MUSIC

Huayno has its roots in the Andes during the colonial era, when indigenous peoples began to blend their music with influences brought by European settlers. During this process the Spanish guitar naturally became very prevalent, incorporating the tunings, finger-style and rhythms of the traditional Andean harp along with it.

The late Alberto Juscamaita Gastelú, known as Raktako, was a renowned guitarist, composer and mentor to generations of guitarists from his home in Ayacucho, southern Peruvian Andes. His unique style also blended techniques from the Spanish lute and other instruments brought by colonisers, such as the violin and accordion. For over a century, Raktako preserved Ayacucho's musical traditions and the Andean guitar form.

In 2022, the last disciple of Raktako, Gustavo Yashimura, shared with Sound of the Andes' Hánkel Bellido a series of astonishing home recordings made by Raktako between approximately 1930 and 1940. These recordings, made with the sparsest of equipment, had never been published before and represent an invaluable cultural treasure. The guitarist, who lived for over 100 years and passed away in 2023, had been largely forgotten until recently, when the Ministry of Culture of Peru officially recognised him as Meritorious Personality of Culture. His legacy, which includes a profound influence on Peruvian music, especially the Ayacucho guitar tradition, is finally being acknowledged.

Rare documentation of Afro-Pacific funerary ceremonies recorded in 2023 - not solemn, or Frank Sinatra, but heartical, rousing chants, songs and drums to raise the spirits and send brethren into other dimensions. Proper send-offs. "The gualíes, alabaos and levantamientos de tumba are burial rites typical of the Afro-Colombian Pacific communities. The rituals are performed to accompany the dead and their relatives when a member of the community dies, helping the deceased children (gualíes) or adults (alabaos and levantamientos de tumba) in the passage of their souls to eternity. The main objective of these practices is to alleviate and help in the management of grief related to death, based on acts of solidarity that allow us to reaffirm ourselves as communities and unite among family members, friends, neighbours and in general with all those who participate.For the Afro-descendant communities, death is a gateway to the other world, a place where the spirits, our ancestors, are present. We understand death as part of life itself and a necessary step "to enjoy the eternal presence of the Lord". For many of us, there is no doubt that there is a relationship between the living and the dead that does not end with the death of the person, but is simply transformed. Among the Afro communities of Medio San Juan, death means reunion with the Creator, triumph over sin. The Chocoan researcher Ana Gilma Ayala sums the alabaos as a way of "accompanying not only the mourners but also the deceased. For us, in our worldview, there is the idea and it is very African - that there is a road to the afterlife, a road on which the deceased needs accompaniment. So one way of accompanying them is through prayers and songs" According to Father Gonzalo Torres, the idea of links between the living and the dead is linked to our African heritage: "these manifestations are based on the idea of the African muntú, of the large extended family, which is not only lived here but is also transferred to the afterlife. And those who leave remain waiting for the one who stays. And for the same reason you always have to say goodbye to them rather than mourn them - although at some point you also mourn them, you first say goodbye to them so that they can leave peacefully, so that they can rest, so that they can wait for you in peace and not disturb the community" Thus, understanding that death is a step, the journey of a path towards the next life, preparation and accompaniment are necessary. The passage to the afterlife lasts several days beginning on the day of death, when the soul leaves the physical body, and ending nine days later when the soul is ready to leave this world. That is why the performance of each of these rites, the gualí for a child, and the wake, the novena and the raising of the grave or completion of the novena for an adult, are so important for us, as it is our way of saying goodbye and interceding before God for the souls of those who have passed away."

'Sweet England' along with its sister album 'False True Lovers', was recorded in the spring of 1958 when I was twenty-two years old. I had been living for the previous two years in London with Alan Lomax, the American folklorist, working for him as editorial assistant on his book The Folk Songs of North America and on his field recordings from America, Great Britain, Italy and Spain. The tracks that make up these two albums were recorded by Peter Kennedy and Alan in two days at Peter's home 'studio' in Belsize Park. English traditional music, at its best, expresses and provides everything in song that I need and feel, both musically and emotionally. Sweet England represents the first shaky steps of a journey that I have been on all my life, and that, happily, I still am." (shirley collins)

