In the twenty years since Malian guitar legend Ali Farka Touré won his first Grammy, a whole spectrum of African Blues has become hugely popular with a global audience. The shades of Blues on this Rough Guide range from the deep indigo of the Saharan nomads to a vivid Madagascan cobalt.

For more information, visit www.worldmusic.net/africanblues

Africa is considered by many to be the home of the Blues, both musically and spiritually. Musically the connection is particularly evident in the music of Ali Farka Touré and other artists from Mali and Saharan West Africa. Elsewhere, the link to the Blues can be described as more spiritual – the intensity of the emotion comes across in the passion of the voices and the rawness of the music.

West Africa provides the first few songs on this Rough Guide. Ali Farka Touré himself said that he was ‘an absolute fool for the guitar’ in the 1970s when ‘Yer Mali Gakoyoyo’ was recorded for Mali’s national radio station, while ‘Dani Dou’ by his acolyte Samba Touré hints at the loping gait of a camel-train.  Tamikrest and Bombino represent further variations of the blues of the Sahara.

Senegalese artists Nuru Kane and Amadou Diagne are joined by musicians from their adopted communities in France and the UK and it’s English guitarist Ramon Goose who provides the springy electric riff to accompany Modou Touré’s vocals in the West African Blues Project.  Meanwhile, Zambian-born Dominic Kakolobango is joined by American Elijah Wald on the dual finger-picking guitars of ‘Gueza Tabiya’ (Change Your Habits) and an international band, including oud and piano, provides a lush backing for Amira Kheir’s jazzy exploration of her Sudanese heritage.

The complex traditional music of their native Madagascar influences the blues of both Nogabe Randriaharimalala and Lala Njava, while Menelik Wesnatchew’s ‘Teteza’ is a beautifully swaying version of ‘Ethiopia’s majestic hymn to the blues’. 

Dilon Djindji, from Mozambique, made his first guitar from an oil can when he was twelve years old, 63 years before his first solo album was released. The final track on the album is a unique unaccompanied vocal piece by La Reunion’s greatest maloya artist, Danyèl Waro.

Nuru Kane: Niang Balo (taken from The Rough Guide To African Blues)

Dikanda - A jo roste dia

Sometimes

Piano 5-4

Les Yeux du Silence

“Tome of Stars” is a 100 sonnet journey, equal parts art, therapy journal, and exorcism, both a celebration and an elegy, a single narrative arc tracing the birth and death of a relationship. All poetry by Stargazer. The verse and accompanying synthetic art and music are public domain, CC0, with no restrictions on use. Nothing is monetized. See below for links on how to access the print, PDF, audio, ePub, video, and music files. Website: tomeofstars.net

The opening section of “Tome of Stars”, titled “Item 1: Anthesis”, comprises 21 poems that chronicle the emergence and flowering of a romantic relationship, structured around the botanical metaphor of anthesis, the period during which a flower blooms. 

“Ainulindalë” traces how the beloved came to inhabit Tolkien’s legendarium in the poet's mind (his primary mythological framework developed in his youth), specifically tying her to the figure of Varda, Queen of the Stars. 

Raised in a secular home without religious myth or doctrine, he instead absorbed Tolkien’s cosmogony with spirited enthusiasm. Those tales expanded to fill whatever subconscious human needs he had for mythology (and they were more beautiful and awe inspiring to his tastes than those handed down by classical religions). Combined with a life-long love of astronomy and cosmology, his formative narratives and images centered around an odd combination of scientific naturalism (inspired especially by the heavens) and a literary mythos from Tolkien’s writings.  When the Stargirl entered his life, he found that his beloved’s name (a Hindu astrological term for a star system) resonated with this personal mythological structure. 

The poem begins with a celebration of Tolkien’s musical story of creation. Music is the metaphor of creation in the universe of Tolkien’s cosmogenesis. “Ainulindalë” means “The Music of the Ainur,” and is a chapter in “The Silmarillion” (Tolkien's great mythic book) presenting an account of this musical creation by the angelic powers (the Ainur, who, when they came into incarnate creation, were called by the Elves the Valor, or Powers). 

