Houston Music Blog

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Nigerian-born Fela Kuti's legacy lives on more than a decade after his untimely passing from AIDS in 1997. His unique fusion of jazz, funk, rock and his own native African sounds brought his continent's melodies to mainstream audiences in an unprecedented manner, thanks to his audacity and creativity, which is carried on by his son Femi and many of his followers around the globe.

www.myspace.com/paintedonwaterband

​Rocks Off knows the humidity make it feel like it sometimes, but if Houston were Istanbul, Painted on Water would be playing Toyota Center this evening. The Turkish duo's eponymous CD showed up on our desks a while back without a clue to their background - turns out singer Sertab Erener is like the Mariah Carey, or maybe Diana Krall, of Turkey - (she's very popular) or what they sounded like.

We're glad we did - it's a languid palette of sophisticated modern jazz, Steely Dan or Santana-like rock and mysterious echoes of far-off shores. Many, many years ago, we're sure, Erener's sultry, flirtatious vocals could have charmed the sultan right out of his kingdom. Rocks Off spoke with Painted on Water's other half, guitarist and songwriter Demir Demirkan, last week as the duo was gearing up for its trip to Houston and tonight's show at Meridian.

Rocks Off: Where did that name come from?

Demir Demirkan: The name actually comes from the art, ebru. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. Actually the artist paints on oiled water, and then prints that painting on some kind of special paper.

It also has a kind of deeper philosophical meaning - the impermanence of life. I guess that would be the closest way to explain it. If you paint something on the water, you know it's just gonna stay for a while and then just kind of disappear.

Each Wednesday Rocks Off arbitrarily appoints one lucky local performer or group "Artist of the Week," bestowing upon them all the fame and grandeur such a lofty title implies. Know a band or artist that isn't awful? Email their particulars to introducingliston@gmail.com.

Caption TK

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D.R.U.M. is arguably the world music band in Houston. They've been together, in one form or another, since the early '90s, released a few very good albums and won about a million world music awards. They are made men in the music community.

Even still, not nearly enough people outside D.R.U.M.'s genre are familiar with them. Admittedly, we didn't even start listening to their music until we met band member Anura Neysadurai a couple of months ago while working on an article about his business parter, rapper Zin. In light of that injustice, we reached out to the quintet to have them answer a few questions.

After the jump, read about the alphabetical complexity that lacks from one of the members' name, if they think they'll ever not win the Press' Best World Music award, and who would in a D.R.U.M.-Moodafaruka death match.

Listening to the first half of this Bosnian-born composer's U.S. debut, you would think that all he does is write party music, which isn't true. Goran Bregović (pronounced BregoVITCH) is a respected writer of movie scores - for instance, he penned the themes for Emir Kusturica's films Underground and Time of the Gypsies. A recent New Yorker piece described his work as "so powerful that it's far easier to imagine the music without the movie than the other way around."

Alkohol is like a soundtrack to Serbian drinking culture. The first half is named after the country's national drink Sljivovica, a very strong plum brandy that is sold in the US as eau de vie. It features traditional and original drinking songs, with titles like "On The Back Seat of My Car" and "Trucker's Song." That section of the disc was recorded live in the village of Guca, where there is an annual brass festival and the city of 20,000 swells to 100,000. During the competition, participants play and listen to music, drink, eat and then drink some more as the days go by.

The son of the late, great Ali Farka Touré definitely does not live under his father's shadow. After his impressive self-titled debut two years ago, he emerges with Fondo (Six Degrees) , a disc that explores and expands Malian blues with a more global perspective.

Since his first disc came out, Touré has been engaged in a whirlwind of activity - just last year, he went on extensive US tours and also appeared alongside Pee Wee Ellis, Fred Wesley and Senegalese multi-instrumentalist Cheik Lô on Say It Loud: I'm Black And I'm Proud, a tribute to James Brown that included a concert at New York's Lincoln Center. If that wasn't enough to keep him busy, he also contributed to the In The Name Of Love: Africa Celebrates U2 compilation with a very personal cover of "Bullet The Blue Sky."

"Bullet The Blue Sky"

Dengue Fever is the name of a potentially deadly tropical disease that is transmitted by mosquitoes. There have been several epidemics around the world, specially in third-world countries where sanitary conditions are less than desirable.

It is also the name of a Los Angeles-based indie rock band that plays Psychedelic Cambodian (Khmer) music inspired by sounds that founding members Zac and Ethan Holtzman discovered after a trip to Cambodia in 2001.

On this 2007 documentary directed by John Pirozzi (recently released on DVD with an accompanying soundtrack CD), we follow the band as they go on their first Cambodian tour in 2005 - possibly the first time ever that an American band played Khmer music there.

