World Music News Wire

Mysterious Flights of Fancy: The Holy Madmen, Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda’s, and Buzzing Tuba of Russia’s Post-Rock Icons Auktyon

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Russia’s Auktyon is a lost folklore ensemble darting behind an avant jazz collective, hidden inside a hugely popular rock band. It’s Animal Collective tangoing through the salon with The Art Ensemble of Chicago, nodding its Radiohead. A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

Here’s the real mystery: a gaggle of out-there bohemian musicians not only became stars at home, but managed to stay relevant in the minds and on the iPods of two post-Soviet generations. They rock a mean tuba. They have a dancer-declaimer who spouts sudden poetry, jerking and trembling like a holy madman.

But this is no under-the-radar cult group; it’s one of the biggest rock bands to burst from the Soviet collapse, with a defiant devil-may-care attitude and a keen sense for improvisation. This improv instinct led the band to Top, a wild, catchy spin through Auktyon’s magical paces. Recorded live at breakneck speed and with sheer joy, the album draws together the eerie folklore (“Shiski,” “Polden/Noon”), edgy urbanity (“Mimo,” “Yula/Top”), exuberant word play (“Homba”), and well-honed musicianship of a group uninterested in laurels or resting.

The band’s unflagging energy and ingenuity will be in full force February 11 2012 for a U.S. release party at New York’s Le Poisson Rouge and at Joe’s Pub on February 18. The band will be joined by long-time American collaborators, key whiz John Medeski and alt-guitarist Marc Ribot, for a special freewheeling show on February 16. Medeski and Ribot first leaped into Auktyon’s whirling songs several years ago, recording tracks for 2007’s Girls Sing, and playing shows together from Ukraine to downtown New York.

“We have never had the goal to do something special, or to get something particular across to people,” muses Auktyon dancer/poet Oleg Garkusha. “We do what we like, and we never do what we don’t want to do. We just play.”

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Auktyon’s first album came together as tanks stormed the legislative heart of Moscow. Yet the album (1994’s Ptiza), arguably a major landmark of Russian rock, rippled with a thoughtful happiness and bittersweet energy that mysteriously defied the madness erupting outside the studio. Perhaps because of that defiance, the curious mix of punk, reggae, klezmer, and a specific but elusive flavor of Russian creativity won the hearts of urbane listeners, turning the band into chart-topping pop darlings.

Things changed in Russia. Life stabilized. Rock stars of the Soviet underground got eccentric religion or got rich and arrogant. Not Auktyon: their live shows continued to be curious explorations, sparkling blasts of pure enjoyment. Fans packed their concerts, tearing the doors off the club that hosted their first U.S. appearance. They parsed and sang their untranslatable, playful lyrics. Though never political on or off the stage, Auktyon became a symbol of all that was progressive and possible in a country still in the throes of economic hardship, political struggle, and cultural upheaval.

Top rushes into this strange evolution, presenting both the essential sound and spirit that made listeners fall in love, and its continued musical maturation. Though they meticulously crafted a follow-up to their hit, the band decided to do something different: They sat together in a big room and started toying with compositions brought in by the band members, most notably Leonid Fedorov, guitarist, singer, and singular songwriter.

Then, eyes locked and ears open, they let things spin off in a new, wonderful direction. “Since we didn’t have any set compositions, it’s hard to define what was improvisation on the album and what wasn’t,” reflects Auktyon’s Nikolai Rubanov, who plays sax and horns. “Improvisation becomes possible when there’s an initial structure. If you don’t have that, then the very notion of improvisation gets fuzzy. Ours was a process of collective creation.” The songs sound fresh but finished: “Meteli” bounces with upbeat pop sensibility that belies the band’s jamming approach, and “Homba” surges forward with a gleeful momentum.

As part of this collective composition, words swim up—fragments of long-lost ballads, funny turns of phrase that suggest melodies—like a friend’s voice in the fog, setting the tempo and evoking entire worlds.  “Take, for example, the song ‘Homba,’” Auktyon producer Sergei Vasiliev begins, discussing the lyrics to the fast-building song with echoes of both Jewish folk melodies and surf rock. “It has elements many other Russian authors have already played with: ‘woulda coulda shoulda…’ but then it flies off somewhere completely different, somewhere ideal in my opinion. The burden of meaning locked in the text doesn’t keep you on the ground. As you fly off, you get the maximum emotional impact.”

Alongside the texts, the band’s instruments fly in new directions, while Fedorov’s urgent guitar establishes an axis. Everything else—buzzing tuba mouthpieces, overblown flutes, creepy squeaks, and ethereal choruses—rotates around it. The spontaneity of the exploration is palpable, as is the band’s complete comfort crafting songs together, live.

Thread Through Time: No Stranger Here Ties Indian Classical Singing, Edgy Spoken Word, and Polished Electronica to the Surging Love and Ancient Poems of a Renegade Mystic

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In the middle of a rough year, Philly-based poet and spoken work artist Ursula Rucker opened an email that stretched back to the 16th century.

It was an out-of-the-blue invitation from strangers, from two producers she had never crossed paths with, working on an album of songs based on the poetry of Kabir, an Indian mystic and poet, and woven around the sublimely precise, stunningly earthy voice of renowned Hindustani classical singer Shubha Mudgal.

She listened, felt the common thread, and co-created No Stranger Here, a polyphonic, multifaceted tribute to love, earthly and divine. With Kabir as the binding tie, Rucker, Mudgal, and the Business-Class Refugees (led by veteran cross-cultural, genre-defying producers Patrick Sebag and Yotam Agam) render in lush sonic form the shared experience of alienation and longing.

Balancing the elegant subtleties of Indian classical tradition, Western orchestral music, rich bursts of electronica, and Rucker’s insistent words, No Stranger Here flows from the universal sense of strangerhood, that mysterious alienation that haunts both our contemporary lives and echoes in centuries-old poems. “None of us are strangers to that feeling,” remarks Sonya Mazumdar, EarthSync CEO and producer. “Yet it is the very feeling of not belonging that highlights the intensity of love.”

“We use silences a lot. The use of silences for punctuation is very important to what Kabir is saying,” notes Mudgal. “We really don’t know about him, what was actually written by Kabir and what was changed by his disciples. But by singing it today, we become part of a much longer continuum.”

Rucker agrees: “Just being a poet, no matter how many centuries separate you, is a connection. I use other elements, but my work is really about God and love, even if you have to dig and read between the lines. It’s a continuing thread that goes throughout time.”

