Tag: Folk

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The Balfa Brothers Play Traditional Cajun Music (1967 Swallow Records)

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The Balfa Brothers Play Traditional Cajun Music
1967 Swallow Records – LP-6011
Vinyl transcription in 24-bit 192 khz || File sets in mp3, FLAC and 24-bit FLAC

I had this record ready to post here long before there was a Cat 4 hurricane bearing down on the bayou.  I’ve been rewatching some Les Blank films this summer, which may be why I felt inspired to share this gem.  The Balfa Brothers were the real deal.  If you are remotely interested in Cajun music or the Acadian contribution to American roots music (e.g. country or “country & western”), do yourself a favor and check them out.  Some of you may know them from their inclusion on various compilations, but it is nice to have an entire long player of this material.  I don’t have any profound commentary to add; I just haven’t posted on this blog all month, and I sure hope the people of Louisiana are doing okay right now.

Tracklist
A1 – Drunkard’s Sorrow Waltz (La Valse De Bambocheurs) (03:16)
A2 – Lacassine Special (02:48)
A3 – My True Love (02:37)
A4 – La Valse De Grand Bois (02:58)
A5 – Family Waltz (02:40)
A6 – Newport Waltz (03:01)
B1 – Indian On A Stomp (02:36)
B2 – T’ai Petite Et T’ai Meon (03:03)
B3 – Two Step A Hadley (01:50)
B4 – Valse De Balfa (02:27)
B5 – Parlez Nous A Boire (03:13)
B6 – Les Blues De Cajun (02:00)

Link to all files

password: vibes

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The Humblebums – First Collection of Merry Melodies (1969) (Transatlantic TRA-186)

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The Humblebums – First Collection of Merry Melodies
Vinyl rip in 24-bit/192 kHz | Art scans at 300 dpi
1969 Transatlantic Records TRA 186 | Genre:  Folk

The other week, I ran a Patreon poll for the site’s handful of patrons to ask what genre the next post should be about, and “folk” won the day.  A few months ago I shared the final Humblebums record, Open The Door, which is split evenly between Billy Connolly and Gerry Rafferty songs.  This debut album predates Rafferty’s participation and demonstrates that it was really Connolly’s project.  In his place was Tommy Harvey, a competent guitarist who went on to play with Hamish Imlach, another Scotsman in the tradition of folk-comedy.  The record opens with “Why Don’t They Come Back To Dunoon?”, a parody of the Jonathan King hit “Everyone’s Gone To The Moon” which remained a staple in Connolly’s live performances.  While I am a big fan of Rafferty’s bittersweet balladeering, this record is less bipolar and more cohesive than their other two releases because of Connolly’s total control over the mood.  And of course, there is some hot banjo playing on it.  (P.S.  If you feel like supporting the site via Patreon, YOU TOO can participate in exciting polls and other activities!)

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Shirley & Dolly Collins – The Harvest Years (2008) (Anthems In Eden / Love, Death & The Lady)

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Shirley & Dolly Collins
The Harvest Years
2008 EMI (UK) 50999 2 28404 2 4

 

A brand new documentary, The Ballad of Shirley Collins, directed by Rob Curry and Tim Pliester – was just released to rave reviews in the UK.  Since I sadly don’t live there yet, I can’t see it and am not sure when I will have the chance.  Meanwhile I am getting my hands on Curry & Pliester’s other film about Morris dancers, “Way of the Morris”, which led rather naturally to their current project. But I’m excited that this Collins biopic exists, and just feel like posting something in connection with her to celebrate the fact that she is being celebrated.  Besides all of the above reasons, I need to post something autumnal on the blog. Searching for “autumnal funk / soul / jazz” in my digital meta-data brings up precious little.  In Brazil the season only exists in theory and no evocative music springs to mind there either at the moment.  I had once attempted a sub-blog called ‘Flabbergasted Folk’ but abandoned it because of the finite nature of time and space. However I have opened up the ‘genre niche’ nature of this blog a little and decided I can post about anything I want, and you all can either dig it or skip it.

