- The Retrographer
- Posts
- The Retrographer, Issue 90 (May, 2 0 2 2)
The Retrographer, Issue 90 (May, 2 0 2 2)
A$AP Rocky, Carly Rae Jepsen, Frank Meadows, Sharon van Etten, Arcade Fire, Noori & His Dorpa Band, Kendrick Lamar, Talour Paige, Tomberlin, THe Smile, Lykke Li, The Wild Tchoupitoulas, and more!
The Retrographer, Issue 90 (May, 2 0 2 2)
Bulletins
“D.M.B.”, A$AP Rocky (Spotify / YouTube) – Ah, fatherhood. What inspires joy and reinvention quite like bringing a little life into the world? And why shouldn’t Rakim Mayers turn up a little to mark the occasion?
“Western Wind”, Carly Rae Jepsen (Spotify / YouTube) – A wistful banger through and through, putting a blustery synth over Len’s “Steal My Sunshine” breakbeat. Jepsen floats through this beautiful song, chords toggling miles below, inviting just a little drama for the outro.
“Dead Weight”, Frank Meadows (Spotify / YouTube) – Meadows’ first album is full of soul, suffused with the full-hearted poignancy that gives this gem of a song its warmth and private profundity.
“Mistakes”, Sharon Van Etten (Spotify / YouTube) – Van Etten used to play little bars; now she swings for the fences of the stadiums she plays. Her voice can swing instantly from intimation to stentorian and somehow retain the same quality, a cool control that never betrays its underlying emotion.
“Age Of Anxiety (Rabbit Hole)”, Arcade Fire (Spotify / YouTube) – Win and Régine are back and the unshakeable dread has come along with them. Its taken different shapes and found different subjects in the last two decades, but still arouses the same urgency and vitality that propels their best music.
“Al Amal”, Noori & His Dorpa Band (Spotify / YouTube) – Shredders from Port Sudan, these Beja musicians string pentatonic riffs over burbling funk like bistro lights, casting a warm light over a foundation that shakes as they blow in the wind.
“We Cry Together”, Kendrick Lamar and Taylour Paige (Spotify / YouTube) – Perhaps the moment, on an album of them, most likely to stop the listener in their tracks, taking each barb and invective in disbelief that a song could be written so dramatically and delivered so convincingly.
“happy accident”, Tomberlin (Spotify / YouTube) – Sarah Beth spills an ocean of fuzz and, as Phillip Weinrobe’s bass rows through it, she admits “I wanna die when you say don't cry” and yet, “I won’t quit, happy accident.”
“Pana-vision”, The Smile (Spotify / YouTube) – Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, and Tom Skinner form the core of this new band, but this song becomes positively symphonic, a work of modern classical music folded into the pocket of a rock trio.
“Highway To Your Heart”, Lykke Li (Spotify / YouTube) – Many pop stars are described as having their own lane, but Li Lykke Timotej Zachrisson is truly one-of-a-kind, whose commitment to her sound is ironclad and rewarded with hundreds of millions of streams per song nonetheless.
One Album for May, 2 0 2 2
New Orleans sits at the mouth of the Mississippi River, and as such has been a commercial hub for centuries among the French settlers that established the city, who met the Spanish and English traders who used the waterway to transport goods through the rivers that sinew throughout the North American continent. Its Creole culture is defined by the mixing of these European settlers, the Native Americans whose land they claimed and who they traded with, and the enslaved Africans they brought with them to labor at the wheel of their industries.
Unlike other regions of America’s brutal regime of slavery and later Jim Crow, New Orleans at times permitted the enslaved and formerly enslaved to periodically celebrate, and these celebrations displayed many of the core traditions now associated with New Orleans, many of which expressed the interwoven ancestries of the population. Parades, like New Orleans’ famous second line processions, and celebrations, like Mardi Gras, present the history of a city of diverse inhabitants.
Starting in the 19th century, African Americans began masquerading as Native Americans in these Mardi Gras parades, calling themselves “Mardi Gras Indians”. They made fabulous, colorful dresses resembling Native dress, with vibrant feathery plumage and elaborate headdresses. They also acted like gangs and militias, roving the streets confronting one another to boast of their fearsome weaponry and prowess. They held rank: tribes were led by “spy boys”, scouts that ventured out front; the “flag boys” or “first flags”, who waved the tribe’s guidon; the “wild man”, a deputy to the “big chief”, the leader. A common shout was “chokma finha, an dan daye!”, or, “It’s all good at the rear!” (a way to say “all clear”, not “kiss my ass”, as the Dead thought), a phrase which The Dixie Cups made famous with their cover of James Crawford’s “Iko Iko”, one of the earliest examples of the image of Mardi Gras Indians penetrating popular culture. That song introduces not only the hierarchy of tribes, but their crowing, confronting, and preening, and is only one of countless paeans to their figure. This recombinant culture reflected an ugly history of violence and compulsion back into a jubilant art form.
