My ten albums: Dan Rosenberg
Which 10 albums influenced you the most? This is a question that I will ask guests from the world music realm (musicians, producers, organizers, agents...), and I will share their answers to you every two weeks on these pages.
Dan Rosenberg is my guest in the new edition of 'My 10 albums' series of articles. Dan is a journalist and music producer based in Toronto. He has travelled to over 40 countries reporting on arts and culture, hosts the radio program Cafe International and is a producer for Afropop Worldwide. He started his world music radio show in the nineties, he wrote about music from all over the world to a lot of different media and he produced and wrote liner notes for more than 60 CDs including Grammy-nominated "Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of World War II". The latest album in which he worked is "Silent Tears: The Last Yiddish Tango" by Payadora Tango Ensemble which is #1 on World Music Charts Europe for March.
How do you narrow the thousands of albums you love down to a “Top 10 List?” I’m sure my computer (or my family) could tell me which albums I’ve listened the most over the years. But this is also a “most influential list.” So, I thought I’d try to run down the most “life changing” albums I’ve heard.
Lhasa - La Llorona (Tôt Ou Tard 1987.)
I met Lhasa shortly after this groundbreaking CD came out in 1997. "La Llorona" doesn’t fit into any simple music category. She sings in Spanish, but her voice is so full of emotion, it is as if she’s channeling the greatest Romani singers, the greatest Arabic vocalists as well as those from Latin America, and in the process, creates something that is 100% her own. When "La Llorona" was released more than a quarter century ago, it spread like wildfire – simply by word of mouth. In the years before social media, anyone who heard it would immediately tell 10 of their friends about it – who in turn would tell their friends. Tragically, she died of cancer at the age of 37 in 2010., but this album will live on forever.
Oumou Sangare - Ko Sira (World Circuit 1993.) + Moussoulou (World Circuit 1991.)
Both of these CDs, and the ones Oumou Sangare released in the decades since are masterpieces. Oumou Sangare did not just broke ground musically by bringing exquisite productions of Wassoulou songs to the world, she also inspired generations by tackling taboo subjects on her recordings, such as polygamy. If I had to choose just one album, it would probably be "Ko Sira" due to the haunting song about death, "Saa Magni".
Ando Drom - Kaj Phirel O Del (Selfreleased 1995.)
In the late 1990s, I did a lot of travelling through Eastern Europe working on a series of compilations of Romani music (yes, it’s hard to find a better assignment than that!). Of all the albums I brought back in my backpack on those trips, few have been listened to more, or inspiring, than this one from Hungary. Ando Drom began as both a musical group and a social institution. It was founded in 1984 by guitarist/social worker Jeno Zsigo, a former president of both the Rom Foundation and the Hungarian Rom Parlaiment. When I met him in the 1990s, he told me about his experience following the collapse of the Soviet Union. 'Discrimination has returned to Hungary will full-force. We are now faced with high unemployment, no education, nothing. Back in the 1970s, most of us had access to housing, our kids went to schools, there was a safety net. Today everything thing has changed, and we are once again the outcasts of society.'
Ali Farka Touré and Ry Cooder - Talking Timbuktu (World Circuit 1994.)
How many times would buying a CD lead you to travel halfway around the world? After I heard "Talking Timbuktu" I was fortunate to get an assignment to write an article about the West African guitar legend. Ali Farka Touré (1939.-2006.) was born in the Timbuktou region of Mali. He was his mother’s 10th son, but the only one to survive to reach a first birthday. As the acclaimed director Martin Scorsese once said of Touré’s music, 'It is the DNA of the blues.'
Mammas par Philipe Eidel - s.t. (RCA 1996.)
A magnificent album that I wish was better known. Philippe Eidel (who also produced some of Khaled’s best CDs) was behind the control board for this recording featuring female vocalists from across the Mediterranean, including Italy’s Lucilla Galeazzi, Spain’s Equidad Bares, and Algeria’s Hayet Ayad. It truly shows the musical connection between all of the countries that share the Mediterranean coast. Perhaps a different album title would have helped this become better known? It is definitely worth checking out.
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue (Columbia 1959.)
It’s hard to have a top 10 list without this jazz masterpiece. When Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb went into the studio together, they created pure musical magic.
Janos Starker - Starker plays Kodaly (Delos 1987.)
While there are a number of classical chamber music albums that I listen to more, such as Itzhak Perman’s recording of Beethoven’s "Kreutzer Sonata" or The Beaux Arts Trio’s version of Dvorak’s "Dumky Trio", on this album, perhaps more than any ever recorded, Starker shatters previous conceptions of what is humanly possible with just one classical stringed instrument. In the process, Starker created the definitive version Kodaly’s sonata for solo cello.
Andy Palacio and the Garifuna Collective - Watina (Cumbancha 2007.)
Andy Palacio’s life is evidence of what one person can do to almost single-handedly revive a threatened culture. Born in Barranco (on Belize’s Caribbean coast), Palacio built a reputation by blending Garifuna traditional drum rhythms and pop music to produce some of Belize’s biggest hits. 'My decision to become a musician was made in part from my experience while living in England', he explained. 'I always came face to face with the fact that no one [in the rest of the world] knew anything about Belize, while everyone knew, for example, about Jamaica. I felt that by, lending my talents to entertainment and culture, I could be a better ambassador for Belize than if I were to get into politics… I felt that music could be a very effective tool, in preserving Garifuna culture, which is to a large extent, endangered, because we had reached a point where being Garifuna wasn’t “Cool”. Music was the medium that we used to make Garifuna “cool” in the eyes of the young people.' Palacio teamed up with Stonetree Records` producer, Ivan Duran to create a sound that both placed Belize on the map of world music capitals alongside Brazil, Cuba, and Senegal, and shaped a new generation of musicians.
His songs raise profound questions, such in the song, "Ámuñegü” (In Times to Come)" where Palacio asked 'Who will speak to me in Garifuna in times to come? Who will perform the dügü? (a traditional Garifuna religious ceremony)'. In the song, he stresses the urgency to preserve Garifuna culture, before it is lost entirely. Tragically, Palacio died incredibly young in 2008, but his music, and life work led to a revitalization of the Garifuna language, music, and culture throughout the Caribbean coast of Central America.
Dimitris Mystakidis - Esperanto (Fishbowl 2015.)
Greece’s greatest living guitarist’s rembetika tour-de-force. Here, Mystikadis revives this musical genre rooted in the Asia Minor Catastrophe that led to huge numbers of refugees arriving in cities such as Piraeus, Thessaloniki and Volos. With the help of a host of Greece’s top vocalists, including Eleni Vitali, Eleftheria Arvanitaki, Eleni Tsaligoupoulou and George Dalaras, Mystakidis created an album so magnificent, it is 'desert island disc' listening.
Burning Spear - Marcus Garvey (Island Records 1975.)
While many legendary recordings were made in Jamaica in the 1970s, few were more influential than Marcus Garvey, demonstrating the power of combining music, political activism and history – in this case, about the horrors of the colonial slave trade.
Plus 5 more!!
Sharon Jones - 100 Days 100 Nights (Daptone 2007.)
AfroCubism - AfroCubism (World Circuit 2010.)
Clara Nunes - Esperança (EMI 1979.)
Khaled - N’ssi N’ssi (Barclay 1993.)
Bruce Springsteen - We Shall Overcome (The Seeger Sessions) (Columbia 2006.)
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