Combining Colombian cumbias, Andean melodies, and Cuban guajiras with psychedelic surf guitars, wah wah pedals and moog synthesizers, Chicha is proof that often the best things are many things at once – strong in their individual identities and creating something larger when they ferment together. So drink up, space cowboys.

*”The word chicha is one of the most used and least understood peruanismos in Peru. For some, it alludes to chaos and disorder caused by working-class culture and people. But we can also understand ‘chicha’ as an irreverent eruption that spreads out and creates a new amalgam of all bloods and cultures of Peru – it is an exciting mix that transcends the ‘good taste’ of hegemonic culture, flees from the official, and subverts colonialism, appropriating its own codes. ‘Chicha’ is something that comes from ‘low’ but cannibalizes everything ‘high’ to create a popular art, an aesthetics, a music, a way of life that has popular force.” – Alfredo Villar, A mi qué Chicha [2013]

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Easy access to excellent music for those who know where to look is another reason why the Internet is awesome.

Like ‘Foreign Film’, ‘World Music’ is not a category, mainly because it doesn’t actually categorize anything. All that odd label says is: ‘This is music not from here. It’s from out there. In the world’. In that way, it’s tied to offensive notions of what is ‘normal’ and what is ‘other’. Unless it’s played on instruments from the future made out of materials sourced on Jupiter, all music is ‘World Music’.

Highlife originated in Ghana- which is in the World – in the early 1900s. The guitarist Charles Kofi Mann formed Carousel 7 in the late 1960s. James Brown gave a concert in Lagos in 1970. “Funky Highlife” came out in 1975 on the Essibons label, but, according to Dick Essilfe Bondzie, who ran the label, the demand for the record couldn’t be met because of the limited availability of vinyl due to Ghana’s economic downturn. Overcoming the tragedy of its limited initial pressings, the album was re-released in 2012 by the excellent label Mr Bongo.

On Funky Highlife, Mann alchemically mixed traditional Ghanian highlife arrangements with the newer sounds of American soul and funk to produce aural gold. When it comes to music, it’s a small world after all, which is something to be joyous about because – at its best – it sounds like this.

The post C.K. Mann & His Carousel 7, Funky Highlife appeared first on The Good Blog.

The critical theorist Catherine Belsey once commented about Shakespeare’s comedies that ‘the plays are more than their endings’. This applies not just to Shakespeare but also to movies, books, relationships and – of course – Guns N’ Roses.

Forget Axl’s White man dreads. Forget Buckethead. Forget the 2012 report in NME that the current line up, with breath-taking animus, banned anyone wearing a Slash t-shirt from entering their UK shows.

Forget all that. And focus on the moment, bio-identical to revelation, when the band appeared like a comet and the world saw by its light something as familiar as it was rare: audacious talent, a generational line in the sand and – in Axl – a sexual she-man successor to Elvis, Mick Jagger and Robert Plant.

In 1987, Axl’s drinking and violence and mental health were deemed Awesome! by virtue of his youth. In 1987, Axl was beautiful. Just look at this punim – as the Bard said, 95 million views and nearly two decades cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety:

These were years when the band was still awed and delighted by their world fame. These were years when they were already monumentally successful yet still had something to prove; a creative moment as fleeting as it is rare. It blows the mind to imagine being in the audience for any of this:

In 1992, they unfurled the Rococo splendor of November Rain – a single that clocked in at nearly 10 minutes, the longest to ever reach the Billboard Top 10. And they could do that because it contained not one but two of the greatest guitar solos of all time.

Anyone who has seen Andre 3000’s green plaid high-waisted happy pants in “Hey Ya” (or Axl’s lack of them here at 0:17) knows that the secret of Cool is 100% confidence. If that confidence is contaminated by a single grain of doubt it may as well be zero. But, once achieved, Cool has prophylactic powers. This is the lesson of the early Gunners videos. Cool is impervious to the crappy filler songs on nearly all their albums. Impervious to the Tufnel/St Hubbins-esque internecine fighting. Impervious to entropy and the moment when beautiful, bad ass party boys became bovine, slack-jawed men. Impervious to subsequent betrayals of metabolism and talent.

In the moments caught on tape in these clips, Guns N’ Roses have defied the laws of time and space to remain at the top of their game, always. They, like all of us, are more than their ending.

