Mittwoch, 20. Dezember 2017

Atahualpa Yupanqui - L´Integrale, Vol. 5

Atahualpa Yupanqui was a legendary Argentine folk musician and philosopher whose fame was revived during the politically charged "nueva cancion" movement of the 1960s.

He became one of the most valuable treasures for the local culture. As a child living in the small town of Roca, province of Buenos Aires, Héctor Roberto Chavero was seduced by traditional music, especially by the touching sound of the acoustic guitar. After taking violin lessons, the young man began learning how to play guitar, having musician Bautista Almirón as his teacher. For many years, Atahualpa Yupanqui traveled around his native country, singing folk tunes and working as muleteer, delivering telegrams, and even working as a journalist for a Rosario newspaper. In the late '30s, the artist started recording songs, making his debut as a writer in 1941 with Piedra Sola, later writing a famous novel called Cerro Bajo. I

n 1949, the singer/songwriter went on tour around Europe for the first time, including performances with France's Edith Piaf. During the following decades Atahualpa Yupanqui achieved an impressive amount of national and international recognition, becoming an essential artist, a distinguished Latin American troubadour, and influencing many prominent musicians and Argentinean folk groups. 

Atahualpa Yupanqui passed away in France in May, 1992.                 

Here´s the final part of the "L´Integrale" set:


Tracklist:
1.El Payador Perseguido41:20
2.Poema Para Un Bello Nombre5:47
3.Vidala Del Silencio6:03
4.Fin De La Zafra4:34
5.Testimonio Final1:52



Atahualpa Yupanqui - L´Integrale, Vol. 5
(256 kbps, cover art included)

Freitag, 15. Dezember 2017

Daniel Viglietti - En Vivo desde Argentina 1971 - 1973 (1978) - Rest in peace!

Daniel Viglietti died October 30, 2017 in Montevideo at age 78 due to complications from surgery. Rest in peace!


Daniel Alberto Viglietti Indart (born 24 July 1939, Montevideo) is an Uruguayan folk singer, guitarist, composer, and political activist. He is one of the main exponents of Uruguayan popular song and also of the Nueva Canción or "New Song" of the 1960s and early 1970s.

He founded, in 1971, along with other musicians like José "Pepe" Guerra, Braulio López, the music scholar Coriún Aharonián (the only founding member who is still active), Myriam Dibarboure, María Teresa Sande and Notary Public Edgardo Bello, the recognized independent record label Ayuí/Tacuabé in order to promote and support valuable Uruguayan musical expressions.

He has performed the works of Cuban Nueva Trova stars Silvio Rodríguez and Pablo Milanés and Brazil's Chico Buarque and Edu Lobo, has worked with Cuban composer and arranger Leo Brouwer. His recordings are widely available, especially "Trópicos" (1972).

Viglietti was imprisoned in 1972 by his own government. He was supported by the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre as an international man of conscience, a voice for peace, and an opponent of the fascism and tyranny that plagued South America in the 1970s. Rumors about possible mistreatment against him forced the authorities to bring him out in front of television cameras to show that, in particular, his hands were fine. However, Viglietti spoke out that his treatment in police custody was much better than what other political prisoners received. He was a peer of the late Chilean poet and folk singer Victor Jara and composer and activist Violeta Parra.

Tracklist:
01. Nuestra Bandera [Daniel Viglietti] (2:53)
02. El diablo en el Paraíso [Violeta Parra] (2:47)
03. De noche en casa [Raimon – Trad. Daniel Viglietti] (2:28)
04. Vamos, Estudiantes (Del film “Me gustan los estudiantes”, Uruguay 1968) [Daniel Viglietti] (2:09)
05. Que no encuentre ni el rocío [Poema Quechua, traducido por S. Salazar Bondy – Daniel Viglietti] (2:28)
06. A desalambrar [Daniel Viglietti] (2:34)
07. Cielito del calabozo [Daniel Viglietti] (3:41)
08. Por todo Chile [Daniel Viglietti] (3:02)
09. Canción para mi América [Daniel Viglietti] (2:36)
10. Anaclara [Daniel Viglietti] (3:53)
11. Otra voz canta [Circe Maia – Daniel Viglietti] (2:55)
12. La senda está trazada [Jorge Salerno] (3:34)

Daniel Viglietti - En Vivo desde Argentina 1971 - 1973  (1978)
(256 kbps, cover art included)

Mittwoch, 13. Dezember 2017

Silvio Rodriguez - Antologia (1978)

Silvio Rodríguez Domínguez is a Cuban musician, and leader of the nueva trova movement.
He is considered Cuba's best folk singer and known for his highly eloquent and symbolic lyrics. Many of his songs have become classics in Latin American music, such as "Ojalá", "Playa Girón", "Unicornio" and "La maza". Among his other well-known songs are "Fusil contra fusil" and "Canción del Elegido". He has released nearly 20 albums.
Rodríguez, musically and politically, is a symbol of the Latin American Left. His lyrics are notably introspective, while his songs combine romanticism, eroticism, revolutionary politics and idealism. He has been referred to as "Cuba's John Lennon."