This collection of the great duo of Shirley & Dolly Collins is one that I was ready to feature last year to help incentive people to listen to seek out Shirley’s new album Lodestar (released November 2016), but for some reason did not.  Perhaps because I think “Anthems In Eden” is not the best place to start for people unfamiliar with her sizeable body of work.  It is atypical, and very innovative when you realize what they’ve done. Both records featured in this two-disc set are worthy of separate write-ups, but there are a number of music journalists who have already had the pleasure and done a pretty good job at the time that Harvest reissued this almost a decade ago.  I’m taking an unusual step of keeping my mouth shut and letting them present the material in the space below after the break.   As a bonus, I have featured the two pages of text that Shirley contributed to a box set of Harvest artists called Harvest Festival.  This box consists of 5 CDs, with really inconsistent sound quality and bad mastering – the best thing about it is the 120 page book.  Also, Shirley was featured in the great series “Mastertapes” on the BBC in January where she revisited “Love, Death & The Lady” and talked about it at length.  You can listen to it here.  I’ll track down my own vinyl copy of that LP someday, as I did with Anthems In Eden, and on that note I have to point out that the CD collection omits the one contribution from Incredible String Band’s Robin Williamson to “Anthems” – God Dog.  I’m assuming it has something to do with publishing or label conflicts, since it could not have been left off “due to time constraints” (that old refrain from CD reissues of the 90’s) on a set that includes bonus material that wasn’t even on the original records.

All Hallow’s Eve / Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, and since adjectives like ‘haunting,’ ‘melancholic’, ‘plaintive’, and ‘evocative’ get trotted out anytime a receptive person attempts to describe the stirring experience of listening to Collins’ recordings, I can also consider this a “seasonal” post.  I might have another surprise on the 31st if I can finish it by then.

DISC ONE

A Song-Story
1-1  A Beginning  2:03
1-2  A Meeting – Searching For Lambs  2:43
1-3  A Courtship – The Wedding Song  4:04
1-4  A Denying – The Blacksmith  3:57
1-5  A Forsaking – Our Captain Cried  2:51
1-6  A Dream – Lowlands  2:35
1-7  A Leave-taking – Pleasant And Delightful  5:14
1-8  An Awakening – Whitsun Dance  2:52
1-9  New Beginning – The Staines Morris  1:47
1-10  Rambleaway  4:23
1-11  Ca’ The Yowes  3:27
1-12  God Dog  3:25
1-13  Bonny Cuckoo  1:55
1-14  Nellie The Milkmaid  2:42
1-15  Gathering Rushes In The Month Of May  3:30
1-16  The Gower Wassail  2:52
1-17  The Sailor From Dover  3:20
1-18  Young John  6:24
1-19  Short Jacket And White Trousers  2:59
1-20  The Bold Fisherman  4:39

——————————

DISC TWO

2-1  Death And The Lady  4:10
2-2  Glenlogie  3:47
2-3  The Oxford Girl  1:59
2-4  Are You Looking To Leave Me  2:53
2-5  The Outlandish Knight  5:05
2-6  Go From My Window  2:36
2-7  Young Girl Cut Down In Her Prime  3:42
2-8  Geordie  4:58
2-9  Salisbury Plain  2:41
2-10  Fair Maid Of Islington  2:16
2-11  Six Dukes  2:28
2-12  Polly On The Shore  3:11
2-13  Plains Of Waterloo  8:03
2-14  Fare Thee Well My Dearest Dear  3:27
2-15  C’est La Fin / Pour Mon Cuer  2:16
2-16  Bonny Kate  3:25
2-17  Adieu To All Judges And Juries  3:10
2-18  Edi Beo Thu Hevene Quene  3:42
2-19  Black Joker / Black, White, Yellow And Green  3:23
2-20  The Gallant Hussar  3:17
2-21  Hopping Down In Kent 2:47

from The Guardian
review by Robin Denselow

Thursday 31 July 2008 19.05 EDT
Jazz review: Shirley and Dolly Collins, The Harvest Years
5 / 5 stars

