Pop Culture

A few years ago, the record label Ellipsis Arts released an extraordinary three-CD set of accordion music. Featuring music from polkas to sambas, this wonderful set was not EA's first large-scale work focusing on one particular genre of music. That honor belongs to a 1994-released three-CD package on Flamenco entitled "Duende, From Traditional Masters to Gypsy Rock."

Flamenco, which is certainly more than the flashing swirling stepdancing replete with clattering castanets, has a long folk history. Evolving in Southern Spain during the 19th century, itinerant musicians from the Andalusia, influenced by various cultures (Arabs, Moors, Romans, and Gypsies), developed this unique soulful music, earmarked by brilliant forceful strumming and finger-picking guitar lines, syncopated hand-clapping, and beautiful emotive vocal lines. The result was a popular music "from the bottom up," music from the people reflecting the energy, pathos, and history of an area and people.

The CDs feature three distinct approaches to Flamenco. The first focuses on the vocalists. Although the familiar virtuoso guitar accompaniment is ever-present, the long-sustain melismatic vocal lines, long the core of Flamenco musicians, are highlighted. Such artists as Luis De Cordoba, Jose Menese, Enrique Morente, and the late Camaron De La Isla all illustrate the breath-taking range and emotive control of Flamenco singing. Of particular note is the Moorish-sounding work of El Polaco. His deeply emotional singing on the elaborate cante jondo, "A mi guitarra" is both eerie and compelling, transcending Flamenco, becoming truly exceptional music of any culture.

The second CD focuses on the more familiar Flamenco guitar playing. The distinctive treble sound of the Flamenco guitar comes from its cheaper construction. Flamenco guitars are often made of cedar (not unlike those guitars found in the gypsy slums of the 19th-century) rather than hardwoods found in more resonant and fuller-sounding modern acoustic guitars. This sound, coupled with extraordinary finger-thumb-strumming techniques, all lead to the Flamenco guitar style which we Westemers are most familiar. Featured in this section is the work of legend Paco de Lucia. He has taken the standard repertoire of Flamenco techniques and combined them with both jazz and rock, playing with rock and jazz guitarists John McLaughlin, Larry Coryell and Al Di Meola, forming a contemporary sound featured on the third CD of this set.

The final CD features the future of Flamenco: a fusion idiom that comes from the musical experimentations of Flamenco players rather than direct influence from outside artists or genres. Today the Flamenco form is expanded and stretched to fit jazz and rock rather than Flamenco techniques merely being added to the forms of rock and jazz. This is not to hint that Flamenco is not driving, pulsating music. It is. It's just that the complexity of the rhythms and sophisticated syncopations of Flamenco are tempered when connected with the narrower genres of rock and jazz. The result is a heavier beat-laden, highly stylized playing that forces both genres into new territory, a hybrid which moves beyond jazz, rock, and Flamenco. Featured in this section is the work of Pata Negra, a wildly, funky, rocky, acoustic Flamenco group from Seville. One can hear elements of the blues, Frank Zappa, even Grateful Dead in their fascinating amalgam.

This entire CD set is worth the purchase. Flamenco music is familiar to us yet the breadth of this compilation makes it sound completely new.

Antonio Carlos Jobim ​​​​​​​- A Twist of Jobim - i.e. music

In his book "Elevator Music" Joseph Lanza does a fine job of laying out the history of Muzak music and the rise of the radio format, "Beautiful Music." He argues that "Beautiful Music," and its newer sound "Lite FM," is so pervasive that it might define American music more accurately than rock, pop, jazz, or country. Certainly when one cannot find a good rock station (say in Lake Havasu, Arizona), one will find a "Beautiful Music" station, playing string-laden mood variations of light classics of popular tunes, soft jazz, or exotic melodies.

A surprisingly good CD has recently been released that focuses on an artist whose work could find no other place on radio than on the "Beautiful Music" circuit. Although Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Girl From Ipanema" did reach the upper positions of the pop charts, his large catalog of materials were soft and inventive, free from rock clichés, focusing on Caribbean sensitivities and rhythms and never really had a chance to be heard by a mass audience in the United States. Besides the "Beautiful Music" stations, there was certainly no room for his exquisite music anywhere else on a U.S. radio dial.

Now, jazz guitarist and producer, Lee Ritenour has released a compilation of the late Jobim's work entitled "A Twist of Jobim." Featuring artists such as Herbie Hancock, El Debarge, Al Jarreau, and the Yellowjackets, the bossa nova rhythms and samba-tinged music made famous by Jobim lives on.

One strength of this recording is how well Ritenour has captured the balance of Jobim's music. A Brazilian, Jobim almost instinctively knew how to combine rhythm, melody and harmony when composing his sambas and bossa novas to form a powerful and persuasive sound. The effect was creatively compelling yet challenging for other musicians to capture and cover. For instance, it is the soft, subtle sway found on "Girl From Ipanema" that gives the song its power and appeal. To introduce an arrangement using more conventional rock or jazz sensitivities would be woefully inappropriate and ... wrong. Similarly, on the classic "The Waters of Maren" featuring Al Jarreau and Oleta Adams, the collection of words create a poetic comparison of rhyme, meter and meaning. Their appeal could not be handled with the same intensity using the formulas of any other genre; no rock beat or blistering jazz riff could accentuate the appeal of Jobim's great musical feel. Ritenour knew this, so he kept the arrangements consistent to the originals, which is one reason this recording is so good and why this recommended recording is truly "Beautiful Music."