MUSIC
6091 products
In the mid-1970s, a force of nature swept across the continental United States, cutting across all strata of race and class, rooting in our minds, our homes, our culture. It wasn’t The Exorcist, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, or even bell-bottoms, but instead a book called The Secret Life of Plants. The work of occultist/former OSS agent Peter Tompkins and former CIA agent/dowsing enthusiast Christopher Bird, the books shot up the bestseller charts and spread like kudzu across the landscape, becoming a phenomenon. Seemingly overnight, the indoor plant business was in full bloom and photosynthetic eukaryotes of every genus were hanging off walls, lording over bookshelves, and basking on sunny window ledges. The science behind Secret Life was specious: plants can hear our prayers, they’re lie detectors, they’re telepathic, able to predict natural disasters and receive signals from distant galaxies. But that didn’t stop millions from buying and nurturing their new plants.
Perhaps the craziest claim of the book was that plants also dug music. And whether you purchased a snake plant, asparagus fern, peace lily, or what have you from Mother Earth on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles (or bought a Simmons mattress from Sears), you also took home Plantasia, an album recorded especially for them. Subtitled “warm earth music for plants…and the people that love them,” it was full of bucolic, charming, stoner-friendly, decidedly unscientific tunes enacted on the new-fangled device called the Moog. Plants date back from the dawn of time, but apparently they loved the Moog, never mind that the synthesizer had been on the market for just a few years. Most of all, the plants loved the ditties made by composer Mort Garson.
Few characters in early electronic music can be both fearless pioneers and cheesy trend-chasers, but Garson embraced both extremes, and has been unheralded as a result. When one writer rhetorically asked: “How was Garson’s music so ubiquitous while the man remained so under the radar?” the answer was simple. Well before Brian Eno did it, Garson was making discreet music, both the man and his music as inconspicuous as a Chlorophytum comosum. Julliard-educated and active as a session player in the post-war era, Garson wrote lounge hits, scored plush arrangements for Doris Day, and garlanded weeping countrypolitan strings around Glen Campbell’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” He could render the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel alike into easy listening and also dreamed up his own ditties. “An idear” as Garson himself would drawl it out. “I live with it, I walk it, I sing it.”
But as his daughter Day Darmet recalls: “When my dad found the synthesizer, he realized he didn’t want to do pop music anymore.” Garson encountered Robert Moog and his new device at the Audio Engineering Society’s West Coast convention in 1967 and immediately began tinkering with the device. With the Moog, those idears could be transformed. “He constantly had a song he was humming,” Darmet says. “At the table he was constantly tapping.” Which is to say that Mort pulled his melodies out of thin air, just like any household plant would.
The Plantae kingdom grew to its height by 1976, from DC Comics’ mossy superhero Swamp Thing to Stevie Wonder’s own herbal meditation, Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants. Nefarious manifestations of human-plant interaction also abounded, be it the grotesque pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or the pothead paranoia of the US Government spraying Mexican marijuana fields with the herbicide paraquat (which led to the rise in homegrown pot by the 1980s). And then there’s the warm, leafy embrace of Plantasia itself.
“My mom had a lot of plants,” Darmet says. “She didn’t believe in organized religion, she believed the earth was the best thing in the whole world. Whatever created us was incredible.” And she also knew when her husband had a good song, shouting from another room when she heard him humming a good idear. Novel as it might seem, Plantasia is simply full of good tunes.
Garson may have given the album away to new plant and bed owners, but a decade later a new generation could hear his music in another surreptitious way. Millions of kids bought The Legend of Zelda for their Nintendo Entertainment System back in 1986 and one distinct 8-bit tune bears more than a passing resemblance to album highlight “Concerto for Philodendron and Pothos.” Garson was never properly credited for it, but he nevertheless subliminally slipped into a new generations’ head, helping kids and plants alike grow.
