A song called "Hoyee", by the Togolese group Toofan (picture above), has emerged as the unofficial anthem for the Africa Cup of Nations 2012. VOA's Ricci Shryock did the following story:
Togolese duo Toofan’s hit song “Africa Hoyee” is becoming an unofficial anthem for the Africa Nations Cup, which is kicking off January 21 in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.
The song takes a continent-wide approach to the game, and the video celebrates an atmosphere of joy and hope, said Toofan member Barabas.
“In order to get everyone in the mood, we had to start from the ground, because not everyone is a football player and not everyone can relate to this place of music,” he said. “That’s why we didn’t just do a song with football stars. That’s why in the song, we featured children in a ghetto setting. To show people that in Africa, football comes from the streets first. It’s not something that’s very luxurious.”
Set in Lome, the music video features uniquely stylized dance moves and children playing on makeshift fields in what producer Micheal Kabom said is the ‘cool quartier’ style, drawing from the English word cool and the French word for neighborhood. Kabom, added that even though Togo didn’t qualify for the Africa Nations Cup, Toofan’s song cheers on all the teams of Africa. “Soccer unites the whole continent of Africa, even though Togo did not qualify for the tournament,” said the producer.
The lyrics mention some of the continent’s most famous players, many of whom will be playing for their countries at the Africa Nations Cup in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea next week.
Willis Conover (1920-1996) was the Voice of America's legendary music broadcaster, (see previous VOAWM posts below), and as this blog is relaunched in the New Year, we'll introduce a regular feature of linking to references to Willis, whose influence throughout the world (and particularly the jazz world) is still remembered with reverence and gratitude 15 years after his death. The most recent is in a blog by Matthew Kassel, a New York-based blogger on Cold Jazz; his latest posting is about the four-time Grammy Award-winning Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés. Kassel quotes Valdés as saying "We used to hear jazz on shortwave radio, the Voice of America 'Jazz Hour,' hosted by Willis Conover. . . . . I would write out transcriptions of the music on paper for myself, so I could figure out what they were doing."
Another reference to Conover's broadcasts is in an op-ed piece, expressing his own opion, by a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, Gregory L. Garland, in American Diplomacy, published by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: "Thanks to the gift of a shortwave radio, I grew up [in Florida] listening to the Voice of America (VOA). . . . .Just like tens of millions of listeners in the former Soviet Union, I set my watch to VOA jazz master Willis Conover’s nightly broadcasts that made him a hero there while he remained unknown in his own country."
Speaking of jazz, this past week has been a busy one for me, in covering four nights of fine performances at Washington's historic Blues Alley, which the New York Times has called "The Nation's Finest Jazz and Supper Club," and which is the oldest such institution in the U.S. since its founding by Harry Schnipper in 1965. In a five night sequence title "Indian Jazz Series", the club featured jazz vocalist Sachal Vasandani on Monday, local guitarist Sanjay Mishra and Friends on Tuesday, guitarist Rez Abbasi on Wednesday, and Rudresh Mahanthappa (and Rez again) on Thursday and Friday.
This blog will feature a forthcoming radio interview with Sachal and a joint television interview with Rudresh and Rez (see photo below), as well as some comments on their performances.
Note: Each of the above five entries features Ellington discussing with Conover the recordings in question, with many fascinating revelations emerging from their conversation. The recordings, unheard before Conover's interview with the jazz giant, became classics, with many subsequent reissues on LP and CD.
During the previous four days, broadcast live on television througout India and the world, was an unprecedented major festival of Dhrupad music performances featuring jugalbandis (duets), by a wide representation of many of the leading artists of this genre, the most ancient and august form of classical music existing in the north of South Asia. For four consecutive evenings, commencing on Thursday, 24 November, each three-hour live broadcast featured three groups of two or three vocalists accompanied by the pakhawaj--the barrel drum so essential to Dhrupad--not only from all over India, but also including Pakistasn's leading practitioner of the art.
The even was jointly sponsored by Doordarshan, India's original and still prominent television network; and the Dhrupad Sansthan, a traditional residential academy or gurukul (of which more later), established and operated by the Gundecha Brothers, who are possibly the most active performers of Dhrupad on concert stages throughout India and abroad. The event was in many ways a tribute to Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar, the seniormost living representative of the distinguished Dagar lineage, which has carried the tradition down through generations, and can safely be credited for bringing the genre of Dhrupad, after a period of relative decline, to world prominence during the latter half of the Twentieth Century
Limited Internet access prevents me from writing further at the moment, but in the coming days I will summarize the various performances and performers, as persuasive evidence that this previously dying art form is undergoing an exciting rejuvenation throughout India, and even in Pakistan.
As I noted in a previous post, there weren't many opportunities in the middle of the Twentieth Century to hear we now call world music in the mainstream world of musical America. Some recordings of what was then call "ethnic" music could be found in the stores, or heard heard on the radio programs, of non-English language immigrant groups scattered around the country, particularly in large urban centers.
In my own experience growing up in Denver, Colorado in the 1950's, I was aware of Hispanic music playing on at least a couple of local am stations. But as for recordings of songs not North American in origin, I was dependent for international musical exposure on the occasional pop hit such as Eartha Kitt's "Uska Dara", which could legitimately be called "ethnic".
Another such piece from my childhood was the instrumental Skokiaan, which was introduced through American pop radio stations in 1954. Composed by Rhodesian musician August Musarurwa (d. 1968), the song refers, according to Wikipedia, to "an illegal self-made alcoholic beverage typically brewed over one day that may contain a dangerous ingredient, such as methylated spirits." (Such a subject brings to mind the hit song Tequila, by the Champs. which won the 1959 Grammy Award for Best Rhythm & Blues Recording. . . . Something here about strong drink and music?)
