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CD Review
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Whole Earth, CD Review >>
Nonesuch Explorer Series
Various Artists
In the late '60s, when the Elektra label began to have successes with folk singers, it branched out, licensing music from Europe. A big breakthrough at the time, reduction in size of recording equipment, allowed musicologists to go into the field with portable tape recorders weighing only 70 pounds (the record cutting machines they had been using weighed 200 pounds).
When David Lewiston returned from Bali with the incredible Music from the Morning of the World tapes, the Nonesuch label was born. Many of us growing up then fell in love with the nonesuch Explorer records, out inauguration into world music.
Now Nonesuch is beginning to reissue all ninety-two recordings on budget-priced CDs, starting with the thirteen volumes of African music (plus a sampler of selections from them). In January 2003 they will reissue the ten classic Indonesian albums from Bali and Java.
Originally released between 1969 and 1983 some of the thirteen African albums have become classics. Escalay (The Water Wheel), by Nubian Hamza El Din, and Dumi Maraire's The African Mbira are eternally great recordings. David Fanshawe's Witchcraft and Ritual Music, recorded in Kenya and Tanzania, caught the echoes of a culture now all but extinct. Nonesuch has retained the orignal liner notes, including remarks like this for a classic cut, "Take me back to Mabayi," on Burundi:
Am amiable old man from Gahabura sings, accompanying himself on teh inanga. He dreams of returning to the places of his happy youth. "Take me back to Mabayi, where there are plenty of women." Pieces like this are usually sung in the moonlight, and many musicians have been annoyed when asked to perform by day in order to allow their songs to be taped.
The eight-stringed zither on which the old geezer accompanies himself has a really funky tone; he adds mouth percussion between stanzas. I've played this in a set with James Brown, and it works! 12/01/02
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