The Black Ark Presents - Rastafari Liveth In The Hearts Of Everyone Itinually

"Rastafari Liveth..." is a very dread collection, with heavy Rasta vibes throughout. Many of these tracks can't be found anywhere else, making this a valuable collection for serious Lee Perry fans. This album follows the pattern of a lot of Lee Perry releases, choosing to chronicle a series of singles and offering first the A, then the B side. The effect is not as mind-numbing and clinical as one might think.

These songs are from the prime of Perry's conscious phase, right during his flirtation with Rastafari. The lyrics are strong and the beats are strident and military, more reminiscent of some of King Tubby's work than a lot of what leaked from The Black Ark. Many of the usual suspects contribute vocals here, including Devon Irons and Watty Burnett.

Highlights include Clive Hylton's meditative "Judgement Day", Devon Irons' heavy duty "When Jah Comes", and the startling "Forward With Jah Orthodox", a menacing nyabinghi number calling for a new order in Jamaica. For those looking for a Lee Perry starting point, there are better records. For the converted, it´s tough to getenough andthis will be a welcome addition to the pile.


Tracklisting:

01. Ethiopian Land - Peter & Paul Lewis
02. Dub Land - The Upsetters
03. Rise And Shine - Watty & Tony
04. Shining Dub - The Upsetters
05. What A War - Watty Burnett
06. What A Dub - The Upsetters
07. 23rd Psalm - Junior Delgado & Big Youth
08. Judgement Day - Clive Hylton
09. Well Judged Dub - The Upsetters
10. Forward With Jah Orthodox - Mystic
11. Orthodox Dub - The Upsetters
12. Come Along - The Bluebells
13. Dub Along - The Upsetters
14. 4 And 20 Dreadlocks - Evan Jones
15. Dreadlocks Dub - The Upsetters
16. When Jah Comes - Devon Irons
17. When Jah Dubs - The Upsetters

The Black Ark Presents - Rastafari Liveth... (192 kbps)

Lee Perry - Black Ark In Dub

Some call him a genius, others claim he's certifiably insane, a madman. Truth is, he's both, but more importantly, Lee Perry is a towering figure in reggae -- a producer, mixer, and songwriter who, along with King Tubby, helped shape the sound of dub and made reggae music such a powerful part of the pop music world. Along with producing some of the most influential acts (Bob Marley & the Wailers and the Congos to name but two) in reggae history, Perry's approach to production and dub mixing was breathtakingly innovative and audacious - no one else sounds like him - and while many claim that King Tubby invented dub, there are just as many who would argue that no one experimented with it or took it further than did Lee Perry.

"Black Ark In Dub" is a fine collection of early Perry dub packaged in what seems to be a semi-legit, bootleg way.

This label seems to be tied in with the French label Lagoon, which has released the Perry-produced Bob Marley session (two CDs, both of them essential). This is a good selection; Perry remixes are typically audacious and crazy, but there's little enclosed information telling you when the tracks were cut. Lack of information is an ongoing problem with Perry releases, since his entire output defies any kind of authoritative historical treatment. Still, this is worthy of your time, even if it doesn't provide the big buzz of some of Perry's other, more far-out experiments.                

Still, this is worthy of your time, even if it doesn't provide the big buzz of some of Perry's other, more far-out experiments.

Lee Perry - Black Ark in Dub

(256 kbps, cover art included)

Mississippi John Hurt - The Best Of (1968)

No blues singer ever presented a more gentle, genial image than Mississippi John Hurt. A guitarist with an extraordinarily lyrical and refined fingerpicking style, he also sang with a warmth unique in the field of blues, and the gospel influence in his music gave it a depth and reflective quality unusual in the field. Coupled with the sheer gratitude and amazement that he felt over having found a mass audience so late in life, and playing concerts in front of thousands of people - for fees that seemed astronomical to a man who had always made music a sideline to his life as a farm laborer - these qualities make Hurt's recordings into a very special listening experience.

This inappropriately titled album is actually a concert recording from a performance at Oberlin College in 1965. Regardless, Hurt's rich, gentle voice and relaxed, flowing guitar lines could soothe the stormiest Monday. Among the hymns and traditional songs heard here are "I Shall Not Be Moved," "Nearer My God to Thee," "Since I've Laid This Burden Down," and "You Are My Sunshine." Complementing those are Hurt folk/blues staples, notably "Monday Morning Blues," "Coffee Blues," and "C.C. Rider." The blues patriarch's warmth and geniality come through here with such emotional intimacy that you can't help being deeply moved. --Genevieve Williams

Tracklist:

Side 1:

1. Here Am I, Oh Lord, Send Me 3:02
2. I Shall Not Be Moved 3:26
3. Nearer My God To Thee 3:04
4. Baby What's Wrong With You 3:35
5. It Ain't Nobody's Business 3:04