This is the fourth volume in World Arbiter's Japanese Traditional Music series. The World Arbiter label presents 1941 recordings of the Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai -- masters of the shamisen. An extensive anthology of traditional Japanese music was created sometime around 1941-1942 by the Kokusai Bunka Shinkôkai (KBS), International Organization for the Promotion of Culture. KBS was established under the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1934 for cultural exchange between Japan and foreign countries, representing genres such as gagaku (court music), shômyô (Buddhist chants), nô (Noh medieval theater play), heikyoku (biwa-lute narratives of battles), shakuhachi (bamboo flute music), koto (long zither music), shamisen (three-stringed lute music), sairei bayashi (instrumental music for folk festivals), komori-uta (cradle songs, lullabies), warabe-uta (children songs), and riyou (min'you) (folk songs). Considering that 1941-1942 was a most daunting time for Japan's economy and international relationships with Asian and Western countries, it is remarkable that this excellent anthology of Japanese music was ever completed and published, as it contains judiciously selected pieces from various genres performed by top-level artists at that time. The KBS' recording project is of unique historical importance and culturally valuable as a document of musical practices in traditional Japanese genres during the wartime. Few copies of this collection exist in Japan. This CD restoration is taken from a set originally belonging to Donald Richie, a writer and scholar on Japanese culture (particularly on Japanese cinema), who had given it to Ms. Beate Sirota Gordon, known for her great contribution to the establishment of Japan's Constitution during the period of U.S. occupation after WWII. Gordon's father, Leo Sirota, a piano pupil of Busoni's, fostered many excellent Japanese pianists at the Tokyo Ongaku Gakko (Academy of Music, forerunner of present-day Music Department of Tokyo National University of The Arts) during 1928-1945. Shamisen, a three stringed lute, is said to have been imported from China through Okinawa into mainland Japan (Sakai, Osaka) in the latter half of the 16th century. It began to accompany popular songs and contributed in bringing about a variety of genres of shamisen music in the early 17th century. In the late Edo period (early 19th century), small-scale shamisen vocal genres such as ogie-bushi, hauta, utazawa, and kouta were performed by geisha in ozashiki chambers. This disc includes the shamisen music enjoyed in ozashiki. Jiuta music is mainly performed in houses or ozashiki chamber in the Kansai area and said to be the oldest shamisen music genre, born soon after the instrument's arrival in Japan. Kumiuta (combined pre-existent songs) music is also heard on this disc. Full descriptions are included in a 36-page booklet in English and Japanese.

Indonesian duo KUNTARI make music that's so distinctive, they had to devise their own genre: primal-core. On 'MUTU BETON', multi-instrumentalist Tesla Manaf and percussionist Rio Abror dialog with both history and their tropical surroundings in Bandung, West Java's mountainous capital. Using the cornet and hulusi, a free reed instrument made from a bottle gourd and bamboo pipes, Manaf echoes the bellows of local elephants, orangutans and rhinos, grazing Abror's ancestral Indonesian rhythms with potent overdriven riffs and evocative microtonal chimes. It's music that's profoundly atmospheric and simultaneously raw, recorded live to fully encapsulate the dynamic and deeply human interaction between the two seasoned players. There are elements of sludge metal, noise and post-hardcore, references to traditional folk music and jazz, and gestures towards sound art, 20th century minimalism and dark ambient, but what KUNTARI do is completely idiosyncratic - it's hardly surprising it needed a similarly unique categorization.

Manaf started KUNTARI as a solo project, debuting in 2020 with 'Black Shirt Attracts More Feather' and animating his nimble instrumental improvisations with bold electronic processes and booming synthetic drums. And by the time he recorded 2022's acclaimed 'Last Boy Picked', his approach had evolved significantly; prioritizing organic sounds, he played prepared cornet and piano, bringing in additional percussionists to help devise a ritualistic rhythm section. Abror was one of those performers, and ended up sticking around, playing on 2023's furious 'LARYNX/STRIDULA', the stylistic precursor for 'MUTU BETON'. At this stage, the duo have racked up a litany of accolades and collaborated with a spectrum of like-minded artists, from noise deity Keiji Haino to fellow Indonesian free-thinker Rully Shabara, who's best known for his work with Senyawa and avant-garde supergroup OSMIUM. 'MUTU BETON' plays like a lap of honor, showcasing their most kinetic and most feral recordings to date.

On 'Parai', a two-part composition made for Singapore-based artist Priyageetha Dia's multimedia installation LAMENT H.E.A.T, KUNTARI surround loose, rattling polyrhythms with blood-curdling, animalistic calls and industrial strength chugs from Manaf's prepared guitar. The artwork honors indentured laborers forced to extract rubber in Southeast Asia, and KUNTARI's response is an incisive critique of colonialism, celebrating the region's ancient rhythmic forms and sharpening their edges as they barrel into the future. Upsetting the logic of academic American minimalism, KUNTARI disrupt winding Reichian xylophone, glockenspiel and marimba repetitions on 'Kerak Terusi', wielding swinging ceremonial thuds from Manaf's Rebana, a cow skin drum that often accompanies Indonesian Islamic rituals.

They confront local sonorities even more directly on 'Miamch', a commission the duo made for Yogyakarta's Festival Kebudayaan, dueling on saron, a single-octave metallophone, and a Javanese gamelan set, and don't just follow the expected path. The familiarity is soon replaced with eccentricity as eerie resonances and reverberations sweep across the rhythmelodic patterns. Rough-edged technoid patterns are bent into new shapes on the abrasive 'Paniscus', and on 'Bessing', KUNTARI do their best to recreate the singular atmosphere of a local trance ritual, interrupting howling spirit voices and jangling chimes with blackened, grindcore-inspired riffs. KUNTARI surpass even their own high standards with 'MUTU BETON', folding history and geography in on itself and suggesting a trailblazing Indonesian cultural movement that's not restricted by highbrow Western conventions. It's not just automation and technology that drives progression, it's interaction and observation. And there's nothing more primal, or revolutionary, than that.

