It is often claimed that participatory protest folk music is in short supply now that Pete Seeger is gone, Baby Boomers are aging, and Dylan thinks he’s Sinatra. It’s still around…
…even in Florida, where white Trumpians accuse Ron DeSantis of being “too liberal.” Rod MacDonald isn’t falling for such nonsense. Rants and Romance is as advertised. The album opens cheerful and upbeat; “Come Out Annie,” is sweetened by Ian Wilkinson’s bluegrass-laced fiddle. It’s never a bad idea to win hearts before you aim for minds. Dollops of irony help as well. MacDonald slathers on the latter in “Cry Freedom” by calling attention to tricksters hiding behind double meanings: They cry freedom while they're taking it away/They don't mean freedom for you/They mean the freedom for themselves to tell you what to do. He follows with the Darryl Purpose/Robert Morgan Fisher “Dangerous Game,” a brilliant patter song in the seam between talking blues and rap that connects the dots between war abroad and danger at home. Dave Barry also lives in Florida and MacDonald has a similar penchant for using humor to sneak in serious points. “What Happened to You” is a poke at those in the left (wing) lane who veered right. “The Pandemic” is similarly leavened with wry observations. It’s a putative “romance,” but not of the Romeo and Juliet variety. These are typical of the album’s 17 tracks. There are straight-up, tender love songs–“I Miss You Here and Everywhere” is lovely–self-deprecating songs (“I Didn’t Go to Woodstock”), crisp covers (Cliff Eberhardt’s “When We Were Kings), and shame-the-stupid selections like “Smallpox,” a slam at anti-vaxers and fearmongers: Yes it’s a shame we don’t have smallpox today/There was no one with the courage to stand in the way/When we all got vaccinated and the disease went away…. You’ll find yourself singing along to MacDonald’s refrains, but when I closed eyes for “Heal the World,” I imagined a room harmonizing on the chorus. Rod MacDonald’s lyrics-forward approach is a balm for troubled times.
The Kennedys (Pete and Maura) used to live in Northampton–they’re in New York State now–and man, do I miss them. Their latest recording, Headwinds, is dosed with rock, roots music, and pop, but they too ring warning bells. The Kennedys have long excelled at shifting moods, styles, and messages. Headwinds is a mix of the sublime, the serious, a call to think, and other fine songs to get you over whatever is dragging you down. Maura lures us into open highway dreams on “New Set of Wheels” by tearing out on nostalgic roads before downshifting to: Now I’m a woman on a mission in my fuel-efficient automobile. Pete sets a downhome jangly tone for “Silence is a Warning,” but don’t rest in the hammock; the “silence” is the absence of nature sounds we should be hearing but don’t. He amps up the tempo and ambience for Maura’s lead vocals on “The Sky Doesn’t Look Right.” It’s about bombs, not climate change, but you could be excused for imaging the latter in a summer marked by floods, searing heat, and mudslides. Leave it to their eclectic tastes to channel Dylan in “The Boy From the East River Shore,” which is about a nameless kid growing up amidst tenements, gangs, and violence. Swirling keys segue to electric guitars on a song brimming with pathos and poignancy. But let’s backtrack to how The Kennedys turn on a dime. Who else has the moxie to drag out ukes for a two-step string band take on nips washing up on beaches (“Little Green Bottles”). Note, though, that the serious stuff is interspersed with changes of pace and subject matter. The leisurely paced title track brims with yearning: The restless breeze made the leaving seem so easy/But headwinds make it hard to get back home. How about a bit of click-clack Caribbean-style (with some Django-like guitar licks thrown in) for the giddy “Tangerine,” or nature celebrated in the gospel-influenced “The Woods and the Wild?” The album rounds out with “Waging Peace” with a series of “How many” questions. If you’ve got no answers for them, you probably ought to join the march with Pete’s guitar reverb and Maura’s voice leading the way.
On to other things:
Katy Guillen and the Drive is a Kansas City-based duo with Guillen on lead vocals, guitar, bass (and occasional keys) and Stephanie Williams on drums and bass. As that implies the sound on Another One Gained is stripped to the bone. They call it indie rock, but you might also think lo-fi and retro. Guillen’s smoky vocals often echo in the mix, though she pierces through Williams’ pounding percussion. The bulk of the songs are about relationships, broken (the title track), probably needing to be so (“Avoiding Every Sound”), emergent (“Discoloration”), scared-but-going with it (“Bottom of Your Belly”), or celebratory (“Different”). She throws out great lines such as I’m cozy in my bed of nails and There is no reason to think about/What I would have changed/For an opportunity lost is another one gained. I was intrigued, but I enjoyed Guillen’s music in small doses. The album could use more variety of style and delivery.
Momi Maiga is a Senegalese singer and kora player now based in Barcelona. The 21-stringed harp-like kora is plucked and well suited for solo runs. Its pitch usually matches the instrument’s voice, but Maiga’s vocals are also a strong complement for the kora. Nio feels like a summer breeze that invites deep listening, or simply lying back and letting the sprays of notes wash over you. Why not? One of the compositions is even called “Ocean.” Maiga’s arrangements often owe more to contemporary jazz and New Age music than West African traditional songs, but it’s all good. Try “Ocean” and “Dadje” for examples of jazz infusions and hear him sing on “Kumo” and “Wato,” the second of which evokes a late night club feel.
Ros (Ricard Ros I Roig) is also from Barcelona. I really liked De la Terra with a big qualification. Ros is Roig plays flutes and the sac de mus (bagpipes) His six-track EP is a mix of exciting tunes and lovely pastoral pieces. The band–sometimes four pieces and sometimes five with the addition of brass–offers quieter treasures such as “Arlovins,” but gets the room hopping with fast-paced material such as “Sac buit.” But let’s talk about the percussion, which throws off the balance. Much of it is the tambori of Axel Balzquez, who also plays delicate flute. When I watched Ros videos, Balquez's hand drums are more constrained but, on the recording, I mistook them for a drum machine. They are so front forward and repetitive that they distract from the melodies rather than frame them. Listen to the sylvan “Juno” and you’ll hear the difference when the percussion is tamped down. Two things would make this a great album: better engineering and ditching the gimmickry.
If you like dreamy Asian music, try the Heart of the Dragon Ensemble. It’s an “ensemble” in the broadest possible way: a Chinese arts collaboration based in London that brings together musicians, acrobats, dancers, and visual artists. (You might recognize similarities to Chinese “opera,” which couldn’t be less like how Westerners perceive that term.) The Art of the Chinese Xiao and Hulusi celebrates festivals devoted to literature and music. The intent is to fuse East Asian and Western music, but the latter is mostly guitar and piano, with Chinese instruments such as the zither-like guzheng, the two-string bowed erhu, and the many-fretted (and often dramatic) pipa the stars of the project. Try “Wild Geese Over the Sands” for calmness and “The Moon Before Dawn” for something a touch more lively. Overall, this is a soothing, meditative album.
Rob Weir
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