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The Beaufort, South Carolina native, who makes California his home these days (busking on the Santa Monica Pier, as it turns out), is more Townes Van Zandt than Hootie & The Blowfish. Bostick understands that great lyrics, paired with dynamite musicians, is a recipe for seriously solid music.

Bostick wisely featured producer John Would (Fiona Apple, Warren Zevon) behind the board to co-produce Ben Bostick – and to great effect. Each instrument – acoustic guitar to harmonica to piano to fiddle, and more – pops out of the speakers, sweetening the songs coming from Bostick’s buttery baritone that, well, is utterly reminiscent of ol’ Waylon.

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2017 release containing the original versions of songs that inspired the Rolling Stones on their album, Blue & Lonesome, along with six bonus tracks: originals covered by the band earlier in their catalog. The Stones’ versions of Muddy Waters’ ‘I Just Want To Make Love To You’ and Slim Harpo’s ‘I’m A King Bee’ appeared on England’s Newest Hit Makers, Chuck Berry’s ‘Come On’ on their debut single, Dale Hawkins’ ‘Susie Q’ on 12 X 5, Marvin Gaye’s ‘Hitch Hike’ on Out of Our Heads and Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘Little Red Rooster’ on their second #1 single.

Tracklist:
01 Little Walter – Just Your Fool (2:24)
02 Memphis Slim – Blue And Lonesome (2:53)
03 Magic Sam – All Your Love (Aka All Of Your Love) (2:58)
04 Little Walter – I Got To Go (2:42)
05 Eddie Taylor – Ride ’em On Down (2:55)
06 Little Walter – Hate To See You Go (2:17)
07 Lightnin’ Slim – Hoo Doo Blues (2:22)
08 Jimmy Reed – Little Rain (3:11)
09 Howlin’ Wolf – Just Like I Treat You (2:57)
10 Otis Rush – I Can’t Quit You Baby (3:04)
11 Muddy Waters – I Just Want To Make Love To You (2:53)
12 Chuck Berry – Come On (1:49)
13 Slim Harpo – I’m A King Bee (3:01)
14 Dale Hawkins – Susie Q (2:21)
15 Marvin Gaye – Hitch Hike (2:34)
16 Howlin’ Wolf – Little Red Rooster (2:26)

320 kbps | 104 MB | LINKS

Chris Ruest belongs to the impressive class of serious Texas blues guitarists, a group that includes Johnny Moeller, Shawn Pittman, and Nick Curran. While the others may have wider name recognition, Ruest has quietly built a reputation of excellence that is spreading beyond his Austin home base. A veteran with nearly two decades’ experience on the bandstand, Ruest’s passion for classic blues (jump, Chicago, and Gulf Coast) and roots rock forms comes through in an original voice that combines immediacy and authenticity. Dead-on songwriting and savvy selection of covers provide a platform for his unaffected, honest vocals and tough guitar.

320 kbps | 111 MB | LINKS

Tracklist:

01. Blackest Deeds (05:55)
02. Disappearing Act (06:39)
03. Masks (06:27)
04. Copycat (06:19)
05. It’s Only A Dream (03:27)
06. Tightrope (07:18)
07. The Hermit (03:57)
08. After The Blast (07:52)

320 kbps | 128 MB | LINKS

Inland Sea is Stephan Micus’ 22nd solo album for ECM, each one taking his audience on musical journeys to far-flung places and unique sound worlds. For decades, he has been travelling, collecting and studying musical instruments from all over the world and creating new music for them. Micus often combines instruments from different cultures and continents that would never normally be played together, adapting and extending them, and rarely playing them in a traditional manner. The instruments then become a cast of characters that help tell the particular story of that album. While he plays nine different instruments on Inland Sea, the lead role belongs to the nyckelharpa – a keyed fiddle from Sweden, with an array of other instruments and vocals providing layers and textures throughout.

