ra ra rasputin

I only recently discovered the Ayoub sisters, when somebody shared Ya Mariam El Bekr somewhere. Looking up their back catalogue, I was intrigued by their adaptation of Boney M's Rasputin even though I generally feel that I have heard too much of this band in the 70s/80s and am not that keen to revisit their work.



I did however enjoy the string duo version of Rasputin, and then watched the making of video, and then wondered where the tune actually comes from. Turns out half of it is an old Turkish folk song (there are also Arabic versions of it, so I don't really know which of the two is the original).

The Turkish song is called Kâtibim (sheet music here) and I really love the Turkish / Urdu mashup you can watch here (just ignore the blatant Coke advertising).

The Arabic version is called Ya Banat Iskandaria, and searching for this title I found a lovely version for flute, harp, percussion, here.

Other versions:
Charbel Rouhana (instrumental: oud)
Sung in Turkish and Arabic, with belly dancer.

Update 28.10.2025: I just discovered that Jordi Savall and friends also made an arrangement of this in several languages under the title of "Üsküdara gideriken" which is the beginning of the Turkish text. See live performances here or here. Here's Jordi Savall again, this time under the Greek title, with yet more languages. The Greek title Από Ξένο Τόπο also leads us to this orchestral version.

-------------

PS I'm really excited about these discoveries, and I think this warrants a new tag, let's call it #folk mash, for unearthing folk influences behind famous pop / rock / classical music. (next up, probably: a very famous Led Zeppelin track)

Najla Shami

We were treated to an amazing concert from the Palestinian/Galician singer-songwriter Najla Shami (with guitarist Sérgio Tannus) this week, organised by the university's Galician Studies Centre as part of this year's Forum for Iberian Studies.

I do love a bit of Arabic influences mixed into my music (see also: Shakira), and I may have lost count but I think I heard Najla singing in seven different languages that evening, so this hit all the right spots. Oh, and she's an amazing singer as well.

So, anyhow, here are some videos with the some of the songs she played here:


Camiño Branco official video

A lingua que eu falo live with Sérgio Tannus

Coração Estaladiço live with Sérgio Tannus

There's also lots of good stuff on her SoundCloud page.

And here are a couple of photos I took towards the end of the show:

lee and che

My series on Oxford buskers seems to be settling in on a monthly rhythm now. For a daily fix of street music visit my street music blog on tumblr. This month's artists are duo Lee and Che - I think she's called Cheryl in real life, so he must be Lee. They play covers of pop/country songs that are a bit less well known (at least to me), so I discover new songs every time I see them. Here they are doing their thing in Cornmarket Street (own photo):

I have a couple of street videos of them on my youtube channel:

Cover me up by Jason Isbell

For you by Angus and Julia Stone

For more info find them on Facebook.

Links:

My flickr pics of Lee and Che

Lee and Che's youtube channel

 

---

NB: Anybody wanting to join the vibrant Oxford busking scene needs a busking pass from the Oxford City Council, application details here. See also the code of practice and the map of the nine official busking spots here.

sylva kay

In my new series on buskers I've seen in Oxford, here's a singer-songwriter whose work reminds me a bit of the 1990s (I hope she won't mind me saying), of people like Garbage and early Sheryl Crow. (It's got the right mix of stirring noisiness and quiet sensitivity for me, if that makes any sense at all.)

Sylva Kay is new on the Oxford scene, but is putting in a lot of appearances in Cornmarket Street, so with any luck Oxford based readers will have seen her or may find her soon.

She's got an album out called Undercut which you can buy as CD or vinyl LP from her or via her official website or check out on SoundCloud. No you can't borrow mine, because I play it every day.

On Saturday 5 April she played a proper indoors gig at the Wheatsheaf which was really lovely and hopefully the first of many at the wide range of venues we have here. You can find videos of the first three songs on my YouTube channel (see specific links below).

