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Another one from 2001.
dZihan & Kamien
Refreaked
(Six Degrees)
by Ted Swedenburg
PopMatters Music Critic
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Refreaked is a collection of remixes of tracks from dZihan & Kamien's successful Freaks & Icons
from last year. The remixes, mostly by artists who are personal friends
of dZihan & Kamien, do not range too far from the originals. But
even if you've already got the original, it is still worth your while to
get re-freaked.
Based in Vienna, dZihan & Kamien produce a brand of Eurodance
that is chilled-out, down-tempo, and very easy on the ears. For the
most part, the tracks on Refreaked will work just fine as velvety
background music. But repeated close listenings reveal a level of
complexity, and even subversiveness, beneath an apparently glossy sheen.
A large portion of both the intricacies and the understated resistance of Refreaked
can be traced to dZihan and Kamien's intense interest in Middle
Eastern, and particularly Turkish, music. Vlado dZihan hails from
Sarajevo in Bosnia, home to a substantial Muslim population, while Mario
Kamien, raised in Switzerland, has a Turkish girlfriend. For several
years the duo have been recording percussion tracks from musician
friends in Turkey, and many of these were used to construct Freaks and Icons. Once they had composed the basic tracks of Freaks and Icons, they then went to Turkey to record live musicians on top. The remixed versions on Refreaked manage to preserve the Middle Eastern feel of the originals.
But what is truly impressive is how these songs are so subtly
given an "Eastern" tinge. Unlike so many "East-West" musical hybrids,
where you can immediately hear the discrete "Eastern" and "Western"
elements working, and often grating, together, on Refreaked the
Turkish drumbeats and Oriental flutes blend together seamlessly with all
the other musical ingredients, to create a lush, integrated texture.
You really have to listen carefully to hear those "foreign" components.
Take, for instance, "Homebase", a tribute to dZihan's natal home
of Sarajevo, the scene of obscene (and for the most part, anti-Muslim
and anti-multicultural) violence in the '90s. Remixed by UFO, it opens
with a vaguely Eastern-sounding, moaning sample, which is later joined
by a simple and melancholic "Western" keyboard riff, repeated over and
over. The song builds slowly, adding bass, and then the rhythms of the
Middle Eastern derbouka. It continues for over eight minutes, achieving a
kind of chilled intensity, as other samples, some recognizably Eastern,
others Western, others unidentifiable, weave in and out. All in all, a
very low-key yet effective tribute to Sarajevo's multi-ethnic,
Euro-Levantine heritage, and an understated lament for the heavy blows
it has suffered. "Carta de Condução", as remixed by Butterkeks, is
another standout. Opening with a lush and dreamy keyboard sequence, it
commences to kick ass with a funky, fuzzy bass and drum riff. A couple
of minutes in, the bass and drum are joined by the Eastern derbouka, and
then those dreamy keyboards chime in. Then it's chill-out time, no
percussion, a moment of repose with bubbly, reverie-inducing keyboards.
The bass-and-derbouka kick up another storm, and the number ends with
those soft, dreamy keyboards.
What makes this all so subversive is that dZihan & Kamien simply insinuate
all these Eastern elements into downtempo Eurodance without you hardly
noticing. It's an insistent, insidious infiltration of the Levant, a
resurrection of the spirit of Sarajevo. Coming from a country where an
ultra-right, racist, fascistic-leaning and anti-immigrant party (Jörg
Haider's Freedom Party) is a partner in the national government, dZihan
and Kamien offer an alternative vision of a tolerant, cosmopolitan
Europe, one that honors rather than vilifies its Islamic and Levantine
elements. And it goes down smooth, like the perfect martini.
Time to get re-freaked!
(The reviews I did for PopMatters have disappeared from their website, so I'm using Wayback Machine to recover them. I think this is the only concert review I ever wrote that was published elsewhere than on this blog.)
Steve Earle / Stacey Earle
20 March 2001: Dave's on Dickson — Fayetteville, Arkansas
by Ted Swedenburg
PopMatters Music Critic
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My hometown, Fayetteville, Arkansas, has been in a drought of sorts for the last couple years, at least as far as decent
touring music acts. But we truly lucked out on March 20, when
Steve Earle decided to make our town his last stop on what he
told us was a seven-month tour, to support his last release,
Transcendental Blues.
