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Opening the box
John Williams explores African music
BY BANNING EYRE

John Williams is among the world’s greatest classical guitarists, but his newest album and touring project, The Magic Box (Sony Classical), explores African traditional and pop music. The title comes from a composition by the late Cameroon guitarist and musicologist Francis Bebey. If Williams had limited his project to adapting stately and lyrical Bebey compositions like "The Magic Box" and the album’s lead track, "O Bia," the result would have been little more than a novel footnote in the story of African music’s slow march to worldwide recognition. But he goes farther, assembling an unusual four-piece ensemble and addressing styles as diverse as West African griot music, Congolese fingerstyle guitar, Malagasy folklore, Cape Verdean morna, and township music from South Africa.

"I like to think of myself as a muso," Williams explains over the phone, "an ordinary London musician, rather than a so-called classical guitarist. I’ve done a lot of sessions, named and unnamed, and I know musicians from a lot of different fields." He drew on those contacts to create his group, hoping that the consistency of the ensemble’s sound would allow him to sample a range of genres without creating a hodge-podge.

The Magic Box is not like any other classical or African recording. On "Malinke Guitars," Williams strings together three Manding griot melodies linked by steel-string-guitar passages from John Etheridge, who has a background in contemporary improvisational music. On "Engome," he threads his way through sanza (thumb piano) and vocal melodies played by Bebey in one of the last recordings he made before his death last year. On "Triangular Situations," Williams and his group capture the mournful, jangling cadence of Cape Verde, where Portuguese and African sensibilities merge. There are three Malagasy pieces, including "Maki," by the multi-faceted pop musician Rossy, in which Williams plays a small requinto guitar to get close to the gentle, high-pitched sonority of the Malagasy valiha, a tubular zither. "Township Kwela" starts out staid and pretty before shifting into the distinctive swing of South African township pop.

The darkest piece here, "Musha Musiki," combines what Williams calls "West African minimalism" with an idea from a village ceremony in Zimbabwe that he saw on film. "I thought, there has to be something that has that minimalist, repetitive, rhythmic character." This was a good impulse. Hardcore African guitar fans may find the selection here relentlessly lovely, but it’s certainly not stiff or forced. Williams has worked hard to realize the informality of African music, the quality that was both the most attractive to him and the most difficult to master. He suggests that this characteristic has to do with the settings in which traditional African music gets performed. "It’s not basically an entertainment but rather an expression of everyday work, or recreation, or ancestral tales. The rhythms move loosely like the body moves, not in angular movements."

The Magic Box project benefits from the musicians’ willingness to innovate. Williams performs the South African anthem "Nkosi Sikelel’I Africa" with Richard Harvey on South American pan pipes and vocal backing by the African Children’s Choir. For Etheridge, this free approach was crucial — he wanted no part of trying to imitate African guitarists. In concert performances, his role has grown beyond what he played on the record, and in the process, he says he’s been seduced by the social quality of the African music. Like jazz, it demands interaction and rhythmic precision; unlike jazz, it leaves little room for narcissism and grandstanding.

Williams says the group have now developed an hour of new African material; he’s hoping they can continue to tour and also release a live album. He’s fortunate to have launched this effort at a time when the British classical-music establishment is opening its ears to the world. BBC’s once stodgy Radio 3 has become a haven for world-music programming. And Williams’s group will be playing radio concerts in Albert Hall and Wigmore Hall this summer. "That says a lot for the BBC and their attitude."

Still, he knows he has some educating to do. "I’ve been pointing out a lot how really ignorant the Eurocentric viewpoint becomes. Most classical people think of the Americas as guitars, and they think of Africa as drumming. Well, before the Spaniards took guitars to any of the Americas, there were only whistles and drums. There were no harmony instruments at all. But in Africa, there were hundreds of string instruments, going at least back to the Egyptians." African music has found an unlikely but passionate, and massively talented, new advocate.

Issue Date: May 23 - 30, 2002
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