Side 2:

1. Salty Dog Blues 2:58
2. Coffee Blues 3:15
3. Avalon, My Home Town 3:41
4. Make Me A Pallet On The Floor 3:45
5. Since I've Laid This Burden Down 3:45

Side 3:

1. Sliding Delta 3:06
2. Monday Morning Blues 3:56
3. Richland Women Blues 4:33
4. Candy Man 3:47
5. Stagolee 4:22

Side 4:

1. My Creole Belle 2:25
2. C.C. Rider 3:59
3. Spanish Fandango 1:05
4. Talking Casey 4:19
5. Chicken 0:54
6. You Are My Sunshine 2:36
.
Mississippi John Hurt - The Best Of (1968)
(256 kbps, cover art included)

Dizzy Gillespie - Afro (1955)

Dizzy Gillespie's contributions to jazz were huge. One of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time (some would say the best), Gillespie was such a complex player that his contemporaries ended up copying Miles Davis and Fats Navarro instead, and it was not until Jon Faddis' emergence in the 1970s that Dizzy's style was successfully recreated. Somehow, Gillespie could make any "wrong" note fit, and harmonically he was ahead of everyone in the 1940s, including Charlie Parker. Unlike Bird, Dizzy was an enthusiastic teacher who wrote down his musical innovations and was eager to explain them to the next generation, thereby insuring that bebop would eventually become the foundation of jazz.

Dizzy Gillespie was also one of the key founders of Afro-Cuban (or Latin) jazz, adding Chano Pozo's conga to his orchestra in 1947, and utilizing complex poly-rhythms early on. The leader of two of the finest big bands in jazz history, Gillespie differed from many in the bop generation by being a masterful showman who could make his music seem both accessible and fun to the audience. With his puffed-out cheeks, bent trumpet (which occurred by accident in the early '50s when a dancer tripped over his horn), and quick wit, Dizzy was a colorful figure to watch. A natural comedian, Gillespie was also a superb scat singer and occasionally played Latin percussion for the fun of it, but it was his trumpet playing and leadership abilities that made him into a jazz giant.

Pairing Dizzy Gillespie with Cuban arranger/composer Chico O'Farrill produced a stunning session which originally made up the first half of a Norgran LP. O'Farrill conducts an expanded orchestra which combines a jazz band with a Latin rhythm section; among the participants in the four-part "Manteca Suite" are trumpeters Quincy Jones and Ernie Royal, trombonist J.J. Johnson, tenor saxophonists Hank Mobley and Lucky Thompson, and conga player Mongo Santamaria.

"Manteca," written during the previous decade, serves as an exciting opening movement, while the next two segments build upon this famous theme, though they are jointly credited to O'Farrill as well. "Rhumba-Finale" is straight-ahead jazz with some delicious solo work by Gillespie. A later small-group session features the trumpeter with an all-Latin rhythm section and flutist Gilberto Valdes, who is heard on "A Night in Tunisia" and "Caravan."


Tracks:01 Manteca Theme
02 Contraste
03 Jungla
04 Rhumba Finale
05 A Night in Tunisisa
06 Con Alma
07 Caravan

Dizzy Gillespie - Afro (1955)
(256 kbps, cover art included)

Don Kosaken - Stenka Rasin (1970)

Stepan (Sten'ka) Timofeyevich Razin (1630 – 1671) was a Cossack leader who led a major uprising against the nobility and Tsar's bureaucracy in South Russia.

Razin originally set out to loot villages, but as he became a symbol of peasant unrest, his movement turned political. Razin wanted to protect the independence of the Cossacks and to protest an increasingly centralized government. The Cossacks supported the tsar and autocracy, but they wanted a tsar that responded to the needs of the people and not just those of the upper class. By destroying and pillaging villages, Razin intended to take power from the government officials and give more autonomy to the peasants. However, Razin’s movement failed and the rebellion led to increased government control. The Cossacks lost some of their autonomy, and the tsar bonded more closely with the upper class because both feared more rebellion. On the other hand, as Avrich asserts, “[Razin’s revolt] awakened, however dimly, the social consciousness of the poor, gave them a new sense of power, and made the upper class tremble for their lives and possessions.”
At the time of the Russian Civil War, the famous writer and White emigre Ivan Bunin compared Razin to Bolshevik leaders, writing "Good God! What striking similarity there is between the time of Sten'ka and the pillaging that is going on today in the name of the 'Third International.'"

Don Cossacks were Cossacks who settled along the middle and lower Don.

This album is a best of compilation of the "Don Kosaken Chor", referring to these historical issues, featuring 15 tracks recorded between 1954 and 1970.

