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Noura Mint Seymali: Arbina
Release Date: September 16th, 2016
Order now: https://glitterbeat.lnk.to/Arbina

The release of Noura’s debut album “Tzenni”(2014) launched her onto year-end top ten lists and the stages of renowned international festivals. Vice/Noisey hailed ”Tzenni” as "arguably the best psych / blues album of the year” and NPR noted: “the arrival of Mauritanian vocalist Noura Mint Seymali in front of Western audiences feels like the start of a new era.” In 2015, Noura was named at the African Union's first-ever AFRIMA awards as "Best Female Artist from North Africa” and in June of this year, she joined Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz) and The Orchestra of Syrian Musicians for a high-profile European tour presented by Africa Express.                                             

Noura Mint Seymali now returns with a blistering second album.

Arbina is Noura Mint Seymali’s second international release. Delving deeper into the wellspring of Moorish roots, as is after all the tried and true way of the griot, the album strengthens her core sound, applying a cohesive aesthetic approach to the reinterpretation of Moorish tradition in contemporary context. The band is heard here in full relief; soaring vocals and guitar at the forefront, the mesmerizing sparkle of the ardine, elemental bass lines and propulsive rhythms swirling together to conjure a 360 degree vibe. Arbina refines a sound that the band has gradually intensified over years of touring, aiming to posit a new genre from Mauritania, distinct unto itself; music of the “Azawan.”

Supported by guitarist, husband and fellow griot, Jeiche Ould Chighaly, Seymali’s tempestuous voice is answered with electrified counterpoint, his quarter-tone rich guitar phraseology flashing out lightning bolt ideas.  Heir to the same music culture as Noura, Jeiche intimates the tidinit’s (Moorish lute) leading role under the wedding khaima with the gusto of a rock guitar hero. Bassist Ousmane Touré, who has innovated a singular style of Moorish low-end groove over the course of many years, can be heard on this album with greater force and vigor than ever before. Drummer/producer Matthew Tinari drives the ensemble forward with the agility and precision need to make the beats cut.
 
Lyrically, the Moorish griot tradition is complex and associative. Poetry is held in a continuum between author and audience in which a singer may draw on disparate sources, selecting individual lines here or there for musicality to form a lyrical patchwork expressing larger ideas via association. A griot may relate her own thoughts and poetry, sing poetry written for and about her by a third party, and transmit lines from one party addressing another in the course of a single song. With this ever-fluid narrative voice, stories are told.

Arbina is a musical act of devotion, calling upon the creator to channel grace through us and uplift our actions.

Arbina

Noura Mint Seymali - Arbina

Intro

Saz'iso - At Least Wave Your Handkerchief At Me
The Joys and Sorrows of Southern Albanian Song
Order: https://goo.gl/xU1M4z
Download / stream: https://glitterbeat.lnk.to/AtLeastWaveYourHandkerchiefAtMe
Artist page: http://glitterbeat.com/artists/saziso/
Release date: October 13th, 2017

Brazilian Samba, Bosnian Sevdah, New Orleans Jazz, Cuban son – and Albanian Saze! The turn of the last century saw mass migrations to the world’s cities with rural people bringing their music with them, adapting their traditions to new circumstances and modern instruments. Of all these great musical forms, the mesmerizing arabesques, joyful dances and heart-breaking laments of Saze are among the least recorded, and they remain largely unknown outside Albania.

Glitterbeat is proud to announce the release of “At Least Wave Your Handkerchief At Me: The Joys and Sorrows of Southern Albanian Song” by Saz’iso, a group of virtuoso musicians and legendary singers assembled by veteran producer Joe Boyd (Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Cubanismo, Songhai) and his co-producers, Edit Pula and Andrea Goertler, and recorded by Grammy-winning engineer Jerry Boys (Buena Vista Social Club, Ali Farka Touré, Orchestra Baobab).

The songs on this album tell of joy and sorrow, love and loss, heroism and tragedy. “Tana” is an ancient song about a shepherd whose flock is stolen by bandits that grant his wish to play his flute for the last time before they kill him. The plaintive melody conveys his terrible fate to his beloved in the valley below. A line from the beautiful “Penxherenë e zotrisë sate” gives the album its title; a boy yearns for the girl next door, pleading, “You keep going in and out of your gate. O poor me outside! At least wave your handkerchief at me.” Other songs are about partisans struggling against foreign invaders and men forced to depart in search of work, leaving behind grieving wives and families, a recurring theme in Albanian music to the present day.

The instrumental dances have deep roots in the region’s history. “Valle e Osman Takës” originated with a captured rebel leader dancing his way to freedom and is now a spectacular male dance that constitutes a test that only the most skilled attempt. Of all the region’s instrumental forms none has the resonance and emotive power of ‘kaba’. According to legend, the form originated when a dying wife told her husband not to cry, but to let his clarinet weep over her coffin instead. The album includes both, a clarinet and a violin kaba as well as a rare, freely improvised ‘avaz’. The melancholic improvisational lines of the clarinet or violin give it a mood often referred to as the ‘Albanian blues’. Kaba’s “melodies, ornamented with swoops, glides and growls of an almost vocal quality, sound both fresh and ancient at the same time”, observes author and musician Kim Burton, “and exemplify the combination of passion with restraint that is the hallmark of Albanian culture.” 

“This recording is a landmark in the history of Saze music. These performers are following in the footsteps of the great masters that have preceded them, while the careful and thorough production and wonderful sound quality allow us to experience recorded Saze as never before.”	
- Vasil S. Tole

“We set out to record these virtuoso singers and musicians like a Blue Note jazz session or a Deutsche Grammophon string quartet. Saze is, after all, a classical form, its essential elements unaltered over the decades. With its ancient roots, the intensity of this world-class music has the power to entrance any listener.”	
- Joe Boyd

Saz’iso are
Donika Pecallari, vocal
Adrianna Thanou, vocal
Robert Tralo, vocal
Aurel Qirjo, violin & vocal
Telando Feto, clarinet
Agron Murat, llautë/lute
Agron Nasi, dajre/frame drum
Pëllumb Meta, fyell/flute & vocal

At Least Wave Your Handkerchief At Me

Saz'iso - Tana

Sweet Tooth

I am black man. I am not of this land, but I am this land.
Hear the black man. The beats beacon our song, the streets beckon our dance.
Hail the black man. Although you steal from me, I create anew.
Know the black man: Gun-beats were my nursery rhymes; nylon strings my solace.
I am black man. My happiness exists, even if you won’t see it.
 
Chimurenga Renaissance (the mixtape) has arrived. Take a holistic journey of a Zimbabwe native raised in American poverty; a black man with two homelands but who belonged nowhere. A new culture emerged, history was penned, life was born.
 
Chimurenga Renaissance. Take the ride.

Quarterblack

Mhondoro Friz

A musical reminder of the power of unity. In celebration of Zimbabwean independence. Pamberi ne Zimbabwe! 

Unity is Power (April 18)

Chimurenga Renaissance