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Kabir has the literary importance (and biographical mystery) of Shakespeare, but with an unrivaled spiritual significance, as part of the Bhakti (or “Devotion”) movement that pressed for spiritual renewal and broad human understanding for several centuries in India. Bhakti proponents eschewed the rigid ritualization of religion, raising a radical call for love and spirit beyond human-made boundaries. Kabir, as both thinker and figure, leaps nimbly across faiths, caste, cultures: Legend has it that Kabir was the son of Brahmins, but was raised by Muslim weavers. His spare, often blunt words have had a lasting impact on the Sikh faith and sparked a religious following that now numbers in the millions.

“Kabir is a major reference point for Indians. He had the ability to put these massive philosophical concepts in a way that the common person, who was denied education or had very simple ways for dealing with life, could grasp perfectly,” explains Mazumdar. “Kabir equated the love between two people to the love between an individual and God. Composers down the ages have interpreted his depth and simplicity in various musical formats.”

Mudgal, a renowned classical performer known for her openness to taking musical risks, continued this long tradition of innovation based on Kabir’s works. Invited into EarthSync’s Chennai studios for a session, Mudgal found herself drawing on poets of the Bhakti movement, and especially on Kabir, as she laid down tracks in response to Agam and Sebag’s grooves.

“Their tracks suggested a mood or tone, and I would look back on the poetry I’d been reading and take little bits from the poems,” Mudgal recalls. “Khayal, one of the styles I specialize in, uses phonetics to great advantage, and allows me to take a very tiny, 30-second composition and turn it into an extended exploration of pulse and sound. You can discover a lot as a musician, just in those few phrases.”

Agam, Sebag, and the rest of the Refugees—bassist Eval Mazig arranged the soaring orchestral parts—worked with Mudgal’s inspired improvisations—but realized that something was missing. Familiar with Rucker’s albums, they began dropping her voice onto a few tracks and realized she was it. Months of emails later, and Rucker, surprised by the invite and uplifted by its timing, crafted her own words and vocal tracks in response to Kabir and Mudgal’s.

Unexpected, the dialogue unfolds beautifully: “Steadfast” weaves the meditative perfection of Mudgal’s vocal lines with Rucker’s gentle yet firm explorations of love’s many angles. “Seraphim Tones” moves through intense longing to prayerful gratitude and connection, as Mudgal flies over scintillating beats and Rucker sings and speaks with an immediacy that shows just how alive the tie between ancient poems and contemporary poet can be.

To balance the Eastern elements and the Western orchestra, the distinctive voices of a highly trained singer and a veteran wordsmith, Agam and Sebag drew guidance from the narrative thread suggested by the pieces. “We look at it like a film that has two major actors that tell the same story but each from his place and environment,” they note. “Every song is a different story and should leave room for everyone to tell their stories in harmony. That's what music and collaboration is all about. That is what we love doing.”

The Ultimate Blues: Leni Stern and Friends Find the Strength of African Strings on the Intimate Sabani

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Wildly creative guitarist meets musical soulmates and engaging new instruments in Mali—and records a stark yet warm dialogue as part of a close-knit, cross-cultural trio

In a warm Malian hotel room, the ngoni smiled.

A seemingly simple instrument with an evocative sound and deep past, it was both delighting and baffling the intrepid jazz and blues guitar maven from New York. Its tuning was open to interpretation, to the player’s feeling in the moment. The tonic sat square on the middle string, not at the bottom like most Western stringed instruments.

But as Leni Stern played this great-grandfather to the banjo, she knew she was in touch with something big. “I kept feeling I had the ultimate blues instrument in my hand,” Stern explains.

This ultimate blues buoys Sabani, a beautifully stripped down collection of graceful and dynamic instrumental lines, thoughtful songs, and catchy dialogue across traditions. Inspired by easygoing jam sessions with two Malian musician friends and recorded at Salif Keita’s Mouffou Studios in Bamako, Sabani brings the sound of every string, every pulse
of the calabash and bounce of the talking drum to vivid life, to honor the intense and intimate connection Stern has developed with West African music over the last half-decade.

Stern and a trio of African master musicians—Kofo (talking drum, vocals), Alioune Faye (percussion), and Mamadou Ba (bass)—will share this sound with audiences on the West Coast and Midwest as part of their Spring 2012 tour. Cities include Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Cleveland, Albuquerque, and Phoenix.

“I don’t know why I waited so long to record this way,” Stern reflects. Stern—whose life has taken her from Munich to New York, from the Peruvian rainforests to the music school in Benin she helped found—was a veteran of the American and European avant rock, jazz, and singer-songwriter circuit.

Brought by UNESCO to mentor studio engineers in Mali, Stern was hooked. She began performing at seminal venues like the Festival in the Desert, touring with musicians from Keita to Baaba Maal, and, perhaps most importantly, making close friends with her newfound teachers and companions. She spent nearly two years living, learning, and making music across Africa.

Bassekou Kouyate, masterful player of the ngoni, and other members of his highly respected family showed Stern the instrumental ropes. Ami Sacko, a popular Malian singer often compared to Tina Turner, taught Stern songs and vocal approaches, while her brother Buba also helped Stern work on her ngoni chops. Stern became a member of the family, earning a new name (Oumou) and sharing the many adventures and trials the musicians encountered as they played for presidents or fled collapsing festival stages.

It was playing alongside Kouyate at a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Malian independence, as one of 50 ngoni players honoring the occasion, that Stern was first wowed by the deep and resonant ngoni ba, an encounter that sparked Stern’s first ngoni-powered, blues-rich song, “Still Bleeding.”

Yet the most powerful moment that became Sabani, the spare follow up to Stern’s more lavishly arranged Africa-inspired work, was the feeling Stern savored as she jammed with friends from Keita’s band, string whiz Haruna Samake and artful percussionist Mamadou “Prince” Kone, who brings some of Mali’s lesser-known rhythms to the album.

Hanging around bus stations and airports, waiting for Keita, or meeting up in the evenings, the three friends often drank sugar-laden tea and made music together, blending their instruments and voices simply and organically.

This vibe bursts through on tracks like “Sorcerer,” which pairs Stern’s sharp, gritty, often eerie guitar with Samake’s round and percussive string work, and Stern’s Ricky Lee Jones-esque vocals with a warm, serpentine chorus in bambara Instrumentals like “An Saba” and “The Cat Who Stole the Moon” show both the virtuosity of crack players and the close listening of good friends, as contrasting yet harmonious melodies and timbres dance in dynamic interplay.

