Note: Links below will enable you to hear musical samples from the Grammy nominees.
The forthcoming 51st annual Grammy Awards will feature two slots for world music--"#74 - Best Traditional World Music Album" and "#75 - Best Contemporary World Music Album"--among a total of 109 categories of various genres (click here for a complete listing of "Fields" and their "Categories", and here for their full definitions.). Other fields, such as Alternative, New Age, Latin, Folk, Reggae, and Polka, may in fact have a substantial world music (i.e., international and/or traditional) component, and further general categories (e.g., Record of the Year, Album of the Year, etc.) may occasionally include world music artists (click here for a complete listing of all the 2009 Grammy nominees). But suffice it for now to look at--and listen to samples from--this year's competitors in the two world music categories.
As for these two categories, it's informative to look at their definitions as per the Grammy Website. Both are virtually identical in the first part, with the only differences being indicated below in boldface:
"For vocal or instrumental traditional/contemporary world music albums . . . that may combine musical elements indigenous to a culture or country with additional elements of another culture."
It's only in the second part that the distinctions are made between the two:
1) (Traditional): "Non-Western classical music, International non-American and non-British traditional folk music are eligible in this category", and
2) (Contemporary): "The music may also contain elements of popular music styles and/or production techniques. World/Beat, World/Jazz, World Pop, and cross-cultural music with contemporary production techniques are eligible in this category."
Next, we come to the nominees themselves, listed below by album title, artist, and record company. The listing in this blog is designed for your ease of access to information about the nominees and their music. Click on each album title (given first, in "quotation" marks) for some Web-based sample of music from the album nominated (you may have to click on "Listen to samples", or follow some similar prompt). Click on each artist's name (in boldface, following the album title) for further biographical information, and in some cases, pictures of the artist(s). Finally, the artist(s)' own Website is listed, following the record company name.
For Traditional World Music, the entrants are:
"Calcutta Chronicles: Indian Slide Guitar Odyssey" by Debashish Bhattacharya, on Riverboat Records/World Music Network. Artist's Website.
"The Mandé Variations" by Toumani Diabaté, on Nonesuch. Artist's Website.
"Ilembe: Honoring Shaka Zulu" by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, on Heads Up International. Artist's Website.
"Dancing In The Light" by Lakshmi Shankar, on World Village. Related Website.
For Contemporary World Music, the entrants are
"Shake" by Lila Downs, on Manhattan Records/Blue Note. Artist's Website.
"Banda Larga Cordel" by Gilberto Gil, on Warner Music Latina. Artist's Website.
"Global Drum Project" by Mickey Hart, Zakir Hussain, Sikiru Adepoju, and Giovanni Hidalgo, on Shout! Factory. Artists' Website.
"Rokku Mi Rokka (Give And Take)" by Youssou N'Dour, on Nonesuch Records. Artist's Website.
"Live at the Nelson Mandela Theater" by The Soweto Gospel Choir, on Shanachie Entertainment. Artists' Website.
For the record (no pun intended), videos of many of these artists are available on YouTube, as well as on some of their Web pages.
In terms of the national origins of the nominees, two of the "traditional nominees"--Debashish Bhattacharya and Lakshmi Shankar, as well as one of the "contemporary" contenders--Zakir Hussain (of the Global Drum Project)--are all from India, and well known as distinguished practitioners of Hindustani (i.e., North Indian), classical music. Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the Soweto Gospel Choir hail from South Africa, Toumani Diabaté from Mali, Sikiru Adepoju (of the Global Drum Project) from Nigeria, and Youssou N'Dour from Senegal--for a total of five nominees from Africa. Of the Hispanic nominees, Lila Downs is from Mexico, Gil is from Brazil, and Giovanni Hidalgo is from Puerto Rico (a U.S. territory). Only Mickey Hart (again, of Global Drum Project), was born in the continental U.S.
As for performance styles, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the Soweto Gospel choir are purely a capella vocal groups, singing in rich harmonies without instrumental accompaniment. Lakshmi Shankar, Lila Downs, Gilberto Gil, and Youssou N'Dour are all well-established singers who perform with instrumental accompaniment. And Debashish Bhattacharya (on his version of the western guitar, which he has adapted to his own purposes), Toumani Diabaté (on the kora, a harp-like chordophone with a large gourd as a resonating chamber and a long neck with frets), and the members of the Global Drum Project are all virtuoso instrumentalists. Only the percussionists in the last group fall directly into the category of "cross-cultural" music, in which the drumming of three different continents is skilfully blended into a musical "fusion."
As noted above, there are numerous other examples of what might also be considered world and/or traditional music among the nominees in the remaining 107 Grammy categories. In future entries, I'll try to highlight some of these--i.e., New Age, Latin, or Folk., as well as comment on the winners in the two fields we've discussed (and hopefully, listened to) today.
