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- The Retrographer, Issue 33 (September, 2 0 1 7)
The Retrographer, Issue 33 (September, 2 0 1 7)
Baaba Maal, Mansour Seck, Daniel Caesar, Lomelda, Moses Sumney, Japanese Breakfast, Mount Kimbie, D33J, LCD Soundsystem, King Krule, Pat Kelly, VulfpeckThe Retrographer, Issue 33 (September, 2 0 1 7)
Bulletins
The great Tom Petty is gone. A great pop songwriter who made better music in (and for) his later life than almost anyone. Remember him this way.
Winston says: Save the date, 11/1, for a special event!
There’s nothing like D’Angelo live.
Thanks to Brett Morell, I’m now fixated on Reflex’s edits of disco and soul. Start here.
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Mailbag
“As the days start to get chillier, I find the music I enjoy the most has a tone that could best be described as "bittersweet yet triumphant." The paragon of the form is The Only Living Boy in New York, but other notable examples include Fleetwood Mac's That's Alright and pretty much every Twin Peaks song. Any recommendations (new or old) that fit this seasonal vibe?” – Andrea Whittle
My freshman year at Hamilton I was super homesick. Upstate New York was gorgeous but it might as well have been dreary and flat from where I was sitting. I was calling home every day, trying to find an out, but all I got was lousy encouragement. One dismally glorious day I texted my dad as he was zipping around Westchester’s gold lamé October. I caught him as he had just dialed to Dvorák’s Symphony 9, From the New World on QXR, and he texted me from the car his living hallucination of the music and season: “Autumn music. Pilgrims Indians. Big cliffs rivers.” That’s remained a mantra for me and a tribute to the season all the same.
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Ten Songs for September, 2 0 1 7
“Loose”, Daniel Caesar (Cymbal / YouTube) – There’s a lot to love about Caesar’s new album, but perhaps nothing more than this daydream, three minutes of Stevie Wonder balladry that suddenly undresses into a demo, a passing idea interrupted by life as they so often are.
“Out There”, Lomelda (Cymbal / YouTube) – Hannah Read singing an image we all know: “I was a kid staring at the telephone lines as we drove by them.” But really, she’s looking past them, to the pinhole blackness that return her brainwaves to an unknowable infinity.
“Quarrel”, Moses Sumney (Cymbal / YouTube) – Sumney’s voice takes on the misty tonality of a muted horn whether he’s sharing words or backing himself with harmonies. Within this song’s lushness – harps, “Superwoman” Moogs, cellos – his instrument is unforgettable.
“Diving Woman”, Japanese Breakfast (Cymbal / YouTube) – To be both propulsive and liquid seems oxymoronic, but the greatest ideas in shoegaze – from DIIV to Slowdive to “Only Shallow” – have always channeled the speed of depth, the fluidity of velocity.
“SP12 Beat”, Mount Kimbie (Cymbal) – It’s a shame to only pick one song from this brilliant record, a full evolutionary step forward from Dominic Maker and Kai Campos’ earlier work. A ringing loop opens to expanse over immense synthesizers.
“Endless Fall”, D33J (Cymbal / YouTube) – Djavan Santos’ first album may make you think of Simian Mobile Disco, Weval, the Range, Floating Points. Given those dark reference points, it may surprise you to learn his best-known muse is the ebullient Lil Yachty, and made an appearance in May’s issue.
“other voices”, LCD Soundsystem (Cymbal / YouTube) – Some see the LCD reformation as a venal cash grab; I dunno. I love that the album sounds like it was made in a practice space with little fancy or schmancy. But lots of Nancy, thank goodness.
“Dum Surfer”, King Krule (Cymbal / YouTube) – Archy Marshall is inescapable and undeniable. Since he surfaced years ago with pencil neck, Monster Mash vox, and 13th chords as Zoo Kid, Marshall has entranced everyone from Earl Sweatshirt to James Blake.
“Long Vacation”, Pat Kelly (Cymbal) – Pat sings about aging like a criminal surreptitiously outlining his escape plan over a payphone before the feds show up to raid the nest. In a manner of speaking: If you find out where D.B. Cooper absconded to, lemme know.
“Birds of a Feather, We Rock Together”, Vulfpeck and Antuan Stanley (Cymbal / YouTube) – For their opening streak of EPs and albums, Vulfpeck reveled in TV themes and pastiche, only occasionally pulling the curtain back for tender, deep music like this Mocky cover. The Funk Brothers-enamored instrumentalists would benefit from more such backing work (imagine them supporting Mac DeMarco!)
One Album for September, 2 0 1 7
“Djam Leelii”, Baaba Maal and Mansour Seck (Rogue Records, 1984 / Mango Records, 1985) (Cymbal / YouTube)
Mansour Seck was born to the gawlo caste in a town in Futa Tooro along the Senegal River. As a gawlo, his life’s work was to be like that of a griot: To recount the oral history of his people, the Muslim Tukulors, in song and in story. His calling was to be narrative, musical, and historical. Seck loved music most of all, and its power drew him to convince his friend, a young Baaba Maal, to join him in abandoning his birthright – in Maal’s case, fishing – to follow music.
Senegal’s music is defined by this obligation to history and traces back to its roots from the Malian Empire. This tradition of music is full of meaning and symbolism: Musical motifs refer to historical traditions and ideas. Each idea is rich and deep.
But Maal and Seck expanded their palettes and life experiences early, each attending university for music at Dakar, then doing postgraduate studies at École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Maal returned to Senegal to make Senegalese music with northern sounds in it, forming the band Daande Lenol.
In 1989 Maal and Seck brought their music to the wider world. By that time they’d produced a large catalog of music which had arced back to traditionalism, re-recorded on Djam Leelii: The Adventurers. The album is a rich and minimalist exploration of the music of northern Senegal and southern Mauritania, centering around Seck and Maal’s two guitars, but within it is a wayward sadness, longing for a homeland.
Musically, it’s redolent of its themes of wandering diaspora: There are no chord changes, only core, cycling themes anchoring brambles of riffs and the duo’s elastic vocals. Additional instrumentation appears occasionally, with lead guitar from Aziz Dieng, kora and balafon from Mamad and Jombo Kouyate, and more percussion from Papa Dieye.
Maal and Seck’s music is textural and mysterious: It seems not to develop so much as evolve, reaffirming its shape with each runic new idea. Upon its release, Djam Leelii was adored by a small group of listeners, who found sunlight and melancholy alike in Maal’s winding vocals and the ensemble’s entrancing musicianship. But the great Robert Christgau rightly identified that the album’s language barrier obscures the narrative vital to the album’s creation, which would’ve personalized Maal and Seck’s story – and the significance of Senegalese narrative tradition – to their listeners: the titular track concerns the artists’ exile from Senegal during its drought, a rambling fate conferred on them by their arid home and the instability of colonialism. The expansive, textured sound of Djam Leelii comprises a quilted tracklist, the sound of two men always on the road.
Djam Leelii brings the oral tradition of Pulaar and Futa Tooro from the mist of history, a form of local preservation, to listeners from around the world, fulfilling Seck’s gawlo birthright at a magnitude he could never have imagined in his youth. And Maal, the fisherman, simply brought the Senegal River to ears that mine it to find minimalism, psychedelia, the blues, and, above all, the stories of Senegal. We still have further to travel to bring those stories home.
Best-Of Playlists
Though these playlists are all on Spotify, not every song (including many of my favorites) is available to stream. To see which tracks are missing, go to "Preferences", scroll down to "Display Options," and then switch on "Show unavailable tracks in playlists."