Music Spectrum

Three-Chord Lectionary is a series of posts that connect songs with readings from Scripture, seeing how music can send us to the music of the Bible.

The Wailing Wall is multi-instrumentalist Jesse Rifkin together with a company of friends. Rifkin brings the East to his brand of rock ‘n’ roll. It’s Middle Eastern in the Jewish inspiration, faith, and tunings. It’s Near Eastern in the way Rifkin is enamored with Hinduism and Sufism, blending those sounds into the music as well. On top of this, Rifkin also counts Baroque and Renaissance church music as part of his inspirational canon.

The Low Hanging Fruit (2010) brings all of these inspirations together into spiritual tones and love poems that could easily fit into the band of brothers that is Half-handed Cloud, Sufjan Stevens, and Danielson.

The album opens with “Speak Not Its Name,” cracking the track with Rifkin in a chant-like a capella, with percussion slowly growing the tension of the song.

And I know there is light in each crack, in each corner
But I cling to the darkness, forever a mourner.

Rifkin’s song works from that place internally where you realize that God’s goodness is reaching out to find you, but you’d rather run from it. You don’t want to name it, you don’t want to look it in the eye, you don’t want to come face-to-face with it, but no matter what darkness you chase, the light of God finds you with grace, beauty, and love.

I could speak not its name but it still would define me.

“Speak Not Its Name” comes from a similar tension spoken in Psalm 139 which deals with that overwhelming sense of realizing how completely God knows us, how completely His light reaches into our lives.

Psalm 139 says:
O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
You perceive my thoughts from afar.

At first glance, Rifkin’s song appears in revolt against God’s light, saying: I could break down its walls but it still would confine me. Yet, this is exactly what Psalm 139 says: You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. The weight of God’s hand on our shoulder at first causes us to want to shake Him off and say, “Don’t touch me.”

But then we calm down—or perhaps better said, we are calmed by God. He reaches out continually with that light to reach into every corner in which we hide, reaches out until we realize that He comes in peace, comes with comfort and salvation and healing.

It’s not clear to me whether Rifkin ends the song with the same hope offered in Psalm 139. The psalm builds to a critical point when the writer, King David, turns from being horror-struck at the Lord’s knowledge to realizing its greatness and instead praises the Lord’s knowledge: I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful.

In contrast, Rifkin’s song builds in tension, the percussive, chanting nature of the song growing to a breaking point as he sings: And the mind tries to chisel, tries to crop, tries to shape it/But it’s there, oh, it’s there, and you cannot escape it. Leading to a chorus of wordless chanting that dies out to leave the tune to be plucked out on stringed instruments. The hope isn’t necessarily there in Rifkin’s song, leaving you still trying to escape this light that has come into your darkness.

For the note of hope, you need to couple “Speak Not Its Name” with the following track, “Bones Become Rainbows,” which points to a resurrection-type hope both in its musical tone and lyric. It’s a tribal song of praise, raising the eyes to the skies that deliver us from the darkness that would try to overwhelm the light. Here is the hope of Psalm 139 ready for us to hear, sing, and rejoice.

And on the day that I die and my spine sprouts its wings
And I’m freed of the burden that my frail body brings
And step out of my skin that so callously clings
As my bones become rainbows and my skin is melting away
So this is my prayer now, please bring me near.

The dervishes spin, the music reaches a certain frenzy, and the rejoicing of heaven begins. His poetry may not necessarily match the imagery and understanding of Christian theology, but there’s a way in which Rifkin’s song are conversing with the Psalms, conversing with believers in Christ, conversing with our hope that God will deliver us from this world of darkness and bring us to a new world where our old trappings of sin and death will melt away.

The Wailing Wall
JDub Records

In honor of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s recent election, the first such democratic election in 45 years (more info at the United Nations site), it’s a good time to go get yourself a copy of Congotronics 2: Buzz’n’Rumble from the Urb’n’Jungle. A compilation of artists from Congo that layer traditional rhythms and instruments on top of electric guitars and Hip Hop-like effects, Congotronics is at once foreign to Western ears but also familiar to anyone used to techno/electronic music’s repetitive patterns.

Thankfully Congotronics includes some beautiful edited videos of six songs that help reveal what’s going on in these mysterious sounds. The DVD contextualizes the music and instruments, the bands and the people, the traditions and the modern environment of the Congolese. There you can see the Kasai Allstars in traditional tribal dress, playing many traditional instruments, but also electrified with mics and amps. On the song by Sobanza Mimansia, you get a look at an electrified likembe. As you watch the people dancing on many of the videos, you’ll find yourself amazed at the different sense of rhythm found in the tribal patterns but then also see the similarities to what you see on a Western dance floor.

May Congotronics and other projects like this increase our awareness of the Congo, their reforms, the hope for increased prosperity, and a culture that is retaining its own style even while the people sip on Coca-Colas.