Finally--a couple of historic notes from my personal experience regarding the nominees:
I remember well the extraordinary impact of Ladysmith Black Mambazo's participation in the groundbreaking "Graceland" album by Paul Simon--one of the earlier (1986) successful mainstream efforts to include "world music" in a contemporary popular context; the album won the Album of the Year Grammy in 1986, and the title song won the Record of the Year Grammy in 1987. And I had the good fortune to meet Debashish Bhattacharya in connection with my writing liner notes for his 2000 release on India Archive Music--Raga Saraswati--so that perhaps I may be permitted a bit of bias in anticipating this year's winners in the World Music categories.
And if any of you do have any predictions or preferences, I'd be most eager to hear about them via the comments option.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Washington Songlines: Ginsberg and Glass' Hydrogen Jukebox at Georgetown University
On the Sunday night preceding the inauguration of President Obama--and while the pre-Inaugural concert with a roster of superstars and an audience of hundreds of thousands was taking place at the Lincoln Memorial (see the post at http://voamusic.blogspot.com/2009/01/musical-events-during-president-barack.html), Georgetown University and the Baltimore-based American Opera Theater presented the last of three performances of the Hydrogen Jukebox, with the libretto taken from the poetry of the late Allen Ginsberg, and the original music by Philip Glass.
(Complete report forthcoming.)
(Complete report forthcoming.)
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Washington Songlines: SamulNori and the Korean-American community
How many entities does it take to present a concert of Korean music in the nation's capital? Despite the exponential increase in "world music" interest and awareness in the U.S. in the last couple of decades, the challenges of presenting a concert of essentially traditional "ethnic" music (as opposed to the more common "fusion" music currently performed by myriad groups) at a major American venue are considerable.
One of the pleasures of living in the Washington area is the abundance of numerous and substantial hyphenated (as in Korean-American) communities (both immigrant and native-born), particularly when it comes to cuisine. Yet for members of the mainstream music audience, access to traditional performances is not as frequent as in many European countries, where well-funded national Ministries of Culture routinely sponsor a wide range of such concerts in prestigious settings.
Last night was an extraordinary demonstration of Korean percussion music by SamulNori, led by master percussionist Kim Duk Soo, at the Smithsonian's Meyer Auditorium. The eponymous group (whose name is drawn from the primally rhythmic genre also called Samul Nori) is certainly the best known in the U.S. as proponents of this music, and it was not difficult to understand the audience's enthusiasm for this spectacularly percussive style--but more on the music itself in a later post.
The performance was preceded by the usual introduction by Michael Wilpers, who for many years has coordinated the public programming at the Freer and Sackler Galleries (the Smithsonian Institution's Asian art museums), and remarks by Paul Michael Taylor, head of the Asian Cultural History Program of the National Museum of Natural History, which co-sponsored the program, along with the Arlington-based Korean Heritage Foundation, Next came a brief speech by former Virginia Governor and Senator George Allen, who was credited in Dr. Taylor's introduction with introducing in the U.S. Senate, in 2005, a resolution for the establishment of Korean-American Day as 13 January--the day of this particular performance.
At this point, let me digress for a moment. Having attended (and assisted in the organization of) numerous concerts at the Freer and Sackler, I am always interested in the various identities manifest in members of the audience, as well as the range of dress (from jeans and sweatshirt to suit and gown and occasional regional garb), ethnicity, and the phenomenon I'll call "clustering"--in which certain individuals will tend to be the focus of unusual attention prior to the concert. As I scanned those in the lobby waiting to enter the auditorium (partly because of some confusion in the distribution of tickets), I was particularly aware of two figures, both Caucasian: one, a distinguished, scholarly gentleman of medium height with an impressive shock of greyish hair, and the other, a tall, smiling, well-coiffed and ruddy-faced man in an impressive (and probably expensive) dark suit. It was clear from the shifting groups of people surrounding them that they were not merely members of the audience.
It turned out that the scholarly figure was Dr. Taylor, who had been instrumental in assisting with the co-sponsorship of the concert through the Museum, and the other was George Allen, whose contributions on behalf of the Korean--American community have been noted above.
To return to my opening question regarding what is needed to organize such a concert: last night's program was the commendable and happy result of the combined efforts (and funding) of two wings of the Smithsonian--the Freer/Sackler galleries and the Museum of Natural History--as well as the Korean-American Foundation, with obvious support by a prominent political figure. In short, the occasion was more than a mere concert, but rather a celebration of a particular day honoring the identity of Korean-Americans, who, according to Wikipedia, are, at 1.4 million, "the fifth largest Asian American subgroup, after the Chinese American, Filipino American, Indian American, and Vietnamese American communities. The United States is home to the second largest overseas Korean community in the world after China."
