Tag: music

Amazing Songs & Other Delights #71 is the The Desert Blues and Not Just edition airs Monday 7th, 3-4:30pm (gmt+1) on Yé Yé Radio:  yeyeradio.com (or on the app). This a longer, special edition.

This programme opens with Imajighen by Mdou Moctar and closes with Tom Huddleston singing a live version on Hank Williams’ I Saw The Light. Once more, I’m travelling through connections, details, inspiration. And writing an essay.

Imajighen means free men in Berber. Although the lyrics specifically, or more specifically, address the free men of the Desert, the song’s words can be transposed to encompass us all. The chorus goes: “Imajighen, we can’t afford to be divided
Imajighen,
We can’t afford to be divided
Imajighen
We have no time for hate
Imajighen
Calling on you all wherever you are!
We are all Imajighen” Full lyrics in English, Tamasheq and Tifinagh can be read here. Tom Hiddleston plays Hank Williams in the film I Saw The Light.

What do Mdou Moctar and Hank Williams have in common? Everything, I venture. Amazing Songs & Other Delights #71 the The Desert Blues and Not Just edition could be said to be part of my “self taught” guitar schooling, mostly related to what Grupo Operário do Ruído, of which I’m part of, have been working on music wise.

Desert and African blues often have clapping. Clapping, including Arab clapping, a dry, hand palm against hand palm, clap, along with the fat clapping, is also something we have been exploring on Grupo Operário do Ruído. The same goes for rhythm, space, speed, rests, tone, intensity, ambient, emotions, silence, continuous, abrupt or smooth changes.

Since I elected the electric guitar as my main instrument in Grupo do Ruído, I have been paying a different kind of attention to the many faces, possibilities, approaches of the instrument.

This year, on Grupo Operário do Ruído we even created our own blues. A not so standard one, nonetheless, a blues.

Which take us to, what is the blues, what is a standard blues? The answers may require a many volumes encyclopedia. Or music theory explanations. I’ll leave both aside. As my choices for this Amazing Songs & Other Delights show, the blues is many things, everything, often not what a rigid blues school would call blues. Yet, it’s precisely the richness, the uniqueness, the emotions, feeling, sentiment that make the blues. Not being a never-miss-a-note-i-can-play-it-at-1000-miles-per-second master of the mimor blues pentatonic scale, proper chords progression, and on. If that’s all you got, you don’t have the blues, you have technique.

On these blues choices of mine we go on a journey with stops on Niger to Portugal, through the United States, Argelia-France, Marocco, United Kingdom, France-Spain, Mali, Cyprus, Algeria. Or, as sang Mdou Moctar’s Imajighen “We can’t afford to be divided”. Therefore, let’s have, sing and play the blues!

Tracklist:
01 – Mdou Moctar – Imajighen
02 – ANOHNI & The Johnsons – Breaking
03 – Tiwiza – At u Azeka
04 – Bombino – Mahegagh (What Shall I Do)
05 – Rui Veloso – Sayago Blues
06 – R.L. Burnside – See My Jumper Hanging On the Line (live at home, 1978)
07 – Tarwa N-Tiniri – Taryet
08 – Tom Verlaine – 5 Hours From Calais
09 – Dead Combo – Lisboa Mulata
10 – Fatou Seidi Ghali (Les Filles de Illighadad) – Telilit (live from Story of Sahel Sounds)
11 – Manu Chao – Tu Te Vas Feat. Laeti
12 – Felt – The Stagnant Pool
13 – Boubacar Traoré & Ali Farka Touré – Duna Ma Yelema
14 – Buzz Ayaz – Buzzi Ayazi
15 – Soledad Brothers – This Guitar Says I’m Sorry
16 – The White Stripes – Suzy Lee
17 – Etran de L’Aïr – Imouha
18 – Ben Watt with Bernard Butler – New Year of Grace (Upstairs at the De La Warr Pavilion Bexhill 5th April 2016)
19 – The Legendary Tiger Man – Keep it Burning
20 – Majid Bekkas – Daymallah (feat. Rachid Zeroual, Khalid Kouhen, Paolo Radoni, Marc Lelangue)
21 – Tinariwen – Sastanàqqàm
22 – Tom Hiddleston – I Saw The Light (with Mark Kermode on double-bass, live in the Wittertainment studio)

All previous shows on mixcloud: Yé Yé Radio mixcloud / | Mondo Bizarre Magazine mixcloud