Nordgrass: Frigg and "Grannen"

Bluegrass is one of those genres of music that, like funk, I feel right down to my bones. I think I read somewhere that genetics can play a part in how you relate to places and what you like and don't like. Or maybe I didn't. But I think that now. My example...I grew up in Northern California on the coast. My family has property inland in the Mendocino Range, and I always loved going out there and being among the mountains and the valleys. There are few things more peaceful for me than sitting under a tree on the top of a ridge and hearing the wind move through the branches of the trees above me.

In my 20s, when I was doing volunteer work for the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, I did some pre-scouting with the group for a community in Hazard, Kentucky in the center of the Appalachians. When I got there, I almost felt I was home. I thought it was because the Appalachians looked like the mountains in the Mendocino Range, but it was more than that. I almost felt like I identified with the people and the culture there also, including the music. I had a chance to do another year of volunteer service there, but decided against it because I had already done two years of volunteer service and felt like I needed to get on with my life. I now think that had I gone to live in Appalachia for a year, I might have stayed there.

Fast forward into my forties, when I discovered my birth family. I was adopted when I was two and I never had known who my birth family was. My biological mother's side of the family came from West Virginia in a region that is Appalachian. And then it hit me - that must have been the reason for why I felt such affinity for mountains and valleys, for bluegrass music, for folk music in general. Could it be that all of this is ingrained in my genetic makeup? I would ask some geneticist (if one ever reads this) to let me know if this is a valid theory or if any research has been done on genetics and place and genetics and culture. I know that genetic memory research has been done on genetics and language and genetics and trauma, but it seems that there is more to genetic memory than this.

Today's random tune is by a group that comes from a region that I have really no genetic affinity with but which I desperately want to see and whose folk music I like very much. Frigg is a Finnish-Norwegian folk band formed in 2002. Their members hail from the Kaustinen region of Finland and the Nord-Trøndelag region of Norway, and they play folk music from both of those regions as well as mixing in some Americana, particularly bluegrass (which is probably why I like them), and some Irish folk music as well. They are named after the Norse goddess of love and fertility, and have taken to calling their mix of Nordic folk music with other musical styles Nordgrass. Grannen is from their 2010 album of the same name.

Minimalism: Las Ultrasónicas and "Quiero Ser Tu Perra"

In the mid- to late-70s, there was a revolution in rock music. Too bad I missed it.

Now, just a warning. I'm not a music critic of any kind, and chances are that I don't know what I'm writing about. These are just my own musings and not some kind of cultural dissection that fully explains causes and consequences in music. I'm just an average Joe. And here I'm writing about the punk movement or at least my experience of it. The fact is that up to that point, rock music had been getting more and more complex and more ambitious. I can remember listening to the almost orchestral movements of the progressive rock bands, and the operatic goals of bands like The Who. Much of that kind of music stirred me, and therefore I wandered down those paths. Of course, there were some spectacular failures. For every "concept album" that worked there seemed to be one that didn't. But given that rock music was coming into its middle age by the late 70s, like all anyone that ages it had become more thoughtful and introspective. The giants of rock were trying to make put their stamp on the new classical music of the time and cement its respectability. Gone were the days of simple guitar riffs and chord changes with vocals layered on top.

Yet they weren't. A small but growing and sizable group of musicians decided to go the other way. They stripped rock music of all the baggage that had been added on to it...the complex chord changes, the literary allusions, the flowery fluffery, the operatic pretensions. Instead, they went back to three chords and vocals and, even better, added in a significant dosage of rage. Rage against what rock had become, as well as rage against the conditions that had been one of the original underpinnings of rock - social injustice, economic stagnation and inequality. Rock had started as rebellious dance music with Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, then had become a vehicle for protest in the 60s. When punk bands stripped off the ornamentation, they uncovered layers back to the original rebellion and they amped up the rage. In doing so, they made rock more minimalist but also truer to its roots in a way. Everything else was still there - dance (in free-for-alls at punk concerts), anger (in straight ahead, driving, distorted guitars and songs playing at intense speeds), rebellion (involving everything from style of music to style of clothes and hair), and protest. Punk became a music and a lifestyle, much as rock in the sixties had been music and lifestyle. It's just that punk hoped to save the essence of rock from itself.