 

Shirley Collins was a 1960s folk revolutionary. After pioneering a folk-jazz-global fusion style with Davy Graham, she experimented in matching folk songs with early music instruments, with help from her sister Dolly, who played the portable flute organ and was an inventive arranger. Championed by John Peel, they were signed to EMI’s then-fashionable “underground” label Harvest to record some of the finest albums of the 60s and 70s folk revival. They are all here on this double set, which starts with the remarkable Anthems in Eden suite from 1969, in which Shirley’s cool, no-nonsense vocal style was matched against cornett, sackbut, harpsichord, recorder and a male chorus to revive songs such as The Blacksmith or Searching for Lambs, now folk standards. Then there’s the bleaker Love, Death and the Lady from 1970, more songs from Amaranth in 1976, and a rousing reminder of her work with the Albion Dance Band on Hopping Down in Kent. Shirley and Dolly helped transform the English folk scene, and their songs remain powerful and fresh.

 

 

Shirley & Dolly Collins The Harvest Years

Uncut August 6, 2008

Read more athttp://www.uncut.co.uk/reviews/album/shirley-dolly-collins-the-harvest-years#vQQCHhIwYxVggYGj.99

It is 1969. The summer of loves lease has expired, but British rock is ripening into its rich and succulent autumn. Fairport Convention are hoeing into the folk tradition on Liege And Lief; Nick Drake is completing Five Leaves Left. Enter Harvest Records, set up by EMI to reap the fruits of this bumper crop, a variegated basket that includes Pink Floyd, Third Ear Band, Kevin Ayers, Deep Purple, Forest, Michael Chapman and the folk singing sisters from Sussex, Shirley and Dolly Collins.

 

Still only 33, by 1969 Shirley Collins had accompanied Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger from Cecil Sharp House to Young Socialist conventions in Moscow; spent a years epic field recording trip in the USA as folklorist Alan Lomaxs romantic and secretarial partner; and cut Folk Roots, New Routes with the high priest of the Soho folk guitar cult, Davey Graham.

 

In 1968 she teamed up with elder sister Dolly to record The Power Of The True Love Knot, a zeitgeist-friendly folksong concoction produced by Joe Boyd and featuring The Incredible String Band. Dolly studied composition under modernist Alan Bush; by the late 60s she was living in a double decker bus in a field near Hastings, mastering the art of the flute organ, a portable keyboard dating from the 17th century. Mindful of a folk scene that had swelled from 30 nationwide clubs to over 400 in a mere five years, Harvest commissioned the sisters to record Anthems In Eden, a suite of folk tunes already premiered on John Peels Radio 1 show.

 

While their hippy contemporaries imagined a hemp-smoke paradise in the Hundred Acre Wood, wrapped up in Tolkien, Celtic lore and Lewis Carroll, Shirley Collins was channelling Englands ancestral spirits in song. Anthems In Eden and Love, Death And The Lady (1970), the twin pillars of this double CD set, are built up via a curatorial selection from the motherlode of English traditional song. Side one of Anthems retitles songs like Searching For Lambs, The Blacksmith and Our Captain Cried as A Meeting, A Denying and A Forsaking to weave a patchwork Song-Story in which the agricultural calendar of pre-war working class life is interrupted by the Great War and converted into an unnatural cycle of birth, parting and loss. The underlying message: the Fall from Eden was an empowerment, from the innocence of a deferent underclass that would blithely allow itself to be concripted to fight its masters wars, to the knowledge of a classless modern society. We wont get fooled again.

