Reviews

Anna Cinzia Villani

I first encountered the astonishing voice of Salento’s Anna Cinzia Villani on Nistanimera’s CD Choré which got a suitably OTT rave at the front of the review section of fR262 back in 2005. Since then came a fabulous solo album Ninnamorella which missed our radar completely (I only know this now having spotted and downloaded it following some manic Googlesurfing inspired by the receipt of this one). Then up popped this which I’ve had on constant play for the past month.

I started that last review saying: “Way down at the foot of Italy, they have traditional music that sounds like it comes from a different planet. It’s way out there in the middle of the Mediterranean, completely separated from the mainland of Europe to the north, to which it’s tenuously attached, far closer to North Africa.” Well, those several-thousand-year-old-music, singing and dance traditions have been enjoying a complicated revival – particularly of the pizzica tarantata (the trance music supposedly designed to cure the dancers of the effects of the bite of the tarantula spider) and the flirtatious pizzica pizzica couple dance. On the one hand, there’s a hugely successful commercial aspect that now results in hundreds of thousands attending Puglia’s annual La Notte della Taranta festival (for an English equivalent, imagine a massive early ’90s style rave where the repetitive beats are a modern version of the morris… you just boggled, right?). On the other hand you have people like Anna Cinzia who, while she participates in that event, has been researching and learning from older local singers, musicians, dancers and communities, immersing herself in deep, and making sure that the traditions carry on at the grass roots.

Anna Cinzia plays tamburello (tambourine), melodeon – though not on the new CD where Annamaria Bagorda takes that role – dances and sings. And what a singer! The antithesis of those wispy ‘little girl’ voices that some people whinge about, she goes out there to the extremes without a safety net, open-throated, daring, emotional, joyful, free and uninhibited, completely inhabiting her chosen tradition. A mixture of traditional and original songs, this is full of energy and occasional tenderness, surrounded by an accomplished small band (accordeon, percussion, acoustic guitar, double bass, harmonica, fiddle and occasional brass) who manage that difficult job of playing appropriately to the songs, the tradition and her spirit, whilst hinting at some background jazz skills.

From the goose-pimple raising Luntananza and the entrancing La Partenza to the funky wildness of Pizzica Pizzica Di Copertino, the bustling carnival atmosphere of Mujerima Le La Musica È Pazza Pazza and the skipping lope of Farnaru Farnareddhu, from the short opening snippet Ìjo Pucanè that’s polyphonic in an almost Balkan way to the closing vocal duet waltz Puccia Canaja with Daniele Girasoli, this is one fabulous album that ought to establish her as a major voice in European folk, world music, or whatever else you want to call it. Hope it gets the distribution. fRoots feature in the works for the autumn (we already booked the flights!).
• www.annacinziavillani.it | www.suonidalmondo.com | Buy from Amazon.co.uk

Photo: K Tsiganos Kristi Stassinopoulou and Stathis Kalyviotis

The all-star fRoots 30th Birthday Concert at the Roundhouse a few years back was a night of celebration and revelation. Even those whose music had previously failed to strike a chord with me delivered short sets that hit the spot. Chief among these were the duo of Kristi Stassinopoulou and Stathis Kalyviotis, who flew in especially from Greece to perform one song. My previous encounters with Stassinopoulou and her band had left me cold. A gifted singer with an interesting take on updating Greek traditions, but delivered in a somewhat over-fussy musical setting. Hearing her with just the one accompanist, I realised what a wonderfully expressive voice she’s got (you can hear for yourself as the performance is up on YouTube)

This album – like June Tabor & Oysterband’s Ragged Kingdom – was catalysed by that night, just Stassinopoulou and Kalyviotis, the former on harmonium and percussion as well as vocals, the latter on lauto (Greek lute), live looping and electronics, performing a set of tunes from the rural Greek demotika tradition. As the album’s title suggests, these are not straightforward interpretations – Greece’s branch of the Folk Police will no doubt be issuing a warrant as I write – but the delivery and arrangements are pleasingly understated and clearly made by people who love the material. Kristi’s voice quite rightly takes centre stage and it really is a thing of beauty, neither florid nor overly dramatic, she just sings these songs of love, longing and loss like she means every word. The electronics and looping don’t get ideas above their station, adding a little colour or a beat to the overall sound. I like things best when they’re slow and haunting, as on Halassia Mou and the closing Rodise I Anatolie, which features just Kristi and her harmonium.

A low key gem that promises much for the duo’s planned UK tour later this year.
• www.krististassinopoulou.com | Buy from Amazon.co.uk

Photo: Rob O'Connor The Imagined Village

The third IV album and quite a radical change of direction as they move beyond multi-cultural theory into a band driven by insistent rhythms and original writing. There’s no Chris Wood (or Billy Bragg come to that) any more and very little grandstanding as global roots are absorbed into a far more personalised sound on an album they themselves describe as “about group survival”.

After two highly successful albums of material mostly rooted in the English tradition , it’s a bold and risky diversion, especially with no obvious big tracks as a centrepiece, and I must admit that I was initially disappointed. Yet, beyond the sound of a proper band gelling and sometimes – as in Sheema Mukherjee’s climactic finale sitar rampage on the title track – flying, you slowly feel the full force of their organic amalgamation, the sharp social commentaries embedded within it… and a rich sense of humour in the way they’ve assembled it. There’s a big, bad and thoroughly convincing John Barry homage filtering through Eliza Carthy’s excellent Fisherman, inspired by protesters at St Paul’s Cathedral; an orgy of seductive skank provides the backdrop to The Guvna; more fabulous sitar as Get Kalsi adopts the robes of a 1970s English film soundtrack; variations on a weird Cornish dance tune on Wintersinging; a Johnny Kalsi/Andy Gangadeen drum battle suddenly bursting into flames on Bending The Dark; and vigorous programmed beats escort us into Sick Old Man, a discourse on attitudes to immigration set around the theme.