[Tracks recorded by Joseph Lamont and Palmer Keen; "Woleka" mixed and mastered by Joseph Lamont, "Gaza" mixed but not really mastered by Palmer Keen] 

Location: Ramadana Village, Loura District, Southwest Sumba

Sound: Musik Gong (also called gaza)

I didn’t expect to hear gong music in Sumba. While I knew that gongs are played everywhere on the island, its usually not the kind of music you can politely request, like other Sumbanese folk forms such as gogah or jungga. Traditionally gong music is played only in very specific contexts connected to adat or customs, such as for harvest rituals and funerals.

These performance contexts often have deep roots in Marapu, the ancestral religion of Sumba. Sumba’s gong music is deeply entrenched in this complex cosmology of Marapu, with sounds both calling and repelling certain spirits. Marapu beliefs are still widespread in Sumba, but for almost two hundred years these beliefs have also both competed and combined with Christianity. 

Largely out of the reach of the historically Hindu-Buddhist and Islamic sphere to the west, the whole swath of Indonesia called East Nusa Tenggara must have felt like a goldmine to early missionaries: a whole land of heathens waiting to be saved (even now you find missionaries lamenting that the Sumbanese people are "trapped in the past and held in bondage by their Marapu religion.") The missionaries were largely successful: most folks in Sumba now have either Kristen (read: Protestant) or Katolik (Catholic) on their state-issued ID cards. The fact that Indonesians must officially be a member of one of the six state-approved monotheistic religions makes things complicated, though: while there is no shortage of die-hard Jesus lovers in Sumba, there are also plenty of “Kristen KTP”, people who claim to be Christian on their ID cards but largely still follow Marapu beliefs.

That’s not to suggest that there’s a strict dualism at play in Sumba between Christianity and Marapu: just like in other nominally Christian areas of Indonesia like Toraja in Sulawesi and large parts of Kalimantan, Christianity and indigenous beliefs often gel into an inseparable blend. It’s not unusual, for example, for Sumbanese Christians to be buried in the megalithic stone or cement tombs of their ancestors, but with a Christian service and a cross inscribed in the rock. 

What does this complex confluence of beliefs mean for music with deep roots in Marapu? While many Protestant missionaries and churches have banned such Marapu-based practices as un-Christian, many Catholic churches and communities have made room for this spiritual music. As I wrote in my post on Catholic “inculturation music” in Timor (an island to the east of Sumba), Catholicism has been surprisingly tolerant of indigenous traditions and beliefs ever since the convening of Vatican II, a landmark moment for the religion. The council led to a larger focus on making the religion accessible to the people, from holding mass in local languages to opening Catholic music-making to outside influences. 

In Sumba, this meant finding a place for gong music. Gong music is still played at traditional funerals where dozens of buffaloes are sacrificed to the Marapu gods, but its also played in church halls for recitals and Sunday service. The music I’m sharing here was played as part of an informal rehearsal leading up to a big Christmas event at the local Catholic church. 

In contrast to the Timorese ratapan lament which was smoothed out for the church, sweet thirds-based harmony and all, I don’t get a sense that this music was changed much, if at all, to make its way into the church. You’ve still got your very Sumbanese seven-beat rhythms and fevered drumming, and the patterns and melodies don’t differ dramatically from other gong music played outside of the church in other parts of Sumba.  This particular group’s gongs do have a surprisingly sweet, consonant sound, a factor which may have made its entrance to the church (a land of major key hymns) smoother. Check the tuning against a keyboard, though, and it's immediately obvious that the scale is still very much in a world of its own. 

While gong groups differ across the island, this particular one featured six gongs, all made from recycled scrap metal painted gold. One musician plays the three hanging gongs called kaduruka and bale (kaduruka on left and right, bale in the middle), while the handheld rada bedu and kaghukeka gongs as well as the hanging, high-pitched kabonguka are shared between two or three players. Beaten in complex interlocking parts with soft palu tala mallets, the gongs combine to spell out both minimalist, rhythmic patterns as well as clear melodies (while its a bit of an arbitrary division, most gong-based music in areas like Sumatra and Java are usually melodic, while those in this eastern corner of Nusa Tenggara are usually more rhythmic, with tight, repetitive patterns giving a less melodic feel; this group had maybe the most melodic style out of any gong music I’ve heard in this region.) 

