Finnish Fusion and Jamaican Jazz

Having a great morning working through the stack of CDs I bought after last night's concert :banana: :banana: :banana:

Those of you too fusty/disorganised ( ) to stay up for a gig ending at 2am in the RAH missed a great and really eclectic evening. Michaelab and I loved it!

So who did we have?
Kocani Orkester - Macedonian gypsy brass band
Ellike and Solo - Swedish folk fiddle and Senegalese kora ( )
Arto Tuncboyacian - Turkish/Armenian percussion/vocal headcase!
Manecas Costa - Ginea-Bissau guitar/harp
Kimmo Pohjonen - punk/krautrock/folk accordion ( )
Jazz Jamaica All-Stars - big band jazz/ska fusion

Clearly the prize for the biggest headcase of the evening is shared between Arto and Kimmo. Arto walked on with a couple of shakers made from what looked like pickle-jars half full of soybeans singing a little wordless ditty that turned into an answering-machine message and then a question-and-answer session with the audience. He then put a kids musical box on the sidedrum (shades of Lee van Cleef) and started a riff with his fingers on a partly filled chamber pot! Later he was joined for a bit more cat-n-mouse with a saxophonist (forget his name). Ace!

As for Kimmo - what a picture! The accordion comes on supported by this mohican/mountain-man in a traditional (well - not quite - it was a sort of mechanistic black and silver) Lapp ankle-length skirt and black DMs, who starts doing slow pirouettes while playing something slightly new-age. Over the next 5 minutes the music and the pirouettes get faster and more furious. Eventually he stops and spends many seconds clearly trying to focus on the madly swimming hall! Priceless!! For the rest of the set he was sitting (well sort of - there was lots of fairly animalistic lurching and writhing going on as well), to allow him to control the looping gear that allowed him to be his own percussion section too.

This CD I got with him on though only has 3 minutes of him - in fairly conventional folk mode - but has some other class tracks from Norway Sweden and Finland. Overall I guess it's fairly laid back, and the first couple of tracks are in a fairly conventional ballad-style. My favourite track has to be the Mari Boine (Lapp - more properly called Sami nowadays - throat-singer) one. This has energy, feeling and trance all in one (even I love the deep bass pedal that underpins the whole thing). I've heard her before with I guess some more extreme stuff I had more trouble with, but this (maybe toned down a bit for more widespread acceptance) is stunning. The track by "Varttina" is also amazing - a runic spell invoked with increasing venom with really tight chorus singing - sort of Finnish gangsta-rap? On the softer side there's (more) accordion-playing from Maria Kalaniemi, but this is beautifully lyrical, and it sings like you'd never have thought possible if you'd only really heard accordion from the "White Heather Club" or English Morris-dancing. Could well be investing in some more CDs of these.

The Swedish/Senegalese duo seems to have a bit of a cult following after, at their first concert, being billed as a double act without ever having met each other. For their first 6 concerts they never rehearsed, but then started doing so after they found they were getting into a bit of an improvisational rut. Interesting, but not entirely sure this worked for me (dreadful feedback problems messing with the balance also didn't help).

The Kocani Orkester were the typical kind of Balkan/Gypsy stuff - basically a village band, but professionals. I have no idea how the drummer got such fast rhythms out of the switch stick in his left hand. I loved the tuba quartet providing the harmony - one standard tuba, and three of the type good-old Dickie Wagner invented (to get a sound half-way between a tuba and trombone). Great fun - but I doubt I'd want a full CD of it.

Now isn't life strange - Michaelab comes from Lisbon to London to hear a concert by a guy who lives....in Lisbon! Manecas Costa left Ginea-Bissau as it plenty of music but no industry to spread it. When he made this CD they had to fly in a studio to Bissau to record it! As the review says, the native music, "gumbe", is a fusion of samba and West-African/Sengalese that is incredibly infectious - it's very difficult to type this as I'm bouncing all over the place to "Djunga Djunga" ATM. They make a point in the notes that, being off the beaten track, this musical fusion is not manufactured but springs from the nature of their culture (unlike I feel a lot of the Mali/Senegal stuff that gets a lot of airtime these days) - and it clearly sounds far more natural. If you like this kind of stuff - you should really get this - and it sounds particularly like a good one for GTM. (Apparently he was at WOMAD too).

The Jazz Jamaica All-Stars were top of the bill, and were fantastic fun (well, for those of us who'd stayed the pace after 3 hours of music/dancing). As it was the Proms - and what does everyone know gets played there? - they started their main set with a slightly jazzy version of "Jerusalem" - but with their trademark ska rhythmic backing - wonderful. They played most of their current CD, 'Massive' ( )web-site here. Did all the usual big-band stuff, but in addition to standards from Hancock, Shorter et al mixed pop tunes e.g. "My Boy Lollipop" or the "Godfather" theme, underpinned everywhere with the ska/reggae/calypso rhythms. Loved the way they'd stuck the drummer in his own plastic cage - clearly he's another nutter (aren't they all) whooping, hooting and yelling as he played - in black tie and tails, natch!!!. My mate commented that he actually looked a bit like a black Stravinsky, but I have to say he looked to me more like "Baron Samedi" from "Live and Let Die" or (very non-PC, sorry) a caged chimpanzee!!! On the CD I like the last 3 tracks the best, and in several places I think the balance needs more spotlight on the soloist, which does tend to get drowned by the rhythm section. Tremendous fun - but maybe the ska beat is a bit too relentless (for me at least) for listening to the whole CD at once. Dean should really have this one (may not be on vinyl though )

 

Hi

I'm going look into getting this tomorrow.


