For the Uyghurs of the Tarim Basin who continue to raise a voice against the twin spectres of internment and cultural assimilation, muqam remains a key mode of expression, the name for a set of melodic formulas which guide musical improvisation and often take the form of sprawling epic suites. Combining song, dance and instrumental sections, characterised by rhythmic patterns which increase in dizzying speed, beyond the twelve classical muqams the oasis towns of Xinjiang each boast their own regional variations. One of the wildest belongs to the Dolan people who inhabit the banks of the Yarkand and Tarim rivers, who refer to their muqam as ‘Bayawan’ which translates to ‘the desert and the wildland’.
Following the Azerbaijani mugham and the Iraqi maqam, classical forms which are characterised by melodic development and the use of traditional instrumentation, the Uyghur muqam of Xinjiang were added to the Unesco list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2005. The Dolan muqam or Bayawan diverges from the mainstream through its plucked and bowed string instruments, hoarse vocal style where words are less sung than chanted or ‘shouted out’, lyrics drawn from folk songs and an oral poetry tradition, and perhaps more than anything for its enveloping and freewheeling commitment to the groove. After performing in May of 2023 at the seventh Tomorrow Festival in Shenzhen, the bookstore and record label Old Heaven Books invited the Mekit Dolan Muqam Group to a recording session at Liu Ying Studio, where they captured the rugged beauty of their muqam as well as a couple of instrumental passages, showcasing too a wiry delicacy where every pluck seems to land with a plangent grace.
Billed as a dissection of displacement and its effects, Moor Mother hones in on the horrors of British colonialism for her upcoming album The Great Bailout, whose first salvo slops and sways like a sea shanty with celestial shivers as the jazz poet and Afrofuturist is joined by Mary Lattimore on the harp plus the trenchant voices of Lonnie Holley and Raia Was.
Devon Welsh has been searching for a sound ever since the breakup of Majical Cloudz, and whether it was the tremulous saxophone loops and strings of Dream Songs, the tenuous sparsity of True Love or the punkier outcrops of ‘New York / Realism’ and Click Here Now! each charted course pretty well stood its ground as a canny enough vehicle for his tender baritone. Now after several cycles of bulking and cutting, the veiny troubadour remerges with a do-it-yourself action adventure, paying homage to both Jimmy Ruffin and The Terminator as he stands over the burning wreckage with clenched fists on the lead single from Come With Me If You Want to Live.
The New York jazz stalwarts and sometime firebrands Tim Berne, David Torn, Ches Smith, Devin Hoff and Marc Ducret explore the intersection of pure acoustics with electronic sound generation as Sunny Five. Described as a suite of songs about intimacy under colonialism, Mali Obomsawin the bassist and singer-songwriter from Odanak First Nation and Magdalena Abrego, a Chicago-born guitarist whose parents migrated from Mexico and Puerto Rico channel a nirvana of sorts with a grab-bag of indie rock anthems under the title of Greatest Hits.
Figuring both birdsong and the adaptations and maladaptations of urban society as anthropogenic noise causes dialects to grow, evolve or even disappear, a sextet of experimental musicians flock and swarm to the Hot Springs label Mahakala Music, with Chad Fowler on the stritch and bass flute, Shanyse Strickland on the flute, vocals and French horn, Sana Nagano on violin, Melanie Dyer on viola, Ken Filiano on bass and Anders Griffen on drums improvising around the vertebrae of five compositions which Fowler and Griffen arranged and orchestrated specifically for the ensemble. From a yurt outside of Bellingham cloaked in the dappled light which passed through cedar trees and the occasional spurt of rain, the guitarist John Saint Pelvyn summons the rollicking spirit of Robbie Basho with added throat and grunt.
Fresh from her work with the Chicago-based new music ensemble Third Coast Percussion, which furnished an extended play and a mini-album, showcasing for the first time her unique approach to organic percussion, broaching the warped strains of early-nineties British intelligent dance music while cutting a swathe through the Midwest through a terminally shifting blend of Detroit techno and waxy footwork, the Indiana producer Jlin embarks on her third full-length in the company of such luminaries as Björk, Philip Glass and Kronos Quartet. On the first outing from Akoma, which signifies the heart in Ghanaian, the electronic maestro yokes and harries the limpid piano runs of the renowned New York minimalist, as abstract rhythms, vertiginous bass drops, choral coos, call-to-attention whistles and moments of four on the floor beat-work send Glass careening with a shapely stagger into barest bosom of the club.
Following up her acclaimed albums Amaryllis and Belladonna, the angular guitarist Mary Halvorson returns to Nonesuch Records with her Amaryllis sextet for an album whose mottled blend of surface interests tend steadily in the direction of billowing uplift. From the anxious and endlessly mutable percussion of Tomas Fujiwara to the lively Patricia Brennan whose vibraphone abounds in piquant plunks and overtones to Adam O’Farrill’s burrowing trumpet, buttressed by Jacob Garchik on the trombone and Nick Dunston’s buzzsaw bass, Cloudward which also features the bristling violin effects and glissando arcs of Laurie Anderson runs the gamut from blues jukes to post-bop with Latinate flair and widescreen bravura, with the closing track ‘Ultramarine’ stretching beyond sea or sky for a fittingly expansive yet tenacious and cohesive climax.
After working together as the Art Ensemble of Chicago entered its sixth decade, the double bassist Silvia Bolognesi, African percussionist Dudú Kouate and producer and engineer Griffin Rodriguez tangle as a trio. Kahil El’Zabar and his Ethnic Heritage Ensemble return to the lost tribe, the incandescent saxophonist Marta Tiesenga strives for the lowest possible melting point, and Laura Cannell commences a year of lore with a gander under the big blue deep.
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John Saint Pelvyn – ‘Today Another Sun (Just Behind the First One)’
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Devon Welsh – ‘You Can Do Anything’
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Mali Obomsawin & Magdalena Abrego – ‘Believer’
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Silvia Bolognesi, Dudú Kouate and Griffin Rodriguez – ‘Kumpa’
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Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble – ‘Return of the Lost Tribe’
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Laura Cannell – ‘The Earth Beneath the Sea’
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Moor Mother – ‘GUILTY’ (feat. Lonnie Holley & Raia Was)
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Jlin – ‘The Precision Of Infinity’ (feat. Philip Glass)
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麦盖提刀郎木卡姆乐队 Mekit Dolan Muqam Group – ‘博斯坦恰其汗尼木套曲 Bostan Qaq Hinim’
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