My Weekend: Hungarian Folk Music, Jack Daniels, and A Plate Full of Butter

This past weekend my wife Michelle and I were running a small bed and breakfast at our house. My father-in-law has been here for a little over a week, because back home in Kentucky the ice and snow had knocked out power, gas, and water. I can feel his pain after Hurricane Ike in September, so I had no problem letting him come and use our amenities for a week or so. Then on Friday night my friend Stephen came down from Austin to hang out for the weekend. Well, not so much to hang out as it was to cruise the blogs looking for Hungarian folk-rock and then burn MP3s onto disc. For various reasons he's having problems unzipping the rar-files on his computer, so I was more than happy to oblige. Stephen and I have known each other since high school (my 25th year reunion being this year was one of the things we discussed) and we roomed together for a while in college.

Stephen actually introduced me to the concept that not everyone listened to pop, rock or country music. Even in high school he was listening to radio from all over the world on his shortwave, learning about folk, rock, jazz, etc in their many variations across the globe. In college we spent many an afternoon flipping through the vinyl at Sound Exchange on Guadalupe Street in Austin, searching for just the right Irish folk title. Stephen is blind, so I would go with him to read off the title of hundreds of albums of which I had no clue at first. So our conversations at Sound Exchange would consist of me reading album titles and Stephen saying, "No. No. No. No. Wait who's the accordion player on that one. Oh no, not that one. No. No. No. Yeah!!! Yeah!!! Get that one!!!" After weeks, months, years of browsing, buying, hearing all kinds of celtic folk, I began to gain an appreciation. Living in the dorm, we would occasionally throw Scottish bagpipe music on my turntable, crank it up to 10, and open the door to our dorm room. Bagpipe music bounces really well off the concrete dorm hallway walls.

Stephen has since moved on from Irish, English and Scottish folk...now amassing one of the most impressive Bossa, Samba, and MPB CD collections that I have seen. Okay, it's the only such collection that I've seen, but trust me, it's impressive. In turn, I have also garnered a more global view of music. So this weekend, while my wife and father-in-law cruised around the city running various errands during the day and watched T.V. at night, Stephen and I sat in my study, downloaded some gypsy folk-rock, talked about music, drank Jack Daniels for me and Irish whiskey for Steve, and watched old television ads from the 80s on YouTube. Ah, livin' the good life!!! We also walked to the Indian food buffet up the street from my house. Hence the "plate full of butter" in the title to this post.

So this week, for the mix disc, I wanted to give a collection of various musical styles that I have from around the world. In listening to this, it may seem a bit schizophrenic. At one point it goes from Zairean guitar ballad, to Mongolian throat singing, to Ananda Shankar doing "Jumping Jack Flash" on the sitar. I'm guessing that most people won't like all of this mix, but hopefully you might find something that you hadn't heard before and maybe you find something that you like enough to buy (or download) a whole disc of it.

1. "Sci-Fi Wasabi," Cibo Matto, Stereo Type A: I know Cibo Matto are actually out of New York, but they are Japanese-born, but it would be ridiculous to classify them as "American." Ever since my friend Alan introduce me to them, I have really dug this duo.

2. "Saukare," Ali Farka Toure, Niafunke: Just love the way he plays guitar. Something rather hypnotic about this track.

3. "Mora Na Filosofia," Caetano Veloso, Trans: No, not Trans the really bad Neil Young album. This is a little MPB from the seventies. And Caetano would be "the man" for that. A beautiful song here.

4. "En Melody," Serge Gainsborough, Histoire de Melody Nelson: For a French track, I was going to put a Jacques Brel tune, but I needed another upbeat tune, since this mix tends a little toward the "jelly." So here's a little Serge.

5. "Ma Jaiye Oni," King Sunny Ade, Juju Music: King Sunny, to me, is the second greatest Nigerian musician. Many would argue that. But we will get to the best in a minute.

6. "Pull Up the People," M.I.A., Arular: I saw an interview with M.I.A. (Mathangi Arulpragasam) on CNN International the other day about the politics of her music. I know it's REALLY poppie, but I really dig this song...and the whole album.

7. "Gentleman," Fela Kuti, Gentleman: Decided that this long cut (all Fela's cuts are long) would work really well smack-dab in the middle, as it were. A little Nigerian interlude. I have a very decent sized Fela collection, so you will be seeing more of him in the future on the blog.

8. "Crooked Jack," Dick Gaughan, Dick Gaughan: This one I owe to Stephen and all that record flipping back in college. Steve was a huge Dick Gaughan fan, and I quickly discovered why. There are other great Irish bards, but Dick Gaughan is king.

9. "Ernesto La Chiva," Conjunto Topo Chico, San Antonio's Conjuntos in the 1950's: A little music from the hometown scene. Growing up in S.A. you could help but be exposed to a lot of conjunto music, even if you were the sheltered white kid.

10. "Limbisa Ngai," Ngwalau Michel & Orch. African Fiesta, The Sound of Kinshasa: Guitar Classics from Zaire: I downloaded this collection on a lark, and was not disappointed. Very mellow.

11. "Haramgui," Egschiglen, Zazal: This would be that Mongolian throat singing I was mentioning before. I really love this stuff. Can't explain it. For me it like when I got into Gregorian chants in college. It's just a soothing sound.

12. "Jumping Jack Flash," Ananda Shankar, Ananda Shankar: This album came out in 1970. Anandar Shankar was much more interested in the whole American pop and psychedelic scene that his uncle Ravi, but he never really took off as his own man as it were. But this cut is kind of cool.

13. "Djam Leelii," Baaba Maal and Mansour Seck, Djam Leelii: Just in case you hadn't had enough, here's some more African guitar...this time from Senegal. I guess this is the way my tastes really runs in world music. I'm okay with that.

Click on Fela for the link.

This compilation released by Blue Note in 1992, and then again as a CD in 2001, makes a valiant attempt to gather together a fair sampling of jazz-funk of the 70s. There's some groovy stuff on this disc from Lou Donaldson, Bobby Hutcherson, Blue Mitchell and others. Grant Green gets most of the exposure here with three tracks to himself...as it freakin' should be. One of those tracks is Green's answer to Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man" entitled "Cantaloupe Woman." And then there's the cover of Sly Stone's "Family Affair." Awesome. Occasionally I will put this album on when I'm grading papers, and I find that I'm doing more pencil-tapping than I am grading. Like that's a crime. Hope you find this just as groovy as I do.