Filed under: Mali
♬ Mouodilo
In the aftermath of General Moussa Traoré‘s military coup of the Malian government in 1968, state funding for the arts, theater troupes and musical groups disappeared. In an attempt to fill the void, the Malian Railway Company decided to sponsor a group that would be the house band at the Buffet Bar at the Station Hotel in the town of Bamako. A trumpet playing Griot named Tidiane Koné was recruited to organize the group, which was called Super Rail Band of the Buffet Hotel de la Gare Bamako – or more simply known as Rail Band.
The band, which first formed in 1970, started off as a Jazz band that was also heavily influenced by Afro-Cuban rhythms. Eventually, the group integrated local Manding musical styles and traditions, with vocals in the Bambara language. From the beginning, the band featured electric guitar, organ, horn section and a drum kit along side more traditional instruments like kora, balafon, Ngoni and talking drum with Islamic-style, Mande hunter co-fraternity song, and Griot praise-singing vocals.
In the band’s first ten years, two of Mali’s best known vocalists – Salif Keita and Mory Kanté – had fronted the group. Keita left the band in 1972 to form Les Ambassadeurs Du Motel. The two bands had a fierce rivalry and would compete in “battle of the bands” concerts. This only fueled each band’s creativity even further.
Rail Band is still active to this day, continuing to record and tour around the world. Their latest album Kongo Sigui was released on the now defunct Indigo label in 2003. Many of their earlier recordings have been reissued on Sterns Music.
The band’s discography can be found at the Radio Africa site.
Catalog number HNS 1582 on EMI / HMV of Nigeria, released 1975.
Filed under: Sri Lanka
♬ Clarence Wijewardena & Super Golden Chimes • Gamen Liyumak
♬ Annesley Malawana & Super Golden Chimes • Udarata Niliya
The music of Sri Lanka is a product of cultural traditions that are the result of three major factors: the religious practices of Buddhism, the lingering influences of Portuguese colonization, and the influence of Indian culture – most notably, Bollywood cinema.
The country’s first pop band was The Moonstones. The group was formed by Clarence Wijewardena and Annesley Malewana in 1966, in the town of Ratnapura. Clarence Wijewardena is also credited with being the person who first introduced the electric guitar into Sinhala music. Although the band was only together for four years, they were very influential. Wijewardena left in 1970 to form the Golden Chimes with singer Anil Bharati, and Malawana continued the group as the Fabulous Moonstones with Mike Gunesekera. In 1972, The Fabulous Moonstones called it quits and Malawana teamed up with Wijewardena once again. They changed the name of the band to The Super Golden Chimes and were quite popular well into the 80s. They reunited in 2003 and 2004.
Catalog number LECL / 007 / LP / 001 on Lotus Entertainment Company Ltd. of Sri Lanka. No release date listed.
Filed under: Syria
When I set the geographic parameters for the scope of Radiodiffusion Internasionaal, I inadvertently came up with the nice even number of 100 countries. So far, we’ve covered music from 62 [Update: 99] of them, listed there on the left hand side of this webpage. Actually, if you count them there’s 63 there, but the one record that was been posted from Republic of the Congo was most likely not from there. But we have yet to hit the other 37 [Update: 20] : Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bhutan, Botswana, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lesotho, Malawi, Maldives, Mauritania, Mongolia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Niger, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Uganda, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
Now I know that for many of these countries, I know that am not going to find what I am looking for. It’s for that very reason China is not even on the list. But for so many other countries on that list, I know there is some amazing music to be found – I just haven’t found it yet!
If you have any interesting records or cassettes that you wish to share from one or more of the countries that we have yet to hear from – or countries that we need to hear more from, like Laos, Sudan or Zambia, to name a few – please get in touch.
For what little information that is available on the Damascus Music Group, please see their previous post HERE.
Catalog number BL 904 on Byblos Records of Damascus, Syria, released 1977.