Hearing Plantasia in the 21st century, it seems less an ode to our photosynthesizing friends by Garson and more an homage to his wife, the one with the green thumb that made everything flower around him. “My dad would be totally pleased to know that people are really interested in this music that had no popularity at the time,” Darmet says of Plantasia’s new renaissance. “He would be fascinated by the fact that people are finally understanding and appreciating this part of his musical career that he got no admiration for back then.” Garson seems to be everywhere again, even if he’s not really noticed, just like a houseplant.
-Andy Beta
While Duster went into hibernation in the year 2000, Clay Parton’s four-track never stopped rolling. Recorded alone at home over several years, Birds To The Ground is an album of 30-something, post-9/11 malaise. Under his Eiafuawn (Everything Is All Fucked Up And What Not) acronym Parton hides beneath layers of fuzzy and clean guitars, his hesitant, cottony vocal disappear into noise. “I’ll be a ghost, you’ll go out dancing,” he confirms.
Released on Parton’s long-running The Static Cult Label in 2006, the album was ignored upon release, though managed to get a one-time pressing on the Swedish Pillowscars imprint a couple years later. An album’s worth of songs were dribbled out on a few Internet forums but a follow up never materialized. “That sweet studio deal never worked out, and the tape machines are just collecting dust in the garage,” Parton last wrote of the project.
10 brilliant tracks from 1960’s Sierra Leone by the wildly popular S.E. Rogie!
S.E. Rogie went from running a tailor shop in Sierra Leone to being one of West Africa's most popular artists. He toured around the country, singing his palm wine music in multiple local languages, created his own record label, and was known as the most handsome man in Sierra Leone. He formed the highlife band The Morningstars in 1965. In 1973, he came to the Bay Area to live and expand his base, performing everywhere from local high schools and convalescent homes to festivals and large stages. In his later life he hit the road again and toured the world, eventually passing away while on stage in Russia in 1994.
He shared the following songwriting wisdom with his son, Rogee Rogers: “When you write a song, you can be complicated if you want, but your chorus should be that anybody can sing it.”
These tracks were originally released on his own Rogie label in the 1960s and include solo, ensemble, and Morningstars songs, most of which have never been reissued until now.
“When the mbira is played, it brings the two worlds together, the world of our ancestors and the world of today.” Ephat Mujuru (1950-2001)
Ephat Mujuru exemplifies a unique generation of traditional musicians in Zimbabwe. Born under an oppressive colonial regime in Southern Rhodesia, his generation witnessed the brutality of the 1970s liberation struggle, and then the dawn of independent Zimbabwe, a time in which African music culture—long stigmatized by Rhodesian educators and religious authorities—experienced a thrilling renaissance.
Ephat was raised in traditional Shona culture in a small rural village in Manicaland, near the Mozambique border. His grandfather and primary caretaker, Muchatera Mujuru, was a respected spirit medium, and master of the mbira dzavadzimu, a hand-held lamellophone used in Shona religion to make contact and receive council from deceased ancestors. There are many lamellophones in Africa, but none with the musical complexity and spiritual significance of the mbira dzavadzimu. Ephat’s first memories were of elaborate ceremonies, called biras that featured all-night music and dancing, millet beer, the sacrifice of oxen and a profound experience of connecting with ancestors. Under the tutelage of his grandfather, Ephat showed an early talent for the rigors of mbira training, playing his first possession ceremony when he was just ten years old.
But from the moment he entered school, Ephat experienced Rhodesian racism and cultural oppression. Nuns at his Catholic school told him that to play the mbira was “a sin against God.” Enraged by this, Ephat’s grandfather sent him to school in an African township near the capital of Salisbury (present-day Harare). By then, guerilla war was engulfing the country and Muchatera tragically became a victim of the violence, a devastating blow to the young musician. Lonely and alienated in the city, Ephat reached out to other mbira masters—Mubayiwa Bandambira, Simon Mashoko and an “uncle” Mude Hakurotwi.
In 1972 Ephat formed his first group, naming it for one of the most beloved Shona ancestors, Chaminuka. In the midst of the liberation struggle, mbira music became political. Singer and bandleader Thomas Mapfumo began interpreting mbira songs with an electric dance band, creating chimurenga (loosely “struggle”) music, named for the independence fighters.
