Yaala Yaala and authenticity

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
'field recordings' is a weird area, no? The second clip sounds amazing, it's such a weird area, all this recording-music-from-other-countries thing.

I'd love to hear more though.
 

bnek

Well-known member
i only skimmed through the review, but it seems kind of foul to me - maybe im missing something. the music sounds great though.
 

ether

Well-known member
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=1734

Interesting stuff, and the Pekos/Yoro Diallo disc is killer. Does "grit equal authenticity" though?

I know someone going to Mali in the very near future, so may ask her to pick up a few random cassettes for me.... if it's anything like this, I'll be more than happy.

thanks this looks awesome just ordered it, (my brother asked for some field recordings for xmas)

regarding grit and authenticity, interesting to see Tanariwen and Ali Farka Toure mentioned in this article and the Jack Carneal interview.
I'd site these are some fairly sympathetic recordings, its seems in the world music genre (if there is such a thing) its the case that over production is rife.

I think when music hasn't developed alongside recording technology and modern production practices in symbiosis, you have to tread carefully, why shouldn't we hear this music in its raw state as its heard by its consumers as raw bootlegged recordings or recorded in the field, I love the way this article suggests that all the musicians should flown over to paris, why so there material can be edited to fuck in pro tools, multiple performances comped and recorded separately to a click track in an acoustically treated space to make it more palitable to the ears, no thanks. hooray for grit.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
thanks this looks awesome just ordered it, (my brother asked for some field recordings for xmas)

I'd site these are some fairly sympathetic recordings, its seems in the world music genre (if there is such a thing) its the case that over production is rife.

I think when music hasn't developed alongside recording technology and modern production practices in symbiosis, you have to tread carefully, why shouldn't we hear this music in its raw state as its heard by its consumers as raw bootlegged recordings or recorded in the field, I love the way this article suggests that all the musicians should flown over to paris, why so there material can be edited to fuck in pro tools, multiple performances comped and recorded separately to a click track in an acoustically treated space to make it more palitable to the ears, no thanks. hooray for grit.

No worries.

I think there's cases on both sides regarding this kind of stuff. On the one hand, people who would never have otherwise heard this music will have now heard it, and hopefully profits in some way will filter back to the musicians involved (if not, then OK, this is bad). On the other, it seems that the Western guy, and not the Malians themselves, is choosing the destiny for the music.

As regards production, from a personal level I find a lot of the Parisian production of Alpha Blondy, later Youssou N'Dour etc to be quite bland and boring.... but to deny that African musicians would want to use these facilities (perhaps with better, less generic producers, as well - it really depends on the individual producers, doesn't it?) seems slightly patronising...int he same way as those who praise the lifestyles of African and Asian people for being 'more real, closer to the earth, man', when, in fact, they might be quite interested in having a car, TV, house in the suburbs etc, if only they had the choice to do so.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
ha, funny to hear Ali Farka Toure being dissed by a local malian taxi driver!

That was the bit I found absolutely fascinating... if what the taxi driver said is representative, then it puts a whole new spin on the 'world music' 'industry.
 

mms

sometimes
That was the bit I found absolutely fascinating... if what the taxi driver said is representative, then it puts a whole new spin on the 'world music' 'industry.

isn't that kinda obvious tho,
its like saying - what do you mean you're english and you're not into leanne and amy winehouse, oh my god!?
 

ether

Well-known member
Its interesting what Jack Carneal was saying about how he never made much money from cd sales when he was a musician and how people have been hating on the project saying its unethical, even though the label undertook the costs of manufacture and mastering etc. and has plowed money back into a scheme for rural musicians. Isn't the issue here that people actually get to hear the music.
Like the bootleg labels that have been discussed on this forum.

People can get very sacrosanct about any form of 'roots music' its strongly associated with authenticity and they always feel someones trying to corrupt it, or any active interest is self serving.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
isn't that kinda obvious tho,
its like saying - what do you mean you're english and you're not into leanne and amy winehouse, oh my god!?

No, but what he was saying is that only white people listen to that stuff...which is far more scathing than just a general "oh God, not that shite". It seems that the claim he's making is that it's almost not African, in some way, or a racial sellout.

PS Who's Leanne?
 

zhao

there are no accidents
No, but what he was saying is that only white people listen to that stuff...which is far more scathing than just a general "oh God, not that shite". It seems that the claim he's making is that it's almost not African, in some way, or a racial sellout.

very interesting that.

of course grit doesn't equal authenticity...

lo-fi sounds are great to sample and recontextualize in my opinion... mixing the grit with polish is a nice idea.
 

Ivor

New member
As a current resident of one of the countries that is frequently plundered by large world music labels and by smaller labels like Sublime Frequencies it's funny to see the construction of a dichotomy. From my experience people listen to the gritty under-produced stuff being put out by Yaala Yaala, but they also spend an equal amount of time listening to the over-produced tapes and cds.

Another interesting question to think about: Are we still dealing with the baggage of imperialism, especially literature written by Europeans about Africa, when we automatically assume that the 'natives' only listen to 'native' (read: less-developed production and technology) music.

I do dig the Yaala Yaala stuff but in no way do I think I'm somehow connecting with the artist or his culture just by putting on the record.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Another interesting question to think about: Are we still dealing with the baggage of imperialism, especially literature written by Europeans about Africa, when we automatically assume that the 'natives' only listen to 'native' (read: less-developed production and technology) music.

I do dig the Yaala Yaala stuff but in no way do I think I'm somehow connecting with the artist or his culture just by putting on the record.

I think there's always going to be a certain element of imperial thinking in Westerners looking at 'non-Western' cultures.

Maybe the comments along the lines of that "no-one listens to that Salif Keita stuff" are simple snobbery ("Listen to some real guitar music instead of that synthetic RnB bollocks" type thing).

I really loved the Yaala Yaala stuff I heard simply because it carried lots of echoes of the kind of Krautrock I like, albeit transmitted in a radically different form.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Take your last point, but I don't really know what "connecting" with another culture means, to be honest. I think, without living for a long period in another country/culture (which is perhaps what you're doing at the moment), it is kind of meaningless.
 

Gavin

booty bass intellectual
Take your last point, but I don't really know what "connecting" with another culture means, to be honest. I think, without living for a long period in another country/culture (which is perhaps what you're doing at the moment), it is kind of meaningless.

Good point, you can't really connect with a culture -- you connect with people. Maybe this turn of phrase represents a contradiction of the imperial psychology: desire for the object but fear/anxiety about the actual people? And this is the authenticity debate around "world" music -- an effort to get more and more of the people into the reified commodity product?
 
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