Playlist for
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
May 16, 2008

Hosted by Greg Lyon on FRIDAYS at 2-4 pm
on WPVM Asheville (103.5 FM and www.wpvm.org)

This show is available for listening as an archive for one week after its airing at WPVM’s Archive Page (click on the STREAM button for this show–under the letter ‘G’)

Notes:

– First, I want to thank Shaina for filling in for me the last two weeks. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Shaina!!! She took the co-pilot’s chair today, just in time for…

– BELLY DANCING!!! Yes, I acquired a stack of belly dancing and other Mediterranean treats from my dear friend Nick, who collects this stuff. I think Shaina was spot-on when she pointed out that if you just judge these records by their covers, you would expect them, well, suck. But oh my, you would be wrong. I’ve been listening to nothing but belly dance music for several days, and it never really gets old. It’s even good to work to! It turns out that a lot of the records that hit the market in the U.S. were made by completely assimilated first generation East-Mediterranean-Americans (Greeks, Turks, Lebanese, et al.–to lump several different ethnicities and cultures together, no doubt against their will) who were great musicians but obviously were pigeonholed into the "exotica" market. Ethnomusicologist Anne Rasmussen sums it up nicely, saying that the Orientalism of the Middle Eastern nightclub scene in America, beginning in the 1950s but peaking in the 1960s and early 1970s “served to enhance the foreignness of these Arab and other Middle Eastern immigrants and their families, placing them in an imaginary world that was exotic — even to themselves”[1]. The vast majority of the records have lovely, scantily-clad (if that), very fit (check out that tummy!) ladies on them. Now, this doesn’t bother me very much, but it might give you the wrong idea about the seriousness of the music. I’m sure there are a ton of cheesy belly dance records out there, but the ones Nick handed to me are not. So thank you, Nick! The best of the bunch, though, was recorded in Lebanon (I think), featuring only Toni Frangieh on buzuk and Setrak Sarkissian on tabla–simple but oh so effective. It was the background music (see below). If you want to know more about this music, well, there’s a website for you: Radio Bastet, complete with scans of the album covers!

– Sublime Frequencies has released the Group Doueh record, Guitar Music from the Western Sahara on CD after it went out of print in a limited edition vinyl run. I think it’s the best thing they’ve ever done, so I recommend you go pick up one.

– Happy Birthday to Brian Eno, who turned 60 yesterday.

– I went to see Polvo in their reunion last Saturday night, and they simply kicked ass. If you get a chance to see them, you will likely be very glad you did. The new drummer, Brian Quast (from Regraped, Cherry Valence) is ferocious, and I had forgotten how good the bassist Steve Popson is. And Ash Bowie and Dave Brylawski had lost nothing on guitar either. They played new songs, and they were good, so I’m guessing they’ll put something out at some point.

– My favorite new music this week was by the Scorch Trio, a Norwegian out-there jazz outfit on Rune Grammofon records, featuring some super-fine drumming by Paal Nilssen-Love. The guitarist, Raoul Björkenheim, is actually Finnish-American, and he also plays a mysterious instrument called the "viola da gimbri"–but not on the track I played. Ingebrigt Håker Flaten plays the bass and electronics.

– The new Fall track, "Taurig," from Imperial Wax Solvent (out only in the UK), is their most addictive in years and years. Very krautrock. Hardly any vocals. You will put this on repeat–trust me on that.

– Singer to Nick Drake to Dando Shaft was one of my most pleasing mixes in recent memory. Dando Shaft were a UK folk rock group from circa 1970, obviously influenced by Nick Drake. I’d never played that Nick Drake track ("Know") before on the radio, and it was in listening to it that I realized how intense Drake’s playing is there, even if it’s the same riff over and over again.

Background Music: Toni Frangieh & Setrak Sarkissian - Belly Dance Nights (Layale Bourg El Haman) Vol. 1 - Voix de l’Orient Series (1977)

1. Anne Rasmussen, "‘An Evening in the Orient’: The Middle Eastern Nightclub in America," Asian Music 23, no. 2 (1992): 63-88.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 8:49 pm and is filed under Playlist. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.