Tracklist:

1. Stenka Rasin 5.25
2. Still ruht der See 2.05
3. Zwei Kosakenlieder 2.09
4. Reitermarsch 2.02
5. Hindulied 3.45
6. Der Kuckuck 2.35
7. Ave Maria 2.59
8. Legende von den 12 Räubern 6.38
9. Matrosenlied 2.17
10. Alter Walzer 5.51
11. Lescinka (Kaukasische Melodie) 3.59
12. Russischer Tanz 1.55
13. Lied vom Terek Fluss 4.33
14. Die Wolga entlang 4.09
15. Guten Abend, gut‘ Nacht 2.10

Don Kosan - Stenka Rasin (1970)

(256 kbps, small front cover included

Ruth Brown - Black Is Brown And Brown Is Beautiful (1969)

They called Atlantic Records "the house that Ruth built" during the 1950s, and they weren't referring to the Sultan of Swat. Ruth Brown's regal hitmaking reign from 1949 to the close of the '50s helped tremendously to establish the New York label's predominance in the R&B field. Later, the business all but forgot her — she was forced to toil as domestic help for a time — but she returned to the top, her status as a postwar R&B pioneer (and tireless advocate for the rights and royalties of her peers) recognized worldwide.

Young Ruth Weston was inspired initially by jazz chanteuses Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, and Dinah Washington. She ran away from her Portsmouth home in 1945 to hit the road with trumpeter Jimmy Brown, whom she soon married. A month with bandleader Lucky Millinder's orchestra in 1947 ended abruptly in Washington, D.C., when she was canned for delivering a round of drinks to members of the band. Cab Calloway's sister Blanche gave Ruth a gig at her Crystal Caverns nightclub and assumed a managerial role in the young singer's life. DJ Willis Conover dug Brown's act and recommended her to Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson, bosses of a fledgling imprint named Atlantic. Unfortunately, Brown's debut session for the firm was delayed by a nine-month hospital stay caused by a serious auto accident en route to New York that badly injured her leg. When she finally made it to her first date in May 1949, she made up for lost time by waxing the torch ballad "So Long" (backed by guitarist Eddie Condon's band), which proved to be her first hit.

Brown's seductive vocal delivery shone incandescently on her Atlantic smashes "Teardrops in My Eyes" (an R&B chart-topper for 11 weeks in 1950), "I'll Wait for You" and "I Know" in 1951, 1952's "5-10-15 Hours" (another number one rocker), the seminal "(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean" in 1953, and a tender Chuck Willis-penned "Oh What a Dream," and the timely "Mambo Baby" the next year. Along the way, Frankie Laine tagged her "Miss Rhythm" during an engagement in Philly. Brown belted a series of her hits on the groundbreaking TV program Showtime at the Apollo in 1955, exhibiting delicious comic timing while trading sly one-liners with MC Willie Bryant (ironically, ex-husband Jimmy Brown was a member of the show's house band).

After an even two-dozen R&B chart appearances for Atlantic that ended in 1960 with "Don't Deceive Me" (many of them featuring hell-raising tenor sax solos by Willis "Gator" Jackson, who many mistakenly believed to be Brown's husband), Brown faded from view. After raising her two sons and working a nine-to-five job, Brown began to rebuild her musical career in the mid-'70s. Her comedic sense served her well during a TV sitcom stint co-starring with MacLean Stevenson in Hello, Larry, in a meaty role in director John Waters' 1985 sock-hop satire film Hairspray, and her 1989 Broadway starring turn in Black and Blue (which won her a Tony Award).

There were more records for Fantasy in the '80s and '90s (notably 1991's jumping Fine and Mellow), and a lengthy tenure as host of National Public Radio's Harlem Hit Parade and BluesStage. Brown's nine-year ordeal to recoup her share of royalties from all those Atlantic platters led to the formation of the nonprofit Rhythm & Blues Foundation, an organization dedicated to helping others in the same frustrating situation. In 1993 Brown was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and 1995 saw the release of her autobiography, Miss Rhythm. Brown suffered a heart attack and stroke following surgery in October 2006 and never fully recovered, passing on November 17, 2006.

Here´s her 1969 album "Black Is Brown And Brown Is Beautiful".

Tracklist:

A1	Yesterday	4:02
A2	Please Send Me Someone To Love	2:57
A3	Looking Back	4:07
A4	Try Me And See	2:08
B1	Miss Brown's Blues	7:00
B2	My Prayer	3:49
B3	Since I Fell For You	4:57
B4	This Bitter Earth	3:54

Ruth Brown - Black Is Brown And Brown Is Beautiful (1969)
(192 kbps, cover art included)

Oliver "Tuku" Mtukudzi - Ndega Zvangu (1997)

Oliver "Tuku" Mtukudzi (born 22 September 1952 in Highfield, Harare) is a Zimbabwean musician, businessman, philanthropist, human rights activist and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for Southern Africa Region. Tuku is considered Zimbabwe's most renowned and internationally recognised cultural icon of all time.