The audience was large and adoring. We love Steve because he
writes such great songs; because he is a quintessential
survivor, has been to hell and back; because his music cannot
be pigeonholed or easily labeled and he refuses to be
constrained by musical categories; because he's a
bohemian-outsider-hillbilly; and because his political stands
are brave and uncompromising. And he's been coming to
Fayetteville ever since the late '70s, when he first played at
the Swinging Door along with Guy Clark. For all these reasons,
the crowd included a much wider range of age groups than you
normally see at rock events. And more women than usual. Lots
of twenty-somethings, and lots of geezers like me. In fact,
all the folks I saw Steve with are over 50, and we did not
feel out of place at all.
Steve's sister Stacey Earle, who's promoting her second album,
Dancin' With Them That Brung Me, opened the show. Stacey
performed solo, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar, and
quickly won over a boisterous crowd that was dying for Steve
to take the stage with her goofy mannerisms, peppiness, smart
songs, and outstanding vocal phrasings. She reminds me a bit
of Ricky Lee Jones. Particularly noteworthy was a song that
she performed for the first time, about being lonely on tour
in New York City, and her secret love affair with the Man in
the Moon.
Steve and his band stormed onstage soon after Stacey left,
opening with the first three cuts off of Transcendental
Blues — the title cut, and then "Everybody Loves Me", where
Earle & the Dukes sound like the Beatles, and then "Another
Town". A great way to open, songs faithful to the album but
with more distortion on the guitars, and played with great
intensity. Steve has slimmed down some, put on a full beard,
but the voice is still intense and raggedy and biting. The
band proceeded to play for about two and a half hours, performing, in
all, 35 songs. Lots of numbers from Transcendental Blues,
but also tunes ranging from all over his career, including
crowd pleasers like "Copperhead Road" and "I Ain't Ever
Satisfied", all played with equal passion and intensity.
What's truly amazing is how wide-ranging a set of sounds this
little four-man band can produce. Not only have they mastered
The Beatles (and the best Beatles, circa Revolver), as on
so many of the songs from Transcendental Blues. They can
also kick hard-rock ass with the best of them. They can blast
out the bittersweet country ballads and the high lonesome
bluegrass — as on "Travel and Toil", from The Mountain
(recorded with the Del McCoury Band), with Steve playing
mandolin. When Steve straps on the harmonica, the group enters
Dylanesque folk territory. And even Celtic — "Galway Girl" from
Transcendental Blues, with Dan the manager joining the group
on pennywhistle. The whole band is outstanding, but at the
apex is guitarist Eric Ambel, formerly of the Del-Lords and
the Blackhearts, who is forever grinding out smart, spare
riffs, fills, power-chords, and solos.
Steve put his politics out there too, albeit in a low-key
manner. The tone was set by the drumset, plastered with a
reproduction of that recent cover of The Nation with George
W. Bush as Mad Magazine's "What Me Worry?" Alfred E.
Neumann. Two years ago when Steve and the Dukes played
Fayetteville, they brought an anti-death penalty banner. No
banner this time, but the focus was still on the death
penalty. Steve did his haunting "Over Yonder (Jonathan's
Song)", from Transcendental Blues, about his experience
witnessing the state's execution of his friend Jonathan Noble
in Huntsville, Texas. (You can also read about Steve's
harrowing and incredibly moving account of this experience in
an article he wrote for Tikkun [September 2000]).
Introducing "Travel and Toil", Steve made a pitch for union
membership, and added, "No matter who you vote for, George
Bush is gonna fuck you."
During the first encore set, Stacey came back to sing
harmonies on "When I Fall" from Transcendental Blues. And
then Steve and the Dukes showed us they could even do funk
psychedelia. Adding Steve's younger brother as a second
drummer, they stormed through the Chambers' Brothers "Time Has
Come Today", in my opinion, one of the great anthems of the
sixties. In the second encore set, Steve made a pitch against
the War on Crime. The band ended their night, and the
seven-month tour, with a fine cover of the Rolling Stones'
"Sweet Virginia", with Steve on mandolin.
Come back real soon, Steve, and let's magnetize this motherfucker again.
I wrote a number of reviews for PopMatters back in the day, and most of them have now disappeared from the PopMatters website. So I've decided to use the Wayback Machine to try to recover them. Here's the first. More to come. This was published some time in 2001.
Hamid El Gnawi
Saha Koyo
(Wea/Atlantic/Detour)
US release date: 16 January 2001
by Ted Swedenburg
PopMatters Music Critic
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Of
all the music genres produced in Morocco, it is Gnawa that has gained
most circulation in the West. Jazz luminaries like Randy Weston, Pharoah
Sanders and Don Cherry have recorded with master Gnawa musicians, as
have Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, most notably on No Quarter. A
stream of albums by gnawa musicians continues to be released; probably
the most well known of the lot is the Bill Laswell-produced Night Spirit Masters (1990).
