Glory to Women II: More Groundbreaking Musicians From Around the World

It's always a good time to amplify women's voices and our music, perhaps not just centered on just ONE day or month. That said, New Sounds continues to give a little more space to innovative musicians who happen to be women from around the world, some playing instruments traditionally reserved for men – like the Ethiopian krar, or the Portuguese guitar – or performing Taraab music of Zanzibar or traditional Tuvan throat singing. Here are just a few of these women:

Nirmala Rajasekar, Veena (USA/India)

Nirmala Rajasekar is a composer, collaborator, teacher, and virtuoso of the Indian Saraswati veena. The veena is a seven-stringed instrument (four melody, three drone strings) with a hollow body and two large resonating gourds under each end; it’s a cousin of a zither, lute, or arch-harp, a “grandmother of the sitar” and is the instrument of choice for Saraswati, the goddess of culture, art and learning.

A disciple of the late veena master Kalpakam Swaminathan, Minnesota-based Rajasekar has played veena since the age of 13 (when she could barely hold the instrument), and earned top awards from Indian Radio and Television. She is also a vocalist in the classical South Indian, Carnatic style, and has collaborated extensively with folks in western classical music, jazz, Chinese music, poetry and dance.

She has recorded a number of albums, been awarded the McKnight Fellowship for Performing Artists, and has spent the last 25 years performing and teaching at venues around the world from the UK, to Germany, India, and Minnesota, vocally and on her veena.

Lately, it was her 2018 collaborative record, Maithree, that caught our attention. Named for a composition originally written for a 1966 concert at the United Nations, Maithree was a piece meant to bring a message of world peace and friendship across borders. Some of the work on Maithree combines Indian, Turkish, and Irish music in original compositions and improvisations.

Hatis Noit, Vocalist (Japan/UK)

The London-based Japanese singer/composer/producer Hatis Noit, is originally from the northernmost island of Hokkaido. Her name, hatis noit ハチスノイト, means the stem of the lotus flower and is intended to serve as a connection between the living world (represented by the lotus flower) and the spirit world (the lotus root). Her music is also meant as a way to explore the connection between the visceral power of the human voice, the memory of all living beings, and nature.

She is at once an improviser, vocalist, and producer, as she layers many tracks of her voice, but then edits them together in an ‘illogical’ way to create what she calls “vibey” music. Her new record, Illogical Dance, might roam freely amongst Bulgarian folk singing, Gregorian chant, gagaku (Japanese court music), Western Classical, Japanese folk, experimental pop and nature’s own ambient atmosphere.

Behold Hatis Noit, performing “Angelus Novus” in our studios:

Asnakech Worku, Lady with the Krar (Ethopia)

Asnakech Worku (or Asnatqèch Wèrqu), musician, actress, dancer, and Ethiopian cultural icon who inspired and challenged society for decades, (until her death in 2011), was the Lady with the Krar. The krar is a six-stringed lyre with a crossbar and a bowl-shaped resonating body, which has been around for centuries. It’s the favorite instrument of the azmari — an itinerant praise musician, or perhaps wandering minstrel, who sings, often in bars, for tips. With her krar, Asnakech was a storyteller and free-thinker known for her quick wit and inspired improvisations, where she carried on a tradition of 'poetic jousting’.

According to the notes from an Awesome Tapes from Africa reissue, “her family wasn’t pleased” with Asnakech becoming an azmari, (as well as Ethiopia’s first actress), but “the Emperor Haile Selassie I began to emphasize theater and music in society, officially legitimizing her career on both the stage and as a singer.” ATFA further writes that “she made seminal recordings of unforgettable original compositions, as well as legendary renditions of traditional songs, that became national staples.”

Then there was her “singular sense of style, glamour and sex appeal that sometimes stunned mainstream society, Asnakech wore clothes no one else wore and said things no one else said. Staid notions of how women should dress and behave didn’t apply to her. Asnakech became a national treasure on her own terms.” (Awesome Tapes from Africa)  There is also a 2013 documentary film about her life: Asni: Courage, Passion, and Glamour in Ethiopia. 

