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World-music networking
From South Africa to Eastern Europe
BY BANNING EYRE

It’s not easy to break into today’s crowded world-music market. With fewer labels producing fewer releases, and increased obstacles to touring, even established artists have to work hard to stay in the game. That makes the emergence of World Music Network’s "Introducing" imprint a particularly welcome development. The label’s first three releases suggest the kind of taste and judgment it takes to bring new names to the fore. Two come by way of artists from southern Africa: Zulu guitarist Shiyani Ngcobo and an unusual assemblage of folk musicians from Madagascar called Vakoka. Both are examples of great African acoustic recordings.

Topping the list is Introducing Shiyani Ngcobo, an album by a performer who’s been a guru of the finger-style Zulu guitar genre known in South Africa as maskanda for 30 years. This style developed in migrant-worker camps, and it’s both a nostalgic reinvention of older rural sounds and a lively means for commenting on harsh, immediate realities. The cyclic spin of finger-picking acoustic riffs creates a sonic space rich with cultural memories, and the reedy vocals, often with choral backing, provide a forum for the kind of commentary that was dangerous and/or forbidden during the apartheid years.

Veteran world-music producer Ben Mandelson came upon Ngcobo playing with a trio at a music festival in Malaysia, then traveled to South Africa twice to make this recording. Maskanda today is out of favor in hip-hop-mad South Africa, and it’s rarely heard on international recordings. It began as a solo guitar-and-vocalist genre; it survives in a pumped-up, electrified sound powered by pounding, programmed drum tracks. Mandelson took Ngcobo’s group as he found it, a small ensemble with an acoustic garage-band vibe. Most of these 14 tracks center on Ngcobo’s deft guitar picking and whispery vocals. The stripped-down "Izinyembezi (The Tears)" features driving staccato guitar and a single, plaintive voice. Ngcobo plays "Sevelina" on a homemade oil-tin guitar called an igogogo. His intros — the signature show-off spot for the Zulu guitarist — are impressive; the disc’s final piece, "Kheta Eyakha (Choose One for Yourself)," is a solo instrumental. Elsewhere, violin, accordion, bass, a second acoustic guitar, a little percussion, and male and female backing vocals fill out the sound, but never to the level of today’s commercial maskanda.

In his liner notes, Mandelson describes his gentle efforts to steer the sessions, bringing out the character of each piece while preserving the sure-footed but shifting rhythmic quality he calls "elastic precision." From the spare, sweet soul of "uDadewetha" to the full-ensemble crank of "Isithothobala (Those Stupid Ways)," he succeeds in overseeing the best recording of Zulu finger-style guitar I’ve ever heard.

Introducing Vakoka also focuses on music neglected in its home setting and is also guided by an inspired, sensitive foreign producer. Seth Whittaker had lived for five years in Madagascar, and he often lamented the lack of attention accorded the island’s folkloric musicians. In 2002, he returned and assembled a group of top-flight musicians from different ethnic groups for a series of concerts and then for an album in which each principal contributed two pieces and could draw upon the other musicians for accompaniment. Two months of rehearsing preceded a frenzied two-day recording session that resulted in one of the most satisfying recordings of Malagasy folk-pop available.

The best-known artist here is Hanitra of the group Tarika, and the two pieces she contributes showcase the relaxed, low end of her vocal range. On the lilting "Era," she’s backed by bass, hand percussion, harmony vocals, and the lithe guitar of one of the island’s greatest pickers, Haja. A rival to the celebrated Malagasy guitarist D’Gary, Haja struts his stuff on "Maromaso," evoking the deep polyrhythms of the marovany box zither and revealing himself as a passionate vocalist. Elsewhere, we get echoes of hira gasy, traditional musical theater that reflects the stately elegance of Madagascar’s somewhat Europeanized highland culture but also otherworldly roots sounds, notably the lokanga fiddle, which is played masterfully by Gabin. On "Manigne," Damy matches the tone of his soprano sax to Gabin’s lokanga with genre-bending results. Most pleasing of all are tuneful folk-pop numbers like Gabin’s "Salama" and vocalist Djôma’s "Vorondolo." But there are no weak links in this tapestry of plucked and bowed strings, flutes, horns, drums, and, best of all, the kind of harmony vocals that can be found nowhere else on earth.

Introducing Sukke completes the label’s opening trilogy with a lively, stripped-down Eastern European klezmer session. Impressive both for the high caliber of the playing and the production and for Sukke’s willingness to break with formula, the disc is characteristic of what World Music Network has become known for — authentic, contemporary roots music, free of calculation and pretense.


Issue Date: August 13 - 19, 2004
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