Sunday, February 3rd, 2008
mali music
i’ve heard some of ali farka touré’s stuff before. and i’ve heard about diabaté, but i’d never heard any of his stuff. fantastic. there are two other bands from mali that i’ve heard: tinariwen - a band of touareg soldier-musicians - and tartit - five touareg women and four men who formed in a refugee camp in burkina faso. i’ve heard tinariwen’s 2007 album, aman iman, is fantastic, and tartit’s 2006 album abacabok, too. i first heard of tartit thanks to “ansari” being included on a free disc i got with the january 2007 issue of the word - probably the best music magazine out there - which i picked up in transit at amsterdam schiphol. check the song out on tartit’s myspace, or just ask me for it. mesmeric is the right word.
also, damon albarn - of blur, gorillaz, the good, the bad & the queen, and the recent monkey: journey to the west - released an album in 2002 entitled mali music, collaborating with toumani diabaté and other musicians. i haven’t been able to get my hands on that album either though. all royalties from the sale of the album go to oxfam. as an aside, i’ll throw out the suggestion that damon albarn is the most creative british musician of his generation.
on microsoft, i guess they’re getting desperate now. i fear they’ll end up messing up yahoo! and wait, i just realised: that means ms will own yahoo! mail too! maybe i’ll have to switch. =( i wonder how long it’ll be until apple’s os outstrips overtakes windows in terms of sales.
atomsmasher, what guitar did you get?
[edit: i've just started listening to tinariwen's aman iman. three songs in, it's absolutely amazing.]
February 4th, 2008 at 11:22 am
an_unsuitable_boy said:
for some reason i thought tinariwen were afghan. i think i saw a song of theirs on jools holland’s show once but think of checking it again. will definitely look into them though.
February 4th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Atomsmasher said:
Tinariwen - they certainly have some street cred, eh? make the american ‘gangster’ rappers look like adolecent scout cookie bakers at a jamboree.
I listened to one of their songs a while back, but guess i need to give them a real try. Bought this cd the other day:
http://www.banningeyre.com/pages/igt_index.html
its real quirky, but interesting, if only for a ethnolinguistic/anthroplogical reason and ill tell you why in my next post..
The guitar’s actually a fender, but a cheap ass one (Squier). Which sort of suits me fine b/c i aint no hendrix. But i was hanging around a guitar shop last w/e and the ones they had there just sounded so much better. Shops owened by real musicians are such a concentration of excentricity, you really have to leave rationality at the door. why would, for instance, anyone, let me, of all people, screw around for a good hour with a guitar that costs a couple of hundred quid? beggars belif, sometimes shakes my faith in the cruelness of humanity i tell you (or as soon_to_be_suitable_boy insists, inhuman-unhumanity).
February 6th, 2008 at 1:16 am
al-tahafut said:
nice. i made a couple of trips to daddy’s junky music, and one to the less-interestingly named guitar center. tried out the squier, and, of course, the casino - i can dream right? - as well as some acoustic seagulls. it would help to pick one out if i actually knew more than a couple of chords. i’m thinking i’ll go with the squier, see how it goes. hopefully, it won’t turn out to be a dud. but i’m now torn between bass and guitar. =S maybe i’ll get a squier bass?
yeah, i’m thinking tinariwen would school 50cent, etc., in a showdown.
that banning eyre cd sounds pretty cool, too. write soon!