As the project came together in the relaxed atmosphere of Mouffou’s riverside studio, Stern also invited Sacko to sing (the bittersweet “Papillon”), and learned a thing or two from veteran sokou (folk fiddle) player and singer Zoumana Tareta. Tareta regaled the three friends with both wisdom earned from his life as a sought-after musician (by stars like Oumou Sangare, for example) and with the gripping vocal performance that graces “Djanfa.”

These experiences have transformed and deeply moved the seasoned Stern, filling her with a quiet, unexpected sense of coming home, a moody warmth that pervades Sabani.

“After all my time in Africa, all the musicians I’ve gotten to work with, I feel like a different guitarist, a different person, like I belong to the red earth and the warm winds and the people I love there,” Stern muses. ”I don’t think anyone can go and live there without changing profoundly. And we have a lot to learn from Africa.”

Channeling the Waterdrum: Chris Berry and the Bayaka Pygmies’ Close Collaboration Resonates on the Oka! Soundtrack

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African music master meets intensely creative, egalitarian hunter-gatherers to create gorgeously recorded, deeply complex score for feature film.

Beats fly from drums made of the living roots of towering trees, or from the surface of flowing water. Songs, born of highly complex structures, spring from multi-part improvisation. Rhythmic cycles extend to lengths that baffle outsiders’ ears. Music both expresses and creates the moment, with spontaneous compositions leaping out in joy, or contemplative flute melodies drifting through the late night village to encourage dreams and peace.

This is the music of the Bayaka (Pygmies) and the Oka! Soundtrack. Directed by Lavinia Currier (Passion in the Desert) and starring Kris Marshall (Love, Actually), the film tells the story of ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno, a leading expert on Bayaka music who ignored a life-threatening disease to live for three decades among these forest hunter-gatherers and record their music. Filmed and recorded on location in the remote tropical forests of the Central African Republic, Oka!’s story, the film, and the soundtrack were intimately shaped by Bayaka artists.

Going far beyond previous recorded encounters with this unique music, musician and engineer Chris Berry used multitracking techniques generally left in the studio and brought them to the Bayaka’s home turf. He worked with the community to write songs and to harness the sonic qualities of everything from earth bows to midnight flutes, from resonant roots to cupped palms on water. The result is a crisp, lush perspective that captures the full glory of the Bayaka egalitarian spirit and endless musical creativity.

“You just can’t frame it like Western music,” Berry explains. “It’s very complex, and make no mistake: Bayaka musicians know exactly what they are doing. And the most ingenious thing about it is that while they stick to this order, everyone is free. They express that moment and get at the power and beauty of where you are, right there.”

In just such a moment, Essandje, a highly respected woman in the community, leaped into overdubs. At first, the Bayaka singers weren’t quite sure why they had to follow Berry’s suggestion, put on headphones, and sing over their previously recorded tracks in the thatched shelter Berry used as his base.

But Essandje got it (Her nimble, rich voice rings out on “Mua” and “Wild Yam”). And within days, so did everyone else, with her guidance. “When Essandje broke the barrier, that’s when the magic started happening,” Berry recalls with a smile. “After a few days, the women came to me and said, ‘We want to write songs, and we want to do to it with you.’”

“The women are the stars of Bayaka music, “Berry says, “When the women start to sing, the men shut up.” Many Bayaka songs come to them in dreams. Etoo (“Yetoo’s Dream”) asked Chris to record the songs she had dreamed in the forest. “‘One day,’ she said, ‘I dreamed a song. When I woke up singing it, my husband was singing the same song,’” Oka! director Lavinia Currier recalls.

Berry’s recording rig was designed to make breaking barriers easy. He had honed it as part of a collaborative effort with globally minded composer Paul Winter, who had invited Berry to join in on a project chronicling the music found along birds’ migration routes. Berry, an American-born multi-instrumentalist who spent more than a decade in Zimbabwe studying the mbira (thumb piano), had recorded thousands of hours of African music, multitracking in the field instead of simply hanging a mic or two over musicians or grabbing a few catchy samples.

Bayaka sounds presented a particularly fascinating challenge: “A lot of the other African music I recorded had lots of rules and stable, regulated roles for the musicians and parts,” Berry explains. “But with the Bayaka, everyone gets to improvise if they stay within certain loose parameters. The music reflects their society, because no one is leader and no one is follower. They all play together, with four or more intermingling songlines. It’s like trying to record Mingus, Coltrane, Miles, and Dizzy, all soloing at the same time, yet all playing together perfectly” on tracks like the bawdy, intricate “Bottlefunk Girls.”

This complexity and freedom first gripped Sarno as he headed into the forest, and astounded Berry as he worked and played music with the Bayaka. Compositions feature rhythmic cycles that feel extremely long by Western standards: “We have a 12-bar blues,” Berry notes. “Just imagine a 54-bar blues, or a 67-bar blues, and you’re getting close to the Bayaka.”

Music is a constant activity, but not really a subject of intellectual discussion for the Bayaka. For the Bayaka, a person’s personality is expressed in song and dance. Berry had to spend time with them, dancing and singing (two concepts expressed by a single word, “eboka” in Bayaka language), improvising and listening. In addition to striking songs, he heard an elder playing flute as he strolled past sleepers late at night (“Mboyo Flute”) and the subtle resonance of the earth bow (“Molimo”). “The earth bow may be the oldest instrument on earth,” explains film director Currier, who like Berry, worked intensively with the Bayaka musicians. “A length of twine is stretched from a bent sapling and anchored in the ground where there is a hollow resonance, then plucked like a double bass.”

Jubilant Bayakas returning from trading at a nearby village played the tree drum, a living forest trees whose roots boom below ground (“Tree Drum and Gano”). “The Gano is a storytelling song, related to the Bantu “Griot” tradition, and, distantly, to American blues,” Currier notes. “Many Gano songs tell of the Bayaka’s ancestors, when people were related to and spoke to the animals, to chimpanzees and gorillas.”

As he worked closely with the Bayaka, Berry was allowed to record a purely female activity, waterdrumming, when Bayaka women cup their palms to create bubbles of air that can be tuned and played with a marimba-like resonance (“Waterdrum”). The women performers, who usually make this music while bathing, agreed to dive in clothed while Berry risked several mics to capture the full, splashing effect.

Yet Berry also wanted to pass along more than just the sounds of his newfound collaborators; he wanted listeners and film viewers to get closer to the visceral experience of being there with musicmaking Bayaka. Berry thoughtfully added bass lines, percussion, and additional frequencies so that the recording would transmit the full feel of the performances, from the rumble of roots to the quiet bounce of the earth bow. He also knew he was creating sound to go with the film’s narrative of intense emotional journey and cross-cultural encounter.

