By Tom van der Meij
If there is something that has connected human beings over all ages and times, it must be music. Traces of both the making and the enjoyment of music have been found in the remnants of prehistorian folks, the ancient Greeks and practically all other places people lived together. It is, however, due to the last 70 years that we ended up in the era in which we find ourselves now: the golden age of music. A moment in time in which an endless number of songs, albums and musicians from all over the world can be found on streaming services with an enormous influx of new work to complement it. This article traces a selection of outstanding and perhaps undiscovered or even forgotten songs, albums, musicians and genres of the last 70 years: a global music tour in a tour-deficient time.
Cheb Hasni – Algeria
The life story of Cheb Hasni, real name Hasni Chakroun, starts and ends in the city of Oran, Algeria. Growing up in a working class family, his youth wasn’t easy. His adult life, unfortunately, wasn’t either. Soon after Hasni started singing in his hometown Oran, his talent got recognized. The releasement of his first cassettes, the standard musical format of the time and place, made Hasni one of the most prominent Rai singers of Northern Africa in the 70s and 80s, mostly famous amongst Algerian youth. His repertoire consists of love songs and homages to day-to-day life in globally forgotten Algeria.
Although the political situation in Algeria was miserable, Hasni always stayed away from political involvement. Due to the fundamentalist Islamite government, however, it became increasingly difficult to perform his songs in his home country. Most of his fame therefore had to be enjoyed in the tours that brought him from Paris to Washington and wherever there were people who enjoyed his music.
In 1994, Hasni gets murdered on the streets of Oran, only 26 years of age. The murderers oppose the western influence in his music and a song Hasni wrote about drugs. His legacy is still much enjoyed in the Arab world and Algerian communities all over the world. With over 400 songs, Hasni has an enormous back catalogue. The relatively unknown Rkebni Ihame can, with its swinging instrumentation of keyboards, trumpets and saxophones, be seen as the typically addictive Hasni anthem.
City pop – Japan
Cosmopolitanism, Americanization of the world or a combination of both? City Pop is a loosely defined music genre that originated in the Japan of the 70s. Japanese musicians incorporated in the genre left national influences behind and based their tunes on western music styles such as jazz, funk and disco. Their songs had a certain ‘city feeling’ – something hard to explain but relatively easy to recognize. The genre came at the same time as another major invention in the enjoyment of music, the Walkman. It suited a generation of richer, urbanized and western-oriented young Japanese.
In the 2010s, City Pop went through somewhat of a revival, mostly through underground electronic musicians and the usage of city pop samples in memes. A good example is the song Chrystal Dolphin by music producer Engelwood. The catchy tune became background music to thousands of TikTok videos and turned into a meme itself. Some minor research online, however, shows that the origins of the song lies in 80s city pop, namely within the song ドルフィン of Japanese singer Kingo Hamada, of which Engelwood sampled the outro. Hamada’s 1982 album midnight cruisin’ is city pop at its best: the cover shows a vaguely photographed metropole which is exactly the vibe of the music itself. ドルフィン is, with it’s soft-rock guitars and hot saxophones, the right track to symbolize the heritage of city pop.
Nina Simone – Let it be me – United States
Nina Simone is probably the best known artist of this tour and there is an infinite catalogue of outstanding music to choose from. The American singer and civil rights activists is mostly famous for songs such as I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free, Feeling Good and Sinner man. She sang in a wide variance of musical styles, such as gospel and soul. But she is mostly praised for her phenomenal usage of the piano. Her discography consists of numerous hiddengems, which feature heavily on the album Let It Be Me, together with some hits and songs Simone has covered her whole career.
The album consists of 12 songs in a spectacular live performance in 1987. The quality of the recording is amazingly high for a live recording and the songs capture the emotion Simone could put in her voice. Reoccurring themes of her career are womanhood and racism, which come back on this album on the song Four Women. When Simone covers a song, you do not hear a copy but an original interpretation. She often switches up the original instrumentals and puts a different emphasis on the vocal arrangements. The cover of the renowned song If you Knew / Let it be me, for example,easily surpasses the earlier cover by Bob Dylan, despite the much simpler instrumentation. The highlight of this album, however, is Stars, a cover of the song Janis Ian wrote in 1974. Simone replaces the acoustic guitar of Ian’s version for her piano and adds some background drums. The combination of poetic lyrics, simple instrumentation and the magnificent voice of Simone makes this cover a worthy addition to the original.