The post Guns N’ Roses, Live at the Ritz 1988 appeared first on The Good Blog.

A rejection letter once advised F. Scott Fitzgerald that “You’d have a decent book if you’d get rid of that Gatsby character”. There are many similar edicts from editors and publishers that reveal a syllabus of errors when it comes to our greatest cultural touchstones (for more on that, see this fabulous Blog). But most people working creatively know to plow through all that. And a lot of the time, we’re glad they did.

In the case of The Congos’ 1977 release, The Heart of the Congos, we should be ecstatic that they did.

This exquisite Faberge egg of an album is one the greatest roots reggae releases ever. Rejected by Island, it received a limited release in Jamaica. But it is rightfully acknowledged now as a musical masterpiece.

Produced and arranged by the great Lee Perry at his Black Ark studio during a period of genius lucidity, consistency and restraint, the album showcases the siren falsetto of Cedric Myton and the warm counterpoint of Roy ‘Ashanti’ Johnson’s vocals. Each song brings something precious and unique to the album as a whole. Singly and in combination these songs sound like sunshine feels and they have a cultural, lyrical and musical depth that wouldn’t normally accompany that description.

So turn it up and the next time you face rejection remember to just rocksteady.

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John Oates begins with a stellar performance, complete with perfectly-timed ‘bombs bursting in air’ accompanied by actual bombs bursting in actual air.

We can only assume that Daryl Hall not only went second but also watched John Oates’s performance. Because when Hall went out there to sing the Star Spangled Banner, he also chose to completely reinvent music.

This clip is glorious for the palpable moment that you feel the baseball crowd go from not really being sure what they were watching, to simultaneously realizing that they were witnessesing a miracle. Even the mascot becomes a Hall fanatic.

You may call it an epiphany, Daryl Hall just calls it blue-eyed soul.

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And if you’d like to compare it to the original, I recommend this version from the Porter Wagoner Show. In this clip, as well as a flawless performance from Dolly, we are treated to two world records from Porter Wagoner – Most Ludicrous Suit Worn By Anyone Claiming To Be ‘Country’, and Most Inappropriately Close Interview Stance.

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In 1964, Joseph Shabalala dreamed of perfect harmony. Not in a Martin Luther King Jr sort of way. He actually heard specific Zulu harmonies in his sleep. For six months, he had a recurring dream of a choir singing in perfect harmony. So he formed a new group with the brothers and cousins with whom he’d been singing since the early 1950s and they started practicing. Their music was isicathamiya – traditional Zulu choral singing.

Their level of extreme awesome meant that they won nearly every local competition in Durban and Johannesburg. As a result, they were forbidden from entering but welcomed to entertain at the competitions. Also as a result, Shabalala changed the name of the group to Ladysmith Black Mambazo. “Ladysmith” for his hometown in KwaZulu-Natal. “Black” for the black ox, the strongest farm animal. And “mambazo” (“axe”) for their mad skills at chopping down their competition.

Their debut album, Amabuth (1973), was the first by a black musician or group in South Africa to go gold. In 1985 they collaborated with Simon on Graceland which sold 14 million copies. And their first album for US release, Shaka Zulu (1987), won a Grammy. They sang at Mandela’s inauguration and toured consistently for about 25 years.

Opinions differ on cultural boycotts. Simon got a lot of flack for breaking the one imposed against the apartheid regime to record Graceland with Black South African musicians. But they did it and in 1987, they performed together in Zimbabwe. Watching this concert 25 years later, the joy and strength, the sublime swagger and ebullient excellence will hit you like a warm wave. But it is merely an echo of what it must have felt like at the time.

In 1991, Shabalala’s brother Headman, a bass member of the group, was shot and killed by a white off-duty security guard. In 2002, Shabalala’s wife of 30 years was shot and killed in a church car park. Shabalala’s sons eventually joined the group and, in 2008, announcing that one of them would be the new leader, he said: “Thus, the dream I had over forty five years ago will continue well into the 21st century. Ladysmith Black Mambazo must continue as the message of Peace, Love and Harmony…We never will be silenced and we hope our fans and friends around the world will keep wanting to hear this message”.

The life of Joseph Shabalala, and that of his country – and of us all – is a story of hurting and healing and hurting and healing. Which is, perhaps, the lesson in a dream of perfect harmony and why it will always sounds so beautiful.

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