- Andrew Cronshaw website -
- Andrew Cronshaw MySpace -
- Cloud Valley Music website -
- Andrew Cronshaw website -
- Andrew Cronshaw MySpace -
- Back to Reviews Introduction page -
Written in
fRoots
issue 321, 2010
VARIOUS
Tsikaya – Músicos Do Interior
PangeiArt PAN 105 CD (2009)
I’ll get to the CD in a bit, but first I really recommend having a look at the
website www.tsikaya.org.
It’s a shining beacon in the use of the net to get
ethnomusicological material out there and making a difference, rather than being
the little-read and unheard stuff of wordy theses, seminars and library shelves.
On a Google Earth view of Angola markers are scattered across the back-country;
a click on any of them brings up audio, still photos and usually also short
video clips of musicians found by the Tsikaya project.
Named after Angola’s shuffling, raft-like flat rattle,
the project is a quest begun in 1997 by teams of researchers, directed by Victor
Gama (the Angolan-Portuguese designer and player of sculptural instruments
featured in fR 249), to find, record and bring to contact with the outside world
musics and musicians scattered across this country that, following armed
conflict with Portugal from 1961 until its independence in 1975, was devastated
by nearly three decades of appalling civil war that lasted until 2002.
Described as “a compilation of some of the most
representative artists and groups working today in the provinces of Benguela,
Huíla, Cunene and Cuando-Cubango”, the CD is intended as the first in a series.
It opens with David Ndumbo, whose photo is on the pack front, singing
self-accompanied on tsikaya what sounds like a hymn, and probably is; the
website’s performer write-ups tell that Davide has been a member of an
evangelical church group.
The CD booklet itself has, surprisingly and
frustratingly, no notes, and the track titles are just the name of the
performers; one has to go to the website for more information, and it doesn’t
give details of the album tracks per se either. By checking each performer back
with the musician list on website, it is possible to figure out who’s doing what
and where they’re from, but it’s laborious and only possible if a computer is to
hand while listening.
The young duo Ovana (as the website spells it; the CD
has it as Ovaina) accompany their singing, in the Kwanhama language, on guitar
and home-made instruments including a guitar made partly from metal from a
military tank; the result is strikingly reminiscent of Malagasy kabosy music.
Avelino Chico accompanies himself on grunting puíta (friction drum) on his CD
track. On the website’s audio files he also plays coroa (mouth-bow), as does
Beio Primeiro, who might or might not be the same person named as Beio Mukuanda
on the CD.
Rodrigo Sekulo sings of the hardships of the conflict,
accompanying himself on an unusual instrument used by several musicians here,
the bow-harp tchisumba, which consists of five strings each stretched by its own
bow, the five bows protruding from a single soundbox. There’s female singing and
clapping from a village group from Serra das Neves not listed on the website,
and singing, clapping and drumming from another group from a village in the
Humpata region that sounded to an ethnomusicologist friend of mine very similar
to the music he’s working with in Angola’s southern neighbour Namibia.
The lack of information on the CD and the absence of
proper links to the CD tracks on the website are notable omissions, but the
latter at least can be easily rectified at a site update and one hopes the
former will be on subsequent releases. Finding and recording this varied and
interesting music is a great work, and the use of the web to connect its
scattered makers with the world is trail-blazing.
www.tsikaya.org
© 2009 Andrew Cronshaw
You're welcome to quote from reviews on this site, but please credit the writer
and fRoots.
Links:
fRoots - The feature and
review-packed UK-based monthly world roots music magazine in which these reviews
were published, and by whose permission they're reproduced here.
It's not practical to give, and keep up to date,
current contact details and sales sources for all the artists and labels in
these reviews, but try Googling for them, and where possible buy direct from the
artists.
CDRoots.com in the USA, run by
Cliff Furnald, is a reliable and independent online retail source, with reviews,
of many of the CDs in these reviews; it's connected to his excellent online magazine
Rootsworld.com
For more reviews click on the regions below
NORDIC
BALTIC
IBERIA (& islands)
CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE, & CAUCASUS
OTHER EUROPEAN AMERICAS OTHER, AND WORLD IN GENERAL
- Back to Reviews Introduction page -