Rodríguez was born on November 29, 1946 in San Antonio de los Baños, a fertile valley in Havana Province known for its tobacco crop. He was raised in a family of poor farmers. His father, Víctor Dagoberto Rodríguez Ortega, was a farmer and amateur poet who supported socialist causes. His mother, Argelia Domínguez León, was a housewife. On many occasions Rodríguez has spoken how his love of music was developed by his mother, who would pass time singing boleros and songs from Santiago. Although Rodríguez had an uncle who played the bass, his mother had a far greater influence. Later, she also collaborated with him on a few musical works.

When the Revolution led by Fidel Castro triumphed in January 1959, Rodríguez was only 13 years old, and, like most Cubans of his generation, became involved in the new Revolutionary enthusiasm. He participated in the Literacy Campaign held in 1961, and then started working as a comics designer in a magazine. During this period a friend of his, Lázaro Fundora, taught him how to play the guitar.
Guitar playing took a major role in his life while he was doing his military service in the army, during 1964, but it wasn't until 1967, with his first television experience, that he started to become well known and influential among Cuban revolutionary youth. With pro-revolution yet very independent lyrics (together with his very informal dress code), Rodríguez soon attracted the animosity of some members of the new Culture Ministry, which was devoted to the eradication of the United States' influence in Cuban culture. In this context, a very important role was played by the cultural institution Casa de las Américas and its then director Haydée Santamaría, the former a respected revolutionary who participated in the Moncada barracks assault of 1953 and sister of Abel Santamaría, who was tortured and killed after the failure of the assault. Haydée Santamaría became a protective mother-figure of the young composers and of several of his colleagues at the time. Casa de las Américas became the home not only for the new Cuban trovadores but also for many other Latin Americans on the left. It was in this institution that Rodríguez met Pablo Milanés, and Noel Nicola, who along with Rodríguez would become the most famous nueva trova singers and composers.

In 1969, for almost five months, he worked as part of the crew on the fishing boat Playa Girón, and during this fertile episode he wrote 62 songs, among which are the famous "Ojalá" and "Playa Girón." The lyrics and music of these songs became a book named Canciones del Mar. In 1976, he decided to join Cuban troops in Angola, playing for the soldiers.

After more than 40 years of artistic work, Rodríguez has now written a vast number of songs and poems (said to be between 500 and more than one thousand), many of which have never been set to music and probably never will be. Although his musical knowledge has been continuously increasing (counting among his teachers the famous Cuban composer Leo Brouwer), he is more widely praised for the poetry in his songs than for the accompanying music. His lyrics are a staple of leftist culture throughout the whole Spanish-speaking world, and he has been banned from the media during several of the dictatorial regimes that ruled Latin America in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

His debut album was Días y flores, launched in 1975. Al final de este viaje and Cuando digo futuro feature songs he composed before Días y flores. He reached international popularity in the early 1980s with Rabo de nube and, in particular, Unicornio. In the early part of his career his work displayed a fair amount of revolutionary optimism. Mujeres, released in 1979, is in contrast a romantic and highly intimist album. In the middle of his career, Silvio Rodríguez experimented with sounds and rhythms departing from his trademark acoustic guitar, accompanied by the group Afrocuba (e.g. in Causas y azares). At maturity, Silvio Rodríguez thoroughly purified his sound through a return to acoustic guitar, great care and sophistication in the voice, and exclusive control of the production process from beginning to end. His lyrics became more introspective, at times even self-absorbed or self-justifying, expressing melancholic longings about the shortcomings of real-life socialism in Cuba while vindicating idealism and revolutionary hope amongst the youth. The trilogy, called Silvio, Rodríguez, and Domínguez (his first name, his father's last name, his mother's last name) displays sound artistic talent. The doubts, absent in the early part of his career, also correspond to the fall of communism worldwide and the so-called Special Period in Cuba. An unnoticed recurrent theme in the lyrics of the early part of his career is that of death, particularly although not only as associated with guerrilla warfare. In contrast to the explicitness of his early songs and political positions, there was a displacement of emphasis in his later years toward fantasy and dreams. Both, however, are about an alternative that is not present but is called for, or what Laclau would call a longing for a "missing fullness". This is true politically, romantically, and existentially. In a similar way, the unusual confessional tone of many of his songs allows for an unorthodox combination of transgression, eroticism, longing, and at times (probably accurate) self-deprecation in many of his lyrics.

