Flying Rivers: George Christian & Jeff Gburek

Listen here:

 https://jeffgburekprojects.bandcamp.com/album/flying-rivers

Flying Rivers refers to the vaporization canopy of the Amazonian rain-forest, an eco-system whose loss contributes in part to global climate change. The album began to take shape in the era when deregulation of clearing the rain-forest began to take place, burning out territories of the forest in order to transform them into agricultural tracts, timber, while displacing plant, animal and indigenous human populations. The music spans several months of exchanges of sound-files and over-dubbing, a trans-oceanic correspondence campaign.

George Christian lives in Stella Maris quarter of Salvador, the capital of Bahia province in Brazil.  Jeff Gburek is based in Poznan, Poland while the bulk of his instrumental tracks were recorded in Bulgaria in the summer of 2019. The album was finished over the course of 2019-2020 and therefore encompasses almost a full year of deliberation, processing, labor and thought. There is a constant play between traditions, innovations and references to transitions in cultural-historical time are registered on many levels, perhaps most consciously in their Homage to João Gilberto who passed away in July, 2019. Further evidence of cultural and ecological sharing can be found in the "Trial by Fires" track where we hear free saxophonist Thelmo Cristovam and later when we hear in the soundscape entitled "Amazonas" some of Thelmo Cristovam's Mamori Lake field recordings which supply the cantus firmus, so to speak, over which play the voices speaking Portuguese of Ana Kavalis  (Cuba/Berlin), Cristina Ferreira (Poznan/ Porto, Portugal) , Denize Mota (Poznan/ Manaus, Brazil).

 Instrumentation

George Christian: voice, Ibanez V72 acoustic guitar, Brazilian telecaster, pedals, found objects.

Jeff Gburek: voice, Gilmore acoustic guitar, Hoefner electric, ebow, percussion, samples and field recordings.

Thelmo Cristovam: saxophone (7) & field recordings (9).

Ana Kavalis, Cristina Ferreia, Denize Mota: voices (9) 

Produced and mixed by Jeff Gburek

The text recited in Amazonas is a spectral ghost poem resulting from lines written in English by Jeff Gburek which were then translated into Brazilian Portuguese by George Christian. Our chorus giving fleshly voice to the poetry are a mixture of native speakers of Portuguese and a Cubana who has traveled among the Brazilians extensively. Many thanks, gracias, obrigados to all collaborators and dziękuję to Karolina Ossowska once again for the cover art from her quickly expanding collagist's oeuvre.

-- Jeff Gburek 

 "I want to send my thanks to the opportunity of this partnership with you, Jeff, to all the other participants who made this album really possible. And I want to dedicate this album to the free spirits that are still striving to survive, facing the lockdown of those turbulent times we're living on Earth.
Remembering now that, unfortunately, Brazilian indigenous people are dying not only because of the miners and the agrobusiness people, but now also of COVID-19... Let's pray for their survival."

-- George Christian 

https://jeffgburekprojects.bandcamp.com/album/flying-rivers

Alternative African Realities Unexplained

I will use the word unexplained because it reflects the basic knowledge one can derive from listening to and reading about the sound art one finds in these anthologies.

But first listen to this from DJ DIAKI   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufTBUGIh4FQ&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3uOp-saZfMe_b10rjODjadRputZ-YocEOoKh2XLzx63FcOJYKMIcOqDeU

Whew... if you are still with us 46 minutes later, let's delve into the more "experimental" music.

   The following Two Noteworthy Anthologies (links below) came to my attention over recent months. The sources of these anthologies seems to be in the travels and networking of Cedrik Fremont who appears to move freely and with great frequency gathering these artefacts from Asia and Africa seemingly in the manner of Alan Lomax in his work on American folk music, although I have no evidence on which the comparison could be found valid. Perhaps much will be explained as the database gets filled out in the future. In the meantime, this listener often has many questions about the provenance of the materials and how they came to be mixed in their current form. Much of the music is very interesting, well-produced, even in reminiscent of other forms of music from the past, such that in many cases I find myself wondering in what sense these works are continually experimental. Every once in a while there is a piece with rough edges, showing signs of physical effort, improvisation, as if it were ripped from the fabric of time. Others sound like very clever studio projects and create their own sense of time. Not being able to see much in terms of where, how and when, leaves me at the guessing wall. In some instances it would appear that these popular music artists main claims (not that they make these claims to be experimental themselves) to the moniker experimental or avant-garde is that they are obscure and unknown outside there own culture's radius. It is their presentation that alienates them perhaps and creates an aura of the exotic extract of an active culture. Nice. I wish to go there. As the cultural perimeter of the global culture expands, thanks to the efforts of Syrphe and whoever constitutes this nomadic gathering tribe (a nomadic gathering tribe that gathers evidence of nomadic tribes -- or sedentary ones, first contacters, and all the colonial & philosophical problematics of firstness) perhaps the unknowns and the unexplained will appear only as the offspring of the known as they continue to attain virtual literacy in these streaming appearances.
That said, the unexplained works sometime seem to be re-mixes that someone doing the remixing doens't want to explain. That is the simplest and most direct way to articulate my criticism. This blog is called Transparent Abelard for the main reason that we love the naked and unashamed and we are repulsed my the attempt to blur the lines. Let's be clear about this. But if the music grooves, so what.

https://syrphe.bandcamp.com/album/alternate-african-reality-electronic-electroacoustic-and-experimental-music-from-africa-and-the-diaspora?fbclid=IwAR0dN6Y3UQYdQ_Qo-obM74RIk_L91y1HwESVdWIc8cfi3PLmdD2iPk10hKs

https://unexplainedsoundsgroup.bandcamp.com/album/anthology-of-contemporary-music-from-africa-continent?fbclid=IwAR1A51deXDnvHR6TMLR9rkJwNtuLKP1QsJnsdTZGKTsqOWggEMeDccWYYo

http://syrphe.com/african&asian_database.htm?fbclid=IwAR1s-G71aic6EmHodHdEcCfugHn-N-l_HsRKtpLLQUYlzCebMV7hTcX2WmY

Flash Update: an old album but newly arrived as a re-post on Bandcamp... 

 Madosini, The Queen of Xhosa Music, is undoubtedly one of the most important figures in Xhosa music today. She continues to expand on the traditional repertoire of her chosen instruments by composing new songs and instrumental pieces.

https://newcape.bandcamp.com/album/eparadesi-nkosi-uzube-nam?mc_cid=ea5500c927&mc_eid=%5BUNIQID&fbclid=IwAR3wrJxGnMSblffzF8Vqj4O02-C2o2gv7vPEGZVQzmXq28Q8Hqr3YkRetc4