And I just discovered a short film from an earlier life of hers, when she lived in San Francisco. It's called Access every sparkle. Oh, and another video called Sylva's Sticks. During that time she was in a band that went through various reincarnations and name changes - a stomping collection of professionally produced recordings appears under the not very google-friendly name of "American City" on soundcloud.

---------

A growing list of links (last update 26.6.2014):

• All my flickr photos of Sylva
  
• Video: A gentle waking (Live at the Wheatsheaf, Oxford)
  
• Video: Drama love (Live at the Wheatsheaf, Oxford)
  
• Video: Urban Marsh (Live at the Wheatsheaf, Oxford)
  
• Video: Admissions (street performance, Cornmarket Street, Oxford)

  
  

• Undercut on SoundCloud
  
• Undercut on itunes
  
• Undercut on amazon UK (MP3 only)
  
• Undercut on vinyl at Norman Records (plus review)
  
• a review of her album Undercut on foxy digitalis

  
  

• Access every sparkle short film by Tara Darby, starring Sylva Kay
  
• Sylva's Sticks short film made for test magazine by Clare Shilland, starring Sylva Kay. There is also a short Q&A with her
  
• American City on SoundCloud. Nine tracks from the band which comprised Sylva Kay, Jon Sortland, Jonathan Hischke, and Jeff Schmidt
  
• American City on MySpace (smaller selection from the same tracks)

---------

PS something I love about pics of buskers is the complete randomness of shouty shop signs in the background, like the "change" in this one. There are a lot more of these to come in the series!

NB: Anybody wanting to join the vibrant Oxford busking scene needs a busking pass from the Oxford City Council, application details here. See also the code of practice and the map of the nine official busking spots here.

shakira - the eponymous album

It's a gift for anybody who loves the word "eponymous" as much as I do :) Seriously though, as I'm playing the album for the 5th time, here are my first impressions:

Having followed Shakira's output for nearly 15 years now, I expect nothing less than brilliance from her releases in Spanish but anticipate the English ones with some trepidation. Conflicts between the artist's vision and the label's views on commercial viability have obviously damaged past English releases. Considering this, the self-titled album is surprisingly good. All the eccentricities we've come to expect from her are firmly in place. The only obvious input from the sales guys is the duet with Rihanna, but as I like both the collaborator and the track, I'm fine with that. (I'm even ok with the football anthem.) Prick up your ears for the slower, more sensitive numbers, including cut me deep, 23, and broken record.

noisettes live

I don't know why, but the new Noisettes tour had its premiere at Oxford last night. It was a great show, ranging from full-on inferno to soft and sensitive. Like the last time, Shingai kicked off her shoes after the first song and performed the rest of the show barefoot, directing the band with her toes (or so it appeared sometimes).

I still don't know enough about their work to make any meaningful comment about old and new songs they played. Clearly haven't done my homework since I saw them the last time round.

So, have a couple of pictures instead (if I'm allowed to make a small suggestion, they could have done with a spotlight on Shingai - most of the time she appeared as a silhouette):

I gather they play the Koko at London today, then Manchester and Glasgow.

PS: Special guests Josephine Oniyama and Marques Toliver were very good, too.

hidden treasure

Tanita Tikaram: Can’t go back

With this album, I had a very weird experience of finding treasure that was very well hidden. I have fond memories of tt’s first album and the single Twist in my sobriety, which was a huge hit in the 80s, but have somehow managed to miss everything she released after that. So when I heard she had a new album coming out this year I started to investigate.

First I watched the official first video from the album, “dust on my shoes” and thought it was a bit too happy-clappy and too smooth for my tastes. Still, I checked audio clips of some other tracks of the album on amazon, and liked those better, so made a note of the release date. In the week it was released I was in a record shop, but the record that wasn’t there was Tanita’s. I ended up ordering it a few weeks later.

It comes with two disks, the proper new album and a bonus CD. I listened to the new material a few times, it was ok, I still like her voice and the kind of sounds she makes in general, some of the arrangements are interesting. But somehow it didn’t grab me. I might have given it 3 stars out of 5.

