Malika El Marrakechia | Malika El Marrakechia

When I was in Morocco a few years ago I picked up a couple of CDs by this woman, who, I guess because I kept seeing her merch everywhere, I just assumed was the hottest thing going in Marrakech at the time. This may or may not have been true, of course; what is true is that hers were my favorite CDs I found there. This one, especially.


I'm almost certain that this is an example of Moroccan chaabi, though Tim could correct me if I'm wrong. I'm also reasonably certain that you're going to love it.



Listen to the second track on this CD


Get it all here.

Kazim Al Saher | Aghsilly Bilbard

Listen to the the whole thing

Get the whole CD here.

[Another of my "house-cleaning" reposts; the first time I posted this it was at 128kbps and you had to download each song individually. Here it is now in 192 & a single zip file. It's one of the most sonically rich albums I've posted to date and I can't recommend it highly enough. I think it's Al Saher's all-time greatest album.]

I found this CD many, many years ago at Princess Music on Fifth Avenue in Bay Ridge. The last time I stopped by Princess Music their doors were closed. I've since called the number on the awning a number of times and always get nothing. They were the last of some half a dozen Arabic music places in the area that I used to haunt; now, it looks like they're gone with the others.

Kazim Al Saher, born in 1957 in Iraq, is perhaps the Arabic world's biggest living superstar. I have maybe a dozen of his CDs, most of which are heavily Western influenced. "Aghsilly Bilbard" is an exception.

Unlike many Arabic singers, Kazim Al Saher composes most of his own music. I don't think there is any question that the man is a genius. But more importantly, every time I listen to "Waneen," the first track (of only three) on this CD, I get terribly misty-eyed. I think it's one of the most moving pop songs--if it can actually be called a "pop" song--ever recorded.

While you're waiting for this thing to download, read this interview.

Silvio Rodriguez | Mujeres

Ten years ago today the first prisoners were locked up at the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. To mark this inauspicious date, here's a CD by Cuba's most famous protest singer, Silvio Rodriguez, one of the giants of "Nueva Trova" ("New Song").

I found this gem--the third of Rodriguez's albums, originally released on vinyl in 1978--at a sort of street fair thingy in a huge parking lot near Arthur Avenue in the Bronx.

I don't know what the fuck we are doing still holding hundreds of people there indefinitely without charging them of anything. I'm sorry, but ... what happened to the president I voted for who said he was going to shut it down?


Listen to the title song

Get the album here.

Archives de la Musique Arab - Vol. 1

Here's something for all of you Excavated Shellac fans: The first CD in the Ocora / Institut du Monde Arabe's Archives de la Musique Arabe series, including recordings from the middle east from ca. 1908-1920, with most of them hovering around 1910. 

Listen to brief samples of the songs here.

Get the whole thing here.

I've imported this CD--which itself dates back to 1987, nearly 25 years ago, which seems like the Jurassic Period for music burned into polycarbonate plastic--at a whopping 320 kbps (my usual is 192), given how much surface noise there is from the original 78RPM-to-digital transfer.

Does that mean anything? Are you happier? Honestly, while I can tell a difference between things I've downloaded at 128 versus 192, I'm not sure I'm hearing any real diff above 192. Am I wrong? Should I be uploading at 320 as a general rule? You do know it takes forever to upload at 320, yeah? I mean, I'm happy to blog less but at higher bit-rate if that's going to make you extremely happy.

I feel like I need to do a survey or something to find out what ya'll expect/want/desire/need. How am I blogging? What could be better. Should the CD cover be bigger? Do you need track lists? Am I a terrible excuse for a music blogger for withholding track lists?

In the absence of any real context for any particular CD, are you okay with me just rambling about talking with the bodega owner who sold it to me? Should I just shut up? Would you like more description of the music? More samples? Do you like videos if they're available, or could you care less?


Seriously, I'd love to know what you think.

I found this CD, by the way, at Rashid on Court Street in Brooklyn, a legendary Arabic music shop and former music publisher that closed a year or so ago.

Thái Thanh | Thái Thanh 5

Several years ago I attended a work-related conference in Montréal--sweet deal for me, right? Well, yes and no. It was, after all, a conference and I worked all day and many evenings. 

