If there’s one thing we know about a number of us, there’s nothing we like better than being turned onto music from a foreign culture (and I don’t mean Canada or England, Townsmen mockcarr, andyr, chickenfrank, et al). If there’s something I’m even more sure of, there’s a larger number of us who shy away from anything that’s not rock ‘n roll, sung in English, etc. (And none of you is off the hook for your soft spot for show tunes!) Our latest Hear Factor collection is entitled Turning Congolese. I think the title is self-explanatory. I encourage you to download this zipped file, unzip it, and spend the next 3 days living with it. It may do you good. It may cause you psychic unrest. Whatever effect it has on you, we want to hear about it.
In particular, for this challenging mix, I summon mockcarr to listen to this disc, which was artfully designed to offend his sensibilities.
No sale, Mod.
my opinion is the opposite of the quote, “I don’t care what language opera is sung in, as long as I don’t understand it.”
I don’t care what accent rock and roll is sung in, as long as it’s English.
We didn’t fight Desert Storm so I could hear Chuck Berry sung in Farsi. There’s just no good translation for the word cheeseburgers.
I’m comfortable with my narrow mind; I rarely get lost in there.
It’s a little known fact that I kill to earn my living, and to help out the Congolese.
It’s just as I sensed, I’m not sensible enough to have sensibilities. It goes in Zaire and out the other. Don’t ask me to pick a rhumba from one to ten.
I didn’t hear the call until today, so I’ll have to go with my gut and say I don’t have a problem with most of this stuff. I listen to a lot of things that don’t rock, it’s more often the melding of certain styles WITH rock that depress me. And disco.
These tracks are a bit too repetitive for me, but very melodic. I hate to say it but I feel like having an enchilada after hearing the first tune. Actually, it’s much more tasteful than the mariachi style I’m thinking of, where the trumpets can be good, bad, and ugly. The guitar seems to use electricity and has a reasonable tone. There’s interesting rhythm going in #2. #3 is way too long and sounds too much like something David Byrne or Paul Simon would rip off, however. It feels religious somehow. As long as they’re not singing about worshipping Dane Cook, or something equally disagreeable, it’s fine.
#5 is jangley, I’m cool with that, although the effusion of words leaves me a bit uncomfortable, it sounds too personal without me knowing what it’s about.
#6 is good crooning, I like that the sax player doesn’t care about squeaking. This is better than what I’d expect from a French colony.That must have been some rebellion. More likely there’s a just a lot of crap going on, and music hasn’t been completely corrupted yet.
#7 Maybe it’s just the newness of the effect to me, but I’m liking this modern guitar use more than the traditional acoustic-fat-plucked-string effect.
#8, with all this ruggish harmony, YOU should be listening to it, Mod. Who needs a bass drum?
#9 sounds familiar stylistically, but happily the 100 dB bass drum throbbing out of the 80s Chevy frame is missing from the usual presentation in my old neighborhood.
#10 That guitar part sounds like the Meat Puppets! The rest doesn’t. That’s ok though, because they can sing.
I donno about this stuff. It’s not without its charms for sure, but this is not my cup of tea. I might be experiencing the same reaction that the Mod had when I gave him what I considered to be a stellar pre-rock mix a few years back. I can appreciate it on a sociological level but I don’t really like listening to it.
When I saw the title, I was hoping it was like that recent MOJO cd, Africa Rising. Some of that stuff really blew me away, particularly the songs by Tinariwen and Tony Allen. But that stuff was still rooted in western popular music. This “Turning Congolese” stuff is too ‘world beat” for my tastes.
I don’t have a map in front of me right now. I know Africa is a big continent and I shouldn’t assume that all music that comes from Africa should sound like the MOJO disc but the MOJO stuff sounded like I imagined/hoped African rock would.
As some of you may have guessed, this was my mix. For those who might want to follow up, here’s the track listing:
1. Kelya — African Jazz/Tabu Ley (African Pearls, Vol. 1: Rumba on the River Disc 1)
2. Boumamou Sili — Les Bantous De La Capitale (Wax d’Afrique Vol. 2 — Ambiance! Ambiance!)
3. Ane Ya – Mensy Nzizoa (Sound d’Afrique, Vol. 2: Soukous)
4. Est-ce que Oyebi — FRANCO ET TP OK JAZZ 67-68 (Franco, Franco 67 – 68)
5. Ngungi — Franco And Rochereau (Omona Wapi)
6. Ambiance Kalle Catho — African Jazz/Grand Kalle (African Pearls, Vol. 1: Rumba on the River Disc 1)
7. Exhibition Dechaud — Docteur Nico/Orchestra African Fiesta (Golden Afrique, Vol. 2 Disc 1)
8. Pele Odija — Mose Se ‘Fan Fan’ (Golden Afrique, Vol. 2 Disc 2)
9. Indépendance Cha Cha Cha — African Jazz/Joseph Kabasele (Golden Afrique, Vol. 2 Disc 1)
10. Yoyoyo Asi Kapela — Asi Kapela (Sound d’Afrique, Vol. 2: Soukous)
The Latin influence mockcarr hears is Cuban rather than Mexican. When Cuban music became popular in the 40s and 50s, it was disseminated worldwide, via Hollywood movies as well as records, and it took root in Africa. It’s been hypothesized that what we think of as Cuban is actually Afro-Cuban, so the Caribbean music Africans fell in love with was really theirs to start with. The various styles of African music that flowered in the 60s and 70s can be seen as the different national and ethnic cultures taking those Cuban sounds and mixing them with their own.
Obviously I love this stuff, most of all for how relaxed it is. On the first song, Kelya, listen to how languorously the sax and guitar chase each other around the rhythm section. I’ve got 100s of tracks of this, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything bad. Like Jamaica during the same time period, the place was just charmed. At its height rumba was THE most popular music all over sub-Saharan Africa.
Congo/Zaire is down in central Africa. Much of the African music we hear nowadays, like the stuff cdm heard on the MOJO compilations, is from northwest Africa — Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Gambia, etc. I prefer the more southerly stuff, and the styles on the western side of the continent — Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda — are cool too.