Filed under: Eritrea
Tiberih Tesfahuney (also seen Tebereh Tesfahunegn) was born in Asmara, Eritrea in 1947. At age 11 she saw Bezunesh Bekele and Tilahun Gessesse in concert, and decided to become a musician. In 1963, she joined the Association of the Asmara Theatre, which included in its membership Ato Atowebrhan Seghid and Tewelde Redda. Her brother – Eyasu Tesfahuney – is also a successful musician.
Tesfahuney scored her biggest hit in the mid-1960s with “Tegezana Abi Hedmo” – or “Our Lovely House” (is infested with bedbugs and fleas) – which was a criticism of Ethiopia‘s occupation and was subsequently banned. This lead to her fleeing to Sweden in 1970, but that lasted only for a few years.
In 1975, Tiberih Tesfahuney returned to Eritrea and joined the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front. Two years later during a battle in Adi Hawesh, a piece of shrapnel from a RPG left her deaf in her left ear. The EPLF sent her to Sudan to recover from the injury. In 1985, the EPLF office in Sudan eventually decided to send her to Germany to get treatment for her hearing. She stayed there until 1994, when she returned to Eritrea once again. Upon her return, she opened a bar called Ab Hedmo – after her favorite song – in the town of Asseb.
Tiberih Tesfahuney published her autobiography – Two Lives: A True Story – in 1999. It was originally written in Tigrigna, the majority of it has been translated into English – which you can find HERE. Tesfahuney passed away on March 1st, 2007. She was buried at Martyr’s Cemetery in Asmara.
Assress Tessema was one of the founders of the Association of the Asmara Theatre. He and his group recorded two other singles for the Philips label – “Temeharu” / “Sewit Lemlem” (PH 7-139) with Tiberih Tesfahuney and “Harestay” / “Meaza” (PH 7-180) without.
Catalog number PH 7-140 on Philips Records Ethiopia, released 1972.
Filed under: Burma
The Golden Triangle is one of the Asian continent‘s two main opium-producing areas. It is an area that overlaps the mountains of four countries of Southeast Asia: Burma (Myanmar), Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. Along with Afghanistan and Pakistan in the Golden Crescent, it has been one of the most extensive opium-producing areas of the world since the 1920s. Most of the world’s heroin came from the Golden Triangle until the early 21st century when Afghanistan became the world’s largest producer.
With the exception of Thailand – where records apparently grow on trees – finding vinyl in the other three countries is not that easy. For the former French Indochina countries – Laos and Vietnam (as well as neighboring Cambodia) – the wars and eventual spread of Communism led to the destruction of any recordings that were influenced by Western music. But for Burma, it was a different story altogether.
For the most part, there were no recordings available from Burma between the demise of the 78 format – which for parts of Asia were still produced well into the 60s – until cassettes came along in the 70s. Somehow, the country managed to skip the LP format entirely and 45 singles are extremely rare.
There is no information available for Accordion Own Kyaw. The song’s title Seinn Leh Meay Hlwa translates as “Greenish Colored Soil”. If you have any further information, please contact me or leave a comment.
Many thanks to Ni Ni Aye for translating the Burmese.
Catalog number HRC-008 / EX-2370 on Hinn Tha Ta Rice Dealer Limited of Burma. No other information available.
Filed under: Lebanon
I occasionally run across articles bemoaning that bloggers are not journalists. And, to be honest, I have to agree with that. Bloggers have an opinion – or an agenda, depending on who ask – while journalists are supposed to not have a bias. You know, fair and balanced…
As much as I had intended not to insert myself into the writing about the music, it became unavoidable. For so many of these records, there is very little – if any – information that is available. So sometimes the process of finding that tidbit of information – or that there is a lack of – becomes all there is to write about.
This is one of those records that I have very little to go on. Supposedly how the story goes, is that Ocean was a group of Lebanese musicians who moved to Côte d’Ivoire… But that is all that I’ve got.
If you have any further information, or even a scan of the record cover, please get in touch or leave a comment.
Catalog number SID 30 on Société Ivoirienne du Disque of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, released 1977.