 

The records peculiar antique grain is supplied by the young firebrand who did so much to kickstart the Early Music movement, David Munrow. In a stroke of genius, Collins and husband/producer Austin John Marshall invited Munrows Early Music Consort of London to the sessions, featuring future stars of the authentic instruments movement such as Christopher Hogwood, Adam and Roderick Skeaping and Oliver Brookes, who arrived laden with crumhorns, sackbuts, rebecs, viols and harpsichord. They repeated the trick on 1970s exceptional Love, Death And The Lady. It may begin with the time-honoured folk lines As I walked out one morn in May, but Collins hardly sounds full of the joys of spring.

 

In fact, though Marshall was again producer, their marriage was on the rocks and the albums maudlin mood is clouded with doomed love, betrayal and suicide. The arrangements Dollys spiralling piano chords on Are You Going To Leave Me, Peter Woods mewling accordion on the devastating Go From My Window, or the military tattoos on Salisbury Plain courtesy of Pentangle drummer Terry Cox are like nothing previously heard in British folk, but suspend the songs in a strangely ageless sonic timezone somewhere between Elizabethan consort music and Rubber Soul.

 

Anthems In Eden played a decisive role in Shirley Collinss future. Fairport Convention founder Ashley Hutchings heard the album at the end of 1969, right after quitting the band after the release of Liege And Lief. It reduced him to a fit of body-wracking sobs, and within less than a year, he had sought out and married its creator, sweeping away most of the dead leaves lingering after Love, Death And The Lady. No Roses, recorded in 1971 by the couples newly formed Albion Country Band, brilliantly grafted Fairport-style electric pastoralia onto Collinss murderous balladry. That record was not part of the Harvest story, but this set does include Amaranth, the extra six tracks the group laid down for the 1976 edition of Anthems In Eden, plus another couple of merry tunes unreleased from the same period. Her marriage did not survive long after this high summer, and she only made one further album before effacing herself from public performance. But Harvests vintage crop of progressive folk survives as the pinnacle of her achievements.

 

ROB YOUNG

 

UNCUT Q&A: Shirley Collins
Uncut: How do you think your music chimed with Harvests hippy audience?
Shirley Collins: Dolly (Who died in 1995) and I were so far removed from popular music thats its quite miraculous that it all happened. I was never a hippy couldnt stand all that vague twee floatiness or the smell of patchouli! My England was Daniel Defoe, Robert Herrick, Hogarth, John Clare, Blake, with a touch of Henry Fielding for larks! My songs, coming from a long and genuine tradition, carried with them a truthful, clear vision of the past, of real lives, and I felt that, because of my background, I was a conduit between then and now.

 

What was your working relationship like with your husband as producer?

Austin John Marshall was a clever, inventive, maddening man. Yes, our marriage was breaking down at the time we were recording Love, Death And The Lady. But John had a clear vision for both albums, and the drive to see it through. And Im glad he persuaded me to add Terry Coxs percussion to The Plains Of Waterloo it still gives me goosebumps!

What did the idea of Eden mean to you in 1969?

Being a child throughout World War Two, surviving it, feeling optimistic, loving the English countryside and feeling proud and glad to be English I suppose England was my Eden. And yet I dont feel I saw it through rose-tinted spectacles. Growing up in a working class family made me aware of the hardships that people endured and overcame. I felt a great connection to those rural labouring classes whod sung the songs before me. I was fascinated by the past, so I was always aware of the dark heart of English history.

INTERVIEW: ROB YOUNG

Read more at http://www.uncut.co.uk/reviews/album/shirley-dolly-collins-the-harvest-years#vQQCHhIwYxVggYGj.99

 

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John Fahey – Christmas With John Fahey Volume 2 (1975)

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John Fahey
Christmas With John Fahey, Volume II
Released 1975



 1. Oh Holy Night
 2. Christmas Medley: Oh Tannenbaum, Angels We Have Heard On High, Jingle Bells
 3.  Russian Christmas Overture
4. White Christmas
5. Carol Of The Bells
6. Christmas Fantasy (Parts One & Two)


Tracks 1,2,3 and 5 are in duet with Richard Ruskin.
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Recorded at United/Western Recording, Los Angeles
Mastered at Fidelatone by Bruce Leek
Artwork by Stephanie Pyren


CD pressing 1986, Takoma Records
thanks to Rab Hines for the rip

Well this medicine may be too late to cure the auditory disease known as Christmas Music Earworms, considering that many of you have been subjected to the stuff for well on two months now.  But better late than never.