The film opens with the band's appearance on a Cambodian TV show, and then we go back to the day when the musicians arrived in the capital city of Phnom Penn.

Except for the Holtzman brothers and lead singer Chholm Nimol (who was born in the country), none of the other bandmembers know what to expect - during one interview, bassist Senon Williams admits that for the first time in his career, he doesn't know where he is going to play or how audiences might react.

Note: This showed up as a comment by "Jenny" in Rocks Off's item about Bob Dylan playing The Woodlands, and we're reposting because it sounds pretty interesting. If you're planning a party in space anytime soon, take special note of the last line.

Jonathan Gutstadt

"Arjun's unique style of music mixes reggae with eastern vocals. From 1996 to 1997, he performed kirtan at the yoga center Jivamukti, a place where notable influences Krishna Das and Bhagavan Das regularly attended. This inspired Arjun to travel to India in 1998. He spent his time chanting at temples with the local babas and learning mrdunga drum and harmonium.

He acquired his first harmonium prior to departing India and moving to Santa Cruz, California, in 1999. In the year 2000, Arjun formed the eastern vocal party Bhajananandi, which released three CDs: Bhajananandi (2000) and Bhajananandi II & III (2001).

Arjun is also a singer in the newly formed Qawwali group Fanna-Fi-Allah, who has traveled to Pakistan to stay and study with the great qawwals, including Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Party. A DVD documenting the pilgramage will be available soon.

When the calendar hits April 20, thoughts turn to man's other best friend: the marijuana plant. Yes, along with copious amounts of Reese's Pieces and trips to the nearest Jack in the Box drive-thru, almost everyone agrees nothing goes better with the reefer than reggae. (Personally, give us Sleep's Dopesmoker, Adult Swim on the TiVo and some chicken strips.)

Invariably, when most people think about reggae, Bob Marley comes to mind. No doubt he was one of the best ambassadors of the genre to a world that was unfamiliar with the island rhythms and relaxed lifestyle. Possessing Marley's greatest-hits compilation Legend is actually required for admission to the University of Texas.

But there is an entire universe of reggae out there, and as with the sticky icky icky, there are vast and varied strains of it floating around, including many that make fuller and stronger alternatives to Marley's work. We love Marley on sunny afternoons in the backyard or chillaxing by a pool, but quite frankly, he's vastly overrated.

Various Artists

Putumayo Presents: India

www.putumayo.com

With Slumdog Millionaire's recent sweep at this year's Oscars, the music of India has become more and more present on our airwaves - a slow trend that began four decades ago when George Harrison first introduced Ravi Shankar's ragas to Western audiences in the late '60s.

On this new Putumayo release, we get a few examples of what is going on in that music scene in recent years, like Niraj Chag's electronic-tinged "Khwaab" and Bombay Jayashiri's lounge-friendly "Zara Zara." Slumdog fans will certainly recognize A.H. Rahman, who appears here with "Tere Bina," one of the countless songs he has written for Bollywood films over the years.

Courtesy of SPA Houston

Irish Airs (l-r): Chieftains Paddy Moloney, Kevin Conneff and Matt Malloy

As Rocks Off mentioned in last week's print article, Chieftains founder Paddy Moloney is a bit of a talker. Furthermore, his lilting Irish brogue is so enchanting it's easy to get lost in it and forget whatever you asked him in the first place - and he rambles so much he probably forgets too.

Luckily, since he started the group in Dublin in 1962 - the current lineup is Moloney (Uillean pipes, tin whistle), Kevin Conneff (bodhran, vocals) and Matt Malloy (flute); fiddler Sean Keane is sitting out this tour to spend time with his family, and longtime harpist Derek Bell passed away in 2002 - the Chieftains' combined resume, discography and touring itinerary has to be thicker than the Book of Kells, so there's a lot to talk about - including their upcoming album exploring the common ground between Irish and Mexican music. A few more excerpts from our conversation after the jump.

Photos courtesy of iFest

Beoga

Since we're already playing hangman today, here's another riddle: What do America's finest genre-hopping Latino band, Houston's best Guinness-chugging rockers, a daughter of the nation's premiere gospel family, a perennially unsung honky-tonker who sounds like the ghost of Hank Williams, a bayou-born boogie-woogie piano queen, a Grammy-winning Tejano godfather, two of Louisiana's hottest young Cajun groups, more regional zydeco groups than you can shake a Hohner accordion at and the '70s funk lords whose biggest hit supposedly contains the screams of a woman being murdered in the studio next door have in common?

That's an easy one: They're a small fraction of the musical lineup for this year's Houston International Festival, April 18-19 and 25-26 downtown, spread over more stages than the Austin City Limits festival. See who they are, and a whole lot more, after the jump.