Anchoring the rhythm and providing rhythmic cues are the drums called bedu. Some are held under the arm and have the long, tapering cylindrical shape of the tifa drums common across Melanesian Indonesian from Maluku to Papua, with the sound of the goat or horse-skin head escaping from the open bottom of its hardwood body. The other variety is goblet-shaped and closed off at the bottom, with the drum stood on its end and beaten with two hard sticks called palu bedu. Inside these goblet-shaped drums lie a secret tinged Marapu beliefs: before closing off the drum's bottom, three candlenuts and a chicken feather are placed inside. The result, I was told, is a sweeter sound. 

The pieces we heard that night were given two general titles: Gaza and Woleka. Gaza itself is a broad term for many associated rhythms or “songs”, many with the theme of “success”: success for the harvest, success during the planting season. Gaza can also be refigured for the church: in the rehearsal session we recorded, sections of looping gong melody were spliced by a capella singing of pujian or Christian hymns or prayers (the singing didn’t get picked up on our mics, which were arranged to pick up the very loud gongs.) Woleka, with its straight-ahead, bedu-driven beat, is associated with upacara adat, or traditional ceremonies, but may also be played in the church to accompany prayers and ceremonies to welcome honored guests. 

My discovery of these “church gongs” was a pleasant surprise. It's not rare in Indonesia for musical traditions to be quickly abandoned at the command of fearful, intolerant religious leaders. For musical traditions to survive in a cultural environment that is constantly shifting, both musical traditions and their environments must be flexible and accommodating. The Catholics of Sumba have thankfully found no conflict in letting the spirit-filled gongs of their ancestors ring out in their modern churches and halls, finding meaningful new contexts for ancient music.

Context:

We arrived at Virgo’s house totally exhausted. Logan, Jo, and I had already woken early in the morning in Waikabubak in Central Sumba, taken a crowded bus to Waitabula in the northwest, then met with Virgo and driven to Kodi to record dungga in the village that afternoon. Virgo was a sweet, intelligent young midwife who we’d been hooked up with through her uncle, a dungga-playing Kodi pop star named Kun Mally. As we were in Kodi recording dungga, Virgo casually mentioned that there’d be a rehearsal with gong music later that night in her village. I think I may have actually giggled with excitement: it was our last night in Sumba, and I’d already given up on hearing gong music, thinking I’d have to chance upon a funeral to hear it for myself. You can join, Virgo said, but first you have to eat dinner with my family! 

It was just getting dark when we finally pulled up to Virgo’s home in Ramadana. Her parents greeted us warmly as we entered, her mom serving us hot tea as we sat in elaborately carved wooden chairs, talking about our countries and their politics with Virgo’s curious father. In the next room was a television, always on, splashing light onto a humble Christmas tree. It was a week before Christmas, and while we’d stayed with other Christian families across the island and spotted dancing, sax-playing animatronic Santas in dusty shop windows in Waikabubak, I hadn’t felt that holiday spirit until we were at Virgo’s. 

We were treated to a feast befitting of the festive spirit: pumpkin soup, fried chicken, local greens from the backyard. As we sat with Virgo and her folks around the dinner table (itself an oddity in Indonesia!), we three agnostic foreigners subtly fibbed about our religious habits, not quite up to explaining the widespread irreligiosity of the West as we dined under a glowing picture of Mother Mary with sweet, pious folk. After dinner, our bellies full, Virgo’s mom brought out her Catholic hymnbook and we looked through the selection of Christmas hymns, trying to find out which were familiar despite their translations (“Silent Night”, for example, becomes “Malam Kudus” or “Holy Night.”) When we chanced upon a familiar melody, we sat together and sang from the book, an odd sense of comfortable nostalgia mixing with the unfamiliarity of the Indonesian lyrics. Even after I’d flown home the next week and spent Christmas with my family in California, that moment at Virgo’s house was still the warmest holiday moment I’d had in years.