Filed under: India
While plodding through Peter Manuel‘s “Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India“, I had a revelation: Filmi music makes up 72% of all music sales in India, but only 41% of the population speaks Hindi. So how did The Gramophone Company Ltd. – who at the time had a monopoly on record production in the country – get the other 350 million or so non-Hindi speaking Indians to buy Hindi language film music? Re-record the music without lyrics, of course.
Batuk Nandy – much like Sunil Ganguly – got his start back in the 78 era performing the music of Kazi Nazrul Islam and Rabindranath Tagore. But to the best of my knowledge, he only recorded two albums of Film songs, while the rest were Nazrul geeti and Rabindra sangeet. As of 2004, he was still releasing albums.
Catalog number 2392 928 on Polydor Records of India, released 1980.
Filed under: Ethiopia
Probably the most fuzzed out track on all of Buda Musique‘s sprawling twenty some odd volumes of their Éthiopiques series, has to be Ayaléw Mèsfin & Black Lion Band’s song Hasabé. That song can be found on the eighth volume, but Mèsfin and his band have been featured on the 13th and 24th volumes, as well as a Rough Guide compilation called The Rough Guide to African Blues.
Ayaléw Mèsfin got his start playing with a band called Fetan Band – or Speed Band – at the Patrice Lumumba Bar in Addis Ababa. According to his biography, he has released “about twenty singles and a dozen tapes released since 1974”. He also opened the Ayaléw Music Shop in Addis Ababa, that he still owns even after moving to America. In January 2008, he performed with the Dutch band The Ex at the Hager Fekir Theatre in Addis Ababa.
Thanks to Peter Roth.
Catalog number KF 16 on Kaifa Records of Ethiopia, released 1975.
Filed under: South Korea
♬ 당
Most of Asia had an astonishing musical history throughout the 60s and 70s, producing mind boggling combinations of music that were the result of traditional and modern influences. And luckily, many of the fruits (i.e. – records) of these ‘chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter’ moments can readily found online. But of all of the countries of Asia, two drive me completely nuts – The Philippines and South Korea.
Both of these countries apparently got the worst music of the Western world. The Philippines got New Wave and South Korea got Heavy Metal. Now, don’t get me wrong, I loves me some cheesy synth pop or the occasional head banging… But the majority of what I see from both of these countries has been re-issues of stuff either like Gene Loves Jezebel or Helloween. Now both of these countries had amazing music histories, but finding copies of those records has been rough.
Kim Choo Ja (also seen as Kim Chu Ja and Kim Chooja) was born January 2nd, 1951. On her first album, she was backed up by Shin Joong Hyun (also seen as Shin Jung-hyeon and Shin Jung Hyun) and his band The Men. She went on to become one of the most popular vocalists of the 70s and recorded well into the late 80s. Unfortunately, I have not been able to translate her biography on her website (and online translators do very bizarre things with the Korean language).
Catalog number KLS-55 on Universal Record Co. of South Korea, released 1973.
Filed under: Tunisia
Information is not static… Especially when the internet is your primary source.
When I first got this record, I could not find anything on the good Professeur. I e-mailed a few of my contacts, and they turned up nothing. Then when I sat down to write this post, out of nowhere – Voila! A Wikipedia post magically appears (en français, bien sûr).
Kakino Isaac de Paz was born on July 12th, 1919 in the Ariana region of Tunisia. After losing his site at a young age, he immersed himself in music and became a virtuoso on accordion, piano, qanún (zither), oud and violin. In 1946, Kakino joined the Tunis Municipal Orchestra and the Orchestra of La Rachidia. Three years later, he became conductor of a weekly radio program on Radio Tunis. In 1956, Kakino moved to Paris where he worked with Enrico Macias and Brigitte Fontaine – to name a few. He continued to live and work in Paris until his death December 7th of 1983.
Catalog number 1060 on Sono L’Aube of Paris, France. No release date listed.
Radiodiffusion Internasionaal Annexe 