Thanks to Crammed Discs and Rykodisc for the review CD/DVD.

Vinicius Cantuaria lands among the World Folk section of the Spectrum much for the same reason Pierre Bensusan does. Both guitarists explore jazz territories—Bensusan in the more traditionally jazz scating form and Cantuaria in the jazzy bossa nova. That’s jazz, but both men open up a portal to another part of the world—Bensusan’s France and Europe and Cantuaria’s Brazil and South America. Listening to Cantuaria’s Silva, you wander the Brazilian streets of his music; it’s an emotive travelogue.

With apologies to my South American and European readers, I realize that labeling Cantuaria and Bensusan as World Music is completely U.S.-centric. Yet, there’s a celebration here, as well, in recognizing that Cantuaria isn’t just reproducing American jazz guitar. There’s plenty of non-U.S. bands trying to sound American (or U.S. bands trying to sound like British bands). Mostly those artists remain less than newsworthy. Cantuaria is newsworthy because he brings jazz strains to music that sounds of his home country, his travels, and his life in the Southern Hemisphere. He brings those sounds from there to wherever you are. (In fact, having moved to New York in the 90’s and recorded Silva in Brooklyn, Cantuaria really is bringing that Brazilian sound from Brazil to New York, then back to Brazil, and finally to your part of the world).

The most fun track is “The Bridge,” which swings and grooves a bossa nova beat even while singing about just how to define bossa nova. Cantuaria says, “Bossa nova is samba,” or perhaps it is Jobim. It seems the “new trend” could be something that’s really old, coming from many different places around the world. Bossa nova is World Folk music, you see, world folk music that gets the night dancing.

Thank you to Vinicius Cantuaria and Rykodisc for the review copy.

This is a post for last weekend, coming in late partly due to the fact that my wife and I were out of town for a couple of days, camping at Devil’s Lake State Park in Barboo, Wisconsin (not far from Madison and Wisconsin Dells). Not surprisingly then, this post is inspired by our experience on our trip.

We decided on Friday afternoon to head back into civilization and go see a movie. We saw the Coen’s brothers’ newest, The Ladykillers. Don’t listen to the reviews; this is another classic from the Coens, reinterpreting an old film and bringing their over-the-top charm to it. Irma P. Hall is incredible, and the music is outstanding. This soundtrack hopefully will generate as much interest as O Brother, Where Art Thou?

However, we saw the movie at a fairly new theater that is in Wisconsin Dells, the Disneyland of the Midwest. The theater is part of a new resort complex called the Kalahari. It features hundreds of hotel rooms and suites, a huge conference center, a wildlife entertainment park, and both indoor and outdoor waterparks. The entire theme of the resort is Africa. Yes, the theme is that general, claiming to provide a “rich educational experience” and “an authentic African theme.”

Well, there are pictures of Africa. Those I suppose are authentic. But really, we found that the resort has simply renamed things with African sounding names, but there’s really no sense of these African names meaning something outside of kitsch. There’s the Kenyan Room and the Zimbabwe Zipper (a water ride). All of the place names come out mixed up together, as if the large continent of Africa is homogeneous.

The resort is striving for authenticity, yet, there’s no Sudanese Civil War Game Room or an AIDS Epidemic Fantasy Suite. I also looked for The Heart of Darkness Reality Ride, but I’m not sure it has been built yet. Plus one of the restaurants can only hope to appeal to diners by being the place where “Italy meets Africa.” Apparently, African cuisine wouldn’t attract enough customers, so they had to go with good, old spaghetti.

This brought us back to the car to return to our campsite. I reached into the console and pulled out the album, African Groove, from Putumayo. Here was the authentic collection of African music that countered all of the Kalahari Resort’s attempts at giving me that rich, educational experience. Putumayo World Music is great at putting together compilation CDs of music from many different genres, cultures, and places around the globe.

While African Groove has the sounds characteristic of African music—beats, languages, and structures, it also shows that Africa is a contempoary continent. We run the risk of expecting that Africa is still the Africa that early white explorers found. Yet, this collection of music is electronica and hip-hop, contemporary music that bridges both traditional tribal rhythms with modern music.

Additionally, while the title of the album is rather ambitious, to present an entire continent (would we accept North American Groove as an actual sound to be collected in one album), it does present the artists as actually being from different countries—Mali, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Senegal, South Africa. This isn’t the blender effect of the Kalahari Resort; this is music from multiple corners of the continent, from multiple perspectives.

Putumayo gives us the chance to hear this music that would otherwise be difficult to find. I’m not sure that many of these artists, Issa Bagayogo, Hardstone, Madeka, or Julien Jacob, could be found in your local record store. This album makes me want to find African radio stations over the Internet to hear what kinds of music is climbing the charts in various cities.

