Week of July 9: This week: rollicking Farsi funk, a melancholy Future, and Kate Bush looks to the past.
PREMIERE: Farsi Funk From NY’s Mitra Sumara
Something wonderful happened in the 60s and 70s when young musicians around the world began incorporating Western pop into their music, without totally abandoning their native rhythms and sounds. Examples include the so-called Ethio-jazz of Ethiopia, the psychedelic cumbias of Peru and Colombia, the reverb-drenched cassette culture of the Turkey and the Near East. Something similar happened in Iran, in the years before the 1979 revolution. And that something is the inspiration for the band Mitra Sumara, whose Farsi funk’n’roll comes from the mind of singer Yvette Saatchi Perez. Raised in America by adoptive parents, she began a search for her birth family and eventually met her Iranian birth father. Along the way, she fell in love with the music that a generation of Western-looking Iranians grew up with. Today we premiere the video for the song called “Helelyos,” or “our people are dancing.” The song comes from the band’s debut album, Tahdig, which is the name of the crunchy rice at the bottom of the pot which is an essential (and addictive) part of Iranian cuisine. The video is a swirling, psychedelic montage of traditional Iranian imagery with photos from the Iranian pop scene in the 70s and occasional photos of the band. When trombonist Peter Zummo first appears, you’ll see a photo of tahdig behind him. That’s assuming, of course, that you haven’t started dancing across the room by that point…
Gaby Moreno and Van Dyke Parks Celebrate American’s Immigrant Roots
On the Fourth of July, the NY Times published the Declaration of Independence on the back page of the sports section. A large portion of it is a laundry list of complaints against the British crown, but the second paragraph is one of the most profoundly moving things you will ever read. To think that almost 250 years ago, a group of people (okay, men) had the wisdom to write this: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Yes, the word “men” proved problematic for a while, but nowhere does it say that only the people who are already here should have those inalienable rights – in fact, it is clear that everyone is entitled to them. For the Guatemalan-born singer/songwriter Gaby Moreno, there is heartbreaking disconnect between the openhearted values of the Declaration of Independence and the reality of what’s happening today at America’s southern border. And so, on the Fourth of July, she paired up with the veteran American arranger and producer Van Dyke Parks (you’ll know his work with The Beach Boys, and hundreds of others) to release “The Immigrants,” a song that celebrates the ideals our country was founded on and the immigrants who built it. The song was originally written by the Trinidadian singer David Rudder after the police attack on the Haitian immigrant Abner Louima here in New York in 1998, but its message (which includes a quote from the Declaration) is still resonant today. The song’s original calypso sound has been expanded to a marching orchestral anthem, with Van Dyke Parks pulling out all his arranging stops.
All proceeds from the sale of the single go to the Central American Resource Center of California (CARECEN).
A Surprising Song From Future’s Surprise Mixtape
Atlanta rapper and singer Future is a guy with a strong work ethic. You may recall when he released his album Future last year it went to number one; then the very next week he released Hndrxx, and it too went to number one. It was the first time an artist had ever had albums debut at the top of the charts in successive weeks. Last month, Future curated the soundtrack of the newly remade film Superfly, and provided much of the music himself. But that hasn’t stopped him from dropping a surprise release on Friday. Beastmode 2 is a followup to his 2015 mixtape called Beastmode, and again was done with the noted producer and pianist Zaytoven. Now, we’ve all heard rappers writing verses about their success, their money, their climb from the streets and how everyone is jealous of their singular talent. So the track called “Racks Blue” on the new mixtape caught my ear. It is all of those familiar things, but delivered in a pensive, almost melancholy way, with Zaytoven providing a lyrical, spare, piano-driven production. It’s quite a different thing from the earlier track “Racks” that Future co-wrote with the rapper YC. That song celebrated money (a “rack” is $1000, usually made up of ten $100 bills, which now have a blue-ish tinge); this one seems to be questioning what it all means.
Kate Bush Unveils A New Tribute To Wuthering Heights – And It’s Not A Song
Back in April, we learned that the English singer and songwriter Kate Bush was one of four British artists commissioned to write tributes to the Bronte sisters, which would be carved in stones set in the Yorkshire moors. Three of the four were unveiled this weekend. Novelist Jeannette Winterson wrote a tribute to all three authors as a single, possibly proto-feminist unit. Poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy was asked to write a tribute to Charlotte Bronte, author of Jane Eyre. Scottish national poet Jackie Kay was given Anne Bronte, whose stone will stand at the parsonage where she mostly lived – it’s the only one not yet ready for visitors. Kate Bush was assigned Emily Bronte – a natural choice given that Bush’s career began with her compelling single “Wuthering Heights.” That 1978 song announced the arrival of a major new talent (she was 19), with its evocation of Emily’s famous novel and its haunting chorus, “Heathcliff, it’s me/I’m Cathy, I’ve come home/I’m so cold; let me in through your window.” In her new poem, simply called Emily, Bush returns to the imagery from that song: there is another plea to open the window, and the poem’s final line is almost like an answer to that early song’s refrain.
Emily, by Kate Bush
She stands outside
A book in her hands
“Her name is Cathy”, she says
“I have carried her so far, so far
Along the unmarked road from our graves
I cannot reach this window
Open it, I pray.”
But his window is a door to a lonely world
That longs to play.
Ah Emily. Come in, come in and stay.
The stone marker was placed yesterday in the West Riding area of the fabled Yorkshire moors, where the Bronte sisters lived and where Wuthering Heights was set. The timing was perfect, as this year marks the 40th anniversary of Kate Bush’s song, “Wuthering Heights.”
Bodega Takes To The Staten Island Ferry In New Video
We met the Brooklyn art-punk band Bodega back in June, when they performed live on the Soundcheck podcast. On Friday, they released their album, Endless Scroll, which is full of plain-spoken, politically-minded, sharp-tongued songwriting that can provoke a surprised guffaw, a wry smirk, and pogoing – possibly all at once. But there is an outlier, a track called “Charlie,” which the band has now released a video for. Singer/guitarist Ben Hozie (or Bodega Ben, as he prefers to be called) wrote the song to remember his best friend Charlie, who drowned in 2007. The details are woven into the lyrics in a way that avoids sentimentality, and the video, of Ben and fellow singer Nikki Belfiglio taking a trip on the Staten Island Ferry, has the feeling of an affectionate memory or celebration.
For a more typical example of the band’s bratty, brainy sound, watch their “Jack In Titanic” video – or check out the band’s songs in our studio. But “Charlie” shows that the band is capable of hitting more than one emotional note.