I wrote the score for a new documentary that’s premiering at The Tribeca Film Festival tonight. The film, called Pray The Devil Back to Hell, is about the Liberian Women’s peace movement. It’s directed by Gini Reticker and produced by Abby Disney.

This is the second documentary in the last year on an African subject that I have scored (the other was Shadow Work by Nigel Walker). One particular challenge is to create music which has an appropriate African sensibility but is not just ersatz African music, or African kitsch. I always encourage filmmakers to use actual African music if that’s what’s called for — and both of these films do have wonderful uses of authentic music from the places they are set.

Anyway, Pray The Devil Back to Hell needed a real film score to support the intense and moving story of a group of Liberian women who rise up and take on Charles Taylor, ultimately becoming a key factor in bringing a fragile peace to their country. We ended up with a dramatic and quite dark score that uses some African elements but is primarily bass, trumpet, strings and percussion, with some wonderful contributions from the great Beninese singer Angelique Kidjo. It was a great honor to work with Ms. Kidjo, and her extraordinary voice brings a transcendent, human, female element to the music which I could never have created without her.

The track I’m posting here is the song from the end credit sequence. I wrote the music first and gave an instrumental sketch to Angelique, and she wrote the lyrics (in Yoruba) and sang the vocal parts. I also was blessed with a beautiful solo from master Kora player Yacouba Sissouk (who happens to be the cousin of Toumani Diabate). I mixed the track, along with the rest of the score, in my studio.

All of the screenings of Pray The Devil Back to Hell at Tribeca are sold out, but you can get more info about screenings at the official site for the film. You can also see the trailer at that site, which features some other excerpts from the score. And the film has a Myspace here.

Always at least a day late, but almost never even close to a dollar short, The Earl of Edgecombe has finally dropped his Summer Mix 2006, just in time for your Labor Day pig roast. It includes the following artists, tripping gracefully around, over, and under each other simultaneously:

Augustus Pablo / Dem Franchize Boyz / Thelonius Monk / Jay-Z / Max Romeo & The Upsetters / Lee Perry / Indeep / Young Leek / Eric B & Rakim / Marrs / Talking Heads / Manu Dibango / Leslie Winer / Future Sound of London / John Cage

Previous posts with The Earl, all of which still contain active links:

Jamie Foxx V. Eno & Byrne: My Unpredictable Life
Summer Mix 2006: Clash Up and Burn
Gwen Stefani vs. Miles Davis: Summatime Girl

The Earl is somewhat vaporous and cannot be linked to anywhere, but you can get the new mix by clicking on the “Hear This Now” button below.

This is the opening track from Tunisian oud master Anouar Brahem’s new record Le voyage de Sahar, just now out on ECM. It sits on my shelf next to the prized Astor Piazzola, Alberto Iglesias, and Dino Saluzzi records. I am captivated by Brahem’s oud; Jean-Louis Matinier’s accordian is sublime and surprising; Francois Couturier’s piano playing is best when it keeps a light touch and stays out of the way - occasionally the tinkly arpeggios remind one of the dreaded New Age beast which hovers in the background of so many otherwise-excellent ECM releases. But like the finest of that crop, this is exquisitely produced and when at it’s best creates a unique, mesmerizing, contemplative space to get lost in.

You can buy Le voyage de Sahar here. The artist has a web site here.

On April 11th Nonesuch are releasing a special 25th anniversary edition of My Life In The Bush of Ghosts, the record which changed the course of music by combining found vocals with “world” music influenced musical collages, giving rise to a new genre of sampled music and influencing everyone from Public Enemy to… Moby?

The new version contains all of the original tracks remastered, plus seven previously unavailable outtake tracks. Well, almost all of the original tracks… the track featured here, Qu’ran, has not been included on most versions of the record since shortly after it’s initial release. A partial explanation for this comes from the enoweb site:

The Islamic Council of Great Britain had approached the record company with a complaint about the use of the “found” material [a ritual chanting of the Holy Koran. Actually, I’m surprised that anyone got permission to even tape it in the first place]; There are some expressions of Islam in which *all* music is considered “haram” [I think that’s the Arabic term, anyway] - or against the teachings of the Koran. There is an argument about whether or not Mohammed (pbuh) stated that “music” for use in certain Islamic festivals or special occasions *is* allowable, but that’s for folks who know the Surahs better than I.

At any rate, the Islamic Council voiced its strong disapproval of having the original source material used in the way it was used [in some ways, the objection is really quite similar to that raised by Kathryn Kuhlman’s estate when they wanted her sermon on Lot and the angels removed from what finally became “The Jezebel Spirit”], and in the days of watching the Fatwahs [pronouncements of death] fly back and forth, Eno and his pals deemed it meet to exclude it. “Very Very Hungry” was added instead. However, my copy of it includes both, so some other judgements must have been made later [I think that my copy is a domestic one, so perhaps that’s why]. {The track could for many years be found on the US releases of the cd.

More detail from enoweb here.

I am making Qu’ran available here for a limited time because I believe it to be one of the best tracks of this important part of 20th century music history.

There is a great site about the new release here. You can buy the new 25th anniversary release of My Life In The Bush of Ghosts (minus Qu’ran) here.