The gongs were waiting, though. At Virgo’s neighbors house, a handful of fellow churchgoers had already assembled and music was ringing out, their golden gongs hanging from the rafters of a kind of thatched-roof veranda, its dark interior chock-full of drying cobs of corn. The musicians, all men, were dressed in church-like Batik and collared shirts, but the rest of their get-up was more relaxed and very Sumba, all jean shorts, loose sarongs, and colorful woven headbands. 

As the song wrapped up, the gang let out a fierce, joyful cry in unison, a ritual they’d enact at the end of almost every piece. We took the pause between songs to finagle our microphones into some key locations (recording gongs is tough work, actually, as unless you get close enough it all becomes cloudy on tape.) Meanwhile, Virgo’s mom was gathering the women, dressed in gorgeous woven ikat sarongs, to practice some coordinated dances which accompanied the Gaza pieces. Virgo’s mom clearly had a special kind of matriarchal power here: she led the women in dance, but when the guy played kaduruka messed up, she shoved him over and took over on gongs, confidently showing the guys how it was done. 

Because it was a rehearsal for an upcoming Christmas celebration and not the “real deal”, the vibe was delightfully relaxed. The musicians switched out from piece to piece, occasionally sitting out from a piece for a cigarette break, while a trio of dirty-kneed boys laid on some blankets on the bamboo veranda, watching their dads beat out the complex seven-beat rhythms and playing along on their own bedu drum, effortlessly following the stilted rhythm. Each song would end with that infectious cry, a spirited yelp that shook the whole bamboo structure. As the ring of the gongs faded, the mechanical clatter of a rice-threshing machine running off in the distance would seep into the sonic space, its own steady rhythm replacing that of the gongs. 

I wish we could have stayed to join the Christmas recital, to hear these ancient gongs resonate amongst the crucifixes and hymnals. Between dense sections of gong music, the congregation would sing out Catholic hymns in their Loura language, their syllables stretching and shrinking to match that primal seven-beat rhythm. Reverberating in that holy space full of spirit and love, the music must feel right at home. 

+++

Huge terima kasih to the musicians: Petrus Negongo Kum, Stefanus Ama Nuru, Dominikus Kadanga Kui, Dartomus Kohunu, Martinus Umbu Matana, Martinus Malokii, and Dowa Pate. Also of course huge thanks to Virgo and her lovely parents, and to the legendary Joseph Lamont for caressing that cloud of gongs into something even more beautiful. 

320 kbps | 128 MB | LINKS

Inland Sea is Stephan Micus’ 22nd solo album for ECM, each one taking his audience on musical journeys to far-flung places and unique sound worlds. For decades, he has been travelling, collecting and studying musical instruments from all over the world and creating new music for them. Micus often combines instruments from different cultures and continents that would never normally be played together, adapting and extending them, and rarely playing them in a traditional manner. The instruments then become a cast of characters that help tell the particular story of that album. While he plays nine different instruments on Inland Sea, the lead role belongs to the nyckelharpa – a keyed fiddle from Sweden, with an array of other instruments and vocals providing layers and textures throughout.

If there’s one constant in Stephan Micus‘ vocational life, it’s his attempt to capture what he does inside a category. His longtime label ECM understands this; he is the only artist in its stable who has a totally free hand. He is not produced by Manfred Eicher, records in his own studio, and releases records when he wishes. Micus makes music from what he doesn’t already know: He is a traveler, literally and creatively. He visits places across the globe — often sparsely inhabited ones — studies their musical traditions and instruments, learns to play them (sometimes from lineage masters), then repurposes them. He often juxtaposes them with other instruments that were never meant to be played together and multi-tracks according to an interior logic. Micus often adds singing and…

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…chanting in self-created languages. When these pieces are assembled, they create a timeless music that sounds simultaneously ancient and contemporary.