“Making a soundtrack with musicians like the Bayaka is a translation process. If you don’t translate it, many listeners won’t get it. Yet most projects get over-translated,” Berry muses. “It’s easy to misunderstand music that’s so complex, that comes from a very different kind of community from our own. I hope this scoring approach becomes more of a trend when we’re dealing with other cultures; there’s a lot of mutual learning and growth to be had if we let others speak. If we let their voices come through.”

African music master meets intensely creative, egalitarian hunter-gatherers to create gorgeously recorded, deeply complex score for feature film.

Beats fly from drums made of the living roots of towering trees, or from the surface of flowing water. Songs, born of highly complex structures, spring from multi-part improvisation. Rhythmic cycles extend to lengths that baffle outsiders’ ears. Music both expresses and creates the moment, with spontaneous compositions leaping out in joy, or contemplative flute melodies drifting through the late night village to encourage dreams and peace.

This is the music of the Bayaka (Pygmies) and the Oka! Soundtrack (Oka Productions; release: February 1, 2012). Directed by Lavinia Currier (Passion in the Desert) and starring Kris Marshall (Love, Actually), the film tells the story of ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno, a leading expert on Bayaka music who ignored a life-threatening disease to live for three decades among these forest hunter-gatherers and record their music. Filmed and recorded on location in the remote tropical forests of the Central African Republic, Oka!’s story, the film, and the soundtrack were intimately shaped by Bayaka artists.

Going far beyond previous recorded encounters with this unique music, musician and engineer Chris Berry used multitracking techniques generally left in the studio and brought them to the Bayaka’s home turf. He worked with the community to write songs and to harness the sonic qualities of everything from earth bows to midnight flutes, from resonant roots to cupped palms on water. The result is a crisp, lush perspective that captures the full glory of the Bayaka egalitarian spirit and endless musical creativity.

“You just can’t frame it like Western music,” Berry explains. “It’s very complex, and make no mistake: Bayaka musicians know exactly what they are doing. And the most ingenious thing about it is that while they stick to this order, everyone is free. They express that moment and get at the power and beauty of where you are, right there.”

In just such a moment, Essandje, a highly respected woman in the community, leaped into overdubs. At first, the Bayaka singers weren’t quite sure why they had to follow Berry’s suggestion, put on headphones, and sing over their previously recorded tracks in the thatched shelter Berry used as his base.

But Essandje got it (Her nimble, rich voice rings out on “Mua” and “Wild Yam”). And within days, so did everyone else, with her guidance. “When Essandje broke the barrier, that’s when the magic started happening,” Berry recalls with a smile. “After a few days, the women came to me and said, ‘We want to write songs, and we want to do to it with you.’”

“The women are the stars of Bayaka music, “Berry says, “When the women start to sing, the men shut up.” Many Bayaka songs come to them in dreams. Etoo (“Yetoo’s Dream”) asked Chris to record the songs she had dreamed in the forest. “‘One day,’ she said, ‘I dreamed a song. When I woke up singing it, my husband was singing the same song,’” Oka! director Lavinia Currier recalls.

Berry’s recording rig was designed to make breaking barriers easy. He had honed it as part of a collaborative effort with globally minded composer Paul Winter, who had invited Berry to join in on a project chronicling the music found along birds’ migration routes. Berry, an American-born multi-instrumentalist who spent more than a decade in Zimbabwe studying the mbira (thumb piano), had recorded thousands of hours of African music, multitracking in the field instead of simply hanging a mic or two over musicians or grabbing a few catchy samples.

Bayaka sounds presented a particularly fascinating challenge: “A lot of the other African music I recorded had lots of rules and stable, regulated roles for the musicians and parts,” Berry explains. “But with the Bayaka, everyone gets to improvise if they stay within certain loose parameters. The music reflects their society, because no one is leader and no one is follower. They all play together, with four or more intermingling songlines. It’s like trying to record Mingus, Coltrane, Miles, and Dizzy, all soloing at the same time, yet all playing together perfectly” on tracks like the bawdy, intricate “Bottlefunk Girls.”

This complexity and freedom first gripped Sarno as he headed into the forest, and astounded Berry as he worked and played music with the Bayaka. Compositions feature rhythmic cycles that feel extremely long by Western standards: “We have a 12-bar blues,” Berry notes. “Just imagine a 54-bar blues, or a 67-bar blues, and you’re getting close to the Bayaka.”

Music is a constant activity, but not really a subject of intellectual discussion for the Bayaka. For the Bayaka, a person’s personality is expressed in song and dance. Berry had to spend time with them, dancing and singing (two concepts expressed by a single word, “eboka” in Bayaka language), improvising and listening. In addition to striking songs, he heard an elder playing flute as he strolled past sleepers late at night (“Mboyo Flute”) and the subtle resonance of the earth bow (“Molimo”). “The earth bow may be the oldest instrument on earth,” explains film director Currier, who like Berry, worked intensively with the Bayaka musicians. “A length of twine is stretched from a bent sapling and anchored in the ground where there is a hollow resonance, then plucked like a double bass.”

Jubilant Bayakas returning from trading at a nearby village played the tree drum, a living forest trees whose roots boom below ground (“Tree Drum and Gano”). “The Gano is a storytelling song, related to the Bantu “Griot” tradition, and, distantly, to American blues,” Currier notes. “Many Gano songs tell of the Bayaka’s ancestors, when people were related to and spoke to the animals, to chimpanzees and gorillas.”

As he worked closely with the Bayaka, Berry was allowed to record a purely female activity, waterdrumming, when Bayaka women cup their palms to create bubbles of air that can be tuned and played with a marimba-like resonance (“Waterdrum”). The women performers, who usually make this music while bathing, agreed to dive in clothed while Berry risked several mics to capture the full, splashing effect.

Yet Berry also wanted to pass along more than just the sounds of his newfound collaborators; he wanted listeners and film viewers to get closer to the visceral experience of being there with musicmaking Bayaka. Berry thoughtfully added bass lines, percussion, and additional frequencies so that the recording would transmit the full feel of the performances, from the rumble of roots to the quiet bounce of the earth bow. He also knew he was creating sound to go with the film’s narrative of intense emotional journey and cross-cultural encounter.