SCIDB

 

Will be interesting to get the views of a pro on it rather than a mere tyro . I think I have to withdraw the penultimate sentence of that post though - I've now played it straight through twice and am having to try hard to stop it going on a third time. :boogie: BTW can't remember whether it was mentioned on the site, but they got the BBC "Best Band" Jazz Award in 2002 - although some (not me) may question that accolade since Stacey Kent got "Best Vocalist" at the same time.

 

Nice summary Graham

My personal favourites of the evening were:

- Ellike and Solo - Swedish folk fiddle and Senegalese kora
The last piece they played was really haunting and moving. Everything else they did I liked a lot too. An unusual combo that works very well.

- Kimmo Pohjonen - punk/krautrock/folk accordion
This guy was simply awesome! As mentioned in the program, it was hard to believe that all that sound was coming just from one guy with an accordion and a couple of tape loops (which were recorded "on the spot" btw and not pre-recorded so all the sounds you were hearing came from the accordion). He got this amazing, almost techno, beat going by slapping and scraping the sides of the accordion which then went onto the tape, once that was looping nicely he just went WILD :yikes: over the top of it. Almost sounded like you were in a club and most "un accordian" like

- Manecas Costa - Guinea-Bissau guitar/harp
Slightly more, ahem, mainstream than the other two above. Straightforward West African music (which I like anyway) and some gorgeous soulful melodies.

Have to say that the Jazz Jamaica All Stars wasn't totally my :latte: The opening set they played at the start of the concert was excellent, and so was their take on "Jerusalem" but when it all got much more into the reggae/ska groove I really didn't enjoy it that much. I tried but it just confirmed for me that for whatever reason, I just can't get on with ska

Don't know why their drummer was behind that plexiglass partition. I thought it might have been an accoustic thing to prevent too much of the 'live' (as opposed to amplified) sound of the drums reaching the audience ??

Anyway, a really enjoyable evening. One really idiotic thing though: at the end when everyone was boogieing away on the 'prom' (standing area) arena there was this one woman who wanted to "come on down" and the unbelievably jobsworth RAH steward wouldn't let her into the arena area becuase she had a seating ticket! Despite the fact that about half the people already there were other people from the seating area who had moved to the arena earlier with no questions asked :bub: At one point it looked like it was going to get ugly but eventually the steward relented.

Michael.

 

Par for the course I'm afraid. It is possible on occasions to reason with the BlueCoats (supervisors), but the RedCoats are bears of very little brain who take to their prommer-herding duties :cowboy: with the gusto of born civil-servants (or, alternatively, are ruled with rods of iron by the Blue Meenies :SWMBO: )

 

you may find the stewards were trying to keep within the local licencing regs limiting the number of people on the floor.if they fail to comply they face loosing there public ents licence

 

Hmmm...when I (and a load of other people) made it down to the floor there was a female "red coat" who let us all down and eventually didn't even bother checking....but it was young "blue coat" (they actually look green to me ) who was being very jobsworth.

It was quite funny really because the woman wasn't listening to a word he was saying and just dancing with her eyes closed as he made vain attempts to manoeuver her off the floor. Eventually he just gave up and uttered a few swear words to a colleague who had been standing by and doing nothing

Michael.

 

That is probably why the rule (seating tickets not allowed on the floor) exists but it was totally clear at that time that the floor was half empty, certainly much emptier than it had been earlier before anyone had gone home or moved about.

Seems like they were just inflexibly applying the rule regardless of the circumstances.

Michael.

 

yea ok ,but let 1 down next thing someone else wants to join in and before you know it theres 500 people all boogying on down.if the fire officer or council licencing department decides to make a random inspection at that point (belive me they turn up at the most inapropiate times) goodbye licence or hefty fine and good bye job for the steward/s who let them down there in the first place.

 

Good try Les - but as Michael said, things were very thin by then - even with the interlopers from the stalls . I suspect you could have got most of the people remaining in the stalls in the arena and still have had space (just). I was actually quite surprised by how much space there was all night: the Wynton Marsalis, Jools Holland and Los Van Van concerts 1, 2 and 3 years ago were far more crowded, as is just about anything with Martha Argerich. Was also quite surprised at how staid the sitters were. A few people in the boxes were having a bit of a boogie (most obviously the production assistants in the BBC boxes), but nowhere near as many as for the Cuban night (which was really heaving).

Lucky the BlueCoat wasn't the rather large young lass - definitely schoolmarm material that I'm not too sure I'd fancy arguing with (or anything else for that matter )

 

The accordion can be surprisingly versatile, and it's awesome to hear about someone pushing its boundaries. It's fascinating how he created a techno beat by manipulating the accordion and using tape loops in real-time.

 

The concertina accordion and tape loops allow for some creative possibilities, and it's always exciting to push the boundaries of what's expected from the instrument.