Peter Tosh

The Ultimate Experience (Shanachie)

www.shanachie.com

More than 20 years since Peter Tosh's 1987 assassination, the Wailers co-founder's legacy (as well as Bob Marley's) live on around the world, but that rings especially true in his native Jamaica, where he burst out of poverty and misery to become one of the most recognizable names in reggae. On a recent trip to the island - I stayed in a hotel close to Negril beach, not far from Bob Marley's house, which has become a tourist attraction - I couldn't help but notice that his music, especially the material he recorded with the original Wailers, was as present as ever.

To celebrate Tosh's legacy, Shanachie is releasing a three-disc definitive look at the man's music. The box contains one CD with rare or previously unreleased recordings and two DVDs - the first with live footage from different concerts played around the globe, some of it very grainy, but nevertheless enjoyable; according to the liner notes, many of the master tapes no longer exist.

Kodo

Heartbeat: Best of Kodo 25th Anniversary (Sony Music Japan)

www.kodo.or.jp

The remote Japanese island of Sado is pretty much devoid of the distractions of modern life. Due to its distance from the mainland - for centuries it was a place where people were sent to when forced into exile - technology did not fully reach the residents of this area, and it's stayed that way for centuries.

Today, visitors who take a two-and-a-half hour ferry ride to the island are promised to step back in time to a place devoid of the rush of urban existence. Because of that, the island averages 900,000 visitors a year. It was in this setting that Kodo came into existence, formed a quarter-century ago by artists and musicians who found in Sado the peace they needed to exercise their creativity and, in the island's ancient festivals and harvest celebrations, inspiration to showcase these almost-lost art forms to other nations through their music.

Ladysmith Black Mambazo

Live! (Heads Up)

http://www.mambazo.com

Though international audiences did not discover this South African vocal group until it appeared on Paul Simon's landmark 1986 album Graceland, Ladysmith Black Mambazo has been active since the early '60s, when founder Joseph Shabalala started the a capella isicathamiya choir alongside friends and family back in his hometown of Ladysmith.

Since hitting the spotlight more than two decades ago, the Grammy-winning group went on to become South Africa's cultural ambassadors, touring relentlessly around the world eight months a year in addition to making new music, participating in other musicians' recordings while also being the face of the Mambazo Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization started by Shabalala in 1999.

Toubab Krewe

Live at the Orange Peel (Upstream)

www.toubabkrewe.com

Listening to Toubab Krewe, you'd never guess that all its members hail not from the Western African nation of Mali, but from Asheville, N.C., where the band recorded its latest disc at the Orange Peel - the same venue where Smashing Pumpkins kicked off their reunion tour last year. Toubab Krewe's trademark sound is a blend of various influences - though Africa is the most obvious reference, there's rock, reggae and New Orleans-style grooves (the name "Krewe" comes from the Crescent City regional spelling of "crew").

An example is Live's uptempo "Kaira," which begins with a kora (African lute) solo from Justin Perkins. The other members, who join in about a minute into the track, take the melody more into West Indian territory. Another is "Roy Forester," a slower number with more of a Latin rock feel, with lots of clever guitar riffs and Ohio-born spoken-word artist Umar Bin Hassam, who emotionally reads from his politically tinged "Personal Things," a piece originally featured on Hassam's Be Bop or Be Dead.

Asha Bhosle

Precious Platinum

asha-bhosle.tripod.com

One basic characteristic of Bollywood films is the fact that actors generally do not use their own singing voices during the musical numbers - that task goes to playback singers like Asha Bhosle, who over the span of six decades has participated in almost 1,000 such flicks. In the meantime, she has also kept busy doing non-film songs - including a Grammy-nominated CD with the Kronos Quartet, 2005's You've Stolen My Heart: Songs from R.D. Burman's Bollywood.

In celebration of her 75th birthday (a landmark that saw her first-ever appearance at New York's Carnegie Hall earlier this year), Bohsle has released a CD of new songs written by up-and-coming songwriter Nitin Ramesh Shankar, who also performed on the sessions. Thanks to its wide musical approach, it's a surprising disc for even those familiar with Bohsle's work. 

Chopteeth live at Washington D.C.'s Black Cat

Photo by C.L. Kunst

Chopteeth

Afro-Funk Big Band (Grigri Discs)

www.chopteeth.com

People deal with grief in various ways - some go out and get drunk,while others might take a trip in order to "clear the air" while attempting to deal with the pain. Quite a few might even try therapy, but in the case of Washington, D.C. bassist and labor organizer Robert Fox, making music was the answer he found after losing a close friend in a tragic car accident.

Fox, however, did not start a punk band. Instead, he found inspiration in the Afrobeat sound Fela Kuti made in the '70s - a blend of the era's American funk grooves with African traditional music. This disc is the result, bringing together musicians from places like Nigeria, Romania and the South, arriving at a sound that reflects all these origins.