David Dalle
Thursday April 2nd, 2020 with David Dalle
Manu Dibango retrospective; a new recording from Hugh Masekela; the new Sahel Sounds Music from Sahran Whatsapp vol.3; the newest from Analog Africa; Marc-Andre Hamelin's latest.

After last week's program, with some of the bleakest music I know, I wanted this week to be much brighter and upbeat. It will be, but there is great sadness in the world today. The great Cameroonian musician Manu Dibango (1933-2020) succumbed to Covid-19 last week. He will not be the last great artist we will lose to this pandemic. :( So we will begin with a retrospective of his lengthy career, beginning in the 1960's and continuing to close to the present day. Wonderful African jazz inflected funk, he collaborated with so many stars from all over the continent and was incredibly influential. We will also hear a new recording from Hugh Masekela, "Rejoice" was recorded in 2010 with the seminal Afrofunk drummer Tony Allen. They had first met in Lagos during the 1970's, and had talked about recording together ever since. They finally got their first chance in 2010 recording in London. The album waited a decade before being released on World Circuit. A stunning mix of South African and Nigerian jazz and funk. We'll also hear March's release in Sahel Sound's 2020 series Music from Whatsapp, each month they are releasing an album recorded by the musician(s) in the Sahel on their phones and transmitted by Whatsapp to Sahel Sounds to distribute through Bandcamp. Volume three is Mauritanian Jeich Ould Badou. Coming from a hereditary family of musicians, Jeich's tidnit (a type of lute) is updated, with built in phasers and pre-amps. Jeich is well known in Nouakchott, where he regularly plays in weddings. https://sahelsounds.bandcamp.com/album/music-from-saharan-whatsapp-03 We also hear the latest from Samy Ben Redjeb who resides in Germany but finds himself trapped in Peru during this pandemic where he worked on Analog Africa's latest project. He has taken advantage of his extra Peruvian stay by releasing many more tracks from the Cumbia singer and bandleader Ranil, making them available free (though any money people choose to pay for the music will go to a Peruvian charity). https://analogafrica.bandcamp.com/album/stay-safe-sound-ranil-selection-share-it Finally, we'll hear from Marc-Andre Hamelin's latest release, a recording of the first six piano sonatas by Samuil Feinberg. Feinberg was born in that most musical of cities Odessa in 1890. A younger generation than Scriabin, he was following in the elder's footsteps as a performing pianist and composer until his career was largely curtailed by Stalinist oppression in the 30's. He was eventually blacklisted as part of the Zhadnov decree in 1948, infamous for its severe censorship of Shostakovich and Prokofiev, but there were many other composers and musicians persecuted by it. He died in Moscow in 1962. He composed 12 piano sonatas, the first in 1915 and the last in 1962. We hear his 6th in b minor from 1923, a dark and brooding work, written in that very brief period in early Soviet life during the early 20's when the arts were dramatically free and experimental.