This tradition had been in place for a century when George Landry established The Wild Tchoupitoulas in 1974 at New Orleans’s Patio Bar. Landry had been marching as a Mardi Gras Indian for years before establishing the group – described as a “black working-class mystic society and fraternal organization” – named after the Native American tribe whose name was used for the street he lived on in New Orleans, Tchoupitoulas Street. The Tchoupitoulas were led by Big Chief Jolly – that was Landry – buttressed by Second Chief Norman Bell, Trail Chief Booker T. Washington, Flag Boy Candy Hemphill "Carl" Christmas, and Spy Boy Amos Landry.
The Tchoupitoulas – whose inheritors still soldier on today – followed in the footsteps of another Mardi Gras Indian tribe, the Wild Magnolias, by deciding to put their performance repertoire to a recording and, in 1976, released their eponymous and only album, a beautiful and historic document of New Orleans’ singular culture. It holds forth so much of what makes this idiosyncratic tradition beautiful while simultaneously pointing toward the city’s musical future.
In making this album, Landry assembled one of the greatest meetings of talent in the history of the city’s music, a group of artists who would define New Orleans music for decades. It was produced by Allen Toussaint, one of New Orleans’s core 20th century musical minds, and the great producer Marshall Sehorn. It was also produced by Landry’s nephews Art and Charles Neville, and, with their contributions in backup vocals and percussion, marked the beginning of the Neville Brothers’ career as a recording group. The rhythm section was the inimitable Meters, the funk ensemble whose work both as their own group and backing other artists such as Dr. John and Toussaint underpinned essential bodies of work.
The melodies and lyrics heard throughout The Wild Tchoupitoulas may often sound familiar: “Hey Pocky A-Way (A Way)” appeared in similar fashion on the Meters’ 1974 masterpiece Rejuvenation; “Meet de Boys on the Battlefront” borrows Lord Invader's 1943 "Rum and Coca Cola". And this makes sense: When multiple groups of Mardi Gras Indians met, they’d engage in performance, showing off their resplendent garb and challenging one another in rhyme and song. It was common practice to repeat songs, riffing on them to meet adversaries on the streets, and establish dominance.
Almost all the songs on the album follow a single theme: Riling the Tchoupitoulas troop up to take on all comers, engaging in battle, extolling the crew’s prowess in combat, or recalling conquests past. Take “Meet De Boys On The Battlefront”, which described the tribes as “prettiest little thing that I ever seen”, people who “sewed all night and they sewed all day” so because they’re “gonna stomp some rump.” The Big Chief “walked through fire” and “swam through mud”, “snatched the feathers from an eagle, drank panther blood”; His Spy Boy “got a heart of steel, if his shank won't get you, his hatchet will.” “Brother John” laments a loss on the battlefield over a bouncy bassline and rolling pianos, with Aaron Neville’s already-unmistakable voice holding down the backing; “Hey Hey (Indian Comin)” warns of a skirmish on Mardi Gras day. War is the subject, and the Tchoupitoulas make it seem fun.
At times, The Wild Tchoupitoulas can sound every bit the mid-70s masterwork it is. “Here Dey Come” opens with a wavy wah from Meters guitarist Leo Nocentelli, as if fresh from a Curtis Mayfield or Isley Brothers track, and “Hey Mama (Wild Tchoupitoulas)” jams like Aretha Franklin’s “Rock Steady”, with Meters bass titan George Porter Jr. riding a high Chuck Rainey-like bassline. Yet other times it can sound older than New Orleans itself, as on the gorgeous introduction to the war chant “Indian Red”, which opens to chorale singing that is almost isicathamiya and proceeds into a linguist’s fantasy, a cauldron of languages and sayings that flow seamlessly throughout, reflecting the fluidity of the city’s culture. Most often though, the music sounds like timeless delta music. “Hey Pocky A-Way (A Way)” sports a cousin of the 3-2 clave beat Bo Diddley concocted across the river in McComb, Mississippi. “Big Chief Got A Golden Crown” holds down a simmering zydeco boogie while calling back to the aforementioned track.Seeing the group performing live in their city makes the picture complete; Their regalia explodes in color, the grooves sit low in the afternoon heat, and the people, from every background but just one home, come together to dance.
CATCH UP ON BACK ISSUES AT TINYLETTER
MONTHLY
#90 May, 2022 | The Wild Tchoupitoulas, “The Wild Tchoupitoulas”
#69 August, 2020 | Special Issue
#29 May, 2017 | Steely Dan, “Aja”
#27 March, 2017 | Wire, “154”
#16 April, 2016 | RIP PRINCE
#15 March, 2016 | Prince, “Prince”
ANNUAL
DECENNIAL
THEMED