Ephat and Chaminuka had their first success with the single “Guruswa.” Ephat once recalled, “We were talking about our struggle to free ourselves,” explained Ephat. “In ancient Africa, in the time of our ancestors, they had none of the problems we have today.” The problems he spoke of—subjugation, cultural oppression and mass poverty—were purely the results of colonization. “We wanted the place to be like it was, before colonization.”
The Rhodesians were defeated, but rather than return to the past, the nation of Zimbabwe was born and a new future unfolded. Ephat threw himself into the spirit of independence, helping to found the National Dance Company of Zimbabwe and becoming the first African music instructor at the formerly all-Western Zimbabwe College of Music. Ephat renamed his band Spirit of the People and recorded his first album in 1981, using only mbira, hand drums, hosho and singers. He sang of brotherhood, healing, and unity: crucial themes during a time when the nation’s two dominant ethnic groups, the Shona and the Ndebele, were struggling to reconcile differences.
Ephat’s band would eventually follow the popular trend and add electric instruments. But before that, he and Spirit of the People released two all-acoustic albums, and they may well be the most exciting and beautiful recordings he made in his career. Mbavaira, the second of these albums, was released in 1983. The title itself is not easy to translate. A Shona speaker with deep cultural knowledge observed that he could not find an exact English counterpart, but that it was “something like ‘chaos.’”
Mbavaira came out on Gramma Records, the country’s only label at the time. Gramma was still finding its way in a vastly changed music market. Guitar bands were ascendant and lots of new talent was emerging. As the independence years moved on, there would be fewer and fewer commercial mbira releases. But for the moment, Ephat had the required stature and reputation. Also, with the energy and drive we hear in these recordings, the album could easily rival the pop music of its day.
Ephat had long since mastered a large repertoire of traditional mbira songs and developed his own approach to arranging them. He had also become a gifted composer, although, with mbira music, it is often hard to draw a clear line between arranging and composing. Certain mbira pieces are like the 12-bar blues form or the “I Got Rhythm” changes in jazz: one can always create a new song from the existing template. But when you listen to Ephat’s feisty refrain on the song “Kwenda Mbire” (“Going to Mbire”), you just know it came from him. Ephat was a small, almost elfin, man, but he had the most exuberant personality and it comes through with particular clarity on that track.
An mbira ensemble typically uses at least two mbiras, playing separate interlocking parts so that it can be difficult to tell who is playing what. The sound becomes one. The only required percussion is the gourd rattle called hosho. It plays a very specific triplet rhythm and it has to be strong and solid to ensure that the mbira parts line up perfectly. Otherwise, the spirit will not come! The call-and-response vocals are also distinctive, a mix of hums and cries and melodic refrains, often punctuated by joyous ululations.
The tonality of a song like “Mudande” is moody, even a little dark. But the melodies that emerge have a remarkable way of turning wistfulness into merriment. The song title means “in Dande,” Dande being a remote northern region in Zimbabwe known for its inhospitable climate and deeply entrenched traditional culture.
Mbira is a healing music. Ephat once recalled, “When I was with Bandambira and Simon Mashoko, I was very surprised at what really made them happy. My grandfather was a very happy person. They had respect.” Ephant contrasted this happiness with the sour demeanor of the whites who condescended to him in Salisbury in his youth. “Somebody who wants to suppress another person is very unhappy.”
Within a few years after the release of Mbavaira, it and albums like it became harder to find in Zimbabwean record stores. Ephat adapted to the times and formed an electric band. “People were surprised,” he recalled. “They said, ‘Are you not going to play your mbira the way you did before?’ I said, I haven't changed anything. It's like me learning Shona and English, or French or Japanese. It's adding to the knowledge. The old one doesn't go away. When you buy a new jacket, you don't throw the old one away.” And indeed, when he began frequenting the UK and the United States, he would record more, mostly acoustic, albums.