Ленинград – Терминатор (Leningrad – Terminator) – Russia
This piece of music is on the louder side of things and created by the Russian band Leningrad. They made ska and punk rock from the late 90s to 2008 and were led by the artist Sergey Shnurov. Their songs follow a simple concept: vulgar and simplistic lyrics, energetic singing of Shnurov and some alternation with horns or string instruments. It is a concept blatantly hearable on the song Терминатор of the 2000 record Dachniki. The song starts easygoing, but the quickly erupts into a fusion of loud, swingy but enjoyable big-band music.
In recent years, the band has frequently come back together for live performances and Терминатор has been incorporated in the set list occasionally. The live version differs slightly from the official version available on streaming services. The combination of an unknown language and the aggressive-passionate vocal performance of Shnurov can have a mystifying effect on the listener. This does, however, not take anything away from the passion and the talent of the band members on stage. In this version out of 2017 it takes the band some time to hit the right pace, but when Shnurov is joined by a violin player in donut pants, the band reaches the top of both weirdness and euphoria. It makes the video a peculiar watch and the song an even more fascinating listen.
Tribalistas – Brasil
The Brazilian group Tribalistas consist of three core members: Marisa Monte, Arnaldo Antunes and Carlinhos Brown. They make modern Bossa-Nova music: a combination of pop, samba, jazz and soft-rock. It is mostly the combination of the laidback instrumentation and the catchiness of the songs that makes their music such a pleasant listen, regardless of one’s grasp of the Portuguese language.
Although widely known in their home country and the rest of the Portuguese speaking world, their emergence in other parts of the world is relatively recent phenomenon. This might partly be related to their own musical approach: with an output of only two albums over a 15 year period, both conveniently called Tribalistas, staying relevant in the music industry is anything but self-evident.
It is, however, the musical qualities of Monte, Antunes and Brown that kept the music of Tribalistas popular. The first Tribalistas album, which came out in 2002, has so far sold more than 3.5 million copies worldwide and got nominated for multiple Latin-American Grammies. With the exception of the 2013 release Joga Arroz, a song supporting gay-marriage rights in Brazil, the Tribalistas did not release any new music up until 2017. The second Tribalistas is as delightful and catchy as the first one and was accompanied by a world tour that brought the trio to filled concert halls and football stadiums from Los Angeles to Brussels. The live performance of Já Sei Namorar, one of the big hits of the first album, explains the ongoing popularity of the group.
Destroyer – Five Spanish Songs – Canada
The band Destroyer pivots upon Canadian musician Dan Bejar. While the band name suggests heavy metal groves, the opposite is true. Since his debut more than 20 years ago, Bejar has put out records going over and combining all ranges of rock music: soft rock, folk-rock, pop rock and even some new wave. After singing in English for the bulk of his career, he temporarily swapped to his second language Spanish in 2013, cynically noting:
‘It was 2013. The English language seemed spent, despicable, not easily singable. It felt over for English; good for business transactions, but that’s about it.’
It was a move both surprising and expectable. Destroyer just enjoyed its first global success with their 2011 jazz-pop record Kaputt: an EP of Spanish songs might lead to disinterest in the group of freshly obtained group of listeners. It is the consistent impulse of Bejar to keep on reinventing his sound, however, that explains this move. This creative urge, Bejars inimitable poetic lyrics and his indifference towards the expectations of the outside world are the biggest strengths of the band; it creates a space in which the band puts out whatever Bejar and his bandmates feel like making. After 20 years, Bejar remains as unpredictable as he is talented.
The result of the switch is the Five Spanish Songs EP, of which the content perfectly matches the title. Bejar does not sing self-written songs, but presents 5 covers from the Spanish band Sr. Chinarro, which in itself is a praiseworthy gesture; the songs from Sr. Chinarro never traveled any further than Spain. In a style comparable to Nina Simone, Bejar recycles the songs and gives them his own interpretation. Opening songs Maria De Las Nieves and Del Monton are a chill mix of acoustic guitars and Bejar soft voice, while the song El Rito goes for a more harsher rock sound. The song Babieca is the most entertaining song of the EP due to its Latin percussion and up-tempo violins and electric guitars.
An accompanying highlight of this EP is the music video of the final song Bye Bye, which has rather vague lyrical themes such as la gominola (the jellybean), la escaramuza (skirmish) and cangrejo de color (the colored crab). The video, however, does not involve any fuzziness and shows serene images that fit perfectly with the music: a group of free roaming chickens on an idyllically located farm, while Bejar plays his soft guitar chords – and eats chicken.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIiQpcgPZRw
Edited by Juni Moltubak
Artwork by Oscar Laviolette