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Around the World with Nonesuch's Explorer Series
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The Absolute Sound , Around the World with Nonesuch's Explorer Series >>
What Alan Lomax’s field recordings are to blues, what Harry Smith’s anthology of 1920s and ’30s mountain-soul recordings is to folk, Nonesuch Records’ 92-volume Explorer Series is to world music. Initially released between 1967 and 1984, the entire series is being reissued incrementally on CD through February 2005, with thirteen African discs leading the way. The sheer volume of the series is a daunting challenge for any novice listener. But in its breathtaking scope, scrupulous (if sometimes quaintly understated) annotation, and remarkable fidelity, the Nonesuch series also provides the best overview of world music ever attempted. It is ethnic music uncompromised by the Western influence that would creep into later domestic releases of world artists—which is not to say it’s for scholars or musicologists only. Long before “world music” became a marketing catch phrase, the Explorer Series redefined the ethnic sounds of Africa, Indonesia, Asia, Latin America, and other far-flung locales as worthy of more than just specialist interest—the province of academics and librarians—as music that could, if presented with the proper attention to sonics, bend the ears and blow the minds of even devoted fans of Western music. Recorded with battery-powered machines in their natural environments, the musicians on these discs are heard with a stirring immediacy that had an instant impact on the West, as rock and jazz musicians of the late ’60s began exploring exotic instruments and non-Western styles with greater fervor and frequency.
With the pleasure principle as guiding force, the Nonesuch Africa series runs the gamut of the continent’s sound field, from the symphony of hippos, jackals, and wildebeests documented on Sounds of the Jungle, Plain & Bush to the sophisticated big-band arrangements heard by way of Ghana on High-Life and Other Popular Music. The latter is perhaps the best introduction for novices, with the saxophones, guitars, and vibes of Saka Acquaye’s African Ensemble floating breezy melodies over simmering percussion. This is good-time dance music steeped in jazz and swing, which merged with the local idioms to create what would become the modern musical language of most of West Africa, starting in the 1940s. But it also veers into more challenging terrain, with an impressionistic piece evoking a day in the life of an African forest. The recording quality is superb, the band captured in real time while running through its set in a New York studio. It’s not a great leap from here to the orchestral African dance music of Nigeria’s King Sunny Ade, who has frequently toured the U.S. since the ’80s.
In contrast, Ancient Ceremonies, Dance Music & Songs explores centuries-old styles in Ghana, with interwoven rhythm patterns on hand drums and other percussion; voices trace call-and-response patterns, and the rattles are so closely miked on “Ahanta Chanti” that the effect can be jarring. The listener eavesdrops on a jam session, the musicians conversing as they thunder away on “Donno Drummers.” Most affecting is “Marilli,” a remarkable a cappella performance in which a girl manipulates her voice to create the illusion of two or even three vocalists singing at once.
Shona Mbira Music, from Zimbabwe, radiates raw power; the handclapping and foot stomping on “Nyamaropa Yekutanga” sound like firecrackers exploding. Throughout the recording, vocalists play with timbre and tone in virtuoso outbursts, attacking the grooves from every possible angle—moaning, bellowing, chanting, even whistling. The voices are goaded by mbiras (thumb pianos) that buzz inside large gourd resonators. These reverberations, echo-effects, and drones make the recording sound positively post-modern, if not psychedelic—fans of Roky Erickson, circa his pioneering Texas acid-rock band the 13th Floor Elevators, will likely recognize kindred spirits.
The drone dominates the music of Hamza El Din, a master of the oud, a stringed instrument that is central to Arabic classical music and the centerpiece of Escalay (the Water Wheel). On the title composition, El Din evokes the labors of a boy and his team of oxen, as they turn large wooden water wheels in 140-degree heat along the banks of the Nile. The 21-minute epic moves through the day, the boy humming along with the turning of the wooden gears, achieving a trance-like state that pulls him through his labor. El Din’s voice and oud weave several melodic and rhythmic patterns into a fugue of hypnotic intensity.
In contrast, there’s a party bursting within the staidly titled East Africa: Ceremonial & Folk Music. These field recordings from villages in Uganda to Tanzania veer from the unbridled “Acholi Bwala Dance,” which suggests a rave in full swing, complete with whistling celebrants, to the urgent chanting of “Samburu Warriors’ Initiation,” a drug-fueled ritual about the passage into manhood. Vocal interplay dominates, but the one exception, “Alular Horns,” is a doozy: a flurry of modal-jazz harmonics that the Art Ensemble of Chicago might envy.
How peculiar then to note that one foray into ethno-musicology that predated the Nonesuch Explorer series was dubbed Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, implying a musty crudeness. Much of the music on Nonesuch’s Africa discs is anything but. These performances hold up as well or better than the Western pop and rock recordings of the era, and their spirit can be detected in today’s best-selling jam bands, the Mississippi Hill country blues, and the sound experiments of countless samplers and electronic-music innovators. Decades after their initial release, these discs remain a window into a world of sound that continues to orbit and enlighten our own. Greg Kot 07/01/03
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