seeline

They're both good, although I have mixed feelings about reissues like these, because the compilers have chosen music that's not really representative of most of what was going on in W. African pop music at the time. They seem to want to focus on cuts that will have immediate appeal to American audiences. Too bad, really, because there's a lot of nifty material out there that they're overlooking. You can find some examples on these blogs: http://wrldsrv.blogspot.com/ http://likembe.blogspot.com/ http://www.voanews.com/english/Africa/blog/ - lots of fantastic stuff here, from the Voice of America archives http://mattgy.net/music/ http://matsuli.blogspot.com/ * For a taste of contemporary Ghanian pop, you might check out King Ayisoba's MySpace page (for starters). Not sure why his album hasn't gotten much press, because he's really good!

NYT blogger David Gonzalez: In El Barrio, Mourning a Giant of Latin Music

there should be an obit/profile up on Descarga.com very soon... Also, try emusic.com for lots of entirely legal tracks by Joe.

Yes. It was a limited CD reissue, part of the Con series.

OK, I'm game, Bev. I recently came across this book by John P. Murphy, and can't recommend it highly enough - The author's website has some great additional material (text, music and videos) that didn't make it into the book and its companion CD. What impresses me most is this: he deals with almost every existing genre of Brazilian music, and is (AFAIK) the 1st to write about most of them in English. He spent a lot of time in the northeast of Brazil, studying several kinds of folkloric/"popular" music with master musicians, and the results are impressive! This book is part of a series for classroom use, so there are occasional bits of intrusive text meant for teachers. But that's easily overlooked. He includes a lot of web-only resources in the text and bibliography, too - very easily accessible stuff. Probably *the* biggest gap is that there are no YouTube/Daily Motion/etc. links, but the book went to press before that all took off.

Oh, they categorize music in Brazil; it's just done differently than here. And truly, there's still a sense of "porousness" about many things, including the boundaries between popular and classical - refreshingly so, I think. It's something that seems to be difficult for us to "get," in some respects, anyway. (Luciana Souza, a Brazilian singer who now lives here, has been highly praised for her recordings of Brazilian standards but faulted heavily for doing a similar project with contemporary American songs - the verdict was that it was much too "pop-oriented.") Thanks for the story on the milliner; black women have kept the profession alive! (See Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats.) It's interesting you say that. I recently bought the great box set "Hitsville USA: The Motown Singles Collection 1959 - 1971." In the booklet, it said this about Marvin Gaye: "In his artistic heart of hearts, Gaye longed to be a troubadour, the next Nat King Cole or Perry Como, singing standards by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Brecht and Weill. He even told confidant and biographer David Ritz at one point, 'I never wanted to shake my ass... I wanted to sit on a stool and sing soft love songs.'" He did make at least one crooner-type, standards album - IIRC, his wanting to do these kinds of albums was mentioned a lot after he died.

Mark, thanks for the great post. This is interesting to me partly because I can recall (a bit) this kind of eclecticism in pop music; also because the "considerably more porous" thing is still true in, say, Brazil. My thought is that we N. Americans are pretty intent on categorizing music and artists, while a lot of Latin Americans are far less interested in that than we are - "popular" in Brazil means something very different than it does here. (Lots of Brazilian "popular" music would be labeled as folk, traditional, "roots music" - or whatever - up here.) My guess is that a lot of Aretha's contemporaries thought very much as she does - Marvin Gaye comes to mind, for one.

That "Hendrix of the kora" biz was cooked up by publicists. He is good, but he's not the only kora player to have done plugged-in work - Toumani Diabate has played with a pickup, and so has Mory Kante. (See Banning Eyre's In Griot Time for more info.; there should also be some material about this on the Afropop Worldwide site.) * Note: Banning's book appears to be o.p. in the US, but the asking price on Amazon.com is insanely high. I'd try abebooks.com, or else write directly to Banning - he should have some copies for sale. Edited to add: Just for fun, I Googled the phrase "Hendrix of the kora" (no quotes) and found that it's applied to virtually every African kora players who's performed in the UK, the US and Canada.

I like that idea - nifty names, too! (Index especially.)

Heck, I'm ready to move; sounds like a cool place! Well, it's a small town in the mountains of NE Pennsylvania - not exactly prime jazz territory. Since I'm from PA, too, I love the way Elliot and his band are using small-town names for a lot of their pieces, but that doesn't make the places "cool" by default.

I've driven past it.

Try $29.95...

