Rise of the Meek is a seven-minute Senegalese/Malian influenced driving dance track that features quivering mournful Islamic calls over a pulsating Ngoni guitar riff, driven by a building polyrhythmic percussion.

Rise of the Meek

In West Africa, women are on the cutting edge of musical and cultural progress. This program looks at four singer/composers with roots in tradition and unique ideas about how to keep them current in the fast-changing milieu of today’s African music. Mali’s Fatoumata Diawara keeps her focus on messages, mixing traditional sounds and rock idioms to reach young audiences. Senegal’s Aida Samb is finding new avenues for that country’s trademark mbalax sound, including collaborations with Afrobeats stars like Wizkid. Elida Almeida of Cape Verde has emerged as a freewheeling composer, able to draw on whatever influences she likes, and it’s working for fans of all generations. And Benin’s Angelique Kidjo, never one to sit back on her many successes, has covered Talking Heads’ 1980 album Remain in Light, in its entirety, re-Africanizing a rock classic for a new time. We’ll speak with all four artists, and hear their latest music.  Produced by Banning Eyre

Women's History Month: Four Women of the West

On the morning of 19 May 2023 we lost Andy Rourke, the great bass player from The Smiths. In the aftermath of his passing I started to revisit all of his band's catalogue, and I discovered songs that I had probably overlooked, and that had really cool bass lines (I'm a bass player too). "Barbarism Begins at Home" was one of those that really stood out so I decided to do a cover of it, but I wanted it to be different, so the main funky bass line became an acoustic guitar riff, and I added a new bass line, with more than a nod to Tony Levin's work with King Crimson on songs like Thela Hun Jinjeet, from the album Discipline.

Then I thought that the whole tune could've been rearranged in a Remain in Light/Talking Heads style, with percussions aplenty and traces of Byrne and Eno "My life in the bush of ghosts" too. I called my friend Zubi and asked him to sing the lead part and to play a solo Adrian Belew-style, and he promptly delivered with aplomb throughout. Kudos to that featous guy. Dominique D'Avanzo added her bright and charming backing vocals and soon started to conceive the brilliant video you can see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFUgK5WeXJ4 

What you're listening - and hopefully grooving to - is both an homage to a great musician and an attempt to give a different light to an already very poignant song. 
Enjoy!

Zubi Records - lead vocals, guitar solo
Dominique D'Avanzo - backing vocals
Emanuele Sterbini - bass, acoustic guitars, drums and percussion programming, mellotron
Andy Rourke - himself, from this interview here  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tMMOZKC9Og&t=8s  

Arranged, recorded and mixed by Emanuele Sterbini in three sessions with GarageBand between May 2023 and January 2024. 
Zubi Records recorded his parts at the Bibbirria in June 2023.
Mastered by Manuel Nash on the 1st of February 2024.

Barbarism Begins at Home (The Smiths cover) feat. Zubi Records

Whitsand fuses traditional West African, Cuban, Indian and Middle Eastern voices, instruments and rhythms with house, jazz and funk elements.

The debut Whitsand LP, Waja was released on July 21st 2023. An extended and remixed version - Waja Deluxe - was released on Aug 3 2024. 

All Whitsand music, video and original artwork is copyright Umio (Publishing) Limited. All rights reserved.

Whitsand is created by Chris Lawer. 

#whitsand,#animation,#orange,#Senegal,#Mali,#rubab,#ngoni,#byrne,#pulsating,#afrobeat,#balafon,#tabla,#driving,#dynamic,#talkingheads,#remaininlight,#repetitive,#longing,#uplifting,#passionate,#spiritual

Afropop Worldwide is an internationally syndicated weekly radio series, online guide to African and world music, and an international music archive, that has introduced American listeners to the music cultures of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean since 1988. Our radio program is hosted by Georges Collinet from Cameroon, the radio series is distributed by Public Radio International to 110 stations in the U.S., via XM satellite radio, in Africa via and Europe via Radio Multikulti. 

Meet Sterbus - a warm, enthusiastic soul who just might have been born in the wrong place; and who writes songs which sound as if they definitely belong in a different place. Although they're Italians and makes their home in Rome, their true musical spirit wanders much further westwards – to the rainy Portland of Elliott Smith; the pink-noise/scruff-tinted Glasgow of Teenage Fanclub; the joyful power-pop of Guided by Voices and The New Pornographers, Frank Zappa and Mike Keneally; perhaps the psychedelic Philly of Todd Rundgren; and most certainly the various London and English West Country ground-soils which nurtured (or spat out) King Crimson, XTC and Cardiacs.

"… In the end, two guys from Rome, Dominique D’Avanzo and Emanuele Sterbini,  under the Sterbus moniker, released one of the best pop records of the year; “Let Your Garden Sleep In” has one of the best setlists of 2021, if what you’re looking for are the melodies of Pastels and the gentle verve of Belle and Sebastian, but also those power-chords on steroids that for thirty years have strengthened the pop rhymes of Guided By Voices or the quick-setting melodies of They Might Be Giants." - Mason & Dixon

https://lineamasondixon.it/en/2021/11/17/sterbus-en/

New tracks tagged #Remain In Light