Here she is with Hailu Mergia as a sideman from the mid 1970s on said Awesome Tapes from Africa reissue: 

Wu Man, pipa (China)

Soloist, educator, and composer Wu Man is one of the world's great virtuosos of the pipa, the pear-shaped four-string Chinese plucked lute. She went from child prodigy to acclaimed soloist, performing in post-Cultural Revolution China, but emigrated to California in 1990. She was almost immediately recruited as a collaborator by the Kronos Quartet, and has played on several Kronos albums since.  

She was a founding member in 1999 of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, and continues to record and perform on various Silk Road projects. As a collaborator, Wu Man has worked with musicians in Central Asia for Smithsonian Folkways' Music of Central Asia series; with U.S.-based Appalachian traditional musicians and others on her Wu Man and Friends Album; and most recently, with her neighbors in San Diego, the Mexican Son Jarocho group Son de San Diego on their album Fingertip Carnival.

She's released albums of traditional Chinese repertoire and contemporary work by Chinese and American composers, and has performed with countless orchestras and appears on over 40 albums, and counting... And if you write a pipa concerto Wu Man is your go-to soloist: She's performed Lou Harrison's Pipa Concerto, Tan Dun's concerto for Pipa and String Orchestra, and in 2019, Qu Wenjun's Pipa Concertos, to name a few.

She's won many awards over the years including a Grammy for Silk Road's Sing Me Home album, and she was the first non-Western musician to win Musical America’s Instrumentalist of the Year award in 2013. She serves as a visiting professor at three major conservatories in China and is in residence at the Pasadena Conservatory. Wu Man is also the first artist from China to perform at the White House.  (-Rob Weisberg)

Here’s one of Wu Man’s Elegant Pipa Classics:

Emilia Amper, nyckelharpa (Sweden)

Emilia Amper is a composer, arranger, ensemble leader, soloist, and educator, as well as World champion on the nyckelharpa, and National fiddler of the realm. The nyckelharpa is a keyed fiddle where the ‘keys’ serve to shorten the strings and create different notes. On the modern chromatic nyckelharpa, there are four strings that are bowed, and twelve sympathetic strings which are set in motion by the vibrations in the body of the instrument.

Emilia has performed with Nordic orchestras, a Swiss Flamenco company, and with Kurdish, Indian, West African, Persian and Arabic musicians, as well as with pop artists, rockers, and jazzers as a studio musician. She is also an instructor in Sweden and abroad, giving workshops in nyckelharpa and Swedish folk music and teaches regularly at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm.

After performing as a soloist with Trondheim Soloists in Norway, Amper was inspired to begin composing and arranging her own tunes. She leads the Emilia Amper Band, and performs in many small combos, including with Forbidden Orchestra, a quintet of musicians in an alliance to explore musical paths, spread equality and unite people through music.

But maybe let her tell you about it:

Marta Pereira da Costa, Portuguese Guitar (Portugal)

Bandleader, composer, and soloist Marta Pereira da Costa is the world’s first and only female professional Portuguese Guitar player of fado music. The Guitarra Portuguesa is a double six-stringed, teardrop-shaped guitar that gives Portuguese fado music its distinctive bright, metallic timbre; which provides a direct contrast to the melancholy of the lyrics and heartache-filled delivery. The instrument is traditionally played by men, both as an accompaniment to fado singers and as a solo instrument with its own repertoire. 

Marta studied Portuguese Guitar with Carlos Gonçalves — one of the most influential players and accompanists of the legendary fado icon Amália Rodrigues. She has played with some of the true giants of Portuguese music, including Camané, Mário Pacheco, Dulce Pontes, and Mariza, as well as Afro-Atlantic legends such as Cameroon's Richard Bona and Cape Verde's Tito Paris.

Marta recorded Rodrigo’s Fados de Amor, the first album in the history of Fado where the Portuguese Guitar was solely played by a woman; it was awarded Best Fado Album of 2012 by the prestigious Amália Rodrigues Foundation. That same year, Marta Pereira da Costa left her career as a civil engineer to pursue music, and she recorded her first self-titled album for Warner Brothers in 2016.