Mm, can't say I'm greatly in favour of subscription fees. It makes e-music like the old record clubs. But if you don't want anything this month, because you've already got too much recent stuff to listen to, well tough, still pay. I absolutely can't absorb more than about 200 albums a year - preferably fewer; 170 last year and that was slightly too many as I only listened to 85% of the albums I've had for longer than two years. MG MG, I think it's a lot different than those record club boondoggles, because there is so much there. Have you looked recently? (I do find myself doing a lot of single-track downloads there, BTW.) There's absolutely no comparison between typical "record club" stock and sites like Emusic. I think you have to look at it as a completely different business model. Edited to add: Forgot to mention how much I dislike iTunes (store and software). FWIW, there's also a lot of good material available on CDBaby - MP3 and/or disc. A lot of people who sell through CDBaby also have their albums available on Emusic.com, though without artwork and inserts. (Which are included if you buy directly from CDBaby.) Last thought: a lot of rare, o.p. material is available on Emusic.com. I've been able to get hold of things that I simply can't afford as used LPs/discs, which is a godsend. Their setup is also very helpful for anyone needing to hear material in a hurry (for research, review, etc.). (I've dug into the Document Records catalog there - just an amazing resource!)

Emusic.com No, the majors aren't there, but just about everyone else is. Subscription fees, not per-track fees, and actual ownership of files.

It definitely is a relatively "old" term, but they're not sure just how old. (Obviously predates "bossa nova," though!) Sorry for quoting myself, but.... I got the info. because of discussion on page 1 of this thread. (Confusion over an album title.)

in other words: "each one she passes goes aaahhhh ... " Hard to say, since the original lyrics don't have a line like that. She's described as being graceful (etc.), but ...well. As with many other songs, the English lyrics are an approximation, not a even close to a word-for-word translation.

Meanings of the word "bossa" I asked a Brazilian friend about this earlier today. the reply: It definitely is a relatively "old" term, but they're not sure just how old. (Obviously predates "bossa nova," though!)

I used to keep up a database/running inventory of my CDs and LPs - and never found one "right" way of handling boxed sets. For the most part, I simply counted them as a single item, without trying to cross-check against the rest. (Especially true of Mosaic boxes, since they don't include the original cover art and cuts from a single album might be spread out over more than 1 LP/CD .)

"Revisionist"???? Do you mean how she's being marketed now, or in the 60s? (Am feeling somewhat confused here.) Regardless of her aspirations (or lack thereof), I think she'll always be viewed through her association with João, in the US, at least. They made a hit single, after all... (But I completely agree that she was/is much more in the mode of people like Claudine Longet.) To me, it's strange that Miucha (Chico Buarque's sister, mother of Bebel) and João lived here in the US, but somehow Miucha never really was on the radar - even after "Best of Two Worlds." Her voice is a little frayed now, but she's still a good singer.

Hmm... Wanda Sá (formerly known as Wanda de Sa/Sah) isn't exactly what I'd call a "copycat." She's pretty highly regarded in Brazil, too. From her AllBrazilianMusic bio. - Astrud was not a singer. João insisted that she sing when the 1st Getz/Gilberto album was being recorded. The rest is history.

Hmm.... I haven't taken the train from D.C. to NYC since 2002. Maybe fares have come down a bit since then? And 175 round trip is (I think) price-gouging on Amtrak's part. 75.00-100.00 round trip sounds about right.

EMI Brasil. The Odeon catalog belongs to them. As for the title "A Bossa Eterna," the word "bossa" has had multiple meanings in the vernacular. The word itself was already around when bossa nova came along. (Will have to see if one of my Brazilian friends can help a bit with background on this one.)

He used two different spellings for his first name. Many of his recordings were done with the alternate spelling: Victor. I know that probably seems like a minor point at best, but it's very helpful if you're searching for his recordings. He also doubled on soprano, and is survived by his brother, pianist João Carlos Assis Brasil. Here's a link to his bio. on the AllBrazilianMusic site.

I've spent a lot of time working in bookstores, though not in recent years... but have to say that when i was doing that, the major publishing houses were putting out *way* too much. Even those of us who read the trade papers religiously had no real hope of keeping up with the flood. The idea seemed to be that "More is more," meaning that putting more stuff out there would automatically translate into more sales and thus more money for the big publishing houses. Most of the best stuff tends to come from mid-sized-small publishing firms, whether university presses or small independents. (Though there are some imprints - now owned by the big companies - that are pretty consistent with good material, like Penguin.) overall, a falling-off in the amount of books printed per year would probably be beneficial to the book trade, authors, etc. As for ebooks, well - no shortage of them (legal and otherwise) online. Your local library is probably offering some - maybe a lot - to its patrons, all free. This has been in the wind for a long time. And Oprah Winfrey's endorsement of Amazon's Kindle is adding to the big push. (Kind of reminds me of how things were back in the late 80s, when the switchover from LPs to CDs happened.) I bet a lot of us will be surprised - in a good way - by newer forms of publishing and distribution. (should I mention that I have a Kindle on order? It's for my mom, though, not me.)