people who had been cool in the sixties and seventies thought they could continue being cool for another decade, but failed. It’s like they collectively imagined that following every new trend would stave off old age. Did everyone who started out cool in the 80′s suddenly become lame in the 90′s? I don’t know, maybe some did, but not with the ferocity that sixties and seventies stars sucked in the 80′s. It was a remarkable phenomenon. As I said yesterday, Lou Reed was one of the few who escaped unscathed. Meanwhile, everyone else just jumped on the hairspray and synthesizer bandwagon. In the case at hand, though, it was the New Age bandwagon, and I’ve already discussed in, like, every single previous Clannad and/or Irish music post.  I’m guessing that New Age was some kind of reaction to the fact that world music in general had suddenly become available in the West, thanks to the efforts of David Byrne, Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel. And Celtic music had been somewhat popular for a while thanks to Clannad. Then somebody (I don’t know who, mustn’t blame Enya) decided to take all that exotic world music and make it as bland and palatable and clean as possible and sell it for bazillions of dollars. So anyway, that’s the thing Clannad was unfortunately doing through most of the decade, with Enya and without her. The album 1983 Magical Ring finds them teetering on the precipice of too cheezy, but still sounding recognizably like themselves. Which actually makes it a pretty good intro for folks who want to learn more about Irish music but find too much traditionality overwhelming.

Houngbati

It’s been a while since I’ve featured anything from Angelique Kidjo. Do not, fear fans, I haven’t forgotten her. It’s just been difficult to find her songs on YouTube, always a challenge with the more obscure artists. It’s been a couple of years since the great lady released a new album, but she’s kept busy touring, working for UNICEF, raising money for AIDS research and women’s rights, and generally making the world a better place. Makes me all weepy to think of all the good she’s doing. Kidjo has been more than an entertainer; she’s made it her mission to use her global fame to teach and empower. Although I rarely understand the words of her songs, I believe that message is in there to be felt.

Homeless

I honestly never noticed this song was a cappella until I saw the Zimbabwe concert video. That is, not for years. That’s because it’s so rich with texture, so much complex interplay of voices, that the lack of instruments barely registers. Paul Simon hit a goldmine when he enlisted Ladysmith Black Mambazo as collaborators, and he was very wise to step back and let their harmonizing take the spotlight. At that time most people had never heard any African music, a cappella or otherwise. Simon deserves credit for taking something exotic and placing alongside familiar pop styles, helping people to hear it as part of a musical continuum. Ever since, incorporating world music styles has gone from bold and shocking to near-de rigueur for forward thinking artists. Which is one trend I would like to continue indefinitely.

Hill and Gully Rider

I’ll bet you that someone who knows the first thing about Jamaican culture could tell me this song means something meaningful. But I don’t know the first thing and I don’t anyone who does. If I did a whole world of context would open up to me when listening to reggae music. As it is, I just think Yellowman is cool and fun and easy to dance to. What his message is, I still don’t know. Yellow doesn’t clarify himself to extend his mass appeal. Does Jamaican dancehall music have the same deep streak of activism that classic reggae does. For that matter, does reggae itself still matter? Or is it just all about good times for tourists since the leading lights have all died? There’s probably a vibrant, outspoken and important new generation of reggae artists flourishing just out of sight, never reaching American markets, but doing their thing and saying what they got to say. And in related news, Yellowman is ugly.

Hely Meli

I’m not sure why pop stars in the Arabic world all look so unsavory, but that seems to be the style. I’m not at all suggesting Middle Eastern men are uniformly unsavory. It’s just the ones who are pop stars, with their eyesex and oily hair, they just look like they should somehow be involved in the production of pornographic movies. Anyway, this here is Libya’s own Hamid El-Shaeri, who looks like he launders money for ViVVidXXX Productions or something, but in fact makes very fun and uptempo dance music. (Although he could well be laundering money on the side, I don’t know these things.) I’ll admit it’s not a world I know very much about, but evidently the more liberated Northern African nations like Egypt and Morocco have a thriving and lively pop culture. And as far as dance music goes, they’re producing some of the best. I love something that’s designed to make me dance, but I also hate that most such product is made by coked-up morons with a laptop and no concept of anything outside the American Top 40. For some dance music with cultural context we have to look to other parts of the world, especially the Middle East, where they like to incorporate traditional instruments with their canned beats.

Hare Krishna

Now for some actual Hare Krishna. The mantra has been around for hundreds of years, but it wasn’t until the 1960′s that it gained popularity in the West. Partly thanks to clever gurus who set their sights on deep European pockets, and more importantly, thanks to the enthusiastic promotion of rock stars like The Beatles. Outside the rock scene, the jazz clarinetist Tony Scott was a promoter of Eastern spirituality and meditation. Starting in the sixties he began to incorporate exotic influences into his music, using instruments like sitars and recording a version of the Krishna chant. In later years he became a leading light in the New Age movement. Since the vogue for everything Indian blew over and Hare Krishna has become associated in most peoples’ minds with  robed, bald-headed crackpots who panhandle in airports (a crude stereotype – everyone knows airports don’t permit panhandling) it’s only through the occasional pop song that the mantra still penetrates pop culture. Tony Scott’s Hare Krishna popped up again in 2002, as part of Verve’s popular and surprising remix series, which greatly improved it.

 

Happiness

“What I’m a-longing for is some happiness”

I’ve always been a firm believer that happiness is to be found within. Not that happiness is a choice – that’s too easy. If everyone could choose to be happy, everyone would. It holds, also, that although external forces can deprive us of happiness, they cannot provide it. Does money buy happiness? Would you be happy if all your dreams came true? Well, all of Marilyn Monroe’s dreams came true, and look what happened to her. We can’t expect something or someone to come along and cause us to be happy. You have to scrabble and dig inside yourself and find the mindset and tell yourself the reasons to be happy. And some people never, ever find it, no matter how big a big-screen TV is in their living room. I work hard on my optimism and I’m responsible for my own happiness. I’ve found that there’s a few things that really boost the happy hormones in the brain, and one of the main ones is music. It’s a science fact. Music is like taking Ecstasy. Strait shot of dopamine to the brain. Even depressing music. (So crying your eyes out to really sad music but still getting that good high, that’s like what, a speedball?) Logically, awesome great happy making music that’s about things making us happy should make us doubly happy, right? Play the song and find out.