The appeal of the Gnawa is apparent from the first listen. The
distinctive sound of the central Gnawa instrument, the three-stringed
guimbri, resembles that of the acoustic bass. The music, moreover, is
based on a pentatonic (five-note) scale, and hence is more readily
accessible to the Western ear than other North African music, mostly
based on Other-sounding Oriental modes. Finally, the most important
point of attraction is that the Gnawa has the same origins as
African-American music, for it is music played by the descendants of
slaves from West Africa who began to settle in Morocco in the medieval
period.
It is the similar origins of the blues and Gnawa music that have
inspired the collaborations between Western and Gnawa artists. When a
Gnawa master plays his guimbri, it is fairly easy for blues-trained
Westerners to play over him. But only seemingly so. In fact, Randy
Weston and Pharoah Sanders' recordings with Gnawa do not really work all
that well. Such collaborations frequently turn out to be not a dialogue
but extemporaneous playing while the Gnawa do their thing. In effect,
the Gnawa provide the "natural" base and the Western musicians provide
the (supposedly) "creative" juice. This mode of
engagement has become so popular, in fact, that it forms the basis for
the annual Essaouira festival, a three-day musical extravaganza held
since 1998. Every year the festival in Essaouira attracts more Western
and "World" musicians, who jam on stage with the major Gnawa ensembles
from around Morocco. I attended in 1999, and found the experience both
invigorating and frustrating. By themselves, the Gnawa groups were
simply awesome. But when the "guest" musicians jammed with them, the
results were, at best, mixed. Great musicians (these included the likes
of Archie Shepp, Reggie Workman, Doug Wimbush, and Susan Dayhem)
frequently came in over Gnawa vocals, regularized the beat in a way
violated the usual Gnawa flow, and sometimes turned the overall sound
into a muddy mess.
On occasion, Gnawa collaborations do work, usually as a result of
sustained ensemble practice rather than just jamming. The work of Don
Cherry, Adam Rudolph, and Richard Horowitz with Hassan Hakmoun on Gift of the Gnawa is a stellar example, and Plant & Page's collaboration with M'allim Brahim on "City No Cry" from No Quarter is surprisingly satisfying.
But the singular contribution of Hamid El Gnawi's Saha Koyo is that it shows that the Gnawa don't need outsiders to "help" them develop and modernize their music. Saha Koyo
is the result of a collaboration between Gnawa musician Hamid Faraji
(a.k.a. El Gnawi), who sings and plays guimbri, and producer and jazz
keyboard player Issam-Issam. The result is a kind indigenous Gnawa jazz.
Unlike most of the collaborations with Western jazz or rock players,
here the fit between the playing of the guimbri and the jazz keyboards
is just perfect. The keyboard work is faithful to the spirit of the
Gnawa, and yet turns it into something new. Issam-Issam's playing on the
organ and the Rhodes piano not only meshes, but also manages to capture
the mood of the Gnawa songs, which are sometimes joyful, sometimes
redolent with dread. The spirits (known as muluk) the songs are meant to propitiate are capricious, neither wholly good nor evil, and they can bring blessings, or harm.
The overall sound is rich and full, although produced by only
keyboards, guimbri, and the distinctive Gnawa percussion, metal
castanets known as qaraqeb. Issam-Issam's playing, especially
when he's on the Rhodes piano, reminds me of 1970s Creed Taylor/CTI
vintage jazz-only funkier. Hamid Faraji has chosen to sing well-known
numbers from the vast Gnawa repertoire, and each one receives a fine
treatment. My favorite, however, is "Merhaba", a song that welcomes and
calls the spirits to the healing ceremony. (The true function of Gnawa
music is to propitiate the spirits at healing rituals.) "Merhaba"
demonstrates the funky side of Gnawa, moving at a fast pace, with
booming guimbri basslines. The album might seem, on the first few
listens, to have a certain sameness, but repeated listenings will reveal
the distinct beauty of each of the songs.
When I visited
Essaouira in summer 1999, I found two cassettes from this group (known
in Morocco as Saha Koyo and not Hamid El Gnawi), and I heard these
cassettes played all over town-in restaurants, shops, on the street.
Hamid El Gnawi not the only example of indigenous experimentation with
the Gnawa form. Gnawa master Mahmoud El-Guinea (who recorded with
Pharoah Sanders) has released some "experimental" Gnawa cassettes in
Morocco, and there are other local examples of Gnawa jazz groups. I hope
that even more examples of these indigenous experiments will become
available here. It's time that the music of the Gnawa stop being treated
as raw material for outsiders to play with, and be regarded as dynamic,
creative and experimental in its own right.