「ヴァシュティ・バニヤンを例に出したくなる英国自主フォークのような質感の琴とハープのアンサンブルに伝統的な歌唱法による自作自演の歌、エレガントな笙のドローンが重なる、信じられない和洋の折衷。「西洋化」「近代化」「ポップス化」「洗練」という言葉は決して雑に扱うべきではないが、この雨田光平の「新春譜」は伝統・土着と西洋音楽それぞれへの距離の取り方において、考えうる最高レベルの古今東西融和の成功例であり、我が国にも「パッタナー」（※タイ語で変革、発展の意）が在ったことを示す証拠となる1曲だ。あと数年後には「日本のポップス史」を扱う本の第一章にはこの曲の記述が載ることになるだろう。つうか載ってるべきでしょう！」（俚謡山脈）

「新春早々、実は食えないニセのおせち料理を食わされった！って悪夢が満載です！！ …でもオイシイでしたね！」（中原昌也）

「とても昭和30年に作曲された作品とは思えない。新春のヒリッと張り詰めた清らかな凛とした空気の中を、柔らかにほぐされ、ゆっくりと呼吸しながら、その瑞々しさを少しずつ身体に浸透させながら、身を清めてじっくりと浄化されるかのような、そんな音の処方箋的メディテーショナルな響きと心地よさに完全に魅了されてしまった。めくるめくミュージックコンクレート的な場面展開ストーリーテリング、エレクトロニクス・ダウンテンポ・アブストラクト・ダビーなSUGAI KENによる伝統への愛情伝わる和イマジナリー・コズミックなリワークとの対比も非常に興味深く面白い。」（COMPUMA）

EM Record's release of little known koto auteur Kōhei Amada continues the label's tireless mapping of multi-hued human expression, sitting outside genre convention and confusing record store clerks everywhere. "Shinshunfu" is sectioned into two parts: a more recognizable duet between koto and Irish harp, and a complete 180 into an elongated vocal piece repellent with droning shō and taiko drum bass hits. This concoction brings up familiar scents: Lou Harrison's small ensemble harp pieces, or a Japanese recasting of the Medieval troubadour songs performed by transcultural-minded early music groups like Studio der frühen Musik or Hespèrion XXI. Yet these comparisons are merely abstract, "Shinshunfu" exists at a crossroads, a form both distinctly Japanese and distinctly "other", a complex blend of folk strains that is deep with emotional resonance and hard to place even for aficionados of Japanese traditional music.

Sugai Ken's rework renders the source material almost unrecognizable, pushing even further in the non-deterministic, GRM-like meta-concrète direction of his recent work, jump-cutting in high definition between synthetic birdsong, haunted vocoded voice and arresting, back-of-the-head foley. Of "Shinshunfu", only the drone of the shō and the occasional taiko hit appear in plain view. The exploration sits comfortably in the idiosyncratic sound world that Ken has been prolifically constructing for himself in the last few years (what he has come to call "Japanese electronic-folklore"), just as brilliant as one would expect. (Spencer Doran/Visible Cloaks)

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「考えうる最高レベルの古今東西融和」（俚謡山脈）を人知れず成し遂げていた幻の傑作であり、現代のアーティストや作家達を惹き付けてやまない秘曲、京極流箏曲「新春譜」。作者、雨田光平の貴重な自演と電子音楽の名工、SUGAI KENによるリワークをカップリングしてお届けする必殺の1枚。

＜京極流＞は明治に創設された箏曲の流派であり、その二代宗家である雨田光平は福井県生まれの彫刻家／画家／作曲家で、日本に本格のハープ奏法（注記）を持ち帰ったハープ奏者でもある。京極流は箏曲界のスーパースター、宮城道雄らの「新日本音楽」に先立ち（※雨田と宮城は親交が深かった）、黛敏朗、諸井誠、武満徹らが台頭するよりも前、歌唱と演奏の両方で古今東西の均整の取れた合体に成功していた驚くべき例で、誤解を恐れず字義のまま言えば日本式＜シンガー・ソングライター＞の始原といえる。

この「新春譜」は画家・青木繁の描いた古の神々のイメージを創作源に、雨田が昭和30年頃に作曲し、京極流箏曲が福井県無形文化財に指定された後、昭和45年に出版した自主制作LP収録のヴァージョンで、琴、笙、ハープを含めた6名で合奏・歌唱したものだ。

対するSUGAI KENのリワークは現代音楽／RVNG／HIPHOPをメビウスの環のようにつないだ作品で、リワークというよりはもはやオリジナル新曲と言っていい。

京極流箏曲と「新春譜」を考察した切れ味鋭い解説も必読！

A long-time best-seller of the MEG-AIMP collection and long out of print, this album of sanza music recorded among the Gbaya people of the Central African Republic by ethnomusicologist Vincent Dehoux was originally released on CD in 1993. It is now being reissued on vinyl and CD to coincide with the exhibition Afrosonica - Soundscapes. It features a selection of 'songs for thought': an intimate repertoire conducive to introspection, accompanied by the repetitive, meditative sound of lamellaphones.