When I got bored with it, I looked at the other CD, which according to the track list contained old songs from her previous albums. I assumed the record company had just thrown in some old recordings for the benefit of the younger audience who don’t know the back catalogue. I played the CD without paying much attention, I recognised Valentine Heart, which is on her debut album, and still didn’t pay much attention.

When the CD came to Twist in my sobriety, around the middle, it finally struck me. This was not an old track. This was a completely new arrangement, with minimal instrumentation, of the old song. In this case, it was a guitar and a cello. And I found it spectacularly good, breathtaking. And the other songs on the bonus CD are similarly reworked, and similarly brilliant.

I like the first CD, and most of the songs I like a lot more than the one chosen for the first video, but the bonus really did grab me by the collar and didn’t let loose. Which is very ironic, as the whole idea of the album and the title track is not to go back to the past, and to me the most successful part of it is where she did go back to the past and reworked it. And this isn’t even explained on the album sleeve. The only thing that points to this being new recordings is the fact that the instrumentalists for each track are listed in the booklet (typically with one of the two instrumentalists being the singer herself). This is a very well camouflaged treasure indeed.

PS I would have normally added a rant about the stupidity of big record companies at this point (why didn't they release the reworked material as a separate Unplugged CD???), but the CD is from a German label I never heard of before, so I'll let them off the hook.

amazon.co.uk

katzenjammer live

I saw Katzenjammer live last night for the first time (though I didn't admit I was a Katzenjammer virgin when they asked, wasn't sure what the rite of passage might be!). I could go on raving for hours now, as they're just so crazy and refreshingly different from everything else that happened in the history of the universe until now, but then again, I'm not nearly qualified to unpick the zillions of influences and cultural references in their work (I just about managed to identify the Genesis cover and I know that the big triangular thing is a contrabass balalaika), so I'll just post two of my not so very good photos and a video of one of my favourite K songs below.

I should point out that this video is very much at the tame end of the spectrum of Katzenjammer craziness ...

Catch them if you can - here at Oxford they played in a ridiculously small venue at a very affordable price, but that might change if word spreads ...

PS The writer in Oxford's Nightshift magazine correctly translated the name as a fit of self-pity, but I think they took it from one of the first comic series in the US, The Katzenjammer Kids, which began at the end of the 19th century and was heavily influenced by Wilhelm Busch.

pregnant bellydancing

loving the highlights video of Shakira's pregnant performance in Baku:

haunted man

Three years ago, I saw Bat for Lashes live at Oxford's O2 academy, not knowing much about them / her (I don't think it's ever made explicit, but the media seem to assume that the name is simply a pseudonym for Natasha Khan, not the name of her band). I then completed my BFL CD collection (2 CDs), which I liked a lot, so I was very keen to get the third offering on day one. Here are my first impressions after 4 spins:

Essentially, the third Bat for Lashes album is a lot like the second, only more so. “Haunting” is a key word that describes the addictive effect of the sounds used to underline Natasha’s ethereal vocals. We get a different texture in each song, for instance plucked and muted strings in the first single All your gold, resonating drums in the next track, then bowed string bass in another, or warbling synths or xylophones. These accompaniments are often ostinato, i.e. obstinately repeated for much of the song, but as they have a different kind of sound in each song, they still offer interesting diversity, and often manage to sound mysterious, pulling the listener in by making them curious.

So, well, if you’ve played "Two suns" a hundred times (I have), you may enjoy this even more.

Oh, and I just love the cover photo to bits. Sadly, the booklet doesn’t reveal what happened next – surely she can’t have carried that bloke around forever?

Prostye Dvizhenia

Related to the movies we're not allowed to see here, I should also mention pop videos that are effectively banned. A notorious case from the early 00s is the Russian pop duo t.A.T.u. I love the style of their videos, some of which reminded me of European cinema, e.g. Kieslowski's 3 colours trilogy (maybe some east-west European dialogue behind this).