It's only been lately, at a time when most people are well past their punk years, that I've taken initial forays into punk and I'm surprised that I like it. For one, I find that I can still touch on that rage I felt in the late 70s and early 80s and what I perceived were the injustices of the world - it's easy to take those things personally at a young age and I think punk, in its stripped down minimalism, must have felt pretty personal to young people who were into it. I also have discovered that punk was pretty egalitarian. Because it stripped rock to its essence, often three chords on a guitar, you didn't particularly have to be a good musician to play it. Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols supposedly was a very limited bassist. But he had charisma, which was important when you stripped down the music. Gender also didn't seem to matter so much, and I remember hearing of more women in punk than in other areas of rock - sure you had your Go-Gos and your Bangles, but you also had your Runaways and Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Plasmatics. And who can leave out Patti Smith, often called the godmother of punk? We found out from these bands that women could rage as much or even more than men, with a deeper well to dig from given gender inequalities.

I wish I hadn't missed it in its heyday, but I can appreciate it now looking back over the years. And all this is preamble to today's random tune from a girl-punk group out of Mexico City called Las Ultrasónicas. Formed by Jenny Bombo and Tere Farfissa in 1996, Las Ultrasónicas started out as a quintet playing in seedy Mexico City dives. They became a quartet in 1997 with the departure of Farfissa. They released their first album, Yo Fui Una Adolescente Terrosatánica, in 1999. The band broke up in 2000, but reformed in 2002 as a trio with the release of Ohh Síi, Más... Más!!! Besides Mexico, they have toured in the United States and Colombia. Quiero Ser Tu Perra is their cover of The Stooges' I Want To Be Your Dog and appeared on Yo Fui Una Adolescente Terrosatánica.

At the Movies: Charanga Cakewalk and "El Cine"

The title of today's random tune, El Cine, reminds me that I haven't been to a movie in a while. My wife and I used to go to at least one movie a week, but as our lives have gotten busier our movie watching has gotten more rare. Even with the advent of streaming video, we haven't really made a lot of time to see movies. It's gotten to the point that when Academy Award season rolls around, we usually have only seen one or two of the ten movies nominated for best picture. However, we do try to catch the live action and animated shorts - and I find that I really look forward to those. Just as the short story is an under-appreciated literary art form, the short film is not given its proper due, particularly in the artistry involved to present a full story in 5 to 25 minutes.

I am also woefully ignorant on Latin American cinema, even though I know that there are classic films from those regions. Some of the newer directors I know, such as Alfonso Cuarón, and some of the newer stars. But classic Latin American cinema is something that has eluded me. I am not proud of this - but it only points toward the necessity of me exploring these cultural art forms.

El Cine is by Charanga Cakewalk, which is the brainchild of Michael Ramos, a Latino Chicano Mexican who also describes himself as a citizen of the world. A once sideman and rocker who played with John Mellencamp, Paul Simon, Patty Griffin and others and was a sometime member of the BoDeans and The Rembrandts, he maintained a keen interest in the Latino music of his childhood. Ramos has made Charanga Cakewalk the leading proponent of a style called cumbia lounge. Within his musical landscapes, you might hear tejano, flamenco, merengue, salsa, garage rock, ska and reggaeton. Charanga Cakewalk has released three albums. El Cine is from his 2006 album Chicano Zen.