Here is a sample of Musarurwa's 1947 recording with the Bulawayo Sweet Rhythm Band:
This attractive piece was quickly recorded by nearly twenty groups from around the world. I had purchased the 1954 release of Ray Anthony's "Skokiaan" on a 10" 78 rpm recording, and loved the energy and optimism of the solo saxophone's soaring over the band's accompaniment:
And the kid in me also absolutely adored the surprise element at the end of this version:
(You can hear the complete Ray Anthony version here.)
But not long hearing Anthony's Skokian for the firs time, I also discovered a rendition of this piece by master jazz comedian Spike Jones (see my earlier April Fool's Dayentry on this amazing musician), and it is here that we return to the subject of today's entry: the explorations by a talented jazz musician, Spike Jones, of subjects outside the mainstream of American music as a source for his own witty creations. Here is the midportion of Jone's version of Skokiaan:
Given the delicacies of political correctness, I should probably keep my comments on this rendition to a minimum. While the Japanese-accented English commentary might be offensive to some, it is important to remember that more than any other Asian country, Japan has wholeheartedly incorporated western musical styles into its own vast repertoire. In college in the early '60's, when I was a fledgling folksinger playing, along with guitar, five-string banjo, and I remember learning to my amazement (and well, yes, envy) that one of banjo godfather Earl Scruggs' main disciples was a young Japanese man. Similarly, Japanese classical composers have produced countless instrumental and choral works in the western (as opposed to the classical Japanese) idiom, just as myriad groups have formed in Japan playing western-style jazz and rock. Suffice it to say here that while not imitating (other than the accent) in this piece, Jones is signaling to the fact that in 1953 western-style jazz was growing and beginning to thrive in Japan, as projected in the form of a hypothetical "cat" (as in "cool cat") named "Skokimoto" who is "the craziest cat we know, he can really make that be-bop flow, he's not a square but really cool", and adding, lest we be in doubt as to his authenticity, "in other words he's really not a schmoe." That is to say, he's the real thing.
In the next blog entry we'll examine two of Spike Jones' pieces that actually make use of non-mainland U.S. musical material, in the form of the "Hawaiian War Chant", and--both from Russia--the "Song of the Volga Boatman" and "Dark Eyes".
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Just for the record, let me refer here--since I'm speaking of the "internationality" of the pop music of the 1950's in the U.S.--to another major hit song whose origins were from abroad: Volare ("Nel blu dipinto di blu"), by the Italian Domenico Modugno, which not only occupied number one position on the Billboard "Hot 100" chart for two months in August and September 1958, (as well as being Billboard's number-one single for the year), but which also received the Grammy Award in two categories in 1958: Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Sadly, we have no version of this song by the inimitable (and irreplaceable) Spike Jones.
Some of the genres we now call world music did in fact exist here and there in America's musical consciousness under the rubric "ethnic" music when I was growing up in the 1950's, but in the mainstream world of musical America there was little of such offerings to be heard either on the radio or in the conventional concert venues.
But for the eleven-year-old that I was in 1953-54, two musical examples stand out that took my thoughts outside the United States: the songs "Istanbul (not Constantinople)" and "Uska Dara."
Before going into the background of the first song, let me just include the opening, from a 78 rpm recording I had by pianist Lou Busch, whose name on the record was Joe "Fingers" Carr (I found that name itself very catchy,) and his orchestra and chorus, which though dominated by a jazz approach, had a drum pattern that was distinctively exotic
To the musically ravenous pre-teen that I was (otherwise accustomed to the homespun stylings of Snooky Lanson, Perry Como, Doris Day, and the like that I heard on the pop AM radio of the time), the spectacularly shrill choral shout--"Istanbul!", followed by the downward cascading trumpet ending in a raunchy blare, was certainly an ear-catcher. Thereafter, the syncopated drumbeat under the melody continued to hold my interest until the chorus came in with its catchy (at least to my then immature mind) lyrics, as well as the chromatic wandering of the clarinet beginning with the lyric "Every gal in Constantinople lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople. . ." that added a vaguely oriental effect:
And to a young lad whose voice had still not changed, there was the irresistible and indisputably "groovy" effect of the very deep basso voice explaining "People just liked it better that way" in response to the chorus' question: "Why they changed it [New Amsterdam to New York] I can't say."
In the ensuing instrumental break, the band pursues an unmistakeably orientalist agenda both in instrumentation (somewhat shrill winds) and main melody--with its minor notes and chords and, in the second round (above the male du-du-du ostinato (repeated pattern), a return of the wandering chromatic clarinet:
And now a bit about the song itself. The lyrics make fun of the fact that the names Constantinople and Istanbul represent the same city in different historical periods, with the former version being founded (on the site of a Greek city previously named Byzantium) by the Roman Emperor Constantine a few hundred years BC, and assuming the name Istanbul. The central joke is "All the girls in Constantinople/live in Istanbul, not Constantinople/so if you've a date in Constantinople/she'll be waiting in Istanbul." Really cool for a kid who'd never had a date in his life. . . . .
Like many popular songs, this one was recorded by numerous artists, initially by the Canadian quartet The Four Lads in August, 1953, and peaked at number 10# on the Billboard Magazine Charts. (See the Wikipedia article for more detailed background, including a chronological list of "cover" versions of the original.)
I have no recollection how or why the Joe "Fingers" Carr record came into my possession (I still have the 10" 78 rpm record somewhere), but upon listening to the Four Lads version on YouTube, I find I much prefer the Carr recording.
Coming up: the most exotic "Uska Dara", by the inimitable and seductive Eartha Kitt.