It’s very much an ensemble effort, though there are some striking individual moments. Jackie Oates’ unaccompanied opening to The Captain’s Apprentice and the purity of Eliza Carthy’s gorgeous lullaby Washing Song – all the more telling for the simplicity of the fiddle/piano arrangement – spring to mind. There are moments when you feel some sense of character may have been sacrificed in the various textures. The atmospheric build-up to New York Trader is too restrained for its own good and for all its broody tension, I’m not entirely sure Nest works at all until Martin Carthy enters the fray to sing the chorus with Eliza Carthy.

It’s certainly very different to their previous two albums and you have to admire Simon Emmerson’s impressive resilience and determination to change the landscape during the course of many difficulties that have stretched above and beyond the practical problems involved in directing a band of such high profile individuals on a cohesive, co-ordinated and credible fresh journey. An album considerably better than it may seem on first hearing.
• www.eccrecords.co.uk/theimaginedvillage | Buy from Amazon.co.uk

Photo: Judith Burrows Amadou & Mariam

To say that Amadou & Mariam’s latest is relentless would be an understatement. Who’d have thought, when we unfashionable world folkniks used to return with cassettes of ‘the blind couple of Mali’ from West Africa or the shops of Barbès back in the last century, that a dozen years into the 21st they’d be cranking out dense, stadium-friendly music like this. After successfully crashing through the Euro-chart barriers with their cute Manu Chao album and then following it up with their made-for-the-Observer Damon Albarn one, there were only two ways this one could have gone – back to the roots or onwards into the rockasphere: they chose the latter, apparently because they’ve not yet cracked the American market in the way they have Europe’s.

Amused by watching other reviewers trotting out the names on the press release in a pretend-knowledgeable way, I fully admit to having had to use Mr Google to find out who some of the featured guests actually were: it turns out that a number are apparently hipster gold dust. MIA-like Santigold’s vocals are embedded in blistering opener Dougou Badia; Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone of something called TV On The Radio superimpose some English vocals onto the almost Tuareg-like lope of Wily Katso; one of the Scissor Sisters features on the driving Metemya, which comes over somewhere between Sympathy For The Devil and an old fashioned soul review and may be the best track; a black Brit singer-songwriteress called Ebony Bones contributes to the short, poppy C’est Pas Facile Pour Les Aigles which has hints of all those post-Vampire Weekend bands; and jazz funk veteran Amp Fiddler wobbles his vocals over Wari.

Statutory rapper Theophilus London detracts, frankly, the globalised predictability of hip-hop rearing its tedious head. And homicidal French rock star Bernard Cantat’s vocals don’t, to be honest, add a great deal at all – Mogo with a bass clarinet and Bassekou Kouyate’s ngoni in the mix would certainly have fared better without – though his guitar work sits nicely in there, as does that of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Nick Zinner on the openers. But regardless of who’s doing what to who, the whole thing blazes along with long-time minder Marc Antoine Moreau’s massive multi-layered production dominated by (mostly) Amadou’s searing guitar. It really is a magnificently big noise.

However, when it briefly drops back to just the couple themselves plus Cantat’s harmonica, Zumana Tereta’s one-string soku fiddle, a kameln’goni and calabash on Sans Toi, it’s such a glorious standout that you really do wonder whether all the rest was actually necessary. They do the trick again at the end, mostly with hardly more than guitar and Toumani Diabate’s kora, if somewhat over-egged with a kids’ chorus. So perhaps the return-to-the-roots album next time, eh? If they could deliver it with the raw energy of this one it’d be a killer.

Finally, a word about the sumptuous, arty package – a quality triple-fold digipak plus booklet in a substantial slip case. Except that the reduced spidery handwritten booklet notes superimposed over photographs are absolutely illegible, even with a magnifying glass. What could have been near to exemplary packaging that’s a total fail on user-friendliness.
• www.because.tv | Buy from Amazon.co.uk

Lisa Knapp: Hunt The Hare: A Branch Of May (Ear To The Ground).
While we continue to wait patiently for a new album, Lisa whets the appetite with this thoughtful and thought-provoking five-track EP homage to May. Alasdair Roberts duets powerfully in an exciting collision between the English tradition and nu-folk, sound effects and all, and one Bjork-esque Knapp original song Green Jack. www.lisaknapp.co.uk

Willis Earl Beal: Acousmatic Sorcery (XLCD564).
Lo-fi oddball musical bastard child of Ted Hawkins and Gil Scot Heron, home-recorded on a cassette ghettoblaster and primitive instruments, but absolutely rivetting all the same as it veers from field holler to rapped poetry. You might have seen this 20-something black Chicago one-off on Later recently. Warning: comes packaged with his brief pornographic novel (er, why?) www.willisearlbeal.com

Céu: Caravana Sereia Bloom (Six Degrees 657036–11852).
Brazilian pop diva Céu offers such profundities as Fffree (“…a road inside of me, don’t know where it’s going to lead”), Streets Bloom (“When I die I’ll not be aware of who I am”) and the Lloyd Robinson-Glenmore Brown ska chestnut You Won’t Regret It. At least in Portuguese she’s inoffensively cloyed. www.sixdegreesrecords.com

Majorstuen: Live In Concert (Majorstuen Fiddlers Company MFC04).Popular band of leading youngish Norwegian fiddlers: Synnøve S Bjørset, Gjermund Larsen, Jorun Marie Kvernberg, Andreas Ljones and cellist/fiddler Tove Hagen revisit their fine tunes, but tracks tend to stop before they really fly, and would flow better without the applause from an audience too small to really energise. www.majorstuen.biz