Altogether, this sonnet explores how personal interests in music, astronomy, and the mythic architecture of Tolkien’s legends interwove with the conceptual and emotional space created by the poet’s beloved. This is most strongly realized in the figure of Varda, a transcendent figure in the legendarium especially connected to the stars and with whom his beloved was identified in his imagination.

***********
Lyrics

They walked the earth as mortals, yet divine—Song angels! Birthed from thought, donned fleshly form.Such raiment hid a majesty that shined,And from their dreams, the cosmos would be born.

God-shapes obscure, oft hidden from our sight,Their natures varied, primal powers wise;And Varda, Queen of Stars, her essence, Light,Spun constellations through her timeless eyes.

Her beauty danced in splendor, lighting space;With hands in agni mudra, fire flowed.She kindled jewels, the sky’s eternal face,And so her name is called when darkness grows.

Within a nakshatra, your name’s enshrined,And so, with you, my myths of youth entwined.

***********

Internet Archive
Book of sonnets:
https://archive.org/details/tome-of-stars/

Music:
Item 1, Anthesis: https://archive.org/details/Anthesis/
Item 2, Senescence: https://archive.org/details/senescence_tomeofstars
Item 3, Sporogenesis: https://archive.org/details/Sporogenesis_TomeOfStars/
Item 4, Anemochory: https://archive.org/details/Anemochory_TomeOfStars
Item 5, Quixotosis: https://archive.org/details/Quixotosis_TomeOfStars
Item 6, Scripture: https://archive.org/details/Scripture_TomeOfStars

Ainulindalë

Transparent Water is the new studio collaboration between 7-time GRAMMY-nominated pianist-composer-bandleader Omar Sosa and Nottingham-based Senegalese singer and kora master Seckou Keita.  It’s slated for release in February 2017.

The project idea grew out of Sosa’s impromptu addition to a mid–2012 date with drummer Marque Gilmore at the CLF Art Café in London, in what was Sosa and Keita’s first musical encounter.  Profoundly moved by the experience, Omar told Seckou he wanted to invite him to work together on a future recording project.
Given their respective touring and recording schedules, it took a year, but in July 2013 Omar and Seckou went into the Fattoria Musica recording studio in Osnabrück, Germany and laid down the core tracks for Transparent Water.

Another chance meeting informs Transparent Water:  in April 2013, Galician bagpiper-pianist-composer Cristina Pato invited Omar to Santiago de Compostela, where Pato hosts an annual residency frequented by associates of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble.  There Omar met Silk Road charter member and sheng master Wu Tong, whom Omar was moved to bring into the project.  In connection with a concert date in Shanghai in July 2014, Omar arranged a side trip to Beijing to record Wu Tong’s traditional flute overdubs.

Tokyo-born, Paris-based koto player Mieko Miyazaki came to Omar’s attention via her recorded work with French jazz guitarist Nguyên Lê.  When Omar finally had the chance to meet her, Mieko’s creative spirit utterly impressed him, and he enlisted her distinctive voice for Transparent Water.

For percussion, Omar turned to longtime collaborator Gustavo Ovalles, who divides his time between France and his native Venezuela.  Ovalles (who can be heard on three prior Sosa projects—Sentir, Ayaguna, and Eggūn) brings the polyrhythmic soul of the African Diaspora to Transparent Water.

Paris-based drummer-producer Steve Argüelles crafted the mix with Omar, having previously worked on Sosa’s award-winning Mulatos and Afreecanos CDs.

Transparent Water is the latest example of Omar Sosa’s transcendent determination to seek new combinations, a manifestation of improvisatory freedom wherein the musical destination is subordinate to the extemporaneous joy of shared artistic expression.  Omar observes that, as he did with Sentir, “What I wanted to do was create something totally improvised.”

Transparent Water—suggestive of translucence and flowing light—is a deeply spiritual recording that reveals its inspiration in the close and compassionate listening of artists engaged in a genial and captivating musical conversation, liberated from time itself, reaching across five continents to probe the collective spirit of the human condition.

Dikanda - Csillagole

sash-dash-sash