A renewed Tradition

World music in the raw

by Banning Eyre

With all the new world-music packages on the market these days, why should we care about vintage recordings of traditional music from the '50s and '60s? Because in hindsight those years now look like a kind of golden age. Pre-'50s recordings, however fascinating, suffer from primitive technology, and they often chop lengthy musical forms into fragments suited more for ethno-musicological study than for enjoyment. And in recent years, with the emergence of "world music" as a commercial concern, packagers, compilers, and tampering producers have worked their own distortions on the simple appeal of ethnic music.

But during those halcyon years after the musicologists and before the hucksters, a long-defunct label called Tradition made many fine recordings of American and foreign music. Now Rykodisc is releasing titles from the Tradition catalogue (including American jazz and blues and Celtic folk), much of it for the first time on CD. Five newly pressed releases span Algerian orchestral works, Greek folk songs, solo flamenco guitar, Pakistani spiritual music, and West African percussion workouts. These recordings have an unfettered integrity and power that is rare among today's global-music offerings.

Lost Africa: Sonar Senghor & His Troupe opens an intriguing window on pre-independence Africa. This troupe presented its pan-West African percussion and vocal music at the Folies-Bergère in 1952. Contemporary tracks of comparable percussion groups from Peter Gabriel's Real World studio may have improved some on the clarity of drum sounds, but they've got nothing over the spirit and pump here.

Originally marketed as "snake-charming music," The Passion of Pakistan presents an energized set of mystical Sufi music by Iqbal Jogi and Party. The percussion kicks like a fast ride on a rough road, and a high-pitched reed horn bleats out most of the melodies with breathless excitement.

Ya Bay! The Toraia Orchestra of Algiers delivers the lush sensuality of a North African orchestra. Drums speak of Africa; plucked strings and wandering, melancholy vocals speak of the Arab world; and the orchestral sense of order speaks of the years when Arab music flowed into and cross-pollinated with cultures in Europe. Flamenco de Triana tells a parallel story with stunning barrages of flamenco guitar, which was already a blend of Asian, Arab, and European musics long before the Gipsy Kings made it safe for prime time. Greek Folk Favorites: Pangyris (featuring Dora Straton) surveys another musical crossroads and conjures a deliciously nostalgic Mediterranean mood with jangling, distracted santouri (dulcimer) and mournful violins and lady singers.

Simple and spare, these releases favor substance over hype, and at around 10 bucks apiece, they're a bargain. One could argue that re-releasing the Tradition catalogue is a cheap, low-risk alternative to going out and capturing fresh indigenous sounds. But the world has changed as a result of all the attention paid to ethnic music. In today's Web-wired global village, the feeling of dropping unexpectedly into a self-contained musical universe seems more and more elusive. That feeling pervades these recordings, and it makes them newly satisfying.