But none of them have the particularly delicious energy of Spirit of the People in the first years of Zimbabwe’s independence. The final track on Mbavaira is a popular Shona hunting song, “Nyama Musango,” literally “Meat in the forest.” As elsewhere, Ephat does not sing the lead, leaving that role to his razor-voiced uncle, Mude Hakurotwi, with his mastery of timbres and rich repertoire of traditional vocables.
It was a tragedy to lose Ephat in 2001. He died from a heart attack shortly after landing at Heathrow Airport, en route to teach and perform in the U.S.. No doubt, he had much more to offer, for as he liked to say, “Mbira is like a sea. It's not a small river. You are getting into the big sea. So I try to show them the Indian Ocean, the Pacific, the Atlantic. What I'm trying to bring now to this music, through all the experiences I've had, is unity.” True unity has been difficult to achieve in Zimbabwe, given its combative history, but if anything could do the trick, this music might be the thing.
Banning Eyre
Senior Producer for Afropop Worldwide
By 1978, Addis Ababa’s nightlife was facing challenges. The ruling Derg regime imposed curfews, banning citizens from the streets after midnight until 6am. But that didn’t stop some people from dancing and partying thorough the night. Bands would play from evening until daybreak and people would stay at the clubs until curfew was lifted in the morning.
One key denizen of Addis’ musical golden age, Hailu Mergia, was preparing a follow up to his seminal Tche Belew LP with the famed Walias Band. It was the band’s only full-length record and it had been a success. But his Hilton house band colleagues were a bit tied up recording cassettes with different vocalists. Still Mergia, amidst recording and gigs with the Walias, was also eager to make another recording of his instrumental-focused arrangements. So he went to the nearby Ghion Hotel, another upmarket outpost with a popular nightclub. Dahlak Band was the house band at Ghion at the time. Together they made this tape Wede Harer Guzo right there in the club during the band’s afternoon rehearsal meetings, with sessions lasting three days.
“My instrumental music was very in-demand and I could have waited,” Mergia recalls. “But I wanted to have a different kind of sound. I had done several recordings with Walias so this time I needed a different sound.”
Dahlak Band catered to a slightly more youthful, local audiences, while Mergia’s main gig with the Walias at Addis swankiest hotel had a mixed audience that included foreign diplomats and older folks from abroad. Therefore their sets varied included lighter fare during dinnertime and a less rollicking selection of jazz and r&b. Meanwhile Dahlak was known more for the mainly soul and Amharic jams they served up for hours two nights a week to a younger crowd.
When Mergia entered the Ghion hotel nightclub to record this tape he was teaming up with a seasoned band who were particularly suited to his instrumental sound. Ethiopian popular music at the time combined elements of music from abroad and Dahlak balanced Mergia’s traditional song selection with the modern approach of a seasoned soul band.
Crucial to the resulting collaboration were Mergia’s arrangements which replaced distinctively use vocals for melodies normally played by instruments. His arrangements conjured memorable new flavors out of existing songs already popular with listeners.
Before Walias Band’s successful gig as house band at the Hilton, Mergia was a young musician hustling from one place to another around Addis. After finishing gigs at the Hilton or on nights off, he would go to good bar where azmari—roving musicians who play traditional songs for tips—and he’d pick up ideas and inspiration. Late night azmari performances revealed for Mergia which songs were moving people in the city. He regularly attended clubs, bars and special private after-hours venues called zigubgn where azmari perform. For Mergia, it was crucial to feature songs he knew people would recognize.
Amharic music has a large repertoire of standard songs everyone knows, the original composers and lyricists of which are often unknown or forgotten. Many of the songs Dahlak, Walias and other bands of that era (including Ibex and Shebele) were playing came from the treasury of shared music, which helped ensure a good vibe in the air.
Mergia released Wede Harer Guzo (“Travel to Harer,”with Sheba Music Shop, which was located in the Piazza district but has long since shut down. Recalling the audience’s positive reaction to Wede Harer Guzo’s novel arrangements, he says it sold well and found many fans. However, as no trace of the tape can be found online, there’s no indication as to why the cassette appears largely forgotten until now.