Gentrified: Capercaillie and "Waiting for the Wheel to Turn"

I first heard the word "gentrification" in the mid-eighties when I was doing volunteer work in the inner-city. At the time I thought that the term meant white people coming into black neighborhoods, buying up the real estate and forcing the original inhabitants out. I have learned that is only one possible outcome. Gentrification happens, of course, when any group of people with money comes in, buys up real estate and moves in, driving out the original inhabitants and changing the cultural character and flavor of the neighborhood. Given this definition, it is perfectly plausible that non-whites can gentrify non-white neighborhoods, and non-whites could even gentrify poor white neighborhoods. However, that doesn't happen very often in the United States, which is why gentrification has a just-below-the-surface ethnic and racial component. The main point is that people are forced out through the forces of capitalism and the very cultural underpinnings that made the neighborhood what it was is lost forever. Neighborhoods in northside Chicago are being gentrified by young, white people, and corporations gentrified Times Square. Brooklyn is being gentrified by people who can't afford to live in Manhattan, and San Francisco is being gentrified by waves of high paid tech workers.  Low income housing in New Orleans is torn down and replaced with high income apartments and condominiums.

Today's song, Waiting for the Wheel to Turn, references a similar process in the British Isles. The lyrics speak eloquently to this phenomena: 

Remember the Buachaille Mor
Reaching for the skies from the barren shores
Watching over the village of burns
And counting the days since the gael kept home

 Well, the stranger claims it now
Sitting like a king with his gold from the south
Don't you see the waves of wealth
Washing away the soul from the land?

It speaks to the loss of culture and tradition:

Yes, you're taking it all away
The music, the tongue and the old refrains
You're coming here to play
But you're pulling the roots from a dying age

It also relates this phenomenon to The Clearances, the Highland Clearances policies in the 18th and 19th centuries that allowed Scottish farmers to be forced off of their lands to make way for aristocratic sheepherding.  The original Clearances were government policies, but the latest waves of these types of things in the developed world are capitalism at work.

I am divided on whether this phenomenon is inevitable or even harmful.  I lament the losses that come with gentrification of any kind, and certainly people and cultures are hurt by it.  But I am also open to the fact that change happens and can lead to dynamism in decaying neighborhoods, just as new participants in things like arts, music and literature can provide bursts of creativity.

I'm glad therefore that groups like Capercaillie keep the old traditions alive while also giving them new relevance by infusing them with new styles and instrumentation. Capercaillie is a Scottish band founded in the Argyll region of Scotland in the early 1980s. Known for their mixing of traditional Gaelic tunes with modern recording techniques and instrumentation, Capercaillie started as a purely traditional band. In the 1990s, they began mix in funk bass lines, synthesizers and electric guitars into their repertoire of traditional tunes, but lately have been going back to more traditional instrumentation while retaining a light fusion feel to their music. In 1992, they recorded the first Scottish-Gaelic song to crack the UK Top 40. They have released eleven studio albums, four of which have made the UK Albums chart, and one live album. They also have two compilation albums and have performed on two soundtracks. Waiting for the Wheel to Turn can be found on their 1991 CD Delirium, on the remix album Get Out (1992), and on the 1998 compilation album Dusk Til Dawn. The version above is their original 1991 version and video, but if you want to hear their longer remix version I am posting it below.

Rockin' Newfies: Great Big Sea and "Fast As I Can"

In the late 1990s, I was very excited one evening. I had recently been turned on to a group called Great Big Sea, from Newfoundland in Canada, and I had learned a few days prior that they were going to be playing the House of Blues in New Orleans, where I was then living. I persuaded a few friends to go with me, including a guy from Ireland, a woman from England, and an Austrian friend. I told them about the band and how good they were. I had almost worn out my CD of Rant and Roar, their US-only compilation release, and now I was in the House of Blues with wife and friends and waiting for them to start. They came out and gave a great show, in my opinion, including their light-speed version of REM's End of the World. After it was over, I asked my friends what they thought, and to a person they said the band was terrible. They not only didn't like Great Big Sea, they hated them. I was thunderstruck, literally floored. They were all annoyed that I had dragged them to this concert And for a long time after I didn't share my musical interests with my friends again.