This is a holiday record by that most unlikely Santa Claus, guitarist John Fahey.  He had released an earlier (and far superior) Christmas album called The New Possiblity, hence this one being dubbed a “Volume 2.”  It is not your average Xmas record and probably won’t fit on a playlist with Johnny Mathis.  Just stare at the album cover for a while and you will swear that somebody spiked your eggnog with something a bit stronger than rum.

While the New Possibility was a revelation for me, this record is a little bit of something that Fahey rarely was: predictable.  And I say a LITTLE BIT because it’s not an entirely fair criticism.   Maybe he just had so much fun making the first one that he was compelled to make a second, or maybe there was commercial incentive involved.  The album is consistently pleasant, but there just aren’t many surprises until you get to the second side.  “Oh Holy Night” is pretty but kind of tame, and the Christmas medley is actually kind of bad.  Things get much, much better with the Russian Christmas Overture.  White Christmas has the kind of halting slippages that make you think they might be mistakes but then we all know Fahey was a genius and MEANT it to sound that way, right?   This is the only track on the first side that is not a guitar duet with Richard Ruskin (who also had three records put out on Fahey’s Takoma label).  Maybe that is at the core of my misgivings – Ruskin is an excellent guitarist, but so much of what charms me about Fahey are his idiosyncrasies coupled with his mastery of the instrument, and  when playing with other musicians those idiosyncrasies are by necessity kept in check.  “Carol of the Bell” is quite gorgeous, however.

The second side of the original album is one long, meandering acoustic guitar experiment called “Christmas Fantasy” – the kind of Fahey you had begun to desperately miss after five fairly straight arrangements.   Playing all on his lonesome, he can manipulate time and space and bring me to that same cocoon-like, familiar place as his most cryptic and dense material, and make me feel welcome with Yuletide cheer.  It sounds mostly improvised although knowing Fahey it is probably more planned-out than it sounds.  As fun as it is, it almost feels like over-compensating for the straight readings of the material on the first side.  A bit self-indulgent, maybe, although I don’t mind it when Fahey indulged himself.

From the very first notes of “Joy To The World” on The New Possibility, you knew you just signed on to a singular experience.  Possibly bordering on the transcendent.  Traditional Christmas material approached with Fahey’s vast musical knowledge but none of the reverence usually accorded to it.  I don’t use the word “irreverence” because it’s not as if there was anything iconoclastic about the record – it was just refracted through Fahey’s interpretive lens, which was always kind of bent. The “Volume II” album, on the other hand, comes across mostly as just straight-up Christmas music that happens to be played by John Fahey and a friend (except for the bonkers second half). 

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Quinteto Violado – Berra Boi (1973)

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QUINTETO VIOLADO
Berra-Boi
1973 Philips 6349.072

A1         Vaquejada     5:13
A2         Duda No Frevo     2:20
A3         Três Três     1:54
A4         Ladainha     2:22
A5         Engenho Novo     3:39
A6         Minha Ciranda     2:42
A7         Pipoquinha     1:47
B1         Beira De Estrada     2:25
B2         Baião Do Quinjí     1:57
B3         Abraço Ao Hermeto     5:26
B4         Forró Do Dominguinhos     2:17
B5         De Uma Noite De Festa     3:15
B6         Cavalo Marinho     3:13

Sando – flauta
Marcelo – violão
Fernando – viola
Luciano – percussão
Toinho – contra-baixo


Vinyl; Pro-Ject RM-5SE turntable (with Sumiko Blue Point 2 cartridge, Speedbox power supply); Creek Audio OBH-15; M-Audio Audiophile 192 Soundcard ; Adobe Audition at 32-bit float 192khz; Click Repair; individual clicks and pops taken out with Adobe Audition 3.0 – dithered and resampled using iZotope RX Advanced (for 16-bit). Tags done with Foobar 2000 and Tag and Rename.