One evening after the workshops and other events had ended, I decided to walk back to my hotel rather than get on the subway. I thought it would be a nice way to explore a bit of the city. As it turned out, the route from the convention center to my hotel took my right through Montréal's Chinatown, on the edge of which was situated one of the largest Vietnamese video and CD stores I've ever seen.

Naturally, though I was exhausted and starving, I wandered in. And spent what probably seemed to the shop keep like hours poring over the CDs. Before long the shop keep, a woman who seemed to be about my age, began asking me the usual questions:


"You like Vietnamese music? You speak Vietnamese?" Yes, no. We talked a bit--I explained that I was a tourist from New York, which seemed to be provide her with enough explanation as to why I'd walked into her store that she loosened up and began to make suggestions. She also told me a bit about her family, who were part of the first wave of Vietnamese immigration to this continent in 1975.


I returned to the store every evening thereafter until the end of the conference and the shop keep each night would recommend several other titles for me to try. She would provide some context for each recommendation, talking about the specific importance of this or that singer, and who they might be similar to in western culture. 


If I remember correctly, she described Thái Thanh as a kind of "blues-y, jazz-y" singer along the lines of a Sarah Vaughn--a description that, actually, was fairly apt. I'm almost certain she recommended Thanh as a personal favorite. In any event, I'm really grateful for her recommendation: this is the only CD I've yet managed to find by this particular singer, and her voice is decidedly fabulous.


Listen to "Mot Mai Gia Tu Vu Khi"


Get it all here.

Tito Rodriguez | Mama Guela

Get it all here.

My first job in New York, summer of 1997, was secretary to the head of the history department at Columbia University. It was an easy gig. The pay was negligible. Our union went on strike about a month after I took the job, making my first months here a living financial hell.

But I got a lot done. A year and a half into the job, I started Readme, one of the first large-scale online magazines of poetics. (It was mostly interviews and essays; I wasn't yet convinced that the Web was such a great place to publish poetry.)

And, at some point while I was there, I remember walking along Amsterdam Avenue above 110th Street and seeing a single line of CDs over the head of a cashier in a tiny bodega with a single aisle. I went in. I saw the cover above, asked how much it was--I think $7 or $8--and bought it.

Tito Rodriguez was one of the most popular Puerto Rican bandleaders of all time. (That said, his father was Dominican, his mother Cuban, and he did most of his recording here in New York City.) I had no idea who he was at the time, but when I popped this thing into my ghetto blaster at home, I was determined to find out. Sadly, the music in this collection--recorded in NYC from 1949-51--may well be the best material he ever recorded. Certainly it is the tightest I've heard by him and, believe me, I've picked up everything else I've managed to find.

More than a decade after finding it, it remains my all-time favorite Latin music CD.

80s Ladies

LMF (大懶堂) | Absolutely Fxxker: The Ultimate_s...Hits

Listen to 10 songs from this 3-CD album

 

Get it all here.

Visiting my favorite Video/CD store in Brooklyn's Chinatown last year I noticed an odd-looking VCD I'd never seen before: "Dare Ya!" which was described as "A daring documentary on the Hong Kong's most controversial hip-hop band, LMF (LazyMuthaFuckaz)." I noted the "Category III" triangle in the bottom right hand corner. ("Category III" = X, or adults-only, rating.) I assumed it was going to be either really awesome, extremely embarrassingly bad, or some sort of parody, a la Daniel Wu's Heavenly Kings.

It turned out to be fairly good. (You can watch the entire documentary, with English subtitles, below.) But nowhere near as life-changingly awesome as the 3-CD "best of" compilation I discovered a week later in a Manhattan Video/CD place on the corner of Bowery & Canal.

That's the place on the left, with the white awning with orange trim

Listen to the playlist above and though you'll hear a little of their range--hip-hop mixed with soul, thrash, rock, etc. I'll be blunt: I love, love, love, love, love this band. Seriously. While you download, watch the documentary:

LMF documentary, "Dare Ya!" part 1, includes English subtitles

"Dare Ya!" part 2

"Dare Ya!" part 3

"Dare Ya!" part 4

"Dare Ya!" part 5

"Dare Ya!" part 6

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