“Making a soundtrack with musicians like the Bayaka is a translation process. If you don’t translate it, many listeners won’t get it. Yet most projects get over-translated,” Berry muses. “It’s easy to misunderstand music that’s so complex, that comes from a very different kind of community from our own. I hope this scoring approach becomes more of a trend when we’re dealing with other cultures; there’s a lot of mutual learning and growth to be had if we let others speak. If we let their voices come through.”

Putumayo Goes Indie: Brazilian Beat Uncovers the Roots-Powered Edge of the Worldwide Brazilian Music Scene

http://www.worldmusicwire.com

Glittering break beats are at home with bouncing berimbaus while rolling Afro-Brazilian rhythms, retro samba soul and velvety bossa nova vocals mesh and groove organically. This is the unstoppable Brazilian Beat.

Selected from tens of thousands of songs collected by the pioneering label created to introduce new global music to broad audiences, Brazilian Beat chronicles the vibrant indie scene in Brazil and around the world. Musicians are taking samba, bossa nova, and MPB (Brazilian popular music) and deftly incorporating electronica, soul, funk, and just about every other music imaginable.

Sultry or upbeat, the tracks on this compilation of hip, rootsy artists aim to raise listeners’ moods and introduce even die-hard fans to a new crop of Brazilian music innovators. Featured alongside unsung icons such as samba soul master Marcos Valle are rising new stars like Tita Lima, daughter of the bassist from psychedelic hipster darlings Os Mutantes.

Brazilian music has bubbled into an indie scene-to-beat-all-indie scenes in underground clubs and on small labels from São Paulo to Rome. “You can go to Italy and find a hot bossa nova scene, and they have their own sound,” like Roman bossa band BungaLove’s “Minha Loucura,” explains Jacob Edgar, longtime head of A&R for Putumayo and passionate follower of the Brazilian music scene. “These retro sounds end up back in Brazil and shake things up.”

A diverse array of young musicians, such as Fino Colectivo, draw on Jorge Ben’s lush ’70s samba-soul sound—and transform it. It’s a realm of discovery, even for ardent followers of global music. “One of the exciting things we at Putumayo do is introduce artists to people who don’t know them,” says Dan Storper, head of Putumayo and avid musical traveler and collector. “It has to be upbeat and melodic, and it has to move us.”

“We’re probably the most voracious music listeners on the planet,” Edgar exclaims, “and we have an elaborate process of cataloguing the tens of thousands of tracks we hear. As we’re listening and traveling, we just keep hearing great music that seems to work together.”

This exhaustive, music-driven approach uncovered artists such as Michigan-born, Brazilian singer-songwriter Mônica da Silva or the Brazilian child-star turned pop diva Bruna Caram, whose carefree vocals dance over cool horns and sparkling keys on “Feriando Pessoul.” It unearthed the wonderfully gritty sounds of a long-unreleased super group session led by New York-based Brazilian saxophonist Leo Gandelman (Brazilian Groove Band’s “Bananiera”) and highlighted the earthy pleasures of Rio-based Rogê’s clavinet-flecked samba (“A Nega e O Malandra”).

“You can really hear the intersection between past and present in the music of Brazilian artists,” Storper reflects. “We didn’t make an effort to seek it out; this is what musicians are doing. They respect their traditional music but are adding new flavors with real passion.”

New Release from Little Known Government of TriBeCaStan: Capital New Deli Found to Have Irregular Time-Space Continuum

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News Alert. This morning Aljazzeera reported that the questionable nation of TriBeCaStan (www.tribecastan.tv) has made scientific breakthroughs in time travel. The unrecognized republic of nomads has broken the code of the time/space continuum. And by broken we mean: it no longer works. Applying sonic techniques once only known to a small group of punk rock shamans, the nation's most prestigious scientific entity, the TriBeCaStani FolkLorkEstra, uses sound alone to simultaneously place listeners in eras separated by decades and terrains separated by oceans. The breakthrough is outlined in an auditory compendium titled New Deli, a recording that allows the world to experience a type of soulful networking more insidious than Facebook's privacy policies.

To fully grasp TriBeCaStan's methodology, one must note the movements of the commonwealth's Minister of Foreign Expatriation Jeff Greene and Archduke of the Forward Guard John Kruth.

Kruth--the sonic engineer and composer of the melodic formulas concocted for New Deli--carried out extensive research with auditory specialists among Bosnian Gypsies, Indians, and Moroccans, while Greene conducted top secret junkets to Western China, Cuba, and Uzbekistan collecting artifacts key to the timbral sound bending necessary to achieve dimensional shifts. Research by the two culminated in their participation in the 2011 International Jews Harp Congress (sic) in the diamond and permafrost capital of Russia, Yakutsk. The Congress broke the record for most jews harps played at once, while the TriBeCaStan delegates broke wind on the stage of the Yakutsk Opera House, with their jews harps.

The plot thickens when one realizes that it is the double-spy tendency of these two former rebels which led to the new discovery. After the revolution, Parliament decided that rather than changing governments every few years, they would do so intentionally every few weeks, creating more instability than even a coup could handle. Thus all government leaders are forced to spend three weeks out of every six weeks in New York City's subways, bars, and, most importantly and considered most sacred, spice-filled delis. One mythical deli in particular inspired the re-naming of the nation's capital to New Deli.

A revolving door of temporarily expatriated patriots led to the swelling ranks of the Folklorkestra. “Everywhere I go, the musicians I meet want to hear and play American music, particularly, blues and country," says Kruth as he smokes dates and eats tobacco. "Musicians all over the world listened to Curtis Mayfield and the Temptations. But for the last decade or two the shoe has been on the other foot. We’ve not only been inspired by world-class global musicians like Bachir Attar of the Master Musicians of Jajouka, Carnatic mandolin master U. Rajesh, and the Austrian hurdy-gurdy virtuoso Mathias Loibner, we invited them to play as guests on New Deli. ”

"As we say in TriBeCaStan," adds Greene, "'If your toes all face one way, you will walk crooked.' This means we must be in solidarity with all of the world to find the right direction. If you dig around in the '60s and '70s in music from India, Thailand and Ethiopia you hear how the musicians borrowed from and reworked American music. We’re just doing the same thing, but in reverse."

Kruth came up with “Bed Bugs” and “Dive Bomber” while swatting bed bugs and mosquitoes with his mandolin late into the night in a pest-ridden Chennai hotel room, while Greene strummed the charango and thumped the marimbula (large thumb piano) in rural Cuba with local musicians until his fingers bled, leading to the romp “El Bumpa.” Bruce Huebner, American-born master of the shakuhachi (pentatonic bamboo Japanese flute), was tricked into joining an atmospheric blues with the ethereal “A Crack in the Clouds.” Little did they all know what was taking place at the time in Fukushima and how the emerging sound of hope would stand as a sonic portrait honoring the victims of the recent Japanese disaster.