** There is an annoying dropout at 46 seconds into the track Engenho Novo.  This is actually on the LP and not do to any post-processing at my end.
I have always had mixed feelings about Quinteto Violado for reasons elaborated below, their music is enjoyable, and this is probably as good a record as any to wind up the Festa Junina cycle – they are the kind of group that would headline an outdoor stage tonight, which marks the feast days of both Saint Peter and Saint Paul. While Quintet Violado had common ground with a lot of post-bossa nova MPB, their records played like an aural encyclopedia of Nordestino folklore. In fact they were so encyclopedic that they were chosen by folklorist and shifty entrepreneur Marcus Perreira to be the “house band” for his Música Popular do Nordeste albums, which launched a larger series of records chronicling ‘folkloric’ music from other regions of Brazil. On this, their second album, Quinteto Violado traverse the musical countryside and give us songs embroidered with forró, frevo, vaqueijada, ciranda, bumba-meu-boi, flute ‘fife and drum’ band or pifano music, and chegança-de-marujos / fandango. They also offer an homage to Hermeto Pascoal on one tune where they stretch out and push their own limits in tribute to that avant-garde alchemist of the Northeast, followed by a version of “Forró do Dominghuinhos” that is pretty original, using Dominguinhos’ unforgettable melody line as a release from the tension they build up around it. Unlike their debut album, which was halfway comprised of compositions associated with Luiz Gonzaga, this record is largely of their own authorship, with one “traditional” theme from Pernambuco’s variant of bumba-meu-boi, cavalo marinho, being given a short rearrangement at the end.
Formed by a group of university music students in the early 1970s and getting their start playing at the famous ‘festivals of song,’ Quintet Violado early on centered their musical identity around an embrace of the traditional sounds and folk musics of their native Pernambuco.  There is a heavy dose of cultural appropriation happening, of privileged individuals drawing on the creative work of the povo sofrido.  But if “my problem” with the Quinteto stopped there then it would be a pretty shallow criticism, because cultural mediation takes place at all kinds of levels and with all kinds of nuances. To cite an example, the world of samba is rife not only with tales of exploitation but also of interesting and productive creative partnerships and business relations that cut across class and racial lines.  So, my misgivings have less to do with the fact that these are conservatory-trained musicians delving into folk music, than with other aspects that in many ways seem specific to the northeast and the historical moment when this group formed. Some of what I have to say in this blog post is even more applicable to the Orchestra Armorial that formed out of playwright and poet Ariano Suasunna’s work. The Quinteto Violado was never formally affiliated with Suasunna’s “movement” as far as I know but they were at least lauded by him as the decade wore on, as the kind of ‘popular music’ that young people ought to like. The elements of the Quintet that I find problematic are also present in even more exaggerated form in the Armorial project; I will surely have to do a blog post for an Armorial album now, not because I particularly want to but because I have opened that proverbial can of worms.
Getting back to this record, let’s take a statement from Roberto Menescal who wrote the blurb on the back cover of the LP:

“I believe that Brazilian musicians, including the entire young generation, are coming around to looking within, searching for their own roots and origins, in a path more personal and true where they can walk with security, originality, and inventiveness, and not just building on what has been done outside our country.”