One thing about doing this daily random tune is that I once again can share my musical interests with others, but the nice thing about the Web is that people can decide whether or not to listen to a particular song. However, I notice that a huge sea change has happened in music sharing since I was younger. Back in the 70s and 80s we often shared mix tapes - cassette tapes where the recorded songs were an expression of a person's interest or what they thought was important. Nowadays, with the advent of the iPod and personal listening devices and cell phones, music has become a much more private pursuit. People make the equivalent of mix tapes for themselves by ordering their playlists and listen on their headphones. I've found also that people are less willing to venture into the unknown. As I have become more and more immersed in global music, I am astounded by the variety and the incredible musicianship outside of the United States, and yet getting many of my friends to even give a listen to a fantastic song from another country has been like pulling teeth. I'm not sure if it's related to the fact that the music isn't of the United States, or if it isn't sung in English, but I suspect the aversion goes deeper than that. Our electronic media, rather than encouraging community around particular things, actually sets us apart in a lot of tiny ways that in aggregation becomes very big and noticeable. I think music and the sharing of music is one of those casualties of our age. I may be wrong, and feel free to argue against my point, but that's how I feel at present.

Great Big Sea was formed in 1989 under the name Newfoundland Republican Army and has become known for its rock interpretations of Newfoundland folk songs drawing from the island's Irish, Scottish and Cornish heritage. Every year between 1996 and 2000 they won East Coast Music Association's Entertainers of the Year until they stopped submitting their name to allow other bands to compete. They have also been nominated several times for the Juno Awards, Canada's top music awards. They have released nine studio albums, three compilation albums, and three live albums. Fast As I Can is from their 1995 album Up, and is also included on their 1998 compilation CD Rant and Roar which was released only in the United States.

I'm going to trust that you won't hate them.

Wide World of Sport: Sportfreunde Stiller and "Ein Kompliment"

Today's random tune is by a German indie band named Sportfreunde Stiller. I was introduced to this band by a young German guy who was staying with Megan and me when a volunteer position that he had taken in El Paso didn't work out for him and he needed a place to crash while he looked for another position. He eventually ended up in New Orleans. We asked him to give us some ideas about German music that we could highlight on our show. Among the groups he suggested was this one.

The song is just what the name implies, a romantic compliment from one person to another. What makes it interesting is the imagery that takes it a little above the usual romantic pap that you find out there. "You are my chill-out area...my sweets department in the supermarket." You don't usually see such vivid imagery in these types of songs, and as a wannabe poet, I like such imagery.

Sportfreunde Stiller was founded in 1996 in Germering, region of Bavaria, Germany. They based their original name, Stiller, on the manager of their local football side. However, they had to change the name because a different band already owned the rights to the name, so they added Sportfreunde (friend in sports) as it is commonly used in names of sports teams in Germany. One of their songs, Independent, was used in the video game FIFA 2003. They are five time nominees for Best German Act at the MTV Europe Music Awards. They are also only the sixth German group to perform for the MTV Unplugged series. Ein Kompliment can be found on their 2009 CD Die Gute Seite. This version is from their 2009 MTV Unplugged appearance.

Surely It Is Not I: Los de Abajo and "Sr. Judas"

I'm getting this in just under the wire today. In case you're wondering about the post's title, it is a paraphrase of what Judas replied to Jesus when Jesus said "Tonight one of you will betray me." I'm not really a biblical scholar, so I probably don't have the words right.

Today's random song is from Mexico. Los de Abajo was founded in 1992 in Mexico City as a Latin ska group. Over time, their musical influences have become more inclusive of rock, reggae, salsa, Son Jarocho, banda sinoalense and cumbia. Liber Terán is their main vocalist and writes most of the songs. After releasing their first album independently, they were signed to David Byrne's Luaka Bop label and released their international debut, the eponymous Los de Abajo. Their followup album, Cybertropic Chilango Power, earned them a BBC Radio 3 World Music Award for the Americas. They have released eight albums and are noted supporters of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and have even featured Zapatista leader Commandanta Esther on one of their songs. Sr. Judas is from their 2002 CD Cybertropic Chilango Power.