In the past Kruth’s “Banshee” mandolin could be heard on stage with the raw flaming sound of punk bands the Violent Femmes and the Meat Puppets. These days he can be found, when not traipsing the globe with Greene, shooting pool with Ornette Coleman, learning the subtleties of improvisation and composition from the revolutionary saxophonist. Which brings us to a new, unexpected era of TriBeCaStan…

With the addition of baritone saxophonist Claire Daly, a former James Brown and Taj Mahal side woman and a fave of both the Downbeat poll and former President Clinton, along with John Turner's versatile ska trumpet tossed into the mix, the band digs deep into an eclectic '60’s bag covering Ornette Coleman, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and Don Cherry. Kirk is the subject of Kruth’s first biography, Bright Moments, and composer of the funky “Freaks for the Festival,” which TriBeCaStan recorded live at Bill Laswell’s studio with Kirk alumni Steve Turre blowing a massive trombone solo.

New Deli's cover art was created by comrade Cal Schenkel, Frank Zappa's resident album cover artist known for a collage and outsider style consistent with the TriBeCaStani culture.

Free your marimba and your mind will follow. Dig into the flesh-and-blood immediacy of worn wood, twisted metal, and buzzing reeds, and you'll get grooves that can set the room jumping and the mind soaring. It's the wacky virtuosity of the Mothers of Invention playing unplugged for Bosnian gypsies doing the tango ("Jovanka"). It's the Pygmy bottle trick turned into a Latvian favorite sing-a-long ("One Day, His Axe Fell into Honey"). It's Don Cherry's Africa reinterpreted for China ("Guinea"). It's the prog rock of the Ottomans, complete with a wailing harmonica ("Dive Bomber").

TriBeCaStan finds these hidden channels, making ancient instruments and techniques feel right at home on the edge of the time and space discontinuum.

Think Funky: KG Omulo Hits Positive Highs with Ayah Ye! Moving Train and First Major U.S. Tour

http://www.worldmusicwire.com

Singer, songwriter, and dance-floor instigator KG Omulo can do anything.

He regularly packs American clubs with gritty calls for justice and hard-hitting Afrofunk. He has moved sold-out arenas with his baritone voice in his native Kenya. He takes on the dark ironies of politics, with anger in the groove, reveling in the potential to shake things up while shaking your thing.

Now on his first major U.S. tour and on Ayah Ye! Moving Train, he calls on the spirit of Bob and Fela, of Marvin and Stevie, and gets right to the point. No vamping or self-righteousness, just banging horn breaks, sweet and snarling guitar, and a voice that can croon, cry out, and urge on.

