Nahawa Doumbia - Vol. 2 - CASSETTES

Nahawa Doumbia's new album Kanawa concisely captures this current moment in Malian history. The singer, whose storied career spans more than four decades, reflects on the immigration crisis from the Malian perspective in the title of her new album Kanawa. Across eight songs recorded in Bamako with a band including traditional and modern instruments, Doumbia merges her early work that relied on a spare expression of her trademark didadi rhythm with the bombastic range of contemporary Malian pop. The beautifully complex musical accompaniment that results is courtesy of the large ensemble she pulled together with producer and arranger (and day one collaborator) N'gou Bagayoko. The band features two highly expressive Malian string instruments, the ngoni and the slightly smaller kamalé ngoni, as well as a variety of percussion, drum programming, karignan (a metal scraper) and acoustic and electric guitars. Doumbia's daughter, a celebrated singer with her own group and busy concert schedule, Doussou Bagayoko sings on InchAdjorobena,Inch a song about patience, tolerance and living in peace. Doumbia weaves together a roadmap of her psyche when it comes to the good and bad life has to offer. She talks about marriage and women leaving home to join another through the metaphor of a tree in the garden; she includes gunshot samples in the song InchFoliwilenInch to honor the bravery of hunters, soldiers and other courageous people; she uses a bird in InchDjougohInch to talk about lazy people; and, in InchNdiagnekoInch she advises people to ignore critics, just do you. Mali has gone through an intense period of regional strife and terrorist incidents over the last ten years and Doumbia roots the album in tragic local concerns with deep global implications. InchThe meaning of Kanawa is so simple. We see our children trying to cross the ocean all the time. I said that many of our chil

For Patrick Flegel, Cindy Lee is more than just a recording music project. It is the culmination of a lifelong exploration of art, the electric guitar, queer identity and gender expression. InchSingers like Patsy Cline and The Supremes carried me through the hardest times of my life,Inch explains Flegel, Inchand also provided the soundtrack to the best times.InchFollowing the dissolution of Canadian experimental indie band Women, Flegel would delve deeper into songwriting that bends further toward high atmospherics and bracing melodies-a unique space where splendor naturally collides with experimentation. Delivering moments of sheer beauty through somber reflections on longing and loneliness, Cindy Lee is something to hold onto in a world of disorder.What's Tonight To Eternity, Cindy Lee's fifth long-form offering, showcases the project's most entrancing strengths ethereal snowdrift pop and sly nods toward classic girl-group motifs. Recorded at Flegel's Realistik Studios in Toronto and featuring younger brother Andrew Flegel on drums, the album travels hand in hand with a spectral guide.Flegel found inspiration for Cindy Lee in the form of Karen Carpenter, drawing on the singer / drummer's early recordings as well as her look and style. InchI found a deep interest and comfort in Karen's story, which is a cautionary tale about the monstrosity of show business, stardom at a young age and being a misfit looking for connection. The darkness and victimizing tabloid sensationalism she suffered is easily tempered and overwhelmed by her earnest output, her artistry, her tireless work ethic. Something utterly unique and magical takes shape in the negative space, out of exclusion. What I relate to in her has to do with what is hidden, what is unknown.InchWhat's Tonight To Eternity remains a mix of pop culture indoctrination, pain and suffering, hopes and dreams, fierce confron

Over a career spanning more than 30 years, the Dutch harpsichordist and conductor Pieter-Jan Belder has become renowned as a Bach interpreter with his surveys in concert and on record of the keyboard and orchestral masterpieces such as The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Brandenburg Concertos and no fewer than three recordings of the Goldberg Variations. On this new album, recorded in 2020 and 2021 on a modern Titus Crijnen copy of a Ruckers model, Pieter-Jan Belder turns to the overlooked corners of Bach's early writing for the harpsichord. These include standalone fugues, fantasias and suites based on themes by contemporary composers such as Reincken and Albinoni. Nevertheless, there is no sense of routine or technical exercise about them. The pieces here are almost all extrovert, playing to the strengths of the young Bach as a performer as well as composer, and already demonstrating that confidence which would go on to mark his mature compositions. An appreciation of French flair is discernible in the F minor Suite BWV823 and elsewhere, but the dominant influence is the keyboard writing of Girolamo Frescobaldi, whose toccatas and canzonas were studied by Bach from an early age. The better-known pieces here include the sober and songful Aria variata BWV989 with it's courtly French theme, and the E flat Prelude, Fugue and Allegro originally written for lute, but which also finds a happy home on the harpsichord. The most famous but also most uncharacteristic piece is the mysterious Capriccio 'on the departure of a beloved brother' which appears to be a work of Bach's late teenage years, though no definite corroborative proof of it's commission or purpose has yet come to light. Rather, it seems unique in Bach's output as a humorous parody of styles and emotions.