World Music and the World of Music in San Francisco: YOUR New Puzzle of the Week!

Good Evening:

One of these days, maybe just maybe your correspondent will finally break down and subscribe to Songlines Magazine, a very fine periodical devoted to the world of music, the world in music, and world music in particular. Each issue includes one or two sampler CDs (remember those?) containing sample songs featuring that issue’s featured artists–and one of these days I will learn how to write coherent English sentences.

Ukulele Player Busking Before the Last SF Giants Game of the Season.

The current issue (#111) puts Seckou Keita on the cover–and if you are also a hard-core lover of kora music you will immediately start looking for this issue. The issue includes two CDs. The first is the usual Songlines sampler.

The second–well, that is your official Puzzle of the Week!

Schooled in Massachusetts, Performed in Austin TX, Loves Dogs.

The second CD includes the following: a song by a band called Jaffa Road (Jaffa is a place in Israel); another song by a band called Delhi 2 Dublin (referencing India and Ireland); and a song by Ayrad entitled “Moroccan Gospel.”

And here is YOUR Puzzle of the Week! What is the title of the CD?

Musician Performing East Asian Music on a Japanese Koto  in Front of a Starbucks Ad, Powell Street Station, San Francisco, CA, 7 October 2015, 9:10 p.m. Note how the ad complements the dress and vice versa.

You probably did not guess correctly. Not unless you own the issue.

The title of this CD is–believe it or not–Canada Now (Canada Maintenant).

It consists entirely of Canadian music. Or at the very least, music by Canadian musicians.

No one can deny that almost all recent developments in the music industry have caused a lot of pain for the artists, as fewer and fewer superstars grab more and more of the attention and money, except that they suffer as much from illegal downloading as anyone else (in terms of actual dollars lost, perhaps more, but I don’t have the numbers). Musicians share the very reasonable hope that they can support themselves with work they love, but their fans have developed the expectation that music should be free, possibly as an offshoot of the original idea that information wants to be free (sometimes attributed to Stewart Brand, late 1960s).

The one positive development? Music itself.

How on earth does a balding, late middle aged, pot-bellied, government bureaucrat white boy like yours truly even know that the kora exists?! Have you seen one of those things?! The kora is The Elephant Man of the guitar family, the horribly misshapen, deformed and monstrous mutant offspring of the unholy dalliance between an oud and a diddley-bow that the family keeps locked up in the basement out of shame–and yet the kora produces gloriously ethereal and beautiful music equal to anything else in the world.

How did I first hear of this West African instrument?!

The truth is that I don’t remember. Somewhere in the past decade, I blundered into In The Heart of The Moon, a collaboration between the late Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate and became madly enraptured with the performance of Toumani on one of his own koras–but even that doesn’t count as my first encounter with that strange-looking instrument. Nonetheless, we all know where I first encountered the kora. On the Internet.

We have entered an extraordinary era, one in which it has become more difficult than ever for musicians to make a living, and yet more easy than ever to discover each other, learn from each other, and experiment with each other, drawing inspiration from music and musical instruments that we might never have encountered even a decade ago.

Making Napster, the iPod, YouTube et alia very bad news for the musician–and very good news for the musician’s music.

I feel so glad I don’t work in music. Feels much better that I just enjoy the sound.

Especially since I never steal music.

Vonn Scott Bair

The Grey Light of San Francisco: More Music for a Friday Afternoon (Weekly Photo Challenge: Inside)

Good Evening:

Can you think of any logical reason why a balding, potbellied, late middle aged white boy who’s never visited Africa could have possible developed such an interest in the Kora? And what does this have to do with the interior design of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s headquarters and the typical all-morning-long fog of my city’s summers?

Rear of Fourth Floor Break Room, San Francisco PUC Headquarters

I’ve worked at developing/increasing my collection of Music for a Friday Afternoon. Specifically, the 15-minute afternoon break on Friday, when the pressures of the week start to dissipate gently like our fog, and thoughts turn to the weekend’s chores and pleasures. To preserve the battery like of my iPhone 4 (which I used for all of these pictures), I’ve chosen the limited free subscription to Rdio for my music explorations. Frankly, Rdio does not wildly thrill me and I will probably dump it for iRadio when iOS 7 emerges into the real world. But Rdio has had its uses.

“The Escher Staircase” (my nickname) at SFPUC HQ, 3rd Floor

I have found some excellent additions to the Friday Afternoon playlist, starting with the curious choice of Andres Segovia. Segovia himself hardly represents a curious choice; but I have grown fonder of the solo works from The American Decca Recordings Vol. 1, not so much the concertos and sonatas with orchestras from other albums. Something about just the man with just his guitar feels just so right on a Friday afternoon.

Corner of Break Room, 12th Floor, SFPUC HQ

Meanwhile, the Kora, a West African instrument associated with Mali, Senegal and other nations. That instrument produces atmospheric sounds of calm and delicacy, and yet manages to feel a little mysterious at the same time. Today I discovered an older collaboration between Toumani Diabate and Ballake Sissoko entitled New Ancient Strings. You can stream the CD for free on Rdio and hear for yourself why I will purchase it this weekend.

Who was here and what did they discuss? Judging from the chairs, I would say one was a foot taller than the other, and they sat close to each other and practically whispered. I suspect the conversation was both quiet and intense.

This morning treated San Franciscans to a typical example of what I call “the grey light.” When the morning’s fog doesn’t let up until sometime past noon, the overcast turns into an translucent filter that softens and diffuses sunlight. In the film industry, we have sheets of translucent paper called “opals” that have the same effect on Fresnels and other lights. This grey light (incidentally, no one else in San Francisco uses this term) illuminated all of these shots today. The interior design palette features heavy use of light green, olive, grey, cornflower blue, mustard and burnt orange, colors that lend themselves to softly lit environments.

Silk Flowers, 3rd Floor, SFPUC HQ

Perhaps that explains the tendency toward quieter music on my Friday afternoons.

Vonn Scott Bair

PS–“Satellite” by the Dave Matthews Band also found its way into my collection.