I’m not the first to tip Congotronics 2 (see The Suburbs Are Killing Us), and the previous Congotronics release Konono No1 was blogged to death, but yesterday was the day this finally hit the shelves in the US, so go out and pick up a copy, wilya?

Volume 2 has the same hallucinogenic rhythms, beautifully distorted metallic percussion, and teetering over the abyss energy, but with more of a range of different bands and music. Volume 1 was relentless and unstoppable. This one is more of a survey of the current scene in the suburbs of Kinshasa, and it has some of the same energy, but also includes some more lyrical, reflective sets. It also includes a DVD with live performances from several of the bands. Highly recommended.

You can find Congotronics 2: Buzz N Rumble From the Urb’N'Jungle here. More info about this at the Crammed Disc site here.

Werner Hertzog’s stunning documentary Grizzly Man has a very pleasant and appropriate score by Richard Thompson. Ok. On the DVD release of the film there is an excellent documentary about the making of the score, with extended scenes of Thompson and his ad hoc band (including a dejected, unused Henry Kaiser) in the recording studio, improvising and philosophizing under the severe tutelage of Hertzog himself. The doc is one of the better views into the film composing process I have seen. Ok again. But there is a moment where Hertzog plays Thompson a mysterious, otherworldly piece of music to try and elucidate the sound he is going for, and that piece of music is what we’re featuring here today. Thompson seems to sort of go “Right then, Werner, I see” and carry on with his usual thing. But that piece of music caught my ear, if not Thompson’s, and I had to hear more of it.

The piece turns out to be Jangelma by Dutch monster improviser cellist Ernst Reijseger in collaboration with Senegalese poet Mola Sylla and percussionist Serigne C.M. Gueye. It comes from the 2003 CD Janna, a beautiful, demanding, uniquely original work, full of challenges and surprises. No world music fusion nonsense here — just three masters of their craft, bringing their unique world-views to the table and creating some very good music together. The lyrics on this track concern the collision of French colonial sensibilities with an African state of mind. Very highly recommended.

You can find the DVD of Grizzly Man here. Richard Thompson’s score for the film is here. There’s more info about Ernst Reijseger here, and his CD Janna is available here.

Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel’s 1995 film Middle of The Moment is a poetic treatise on nomadism, intercutting documentary footage of a tribe of Tuareg nomads in North Africa and a European art-circus group. The film is a mesmerizing journey with a completely unique sense of pacing… protracted… crystal-clear… with a laser beam focus on tiny illuminating details. Fred frith, who was the subject of Humbert and Penzel’s 1990 documentary Step Across The Border, wrote the excellent score for the film.

In creating the soundtrack CD, Frith took the entire audio track of the film as his raw material, and created a unique sound and music montage piece which weaves together his music with the evocative sound landscapes of the film. This track has very little of Frith’s “music” - some drones drift by occasionally - but rather creates a captivating mood through layers of “musical” found sound, including roosters, wind, and Tuareg voices.

The CD of Middle of The Moment is available here. The DVD is here. Fred Frith has a site here.

Peter Gabriel has always been one of the more generous musical colonizers. Rather than just using authentic global musical culture as window dressing for his own white rock records, he has established a real dialogue with other musicians from around the world, and has directed not only attention but money and opportunities to those he has worked with. Here then is one of his earliest collages that combined indigenous South African music with his brand of intimate stadium rock. Shosholoza is perhaps most interesting when seen as a conceptual sketch for the planetary hit Biko, which has had many iterations including a great cover version from Manu Dibango. “Chocholoza” is the name of a traditional South African chant sung to give strength when facing hardship. It means “go forward.” The Gabriel version became popular in South Africa during the country’s victorious 1995 Rugby World Cup tournament.

This is very rare, only ever released on vinyl. I’m taking it from the 1980 12″ of I Don’t Remember, which I found in the recesses of the Urmson Vinyl Crate. You can find the definitive Gabriel version of Biko here, and the Manu Dibango version here.

Composer and multi-instrumentalist Richard Horowitz & Iranian-born vocalist Sussan Deihim have been collaborating since 1981. This track comes from their 1988 landmark first release Desert Equations. Today it might seem like old hat to combine the obliquely-blown ney with electronics in a combination of jazz, classical, and Moroccan trance music, but beleive you me, when Horowitz started doing it in the 1980s the hat was brand new. It was after hearing Desert Equations that Bernardo Bertolucci asked Horowitz to score The Sheltering Sky.

Richard Horowitz has a site with many more music examples here, and Desert Equations has a spot at the Crammed Disc site here. I’m taking this track from the original 1988 Belgian import CD, but fortunately you can find the 2003 re-release of this CD here.

Here’s a gorgeous Mandingo pop song from Guinean singer Oumou Dioubate, which first appeared on her 1997 record also called Femmes D’Afrique. I’m taking it from the excellent Sono Afrique compilation CD. You can find out more about Oumou Dioubate here at the Leopard Man’s African Music Guide. She is quite a controversial figure in Guinea.

There’s information about the Femmes D’Afrique CD at the label here, although it’s very difficult to find a copy by now. Dioubate’s earlier CD Lancey is available here.