The parts of their work that were released internationally faced stiff opposition in the UK and calls for outright censorship from TV show hosts Richard & Judy.

Small wonder then that the following gem was never released in an English version. It's title, Простые Движенья, translates as simple movements. I think the movement it might have triggered around here could be described as a kneejerk response ...

both of us

I loved B.O.B.'s airplanes (with Hayley Williams) at the time, but that could have been a one-off. Now he's done it again, with Taylor Swift:

Oh, and price tag, with Jessie J, was good too. So, conclusion (and memo to Shakira) B.O.B. is the man to duet with ... seems a much nicer guy than that pitbull person.

addicted to you

I'm loving the new Shakira video, which was released just a few minutes ago:

and that wasn't a foregone conclusion, I could name one or two that I hate :) In this one, I'm loving the hat, in particular.

Now for the fun part, watching how UK music channels will completely ignore this. Living in the UK one can quite easily forget that this woman is quite successful in the rest of the world.

je l'aime a mourir

it's Shakira's birthday today, so in celebration, here's the video of her lovely bilingual rendition of "Je l'aime a mourir" by Francis Cabrel, from the recent DVD Live from Paris:

light up (the world)

You can't have too many music videos filmed in Cuba, and I'm loving the latest one, by Yasmin ft. Shy FX & Ms Dynamite, Light up (the world):

shattered dreams

There is a vibrant local rock scene around here, which I know far too little about. I used to know just one local band that I have a soft spot for (Borderville), but have now been able to double that figure with the discovery of female-fronted pop-punk outfit Shattered Dreams, who have just released their first video:



Apparently the video is playlisted on Kerrang Channel, which is great news for them, so I hope they are going to come out really big in 2012!

live from paris - review

The Live from Paris DVD+CD arrived yesterday - ordered from Germany as Sony UK is being hopeless again. In the UK you can only get the DVD this week, the double pack is due to be released next week. And as track 2 says: "Why wait?" Here are my first thoughts on the new release:

This is Shakira’s fourth live DVD, so you may wonder whether she can add something new to the series, but as someone who knows the first three by heart I can reassure you that the new offering is a combination of the reassuringly familiar with the new and inventive.

Very familiar and mostly unchanged are the songs at the hard core of her repertoire from the 90s albums Pies descalzos and Donde estan los ladrones. As far as I can tell, she hasn’t changed a note in her own favourite, Inevitable, since the MTV unplugged concert, and Si te vas, and Ciega sordomuda are similarly steadfast reminders of the good old days.

A lovely new feature is the medley made of A'tini al-Nay (an Arabic song she used to sing as a child), the Metallica cover Nothing else matters, and her own Despedida from the Love in the times of cholera soundtrack. Travel around the world in just a few minutes. Within the same “acoustic” setting is a much-improved version of Gipsy.

Since I saw the show at Paris in December 2010, she added a lovely French song (Je l’aime a mourir by Francis Cabrel) and switched a few more of her announcements to French, which is a nice touch. My only moan about the programme is that none of the collaborators showed up (while Alejandro Sanz and Wyclef Jean did, the last time round).

The DVD with 99 minutes of concert footage and 20 mins “behind the scenes” extras is perfect as always. The CD contains as much of the concert as fits on a single audio CD (big improvement on the 5-track CD from last time!), which means all announcements and a couple of songs (Si te vas, Gordita) were dropped, and the A'tini al-Nay snippet was cut too. The sound editing on the CD is different from the DVD version; there were a couple of places where I think I heard things that weren’t so prominent in the DVD soundtrack.

Her last words on the concert recordings are “a la prochaine” (until the next time), so I’m very much looking forward to the next tour and the 5th DVD. After New York, Rotterdam, Miami, and Paris, maybe we'll hear her "live from Beirut" in four years time, complete with a full-length version of A'tini al-Nay?