This kind of sentiment is rich in irony coming from someone so central to bossa nova, a music that was excoriated by traditionalists for being unduly influenced by North American jazz. But neither Menescal or the Quinteto Violado were making claims of traditionalism here. Although there are no electric instruments whatsoever on this record, the upright string bass of the band’s leader Toinho is completely foreign to the folkloric music they draw upon, and you can hear the ‘jazzista’ influence both in the solos the members take and in the close intervals used in some of the chord voicings. So  they were not trying to excavate a lost folklore music like the followers of Cecil Sharpe in Britain (many of whom I am a big fan of, incidentally), but wanted to draw on these elements and create new compositions, even when there was a strong element of emulation. Perhaps they were more like Inti-Illimani or certain others involved in the nueva canción who drew on indigenous music. And just like those artists were not necessarily indigenous, the members of Quinteto Violado did not come from the same social background as the people who originally made and continued to make the “folkloric” types of music they used as their palette. This is not in and of itself a problematic thing, except that these “roots” are celebrated as belonging to everyone – this is “our” culture, ‘o povo nordestino.’ Regional and colloquial references are employed in great density to built up an air of authenticity, to the point of really laying it on thick sometimes: in the song “Ladainha”, they manage to reference the ceramic folk-artist Vitalino from the city of Caruarú, alongside the bandit-heroes Lampião and Maria Bonita, and the deified (and mildly heretical) Padre Cícero from the town of Juazeiro, all in the same verse.
Although they might appreciate the cultural references, the intended audience for the music the Quinteto Violado made was not sharecroppers in the sertão, or cane cutters or wagon drivers like the family described in the song “Engenho Novo” here.  Beginning with this album they had moved from performing at the festivals to giving their own somewhat elaborate concerts, which that like all MPB of the era involved stage designers and art directors.  I would be interested to know what some of the regional folk musicians (whose styles were being appropriated) actually thought of the Quinteto’s music at the time, if they ever encountered it at all.  “The people” who provide the inspiration and raw material for this kind of music are left out of its production, consumption, and critical appraisal; in the end, music like this can become yet another way to write people out of their own history.
The Quinteto’s musicianship is indisputable, and their intentions were sincere.  It’s not as if they set out to dispossess a people of their musical traditions and make a ton of money on the backs of it.  The band never really got rich and famous playing this kind of music, but they have made a healthy career for themselves, and maintain a level of visibility that is largely unachievable by those folk musicians of more humble backgrounds.  This is not simply due to the relevant but also too-obvious fact that privilege and connections in the music business often count more than raw talent.  In aesthetic terms, the trained musicianship and refined, conservatory sensibilities of the Quinteto allowed them to recast these rural folk music forms into a form that is more palatable for Brazil’s educated middle class, honing down the rough edges.  The music is not decontextualized so much as recontextualized, stripped of elements that might offend the sensibility of a more erudite public. The frequently bawdy or raunchy language or double-entendre, the occasionally sexist or even racist jokes, and even the elements of social critique that might hint at an awareness of class struggle or exploitation: all are purged from this sanitized representation of cultura popular. To ask and to answer what purpose such representations serve in the long run would be to launch into a discussion verging on the academic, and dragging in outside references that don’t comfortably fit into this blog as I conceive of it. Besides – you will just have to wait and buy my book, if and when it is ever completed and/or published, when you can have footnotes and references to your heart’s content.
Of course, don’t let this write-up put you off from listening to and enjoying this record. It is well-conceived and well-played music, with an energy and enthusiasm that is palpable. There are gorgeous textures produced by the interplay between the acoustic guitar and Brazilian viola (not the bowed but the fretted instrument in the guitar family). There are plenty of reasons to appreciate this record on its own merits without taking any of the above into consideration. And for many Brazilians of the time, encountering Quinteto Violado was probably the first time they had heard of many of these music genres. Just like the first time I ever heard of the Banda de Pifanos de Caruarú was by way of their glorious opening of Gilberto Gil’s Expresso 2222 album, where I also heard my first Jackson do Pandeiro composition. The fact that most people are not compelled to dig deeper into the roots of their favorite contemporary artists does not cause me any great existential pain. The problem lies more with a particular way of celebrating “tradition” and fixing it in time and space in a way that fits a certain agenda, one that may be odds with the communities that originally cultivated it. All too frequently the people and institutions who herald these celebrations make claims that “the old ways” need to be revived and promoted or they will be lost to the ages, but instead of watering the “roots” and allowing them to flourish, they are watering them down and offering up a diluted simulacrum.

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