The entire work of Silvio Rodríguez offers an intimate and introspective window into the life cycle of the artist. If the lyrics of the early part of his career are about revolutionary enthusiasm, love encounters and disappointments, as well as sensual desire, and if the middle-aged Silvio is more self-questioning, often looking backward; his most recent albums, such as Cita con ángeles, talk in part about his life as a grandfather and has a certain focus on children, while Érase que se era is the release (with all the means that come with being an established artist) of songs written early in his youth but never previously recorded. Mariposas also featured two classics composed in his youth.
Silvio Rodríguez stands out in the Spanish-speaking world for the intimacy and subtlety of his lyrics, as well as for his acoustic melodies and "chord picking." He is particularly popular amongst intellectual circles of the left in Latin America and Spain. He has also often served as Cuban cultural emissary in events of solidarity, whether in Chile (Silvio Rodríguez in Chile, 1991) or Argentina (En vivo en Argentina, recorded in 1984), both massive concerts given shortly after the fall of the right-wing dictatorships. Cuban flags are always conspicuous in the crowd during his concerts.
In 2007, he received a doctorate honoris causa from Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Peru.

Tracks:

01. Canción del Elegido (3:01)
02. Te doy una canción (3:09)
03. Madre (2:16)
04. Pequeña serenata diurna (2:53)
05. Mariposas (6:08)
06. El papalote (5:27)
07. Fusil contra fusil (3:15)
08. La era esta pariendo un corazón (2:57)
09. El rey de las flores (2:17)
10. Esto no es una elegía (3:25)

Silvio Rodriguez - Antologia (1978)
(256 kbsp, cover art included)

Sonntag, 10. Dezember 2017

The Sextet Of Orchestra USA - Mack The Knife And Other Berlin Theatre Songs Of Kurt Weill (1964)

Third Stream, Gunther Schuller's well-intentioned but commercially doomed idea of forcing contemporary classical (i.e. serial) composition music to cohabit with hard bop, produced but a handful of fine recordings, most notably the classic 1960 Atlantic Jazz Abstractions and this 1964 sextet outing under the stewardship of trombonist Michael Zwerin.

The choice of Kurt Weill's sleek and elegant compositions was astute: the bittersweet harmonies of Weill (who ultimately emigrated to the U.S. from Germany) lend themselves particularly well to jazz soloing, and accordingly, an outstanding rhythm section featuring the Modern Jazz Quartet's John Lewis (an enthusiastic advocate of Third Stream from its inception) and Connie Kay. Bassist Richard Davis is on hand to support some splendid horn work from Thad Jones, Nick Travis, Jerome Richardson, and most notably Eric Dolphy, whose wild bass clarinet leaps on "Alabama Song" are a pure joy to hear, and proof that the saxophonist's harmonic concept, while undeniably "out" for the standard-based harmonic repertoire of bop, was most definitely "in" the wider scheme of musical thought that Third Stream aspired to.               

Tracklist:

1 Alabama Song 5:22
2 Havanna Song 6:16
3 As You Make Your Bed 5:26
4 Mack The Knife 5:04
5 Bilbao Song 3:47
6 Barbara Song 5:04
7 Pirate Jenny 3:34
8 Mack The Knife (Alternate Take) 4:50
9 Bilbao Song (Alternate Take) 3:45
10 Pirate Jenny (Alternate Take) 4:23


The Sextet Of Orchestra USA - Mack The Knife And Other Berlin Theatre Songs Of Kurt Weill (1964)
(320 kbps, cover art included)

Samstag, 9. Dezember 2017

Joe Gibbs & The Professionals‎ – African Dub - Chapter 2

The second volume in this vintage four-disc series of instrumental dub from Joe Gibbs' studio finds him still working with members of the Soul Syndicate and We the People bands, and utilizing the formidable mixing talents of Errol Thompson.

What sets this volume somewhat apart from the other three is the number of rhythms it carries over from the rocksteady era: "Chapter Two" is a remix of the Techniques' late-'60s classic "Queen Majesty"; "Peeping Tom" reworks the Melodians' "You Have Caught Me"; and "My Best Dub" is an instrumental and nicely dubbed-up recut of the early Wailers track "Hypocrites." But it also includes some heavyweight rockers and one-drop material, including "Angola Crisis" (based on a familiar rhythm later used for such roots reggae hits as "Uptown Top Ranking" and "Three Piece Suit") and an absolutely brilliant dub mix of Bob Andy's "Chained," here rendered in dark, minimalist tones with drastic dubwise effects and retitled "Third World."

Along with the third volume, this is one of the most impressive of the four discs in the African Dub series.                

Tracklist:
1Chapter Two
2The Marriguna Affair
3Angola Crisis
4Peeping Tom
5Outrage
6Idlers Rest
7My Best Dub
8Third World
9Heavy Duty Dub
10Musical Arena
11Mackarus Serenade
12Jamaican Grass


Joe Gibbs & The Professionals‎ – African Dub - Chapter 2                                   
(320 kbps, cover art included)