From: crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu (Lauren L. Crawford)
Newsgroups: rec.music.christian
Subject: Re: Top 40 CCM albums of 1992
Date: 12 Jan 93 18:34:28 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <1993Jan11.213419.2733@cbnews.cb.att.com> ajw@cbnews.cb.att.com (andrew.j.whitman) writes:

>Thanks for your response, Lauren.  I'd be particularly interested in
>hearing more about some of the world beat/international music you
>mentioned.

I'm rotten at coming up with stuff off the top of my head, so I should
probably do research on my collection and get back to you ... but here
goes for now.

I particularly love Indian music, so am drawn to folks like Sheila Chandra
(whom I previously mentioned; sort of Indian jazz) and Najma (Indian pop;
on her more recent album she takes a stab at "Faithless Love" which is
unfortunate).  Ravi Shankar (who is no doubt familiar to an old ex-hippie
like you) did an interesting album with, I think, the Moscow symphony
orchestra -- a sort of Indian/Russian thing.  Odd, but intriguing.  I like
to frequent Indian grocery stores and have picked up a number of awful
(but enjoyable) CD soundtracks from Hindi movies, which I also love.  And
I like much traditional Indian music.

I'm also a fan of traditional Japanese and some Chinese (instrumental
*only*; I'm not a fan of the Chinese traditional vocal style) music,
particularly bamboo flute, koto and pipa tunes.  James Galway has done a
wonderful pseudo-Japanese album called "Songs from the Seashore"; I
understand it was so popular he's done a sequel.  It's a nice intro to
Japanese music for Westerners.  

If you'd like some actual album names of
any of this stuff, let me know and I'll hunt them down.  

I like some of the African pop/jazz folks like King Sunny Ade' and
Youssou N'dour (sp?), particularly the former.  I like some Rai music
(blend of Northern African and other pop influences); I also like some
things by Dissidentan (sp?), a German/Moroccan band.  It's sort of
punky Tunisian.  And, of course, I love some traditional African
stuff, particularly the call-and-respond singing of West Africa (where I
used to live).  I liked Juluka's first album (South African group, mixed
black and white), particularly the song "Scatterlings" which actually got
some MTV airplay.  They're sort of like Jethro Tull goes to Africa.  I
also like some of their lines, like the one that goes:  "Spirit is the
driver, body is the bus..."  I haven't been as fond of Johnny Clegg's
later stuff, though.

When I lived in Asia, I picked up tons of cheap tapes of all kinds of
great and horrible stuff ... I've got cheesey pop from Hong Kong,
Thailand, the Philippines and Viet Nam.  I particularly love when they do
covers of Western songs but in their own languages, or in mangled English. 
"Every Break You Take" is one of my favorites.  A lot of this stuff is
available in Chinatowns of larger cities -- maybe not the Thai stuff so
much, but the others definitely.  I've only found one or two other
Westerners with my tolerance for this stuff, though.  My fiance is *not*
one of them.  I have a Thai punk album you might like ...  

>Which Kate and Anna McGarrigle album are you thinking about buying?
>The last one I heard, "Heartbeats Accelerating," was okay but not as
>good as "Dancer with Bruised Knees" or the album with all the French
>songs.  Is that their latest?

I think it is.  As far as I'm concerned, you're absolutely right; nothing
has come close to their first two albums and their French album.  But
they're still wonderful.

>Depends on what you're calling fusion, I guess.  Originally the term
>referred to a fusion of rock and jazz music, and was inspired by some of 
>Miles Davis' more exotic albums and typified by late sixties/early seventies 
>bands such as Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report, and Return to Forever.
>I think this is pretty good stuff.  But when I think of fusion now I think 
>of a fusion of jazz and pop music, as typified by Kenny G., Spyro Gyra,
>Earl Klugh, Bob James, Dave Grusin, Lee Ritenour, etc.  This stuff has
>an ultra-high glucose content, and I can't stand it.  

Hmm.  I'm not sure what I'm talking about, I guess.  It's the kind of jazz
that has about 6,000 notes per minute, all totally discordant from one
another, with someone hitting a cymbal periodically in nothing that
resembles any rhythm I understand, and where each person in the band does
a 30-minute solo in every 3-hour song.  I'd been told that was fusion, but
perhaps not.  Perhaps it's just bad.

>All of this is, of course, my opinion, and I make no claims to musical
>objectivity except in the case of Kenny G., who has already proven 
>that he is beyond redemption and has already been consigned to the
>outer darkness of hell, where he will be forced to torture Lucifer and 
>his minions with a never-ending version of "Songbird."

>I'm still a sucker for three-minute pop songs that feature jangly
>guitars and choruses about girls and cars and True Love.  Song titles 
>in which girl's names appear are almost invariably good for some reason. 
>There are still a few performers/bands making songs like this, among
>them The Posies and Matthew Sweet and The La's and E and NRBQ
>and The Bats and Material Issue.  It's pop music at its most fluffy
>and vacuous, and it's simply great.  Eat your heart out, Rushfans.

Yeah, I guess I know what you mean.  I like some of the "girl groups" for
the same reason.

>>Except Sinead O'Connor's "I Am Spread(?) on Your Grave."  Who would've
>>thought to combine rap with traditional Irish music?  
>
>You know what?  That song is actually more than twenty years old,
>and was written by a guy named Phillip King, who played (plays?)
>in an obscure Irish band called Scullion.  I mention this only
>because the original version, recorded in 1971, is definitely a
>rap song.  And it was a rap song before anybody had even invented
>the term.

Get outa here!  Really?  There are times, Andy, when you remind me of Rain
Man with that memory of yours.  

>In general rap doesn't do much for me, but Public Enemy is certainly
>one exception.  Arrested Development is another.  These folks are
>carrying on in the grand tradition of protest music, and they're doing
>it very well.  And I find a lot of the sampling to be very creative
>too.  I find a lot of rap to be sexist, misogynist crap, and pretty
>boring crap at that, but PE and AD give me real hope for the genre.

Sampling can be useful.  It was the sampling in a club/dance tune that
introduced me to Ofra Haza.  I heard her while sitting in a Pizza Hut
outside of London, and I was absolutely amazed.  I've since gone out and
got all her stuff -- Disco Craze meets the Queen of Sheba.  Forgot the
name of the group that originally sampled her.

>Dorothy Sayers is probably okay, but G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown
>mysteries would probably be a safer Christian alternative.  

But Dorothy was a Christian in utero when she wrote those mysteries ...
I'll console myself with that.

>"M*A*S*H"
>is straight from the pit of hell, and features a certain character
>"Hawkeye" (a Satanic talisman, isn't it?) 

Who, backmasked, is "Yekwah," which is awfully close to "Yahweh" in *my*
book.  You're right; I'd better give it up.  

>I'll 
>pray for your deranged soul.  The mildew passage has been done to
>death.  I'd suggest an 200-page thesis on "Thou shalt not boil a
>kid in its mother's milk" instead.

*Sigh.*  Well, at least it's not the passage on acceptably edible insects.
That would've driven me to fusion jazz if nothing else had.
  


-- 
The trick of reason is to get the imagination to seize the actual world --
if only from time to time.     -- Annie Dillard, "An American Childhood"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lauren Crawford  //  crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu
Newsgroups: rec.music.christian