(Cover of the DVD+CD pack, which comes in a CD case)
amazon.co.uk

suerte

Spanish/English mixed version of Jason Mraz' song Lucky, featuring the Mexican singer/songwriter Ximena Sariñana:




As luck would have it, I just found out that Ximena has an English album in the pipeline, due to be released in August. There is already a video for the first single, Different, and I love both the song and the video (and the cuddly yellow monster, too), so even though I only meant to post the Suerte video, here comes another one ,enjoy:



so, mucha suerte to Ximena, at least in the UK she will need it.

Lady Gaga and philosophy

To my utter shock and bewilderment, I have just found out that neither of the two publishers that run book series on popular culture and philosophy has yet published a book about Lady Gaga and philosophy. In fact, searching the exact phrase “Lady Gaga and philosophy” I got only two hits, one to the twitter profile of someone who lists her interests and ends the list with these two items (as you would), and the other to a philosophy blog which also notes the lamentable absence of this title.

So, while we are all waiting with baited breath to find out what the serial philosophers will have to offer once they have woken up to the semiotic treasure trove that is the work of Gaga, I’ll start compiling a few suggestions of topics they may want to consider:


Is it music? Why Mozart might have written “Bad Romance” if he were alive today (for more about this, see here)

Is it art? The school of gagaism and its position in the development of occidental art

Baby you were born this way: The quest for sexual identity in the 21st century.

I’m in love with Judas: Gaga vs. God

Scheiße Scheiße be mine: the language and languages of gagaism

P-p-p-pokerface: The semiotics of make-up and masks

I am my hair: Hair style as a cipher for personality in postmodern society

I’m on the edge of glory: Feeding the reward system in the age of individualism

Papa paparazzi: Iconography and perceptions of fame

Monster ball: Identification and motivation of fans and followers

Gossip girl: The education of a cultural icon


All suggestions for additional chapters, and indeed authors, welcome.

I notice that Open Court have among their forthcoming titles "Rolling Stones and philosophy" (due to join a male-only club of artists like Bruce Springsteen and U2), so they are clearly catching up and might get round to the Gaga title in a few decades. My favourite title on their list of 59 books is "Woody Allen and Philosophy: You Mean My Whole Fallacy is Wrong?" (2004). The competitors at Wiley-Blackwell have Metallica as their only musical entry. Gaga apart, I really do think one of them should have covered the philosophy of Alanis Morissette by now.

Update June 2012: Open Court now list "Lady Gaga and philosophy" among their future publications, but without a date, so I'm guessing it will be 2013 before it comes out.

Update April 2015: Open Court still has it under "Forthcoming Titles: 2015 and Beyond" at the bottom of the list, now with a release date of 2017. These guys should get their priorities in order. Still no news from Blackwells.





Oh, and as bonus material, here are my random thoughts on the new album, jotted down a bit hastily after the first two or three times playing it:

Would I still enjoy this album if it had arrived in a brown cardboard sleeve and I knew nothing about the artist?
Actually, I think I would. Not all tracks are great, but there is an interesting variety and I sense the genuine artist's urge to express herself in many details. I'm not wildly excited by the first three tracks including the title track, but love the middle section starting with Judas (which I read as an attempt to recapture the glory of Bad Romance).

As someone familiar with several European languages, I find Scheiße interestingly disturbing - it mangles fragments of half a dozen languages into a meaningless but attention-catching pidgin pudding. Gets me every time. My attention tends to wander off after Bloody Mary, and come back for You and I, strangely.

Surely it's not to everybody's taste and will irritate many, but that's what art is supposed to be like. So please ignore the hype and try it with an open mind.

rabiosa

One wouldn't be able to tell from the UK media, but Shakira has a new video out from the Sale el Sol album, called Rabiosa. The Spanish version features El Cata, the English one PitBull. Here's the Spanish one:



Oh, and the Sale el Sol tour is still going strong too, sadly I can't attend at the moment ...