She has since played at rock, jazz, and guitar festivals the world over, and performed with a traditional men’s fado choir from Coimbra — where she was the only woman featured on-stage. Marta has recorded and performed for film and TV, including a promotional spot for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, and was also invited to the 14th edition of the L`Oreal Medal of Honor for Women in Science event in Lisbon.

Here's the song, "Terra", that was used during the 2018 World Cup: 

Siti & the Band, Taarab music (Zanzibar, Tanzania)

Led by oud player, composer, and singer Amina Omar Juma (aka Siti Amina), Siti & the Band is a group from Zanzibar that fuses Taarab music, folk songs from East Africa, along with kidumbak and Afro Jazz. Originally brought to Zanzibar 200 years ago by migrants and traders, traditional Taarab music often resembles classical Egyptian orchestras with a full string section and rhythm instruments, but also features accordion, oud, and the plucked zither known as qanun. 

On Zanzibar, a woman singing in public was once considered taboo, but Siti & the Band aims to pay homage and channel 1930’s Taarab legend Siti binti Saad, a Zanzibari taarab singer and daughter of slaves, who became the first East African woman to record the music for Columbia Records in Mumbai, India. “When you talk about Zanzibari women,” Siti Amina asserts, “It’s the women who have made our unique island famous, it’s the women who are our culture bearers, and we should, of course, be proud.” (from an interview with Bandcamp Daily, 2018)

Still, Siti Amina’s grandmother and the aunts who raised her were not enthusiastic about her singing. Neither did her husband support her greatest ambition - that of making music. After separating from the husband, Siti Amina signed up for vocal lessons at Zanzibar’s Dhow Countries Music Academy (DCMA), the island’s one and only professional music school. There, she studied oud and voice, and formed a band. Through friends and administrators at the DCMA, Siti & the Band recorded at a state-of-the-art facility, and have toured regionally, with the aim to take their music to international stages.  

Many of her songs are about the challenges of women in African societies, where Siti Amina thoughtfully combines messaging with composition. In a way, she speaks from the stage about women’s rights. “I don’t only sing for my heart, I also sing for my society, for my and our culture.” (Zanzibarmusic.org)

Siti Amina's latest song, "Nielewe" takes on her own life story as a female musician in Zanzibar, and how she had to divorce from her husband in order to be able to pursue her career as a singer and oud player. It sends out an empowering message to all fellow female aspiring musicians that grow up in a restrictive environment: believe in your vision and stand up against cultural and society's restrictions in order to pursue your mission. (Siti & the Band's Youtube)

Despite a busy schedule of touring, recording, and composing, Siti Amina has returned to the DCMA as a teacher, along with her band members. “As a teacher, Siti Amina is an example to young Zanzibari women aspiring to sing their roots.” (Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein, Bandcamp Daily, 2018)

Sainkho Namtchylak, Vocalist and Composer (Tuva)

Singer, artist, actor, writer, composer, and teacher Sainkho Namtchylak is an extraordinary vocalist with a seven-octave range who combines Tuvan throat singing, experimental jazz, the blues, Siberian folklore, classical, electronica and Buddhism.

Sainkho grew up in southern Siberia in the former USSR on the Tuvan/Mongolian border where she was exposed to the local overtone singing - something generally reserved for men. Schooled by her grandmother in the Tuvan overtone (“throat”) singing style, she went on to study music at the local college, but was denied professional qualifications in the styles traditionally sung by Tuvan men. Namtchylak moved to Moscow, where she began her initial collaborations with jazz and avant-garde musicians. Eventually, she relocated to Vienna, right about the time that Tuvan overtone singing made its global debut, with Out of Tuva (1993), featuring Namtchylak. (Chris Nickson, Allmusic)

Her vocal delivery ranges from growling, bleating, gurgling, screaming, whispering, cooing, singing, clucking, roaring, whooping, yodelling, trilling -  all of it in the context of the spiritual, and are a bridge between the animate and inanimate world. She also mixes in traditional Tuvan instruments with turntables and effects. Her vast 25-year discography spans all kinds of experimental collaborations, including a recent record with members of the Tuareg band, Tinariwen. (World Music Central)