Inland Sea is his 22nd album. Its title reflects that this music was developed by using the physical world to journey to an inner one. Its central instrument is the nykelharpa, a keyed fiddle from the Swedish folk tradition. It marks the first time he has ever used a bowed instrument that is not Asian in heritage. Micus doesn’t play it in its intended manner. With keys over strings — somewhat like a hurdy gurdy — it’s usually played with a short bow for rhythmic purposes to accompany dances. Micus uses a much longer bow to hold it upright, playing it like a cello in some cases, striking and plucking at its strings in others, and overdubbing these processes. On “Haze,” he uses it in conjunction with another first-time instrument, the plucked-string balanzikom that he brought back from a mountainous valley between Afghanistan and Tajikistan. While sounding otherworldly, it offers a trace of familiarity: his bowing technique suggests the Baroque cello. The balanzikom (with fishing nylon for strings) is used to startling effect on “Flor del Sur,” with a deep rumbling rawness fueling his rich yet arid singing. These aren’t the only instruments Micus plays here; shakuhachi flute, Moroccan genbri, guitars, and two self-designed ones — a chord zither and a bass zither whose strings are over three feet long — are also used. Rhythms are generated by the noisy keys of the nykelharpa, which can be heard with brooding intensity on “Dancing Clouds” with the guitars, chord zithers, and bowed instrument woven into an atmosphere that suggests a coming storm. Closer “Nuria” (a Catalan girls’ name taken from the Virgin of Núria) uses the nykelharpa as a deftly syncopated rhythm section, buoying not only Micus’ voice but the shakuhachi as well, which offers an approach to the sacred by means of the secular.

ECM’s press release accurately states that there is no musician like Micus; so is the notion that there is no music like his. Inland Sea is another deep dive into sound. While Micus’ discipline is rigorous, the listening offers only abundant pleasure. — AMG

FLAC | 310 MB | LINKS

One of the long-standing collaborations of the British folk revival, Bert Jansch and John Renbourn’s Bert and John sees the masterful Pentangle guitarists sparing together through their trademark steel-string guitar styles. Their respective solo careers established them both as leading troubadours of British Isles folk, with little debate and few peers, besides maybe Wizz Jones and Ralph McTell. On this album the duo finds good company in each other’s techniques, which are quite indistinguishable in both guitar playing and singing through traditional adaptations, blues, and originals in the Anglo-folk style. The duo plays beautifully together in a candid setting.

Anyone interested in African and Caribbean history needs to know the story of the Maroons of Jamaica. Their history dates back to the 1500s, when they were conscripted as African servants and workers for the Spaniards who first invaded the island. When the British invaded Jamaica in 1655, the Maroons escaped to the precipitous Blue Mountains where, astonishingly, they fought against the British army—and won! They accepted a peace treaty in 1738 in exchange for their freedom from enslavement, and are considered an autonomous nation within Jamaica.

But the most fascinating part of this saga is the continuous connection to Africa, in particular, Ghana. Isolated in remote mountain villages, the Maroons retained much of their original African roots and culture, which persist to this day. One of the main Maroon villages in Jamaica is named Accompong, also a village in Ghana. They still use an instrument made from a cow’s horn, called abeng, a Twi word meaning “horn,” which also is used by Ghanaian Ashantis. Names arising from Ghana, such as Quashie, Cuffee, Kojo and Quako, are found in modern-day Jamaica, names of heroes in the Maroon freedom struggle.

This “Best of The Beat” feature, published in 1985, was written by Sister Farika Birhan, who adds a personal aspect to the story. She admits, “Like most Jamaicans, I had not given serious thought to the Maroons.” She learns that she actually has Maroon ancestry herself, and goes on a journey to visit Accompong for the first time and connect with her roots.

READ OR DOWNLOAD PDF: Beat4#4Maroons

ABOUT “BEST OF THE BEAT ON AFROPOP”

Drums of Defiance: Maroon Music From the Earliest Free Black Communities of Jamaica