29. Berber music from Morocco

A friend of mine (a brilliant girl from Spain called Mercedes) recently drew my attention to a blog called  "Awesome Tapes from Africa" (http://www.awesometapes.com/). On it I found this amazing recording -- no doubt made during an Islamic (almost certainly Sufi) religious ritual somewhere in Berber Morocco:

Ahwach Souss - Side A

Wikipedia sez:

Ahouach (a.k.a. Ahwach, Ahwash) refers to a folkloric style of music and associated dance from southern Morocco. An Ahwach session is held by a number of performers (sometimes more than 20 performers) from both men and women (in some regions; only men) playing on the rhythms of drums while chanting, Ahwach is famous in the Amazigh (berber) regions of Morocco, especially, the region of Ouarzazate, Zagoura, Souss.

The root h-w-sh means "dance", but the term ahwash encompasses 1) general idea of (musical) performance 2) An evening of song and dance 3) a single piece and 4) the dance section of a single piece. [...] It is an exclusively Berber village music, probably unchanged for centuries or longer. Ahouach texts emphasize the submission of the individual to the community. Typically, it consists of two large choruses engaging in call-and-response vocals, accompanied by instrumentalists and dancers. Since this music requires anywhere from 20 to 150 participants, it is not easily portable and so rarely heard in the cities.

The recording is brilliant. A beautiful religious "song" (probably reciting chosen sentences from the Koran; all his lines certainly begin with the same words, perhaps an incantation or blessing of some kind, or a plea) sung by a single man over a public address system. His solo chanting is regularly cut quite incongruously with longer recordings of a group of girls (perhaps dozens) singing (and no doubt dancing) to the hypnotic and increasingly frenetic beating of drums.

28. Benito Urgu e i Barrittas

'Gambale Twist' - an amazing and amusing twist on traditional Sardinian music, as played by the legendary Benito Urgu and his band on Italian television:
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27. Tufan Altaş

I have no idea where Tufan Altaş is from, but he certainly knows how to play a saz! (Or is this a bağlama?)

26. Ali Ercan

Another great, great, great Turkish musician and singer. One has to hand it to the Turks: When it comes to being a great traditional musician AND singer, they are hard to beat. The first time I came across Ali Ercan (pronounced 'er-djan') was in the ever-so-'umble shop of a 'kasetci' ('cassette-dji' in English) in the town of Ispir in North-eastern Anatolia. Unsatisfied with the age of the music the owner played for me, I asked him for cassettes of 'very old' traditional Turkish music. He began to play a song by Ali Ercan - one with a synthesizer. I said that this was certainly not old enough, to which he answered: 'You must be joking! Even Ataturk himself went to the concert!'
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25. Abdullah Papur

Having just trawled through several (9) albums by Turkish musician and singer Abdullah Papur, I have come to the decision that it was worth listening to songs I really did not like for over an hour just to end up with this one song: Uzak yoldan gelen yolcu ('A traveller comes from afar'). Admittedly repetitive, but nonetheless a "traditional club-banger"!
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24. Ferdi Özbeğen

Turkish music combined with jazzy funk... On the surface, an almost unbeatable combination, and one which Ferdi Özbeğen has undoubtedly pulled off with this song: Köprüden geçti gelin ('the bride crosses the bridge', I think - Turkish speakers: please help!).
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Born in Izmir in 1941, Ferdi Özbeğen seems to have been one of the "kings of 70s cheese" of Turkish music, but this song - taken from an apparently quite rare compilation entitled 'Bosporus Bridges - A Wide Selection of Turkish Jazz and Funk 1969-1978' (Discogs - link >>>) - is just unbelievably good!
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Having just returned from a week-end jumping off a yacht in a bay near Bodrum, I can safely say that this tune of Ferdi's is one of the best cures for "post-Bodrum blues" I could ever have imagined!
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22. Afghan Funk

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As Afghanistan slowly opened up to the world in the 1960s and 1970s, the country was exposed to Western music, and a fusion of sorts seems to have taken place as traditional Afghan music became influenced by outside musical styles.
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The following song is by a certain Hasan Bismil. I unfortunately don't know anything about him, but "jaan bashai ailagi" is an absolute Afghan club-banger!
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Hasan Bismil - Jaan Bashai Ailagi
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Another great favourite of mine is Nasir Parwani's "Dard Dandan", which was apparently recorded at a wedding.
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Nasir Parwani - Dard Dandan
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21. Bakht Zamina

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I don't know much about Bakht Zamina, but she was clearly a fantastically beautiful and talented Afghan singer, as this video on YouTube illustrates:
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Note that she never smiles, and that she always moves back - away from the microphone - when she isn't singing... Perhaps there were limits to what one could show (i.e. what women could do) even on Afghan Communist television? Also, I think that the way she rolls her eyeballs when saying "vai, vai, vai" is brilliant!
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However, besides daring to "westernize" (i.e. appear on television without a veil, sing, &c., which no doubt made her many enemies in ultra-conservative Afghanistan), she apparently collaborated with the Afghan Communists, as this other video illustrates:
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Here is the studio version, perhaps more explicitly pro-Communist:
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A Chitrali friend in London once told me that she lived in constant fear of being made to pay for her songs, and that - one day - her inevitable destiny caught up with her...
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20. Bulgarian Bagpipes

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The legendary Valia Balkanska sings "Излел е Дельо Хайдутин" ("Izlel e delio haidutin"), a song from the Rhodopian mountains in Bulgaria. This song was included on the golden record which was launched into space on board the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft in 1977.
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Valia Balkanska was born in a hamlet near the village of Arda in the province of Smolyan in Bulgaria in 1942, and has been singing Rhodopean folk songs since childhood. She has been working with the Rodopa State Ensemble for Folk Songs and Dances in her native Smolyan since 1960, and in 2002 was awarded the "Stara Planina Orden", the highest Bulgarian award, for her work.
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Here is another tune for bagpipe from the Rhodopean mountains, played by renowned musician Stefan Zahmanov:
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19. Aurelia Shrenker sings 'Lale'

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