“I can be conscious and get people stirred up instead of bringing them down,” Omulo explains. “I make positive music that educates without judging. I want to create awareness and still make people dance.”

~~~

Omulo’s dance-floor positivity has deep roots. His family was very pious, yet savored lively political discussions. His mother had conservative religious views, but still shared the Motown hits, East and West African classics of her youth with her son. Omulo learned that the spirit could shape the world—and could do so through powerful music.

This faith and pop savvy combo led to his first musical coup: As a teenager, Omulo and two close friends from his rural Kenyan high school sang gospel a cappella for stadium crowds. “We were a barber shop-style trio, doing something between doo wop and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, because we didn’t have any instruments at our school,” Omulo recalls. “We recorded a simple tape and before we knew it, we were traveling to Nairobi and singing for 35,000 people a show. We never thought it would get so serious.”

But when Omulo’s parents moved to Rhode Island, KG had to follow. “I had to start from scratch,” he says.

The challenge opened new musical vistas for Omulo, who wanted to reach a whole new set of ears. His education took him to Florida, far from any Kenyan émigré community and even farther from his roots. He knew he needed a live band. He knew he wanted to move people—move them to toss aside apathy, fight for their rights, work together for justice. He began to think funky.

“I needed to find common ground, a cross-over point,” Omulo reflects. “I’m one of those people who can adapt to the immediate surroundings. I could have stuck to what I was doing so well back in Kenya, but that didn’t make sense in Florida.”

What made sense was a rock-infused, reggae-powered take on Afrobeat and Afropop that doesn’t linger in long instrumentals, but goes straight to the irresistible hook. Fueling all the carefully crafted tracks, Omulo’s longing for a different, more just world gives his good-time music a compelling depth of meaning.

It’s not just about making it—as an immigrant, as a musician—but about making it matter. Omulo uses the groove to rile up and wake up, to praise the often unsung efforts of the world’s women (“Quality Women”) or to point out the political roots of economic hard times (“Intervention”).

On stage and in the studio, KG runs the show. He writes all the music, brainstorms lyrics in English and Swahili, and even uses visual editing skills gleaned from post-production film work to perfect tracks in the studio.

But he knows when to bring in friends to the mix, and Omulo’s Florida-grown backing band has worked with everyone from Ray Charles to T-Pain. “Cleary Boulevard,” an uptempo shout-out to the vibrant South Florida scene, features recording engineer, producer, and close friend Ramsees Mechan bantering in Spanish as KG waxes poetic in Swahili. “Ready to Love” features guitarist and MC Fareed Salamah (“Ripstah”), originally from the Virgin Islands, who lays down lush, purring guitar on the reggae-styled anthem to an open heart...

“I always think as I’m making music, ‘This doesn’t end here, even if this one situation doesn’t work, life goes on,’” Omulo muses. “I want people to live, to love, to fight for what they believe in. To belong and to care about others. If you can reach that special place in your heart, you can achieve anything.”

All-Access Planet: globalFEST 2012 Opens New Spaces for Traditions Transformed

http://www.worldmusicwire.com

Malian roots rap and sensually fresh samba. Eerily avant jaw harps and 21st-century tarantella. Heritage never sounded so cool.

Whether continuing famous musical lineages or pushing forward on new paths, the artists of globalFEST (January 8, 2012 at New York City’s Webster Hall; full info at globalfest.org) show how world music has matured from a quaint, catch-all niche to a meaningful, deeply rooted challenge to the musical status quo. Artists are crafting history into new sounds.

This year’s edition of the annual world music showcase and all-night party includes three U.S. debuts, as well as several fresh programs and approaches from a bevy of respected global performers.

BélO: Haiti’s acoustic innovator and social activist channels his home’s deep and diverse Afro-Caribbean roots with catchy, reggae-inflected songs.

Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino: Southern Italy’s hottest band revitalizes the ancient ritual pizzica tarantata, said to cure the deadly spider’s bite with frenzied trance dances.

Debo Band: Boston-based crew reinvents the Golden Age of Ethiopian and East African funk and jazz.

Diogo Nogueira: Brazil’s red-hot samba (and television) star adds a contemporary twist to the beloved rhythms of Rio.

M.A.K.U. Sound System: Queens, NY-based Afro-Colombian underground band’s roaring guitars, bold brass, and hard-hitting Latin beats and vocals bring down the house.

Mayra Andrade: Golden-voiced Cape Verde singer brings a Parisian and Brazilian flair to her island roots with a new acoustic trio.

SMOD (U.S. Debut): Malian folk rappers, featuring the son of Amadou and Mariam, work serious lyrical flow to create Afro-Rap, wrapped in Manu Chao’s signature globe-trotting production.

The Gloaming (U.S. Debut): Irish and American roots supergroup (Martin Hayes, Dennis Cahill, Iarla Ó Lionaird, and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh with NY’s indie pianist Thomas Bartlett (aka Doveman), marries edgy but harmonious, sparse yet beautiful elements to age-old and new tunes.

The Silk Road Ensemble: An international collective of virtuoso musicians from around the globe, this ensemble carries on the cross-cultural legacy of founder and artistic director Yo-Yo Ma, drawing inspiration from the historical Silk Road and contemporary musical crossroads.

Wang Li (U.S. Debut): France-based Chinese jaw harp master-improviser creates wildly unexpected and deeply meditative melodies, discovering the infinite nuances that breath, tongue, and throat can make.

Yemen Blues: Yemeni-Israeli electrifying singer and his global band make Mediterranean sounds rock and soar.

Zaz: French street sounds meet quirky global influences in young singer's plush bluesy voice.

***

Though many of this edition’s artists have taken up the torch from family members or musical mentors, they are reaching into new sonic territory, whether they are funkifying cumbia or transforming the role of the spike fiddle or jaw harp. globalFEST, as America’s vital world music springboard event coinciding with the annual Arts Presenters Conference (APAP), aims to bring musicians to ears and even into venues once closed to global artists.

“In addition to summer rock and folk music festivals, we’ve started to see an embracing of world music throughout the performing arts field, including more traditionally classical venues,” explains festival co-organizer Bill Bragin (Acidophilus: Live and Active Cultures). “Many of this year’s globalFEST artists are performers who would be appropriate in more traditional concert halls, which are responding to the desire to diversify their programs.”

The goal of access has been at the heart of the festival’s mission since it was founded post-9/11, when dedicated global music presenters looked to restart the stalled influx of international music at a crucial moment. globalFEST remains committed to supporting exchange—both cultural and economic—and has emphasized artists of note from Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, and from Haiti since the earthquake that struck there in 2010.

“globalFEST needs to constantly be aware of its mission,” continues co-organizer Isabel Soffer (Live Sounds). “We spotlight artists we believe presenters will want to book, will be successful in their venues and will bring new audiences. Our curatorial decisions are made with this in mind, and in this way, we feel we can encourage presenters to rethink artists that are on tour.”

2012’s festival promises to indeed be great, filling the multiple, varied performance spaces at Webster Hall with irresistible dance sounds, reflective beauty, and singer-songwriter intensity. globalFEST’s emphasis on access—access to the U.S. market for innovative musicians, continued access to new global music for music fans through reasonable ticket prices supported via globalFEST’s  Kickstarter campaign—now extends beyond good times in the early January cultural doldrums.

With support from the Ford Foundation, the globalFEST Touring Fund is launching to support festival alums on U.S. tours, as well as creating a new program to reimburse festival performers for expenses related to their globalFEST appearances. This, added to ongoing support from founding sponsor, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, will strengthen the festival’s ability to find uncommonly good, often unheard sounds and bring them to the States.

“Starting this edition, we will be able to offset some of our artists’ expenses, the cost of coming to New York to play a showcase festival,” notes globalFEST co-organizer Shanta Thake (Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater). “It will encourage musicians and expand the pool of artists who can commit to that investment. We are excited about the possibilities these new programs will create to widen globalFEST’s geographical and musical scope.”

“Global citizenry is a priority for France, and for many people worldwide. We support globalFEST in hopes of sharing the multicultural musical heritages of France-based, France-produced and Francophone artists," says Emmanuel Morlet, Director of the Music Office of the French Embassy, the festival’s founding sponsor since its first edition. “From increasing cultural understanding to the real economic role the festival plays for emerging performers, now more than ever globalFEST plays a great role in connecting people across political boundaries.” And gets them dancing while doing it.