One of the pleasures of living in the Washington area is the abundance of numerous and substantial hyphenated (as in Korean-American) communities (both immigrant and native-born), particularly when it comes to cuisine. Yet for members of the mainstream music audience, access to traditional performances is not as frequent as in many European countries, where well-funded national Ministries of Culture routinely sponsor a wide range of such concerts in prestigious settings.
Last night was an extraordinary demonstration of Korean percussion music by SamulNori, led by master percussionist Kim Duk Soo, at the Smithsonian's Meyer Auditorium. The eponymous group (whose name is drawn from the primally rhythmic genre also called Samul Nori) is certainly the best known in the U.S. as proponents of this music, and it was not difficult to understand the audience's enthusiasm for this spectacularly percussive style--but more on the music itself in a later post.
The performance was preceded by the usual introduction by Michael Wilpers, who for many years has coordinated the public programming at the Freer and Sackler Galleries (the Smithsonian Institution's Asian art museums), and remarks by Paul Michael Taylor, head of the Asian Cultural History Program of the National Museum of Natural History, which co-sponsored the program, along with the Arlington-based Korean Heritage Foundation, Next came a brief speech by former Virginia Governor and Senator George Allen, who was credited in Dr. Taylor's introduction with introducing in the U.S. Senate, in 2005, a resolution for the establishment of Korean-American Day as 13 January--the day of this particular performance.
At this point, let me digress for a moment. Having attended (and assisted in the organization of) numerous concerts at the Freer and Sackler, I am always interested in the various identities manifest in members of the audience, as well as the range of dress (from jeans and sweatshirt to suit and gown and occasional regional garb), ethnicity, and the phenomenon I'll call "clustering"--in which certain individuals will tend to be the focus of unusual attention prior to the concert. As I scanned those in the lobby waiting to enter the auditorium (partly because of some confusion in the distribution of tickets), I was particularly aware of two figures, both Caucasian: one, a distinguished, scholarly gentleman of medium height with an impressive shock of greyish hair, and the other, a tall, smiling, well-coiffed and ruddy-faced man in an impressive (and probably expensive) dark suit. It was clear from the shifting groups of people surrounding them that they were not merely members of the audience.
It turned out that the scholarly figure was Dr. Taylor, who had been instrumental in assisting with the co-sponsorship of the concert through the Museum, and the other was George Allen, whose contributions on behalf of the Korean--American community have been noted above.
To return to my opening question regarding what is needed to organize such a concert: last night's program was the commendable and happy result of the combined efforts (and funding) of two wings of the Smithsonian--the Freer/Sackler galleries and the Museum of Natural History--as well as the Korean-American Foundation, with obvious support by a prominent political figure. In short, the occasion was more than a mere concert, but rather a celebration of a particular day honoring the identity of Korean-Americans, who, according to Wikipedia, are, at 1.4 million, "the fifth largest Asian American subgroup, after the Chinese American, Filipino American, Indian American, and Vietnamese American communities. The United States is home to the second largest overseas Korean community in the world after China."
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Adrift in the musical cyberseas of the New Year
Warm New Year's greetings to everyone who reads this!
I spent the past month in India in what was very much a musical environment in the countryside outside the city of Bhopal, but which was also in isolation from the Internet, with the result that I could not continue my blogging on this site as I had expected. The bad luck which besieged my travels during this period (delayed or canceled airline flights, much delayed and prolonged train travel due to fog) seems to have been transferred to my connectivity. I returned this morning to my VOA office hoping to post two previous blogs from my Macintosh laptop, only to have the machine crash shortly after my arrival.
So turning to the mail accumulated during my time away, I perused the latest calendar from the Freer and Sackler Galleries here in Washington, with whom I have enjoyed nearly twenty years of musical collaboration (including the arrangements for the inauguration of their series of concerts of classical Indian music with a performance of the late Ustad Vilayat Khan in 1987, as well as subsequent appearances by a variety of prominent artists, including, most recently, the Hindustani vocalist Subhra Guha and sarangi master Ustad Sultan Khan.)
The calendar included a listing for "Five Directions: A Korean and American Jazz Excursion", which took place in December while I was in India. Among the performers in that program I found the name of Ned Rothenberg, performing on clarinet and shakuhachi. I paused, momentarily confused, because when I was teaching at Harvard I had a student, also a clarinetist pursuing new musical avenues, named David Rothenberg, and wondered whether he had changed his stage name. But a quick check of Google took me directly to David's own Webpage, and I was reassured to find that he is continuing his activities, as before very much in the realm of environmental consciousness. I would have called him to re-establish contact, but with his telephone number inaccessible in my sulking computer, I was forced to follow his activities on the Web. Hence a full posting on him will come later. . . .