For now, this album occupies the World Rock section of the Spectrum which is a catch-all (like World Folk). That’s way too simplistic, and counter to everything I just said. However, it is kind of a temporary holding area until I see of what world music I start to own multiple albums. Soon there could be an African Rock section, because African Groove makes me really interested in expanding my collection to include more of that beautifully rich continent.

Our next CD giveaway at Music Spectrum comes a long way. It is a sampler of La Talvera, a traditional roots band from the northern Midi-Pyrenean region of France. Based out of CORDAE, Occitan Research Centre for Ethnographic Resources Activities, La Talvera is the house band for education, street parties, entertainment, and continuation of the Occitan/Provencal culture.

The music, language, and culture crosses borders encompassing southeast France; Pyrenean Catalonia, Spain; and in northwest Italy. See infoplease.

La Talvera’s album, Pampaligossa, (from which most of the tracks on the sampler are taken), is a exciting mix of traditional songs and instruments with new music and instruments/sounds. Much of the album makes you feel as if you are at CORDAE, taking in a cultural education experience. Yet, you could also be in a small farmhouse or a small bar, with the band gathered in the corner, others joining in on a chorus or two.

Instrumentation marks this clearly as World Folk (from an American perspective, of course). Bagpipes, diatonic accordion, reed-flute, oboe, and many different percussion instruments. Vocalization also takes you into a new world musically. The lyrics are in Langue d’Orc (Occitan), but also draw in whistle-languages and other vocal sounds.

This is an enjoyable way to discover World Folk. It makes me want to fly to Paris, rent a car, roll down the windows, crank La Talvera on the radio, and head south to the Pyrenees.

The first person to email me was Alison, a high school teacher in Valders, WI. She receives a 6-track sampler CD from La Talvera. Thanks to La Talvera and CORDAE. You can learn more at www.talvera.org.

Thanks to fRoots magazine which featured a track on their sampler CD recently. Check out fRoots, a world music magazine, at www.frootsmag.com.

Pampaligossa will soon be available through Roots Music.

Where do you put Tom Waits? In the Music Spectrum, who else sounds like Tom Waits? No one has such a gravely, garbled voice. No one really has such strange tales. Tom Waits is like gothic circus train music. That’s a category that will never have anyone else in it. He is like a miner’s musician, the whole band following the workers into the dark hole in the earth. (OK, I might be influenced in thinking about mines because of Waits’ contribution to the Disney tribute album, Stay Awake, on which Waits contributed a stirring version of “Heigh Ho (The Dwarf’s Marching Song)”).

But really, with that pulsing rhythm, the China boy/bell in the percussion, you can imagine a circus train going past as Tom Waits narrates, telling the stories of the circus workers. Long time ago I had a copy of Rain Dogs on a cassette tape that I either lost or—geez, really?—sold for a pittance when I needed some cash. Why would I ever sell Tom Waits? I think I was stuck in a period of not recognizing the beauty of his work. ‘Cause, you know, that on first listen, there’s not always a lot to sing along with, this isn’t danceable really, this is music for a dark room where everyone is drinking whiskey and absorbed completely in the world and thoughts of the bard holding forth.

So I was “Tom Waits-less” for many years, always remembering though that there was truly something special about that music. Then there was a track from his album Blood Money on the Uncut sampler “Best of 2002.” Then the Blind Boys of Alabama had Waits join them for “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” the title track of the 2003 Christmas album. Then I knew—it was time for the Spectrum to have some Tom Waits in it.

Thanks to my brother-in-law, Jamie, I got the 1988 live album, Big Time, for Christmas. A great collection of early favorites recorded during a series of concerts, this was a good way to kick off getting some Tom Waits into my collection.

But what to do with it? Where it would ever fit? Create a Circus Train Music section? Create a Miner’s Worksong section? Where would it fit? I looked at my current categories, scanning them while listening to the album. I jumped back and forth from Jazz-influence Rock (for his use of horns, sort of scat singing, and jazzy/bluesy rhythms) and American Folk (because Waits really is a singer/songwriter telling us his stories). Neither of those seemed right, though.

Then while listening to “Clap Hands,” I decided to yes, create a new category, but maybe one that would include others later on. World Folk-influenced Rock. The rhythms come from so many different places in the world—blues, jazz, folk, rock, samba, worksongs, Western. This new category would acknowledge Waits’ eclectic sound. Of course, I may always be tempted to call it the Circus Train/Miner’s Worksong category.

For now, I’m going to put Tom Waits on the shelf just after Full Confession 3, a World Folk sampler from Six Degrees Records and just before cities 97 sampler, a set of live tracks from a Minneapolis radio station, an album that begins the American Band Rock category. I’ll wait for the day when they release the Big Time film on video or DVD again (soon, please!). I’ll put Tom Waits in the CD player, and be transported to a place of dark apartments, dark tunnels, dark people, but with a light shining out saying that there’s some hope in the midst of our dark life. “The Gospel in Tom Waits,” that’ll have to be a discussion for another day.