elcome to Stylus Magazine’s monthly world music column. We call it World Music 101 for one simple reason: we understand that world music is a tough genre to “get into”—and we’re constantly learning ourselves. So, instead of thinking of us as teachers, regard as classmates learning alongside you and bringing what we’ve found to a monthly study session. We hope you enjoy sitting in.


Gershon Kingsley is at the age where he just doesn’t give a fuck. And when you’re the 80-something composer of “Popcorn” and the “Baroque Hoedown" that scores Disney’s Main Street Electrical Parade, why should you? This is a guy who has a thick volume on his bookshelf entitled Everything I Know About Electronic Music with his name printed on the side as the author. If you open it up, you’ll find that every page is blank.

As far as I can tell, when Josh Kun and Roger Bennett went to Kingsley to ask if they could reissue his album, God Is a Moog, he first asked how they got a hold of it (Bennett relates that when Kingsley did call he didn’t know that the thing had ever been released). Then he asked them why in the hell they’d want to.

The album in question is described by the Reboot Stereophonic website as the transformation of a traditional Jewish Sabbath service into a Moog rock opera complete with an African-American choir. And if Kingsley hadn’t forgotten about the commission that he received for it in 1968 from Rabbi Charles Annes, he might’ve taken more than three days to write the whole thing. But he did. So he didn’t.

It’s an amazing story, but amazing stories seem to be the norm for Reboot Stereophonic, a non-profit record label begun in 2005. I asked Bennett to tell me why: “the four of us came together fused by a sense that music creates conversations otherwise impossible in daily life. Our goal is to incite a new conversation about the present by listening anew to the past.” A heady goal, surely, but with the label’s first three releases, they’ve been doing just that.

The first, Irving Fields’ Bagels and Bongos, is the re-mastered edition of a lounge classic that sold more than two million albums upon its initial release (according to Fields). Its fusion of Jewish melodies and Latin rhythms was perhaps just the sort of suburban-cool that listeners were looking for at the time. Today, it’s a curio, full of the “hybrid identities, eclectic communities, racial dialogue, and pioneering musical style” that Bennett calls the hallmark of the label.

The third, the Jewface compilation, was curated by Slate music critic Jody Rosen and may just be the most exceptional of the bunch. The music is exactly what the title suggests: 16 Jewish minstrelsy songs rescued from 78s and wax cylinders. Like the makeup utilized by Blackface performers, Jewish minstrels would often add putty to their nose and put on dirty overcoats to approximate “the look.” In a recent New York Times piece, Rosen said that the compilation is “like Hitler’s playlist, but it’s not, because it was actually Fanny Brice’s playlist.” Equally fascinating as it is frightening, Jewface uncovers a piece of American Jewish history that like so many other complex and nuanced ideas gets swept under the rug all too easily. As Bennett puts it, “This is music that forces listeners to ask themselves anew, who am I, what have I inherited, and what am I going to do about it?”

In other words, music that makes you give a fuck.
[Todd Burns]


Various Artists - Golden Afrique Vol.3
Network

Following widely acclaimed historical round-ups of West African (Vol.1) and Congolese (Vol.2) musical styles, this exemplary series now turns its attentions southwards. Disc One traces the development of South African music from 1939 to 1998, covering all its best-known genres: Mbube, Kwela, Kwaito, and Mbaquanga, a.k.a. “township jive.” The emphasis is on dance grooves rather than song structures, and although over half the tracks rely on the exact same ascending three-chord sequence, the defiantly joyous spirit of the apartheid-era “shebeens” is equally all-pervading. Disc Two, which splits equally between Zimbabwe and Zambia, is dominated by the sort of pealing, tumbling guitar lines which came to prominence in the mid ‘80s, via bands such as the Bhundu Boys. There’s less rawness and more fluidity, but the overall celebratory vibe is equally intoxicating.
[Mike Atkinson]

Various Artists - Rough Guide to the Music of South Africa
World Music Network

This Rough Guide does exactly what it says on the tin, speeding the listener on a whirlwind tour through the plentiful musical styles of the Rainbow Nation. The effect is predictably similar to any other breezily unattached voyeur’s voyage: pleasantly head-spun disorientation, a titillating-if-unchallenging palette of flavors scarcely remembered. Given the wealth of material to be excerpted, taking issue with the selection (No township jazz? No kwaito?) would be churlish.

Bowing its head to the scrupulously polite, encyclopedic political correctness of the New South Africa, or in a vain attempt to liven up an otherwise thoroughly inoffensive lineup, it includes “Waar’s My Pyp?” an Afrikaans-language song pseudonymously recorded by black reggae star Lucky Dube as “Oom Hansie” (Uncle Hansie), of the type lovingly known as “lekker boer techno.” The Rough Guide’s greatest weakness is its we-are-the-world piety; “Waar’s My Pyp?” is either the worst example or the exception that redeems the rest.
[Andrew Iliff]

Fanfare Ciocarlia - Queens and Kings
Asphalt Tango

Perhaps the most Western-friendly of the Balkan groups, Fanfare made their name on their 2005 album, Gili Garabdi, by covering the James Bond theme, “Caravan,” and a song called “Godzila.” The hook on Queens and Kings? The inclusion of more than two dozen Romany musicians from all over Europe. For the most part, it’s an incredibly smooth ride.

The immediate highlight of diversity is “Cuando tu volveras” and “Que Dolor,” which features the flamenco guitar and vocals of Kaloome expertly weaved into the mix. Their matched in energy by “Mig Mig,” Jony Iliev’s vocal turn on the album. Elsewhere, the ghost of the Shukar’s Collective’s electronic experiments are heard in “Duj Duj”—included in a far less hackneyed way, thank goodness. The production here is sharp and clear, but not glossy, making this a must-have for fans of gypsy—and a great primer for people buying this strictly based on the inclusion of the group’s cover of “Wild Thing” (you may remember it from Borat) tacked onto the end.
[Todd Burns]