Mtukudzi began performing in 1977 when he joined the Wagon Wheels, a band that also featured Thomas Mapfumo. Their single Dzandimomotera went gold and Tuku's first album followed, which was also a major success. Mtukudzi is also a contributor to Mahube, Southern Africa's "supergroup".
With his husky voice, he has become the most recognised voice to emerge from Zimbabwe and onto the international scene and he has earned a devoted following across Africa and beyond. A member of Zimbabwe's KoreKore group, with Nzou Samanyanga as his totem, he sings in the nation's dominant Shona language along with Ndebele and English. He also incorporates elements of different musical traditions, giving his music a distinctive style, known to fans as Tuku Music. Mtukudzi has had a number of tours around the world. He has been on several tours in the UK, US and Canada to perform for large audiences.
Unlike Mapfumo, Mtukudzi has refrained from directly criticising the government of President Robert Mugabe.

According to the sleeve notes, "Ndega Zvangu" means "All Alone" and Mutukudzi is all alone, apart from his acoustic guitar, throughout. This gives a sound completely different from the faster, more percussion-based Zimbabwean music I'd heard before.
Instead, the sound is stripped-down, sometimes melancholy, but always beautiful. The album doesn't suffer from over-polished production, which makes it feel as though Mutukudzi is right there in the room with you. A wonderful album!

Tracklist:

1	Cheka Ukama
2	Mwana Wamambo
3	Andinzwi
4	Unodada Nei?
5	Chirimundari
6	Zivai Nemoyo
7	Handiende
8	Neria
9	Kwawakabva
10	Ndima Ndasakura
11	Ndakuneta

Oliver "Tuku" Mtukudzi - Ndega Zvangu (1997)
(256 kbps, cover art included)

Jacques Brel - Quand On N'a Que L'amour (1957)

Jacques Brel was on tour when he learned that a song from his most recent EP release, "Quand on N'a Que l'Amour," had hit number three on the French chart. The song fell like a hand grenade into the comfortable world of French pop in the mid-1950s -- not through its sentiments (the best known English version, "If We Only Have Love," is as worthy a translation as any) or through its delivery, but via an almost intangible sense that in Jacques Brel, France had finally been gifted a hero as relevant to its modern culture as Elvis Presley was to America, or Tommy Steele to Britain. Maybe even more so.

Since the release of his debut album, Brel had launched into a period of considerable musical experimentation, pairing himself with a string of different accompanists in an attempt to find that which most suited his material. Neither Michael Legrand nor Andre Popp matched his standards, however, and Brel finally returned to Francois Raubert, with whom he had recorded the earlier mini-hit "Sur la Place." The wisdom of his decision became immediately apparent, as "Quand on N'a Que l'Amour" soared up the chart and work immediately began on completing Brel's next album. "Jacques Brel 2" can scarcely be expected to match up to either the brilliance of his debut or the magnificence of the hit. Acting to strike while the commercial iron was hot, Philips chose to draw its contents from the stockpile of material Brel had recorded over the past two years, ensuring just one other Raubert recording, the initially eerie, and utterly hymn-like "L'Air de la Betise" made the set. Other cuts were drawn from the Popp and Legrand sessions, with the occasionally less-than-sympathetic results Brel had already noted.

Nevertheless, some undisputed masterpieces emerged. "Pardons" is a slight song raised to unexpected heights by its smoky jazz club backing, while "J'en appelle" could easily have competed with the broad pop ballads which would soon be unleashed by the English likes of Billy Fury and Cliff Richard. "La Bourree Du Celibataire," better known to English audiences as "Bachelor's Dance," is a bawdily infectious singalong, while the raw violin which opens "Heureux" elucidates a pain which Brel's haunted delivery stretches to panoramic proportions. The melodic similarity to "Quand on N'a Que l'Amour," incidentally, was surely deliberate, bookending the eight-song heart of the original album release, before the set closed with the only true (but nevertheless enjoyable) throwaway in sight, "Les Bles."                


Tracklist:

01. Quand On N'a Que L'Amour
02. Qu'Avons-Nous Fait Bonnes Gens ?
03. Les Pieds Dans Le Ruisseau
04. Pardons
05. La Bourrée Du Célibataire
06. L'Air De La Bêtise
07. Saint-Pierre
08. J'en Appelle
09. Heureux
10. Les Blés 11. Quand On N'a Que L'Amour

01 to 10: from the album "Quand On N'A Que L'Amour", 1957
11: recorded on January 25th 1960

Jaques Brel - Quand On N'a Que L'amour (1957)
(320 kbps, cover art included)