globalFEST, Inc. is a not-for-profit production presented in association with Live Sounds, Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, Acidophilus: Live & Active Cultures and The Bowery Presents. Support provided by The Ford Foundation and The Cultural Services of the French Embassy with additional support from the French Music Export Office, recognizing France’s pre-eminent role as a hotbed of global music activity. The globalFEST media sponsors are WNYC Radio and NPR.org. Artist visa services are provided courtesy of Tamizdat. Publicity services are provided by rock paper scissors, inc.

The Reluctant Muse: How Deep Roots and Blue Pop Found Singer-Songwriter Kami Thompson on Love Lies

http://www.worldmusicwire.com

Catchy, moody debut by velvet-voiced young daughter of famous roots-rock family

Love may lie, but Kami Thompson doesn’t.

The young singer-songwriter speaks of intimate moments, using her husky, lovely voice, unflinching honesty, and long-honed musical sensibilities to craft a strikingly full-fledged debut effort, Love Lies.

Drawing inspiration from her life-long love of roots music and deep ties of love and friendship—her father Richard Thompson and brother Teddy, family friends Sean Lennon and Martha Wainwright—Kami’s songs suggest the freshest strains of Americana (“Little Boy Blue”), storied British lyric traditions (“Blood Wedding”), and clear-sighted, bittersweet pop (“4,000 Miles” and “Stormy”).

“I wasn’t writing any of these songs on purpose,” Thompson muses. “I was writing as I felt.”

Thompson was not eager to leap into the family business. Her father and mother Linda had broken new ground in the roots-rock, singer-songwriter realm. Her brother was making his way as a professional musician in Los Angeles. She’d grown up surrounded by musical families and seen the whole business from the inside, right down to selling merch at her father’s shows.

“I kept thinking, ‘I don’t want to go into the family biz, and into a whole new world of personal judgment,’” Thompson explains. “In a musical family, everything is heard with professional ears, and even though everyone has been extremely supportive, they’ve also been brutally honest when they’ve heard my songs.”

But the music started coming, despite Kami’s reluctance. “I had all these ideas, all half-finished,” Thompson recalls. “In my early 20s, I started writing whole songs. I did it for my own pleasure, coming home after long week at work, sitting with my guitar and playing away. It seemed like a good alternative to sitting around the TV and drinking another bottle of red wine.”

The songs that arrived, though dealing with the complexities of love gone wrong, find unexpected approaches to that time-tested theme. “Blood Wedding” imagines a conversation between Thompson and her mother, as it may have unfolded in an English ballad several centuries ago, and is graced with her father’s heartfelt mandolin solo. “Gotta Hold On” mixes heartbreak and defiance with a devil-may-care honky-tonk vibe. “Don’t Bother Me” finds a new, almost eerie perspective on a George Harrison classic.

Thompson’s music eventually saw the light of day, by complete accident. She played a gig with her father, singing a duet that caught the ear of Will Oldham (aka Bonny Prince Billy), who just happened to be in the audience that night. He tracked her down and invited her to join him on tour in New Zealand and Australia.

“It took someone from outside the hothouse world I grew up in,” notes Thompson. “I realized I should finish these songs that I’d half written.”

Once finished, Kami worked with Brad Albetta, bassist, producer, and partner of close friend Martha Wainwright, and Ed Haber, saving up her money to fly into New York for studio sessions, wandering the streets between takes, and wondering at her good fortune. The songs took on a distinctly American sound, a fact Thompson credits to the recording location and musicians involved, including Martha and Lucy Wainwright on vocals.

“If we’d done it in Britain with British musicians,” she says, “it would have had a totally different sound. It wasn’t intentional; everyone just played what they wanted to, and it turned out beautifully.”

Yet there is something universal in Thompson’s songs, something that springs from their quiet beginnings and careful tending over the course of years.

Blast! Squeeze! Whack! The Horns-to-the-Wall Sound of Raya Brass Band

http://www.worldmusicwire.com

Raya Brass Band make accordions and tubas feral and sexy. From Russian bath denizens to usually staid city officials, their serpentine grooves inspired by Greek, Macedonian, Romany, and Serbian roots get everyone leaping, gyrating and causing a ruckus.

But don’t blame it on the Balkans: This crack quintet is all NYC. You might catch them wailing mid-span on the Brooklyn Bridge under a full moon. Or making partiers above Bushwick dance so hard that the roof bounces—literally. They’ve played passionate solos in Brighton Beach hot tubs, snaked through unsuspecting fashionistas on Staten Island, and gotten listeners in one upstate town so riled up, the police nearly intervened at a street gig one cold December day.

Dancing on Roses, Dancing on Cinders bursts with this frenetic joie de vivre—and with the intense love for Balkan traditions and focus on musicianship that power the high-energy party. Digging into black-market compilations, Eastern European carnival traditions and their own eclectic musical pasts (out jazz, New Orleans brass, punk), Raya Brass Band has the chops to match their irrational exuberance.

***

Raya Brass Band, with its portable but powerful show, plays crazy gigs as a matter of course and can scramble and leap into any party breach. The beautiful mayhem runs side-by-side with a serious grounding in the music of Eastern Europe.

This includes a striking sense of the compound rhythms, odd meters and curlicue melodies of Northern Greece, one particularly strong source of inspiration for Raya’s players. Masquerade traditions and an early-winter carnival repertoire set the region apart. Accordions often take center stage in Greek Macedonia and rhythms get complex even by Balkan standards.

“This draws a lot of us to the music,” explains Raya’s reeds man Greg Squared. “The challenge of the meters. All over the Balkans, you get lots of dances and songs in seven or sometimes in nine. But in Greece, you get tunes in 9+7, in these amazing compound odd meters with certain beats that swing and stretch.” Which adds up to an intriguing time for musicians and dancers alike.

Beyond the musical intricacies, there’s a warm, welcoming social core to the music that Raya communicates. “When I was in Greece, I remember hearing this incredible music coming down street. It was a brass band, wandering through the village,” recalls accordion player Matthew Fass. “I was struck by the immediacy and the intimacy. That drew all of us to this. We don’t want to play on stage so much; we love to be out on the dance floor, to break down the walls between us and the audience.” This intimacy shines on traditional Greek tunes like “Endeka/Patinada” and on “Melochrino,” a santouri (Greek hammered dulcimer) number Fass took up a notch.

Devoted to the roots, Raya Brass Band unabashedly plays around with their favorite beats and forms. They turned Macedonian mystery synth blasts into funky, dubbed out dance tunes like “Cell Phone Song.” Named for the wacky ringtone Greg Squared crafted from an enigmatic track he found in Skopje on a black-market compilation, the track bounds through melodic curves and unexpected quarter tones—and still gets dancers waving their own phones in the air like lighters at a classic rock show.

And other influences—from avant-garde to down and dirty—sneak into Raya’s explorations. Witness “Tavernitsa,” an original tune by trumpet player Ben Syversen. “Most of the tune is fairly traditional sounding, but there is an interlude between the trumpet and sax solos that is more reminiscent of Julius Hemphill or Henry Threadgill than something that you would typically hear in a Balkan folk song,” Syversen reflects. “I always imagined watching folk dancers turn their heads and make faces during that part of the tune, all while continuing to dance. In practice, I haven't seen too many shocked looks.” Only smiles, hoots, and flying feet.

“Nevestinsko Oro,” traditionally played during the bride’s first dance at Macedonian weddings, got a dancehall-inflected revamp, at Fass’s insistence. The straight-up Balkan brass arrangement just wasn’t grooving enough. “We had fun with that one,” laughs Fass. “After starting out with just the tupan [double-sided bass drum] and two other players, the band roars out with this big major chord. We get into the groove. People start singing, in anticipation of that big moment.”

Though complex and subtle as any out jazz, Balkan brass is ultimately celebratory music. At the same time, for musicians like Greg Squared and the band’s tuba player Don Godwin, it harnesses the raw, bold power of the hardcore music they grew up with. It’s got punk oomph, but deeply joyful roots.
 
“That’s the beauty of the music,” Greg reflects. “You can’t really make a half-statement. It doesn’t work. You have to say, ‘This is how I feel and this is what I think right now.’ You say it in complicated ways, but there’s this amazing, direct sense of presence in the music and the playing.” This presence, unamplified and unmediated, moving directly through the crowd, is what Raya Brass Band is all about.