In addition to an interview with David on NPR's All Things Considered, I was pleased to find samples of his music on his MySpace page, and while I was listening to these I scrolled down casually over "Friends' Comments," only to stumble upon a message from one Lukas Ligeti--a name which caught my eye because of the surname being the same as that of the great twentieth-century composer, Gyorgy Ligeti.
Once again, upon searching for more information about Lukas Ligeti, about whom I'd heard nothing previously, I found yet another western composer who is integrally involved in non-western music--in this case, the musical traditions of Africa.
Ligeti's MySpace page includes two examples of this involvement. The first, "Ligdi", is from the 2006 debut CD, "Paspanga," by Burkina-Electric, a ground-breaking ensemble Ligeti formed with a number of musicians from Burkina Faso. The song "uses the waraba, a traditional rhythm of the Mossi people"--the quote being taken from an extensive, thoughtful paper by Ligeti on "The Burkina Electric Project and Some Thoughts About Electronic Music in Africa." The group's Web page includes one of their music videos.
”Rain Turns Red Gold”, another piece based on African music, may be heard on Ligeti's MySpace page. The track is from "Shadowglow," a 2003 CD on Finland's TUM Records in which Ligeti collaborates with guitarist Raoul Björkenheim; a thoughtful online review on www.allaboutjazz.com observes that the piece "has Björkenheim on a Tri-sonic steel guitar chiming out cyclic patterns of metallic tones, born up by Ligeti’s prepared log drum and atmospheric percussion palette."
Well, so much for today's musical wanderings and serendipitous discoveries. More to come, as I ramp up for the New Year.
I spent the past month in India in what was very much a musical environment in the countryside outside the city of Bhopal, but which was also in isolation from the Internet, with the result that I could not continue my blogging on this site as I had expected. The bad luck which besieged my travels during this period (delayed or canceled airline flights, much delayed and prolonged train travel due to fog) seems to have been transferred to my connectivity. I returned this morning to my VOA office hoping to post two previous blogs from my Macintosh laptop, only to have the machine crash shortly after my arrival.
So turning to the mail accumulated during my time away, I perused the latest calendar from the Freer and Sackler Galleries here in Washington, with whom I have enjoyed nearly twenty years of musical collaboration (including the arrangements for the inauguration of their series of concerts of classical Indian music with a performance of the late Ustad Vilayat Khan in 1987, as well as subsequent appearances by a variety of prominent artists, including, most recently, the Hindustani vocalist Subhra Guha and sarangi master Ustad Sultan Khan.)
The calendar included a listing for "Five Directions: A Korean and American Jazz Excursion", which took place in December while I was in India. Among the performers in that program I found the name of Ned Rothenberg, performing on clarinet and shakuhachi. I paused, momentarily confused, because when I was teaching at Harvard I had a student, also a clarinetist pursuing new musical avenues, named David Rothenberg, and wondered whether he had changed his stage name. But a quick check of Google took me directly to David's own Webpage, and I was reassured to find that he is continuing his activities, as before very much in the realm of environmental consciousness. I would have called him to re-establish contact, but with his telephone number inaccessible in my sulking computer, I was forced to follow his activities on the Web. Hence a full posting on him will come later. . . .
In addition to an interview with David on NPR's All Things Considered, I was pleased to find samples of his music on his MySpace page, and while I was listening to these I scrolled down casually over "Friends' Comments," only to stumble upon a message from one Lukas Ligeti--a name which caught my eye because of the surname being the same as that of the great twentieth-century composer, Gyorgy Ligeti.
Once again, upon searching for more information about Lukas Ligeti, about whom I'd heard nothing previously, I found yet another western composer who is integrally involved in non-western music--in this case, the musical traditions of Africa.
Ligeti's MySpace page includes two examples of this involvement. The first, "Ligdi", is from the 2006 debut CD, "Paspanga," by Burkina-Electric, a ground-breaking ensemble Ligeti formed with a number of musicians from Burkina Faso. The song "uses the waraba, a traditional rhythm of the Mossi people"--the quote being taken from an extensive, thoughtful paper by Ligeti on "The Burkina Electric Project and Some Thoughts About Electronic Music in Africa." The group's Web page includes one of their music videos.
”Rain Turns Red Gold”, another piece based on African music, may be heard on Ligeti's MySpace page. The track is from "Shadowglow," a 2003 CD on Finland's TUM Records in which Ligeti collaborates with guitarist Raoul Björkenheim; a thoughtful online review on www.allaboutjazz.com observes that the piece "has Björkenheim on a Tri-sonic steel guitar chiming out cyclic patterns of metallic tones, born up by Ligeti’s prepared log drum and atmospheric percussion palette."
Well, so much for today's musical wanderings and serendipitous discoveries. More to come, as I ramp up for the New Year.
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