The Soul of Mbira

01 Nyamoropa Yevana Vava Mushonga.m4a

The Soul of Mbira
cover by Donald Leake and Robert L. Heimall
Nonesuch Explorer Series, H-72054
Nonesuch Records, New York, 1973

Scholarly level musical recordings are not the type of records you would expect to show up at thrift stores. Half the records however, I own from labels such as the Nonesuch Explorer Series and the Ethnic Folkways Library, I have found for less than a dollar at thrift stores. The recordings on these records are not hard to come by, the Nonesuch records are mostly reissued on CD format while the Folkways recordings can be ordered as a download or as a CD from the Smithsonian Institute. The original vinyl copies is a different story though as you would pay a minimum of $25 on line for a used copy, if available at all. I'm excited when I find a record such as this The Soul of Mbira for 99 cents but I get a little sad too thinking who it could have belonged to. I imagine that records such as The Soul of Mbira belonged to people who were serious about the music they bought, I imagine that they were once part of a serious collection. The Soul of Mbira was published almost forty years ago and I wonder about the fate of the original owner. Did he (or she) pass away? Did their children come in the house after this happened and just picked up these "worthless, obsolete" vinyl records to drop them off at the nearest thrift store? If that's the case I think the previous owner will be pleased that his/her precious item found a home that truly appreciates all the aspects surrounding the album. Nyamoropa Yevana Vava Muchonga by Muchatera Mujuru was my favorite track when I first listened to the album back in 1991 when I borrowed it from the library, and now 20 years later it still is. With the purchase of the album I learn that Nyamoropa, according to Paul Berliner, is played on "one of the few remaining varieties of an older style 25-key Mbira Dza Vadaimu, having the lowest and most traditional tunings".

The Soul of Mbira: Traditions of the Shona People of Rhodesia was first released in 1973, when it was issued on CD in 2002, the title changed to reflect a new political name for Rhodesia: Zimbabwe: The Soul of Mbira, Traditions of the Shona People.

Rahsaan

05 Raouf.m4a
http://www.box.net/s/3ecy2ni2veshhuc910qx

Roland Kirk - Slightly Latin
(sleeve design by Daniel Czubak)
recorded 1965 at Capitol Studios
Monaural LM 82033, Limelight

Last week I meant to comment on records that you would never find at a thrift store. Those records that you would, without blinking your eye, pay 6 or 7 dollars for if you find a used copy somewhere, and even spent 12 dollars for a brand new release on CD. Records by musicians you esteem so high that it wouldn't even occur to you you'd find them for 50 cents at a Volunteers of America. Captain Beefheart, Pere Ubu, the Velvet Underground, and even Cat Power and Bob Dylan belong to this category. One of the names I included in this list—a rough draft I had already written—is Rahsaan Roland Kirk. By Jove, days later, at a Goodwill store on Route 41, Slightly Latin by Roland Kirk (from before he added the Rahsaan to his name) appeared. I never even saw this record before, I didn't even know it existed, but there it was, in mint shape, with all the colorful pages originally attached to the folding sleeve still intact. I chose the song Raouf for the following reasons:

1. Raouf was composed by Roland Kirk himself.
2. Raouf is the new, self assumed, African inspired, name of one of the singers on Raouf whose original name was Ruth Perkinson. I have the feeling that the photographic portrait on the sleeve, as well as all the other color photographs in the attached book, is of her. Kirk, as well as the photographer Daniel Czubak, must have been infatuated with her. The voices on the record are arranged by one Coleridge Perkinson by the way.
3. It's a great tune.

Slightly Latin is the seventh vinyl record I own of Kirk (I also have several cds) and the first one bought at a thrift store. It brings the Average Kirk price I paid for an album (including cds) to about 6 dollars.

Children's songs

01 Haj szén'alja, szén'alja.m4a
http://www.box.net/shared/sfs1hz9z4tpp8xd3045o

Hungarian Folk Music, sleeve design by Gyözö Varga,
presented by the Hungarian Academy of Science,
Budapest, 1964

Often a children's song or two are included in such albums that seek to give an overview of the musical traditions of a certain cultural or geographical group.  I have gathered quite a few but to say I'm collecting is an overstatement, they're simply included in some of the records I collect. My interest in these children's songs is fairly new. I'm attracted to the uncomplicated spontaneous nature of these songs. They're happy songs, playful songs, free from the burdens of the hardness and sadness of life, complex psychological identities, and sexual rejection. I was never interested in their songs, their aesthetic, or their play, but something changed. I think my interest started with teaching drawing and painting to children this summer, I had never done this before, and never thought I would like it, but I did.
—It has recently been discovered that some of the iconic ancient cave paintings have been done by small children. In the recently discovered Rouffignac  caves in the Dordogne, the most prolific artist was a five year old girl. Learning about this fact impacted my worldview and my attitude of how I view children.

The LP Hungarian Folk Music contains a really nice children’s song. it is called Haj szén'alja, szén'alja which translates to Ah, bundle of hay, bundle of hay. The LP Hungarian Folk Music (not to be confused with Bartok's better known Folk Music of Hungary) is so far the year's best thrift store find. The number 194 taped in the top left corner on the record indicates that it once belonged to a collection. I bought 20 records from that collection in one day, the numbers ranging between 185 and 232. All records are from Eastern Europe with a majority coming from Poland. I assume the collection once belonged to an immigrant from Poland. I really should revisit that thrift store to see if other numbers from the collection have been released.

Sad Song

04 Gloomy Sunday.m4a
http://www.box.net/shared/fng0kve6vxnsne287sad

George Boulanger, King of the Gypsy Violin
Colosseum Records CRLP 200, New York, 1955

Our family home had a painting of a guitar playing gypsy boy with a tear in his eye in the living room. It was the only painting we had. Many living rooms in the Netherlands in the 1960s had a painting similar to ours. As a young boy paintings like this were synonymous for me with the whole of painting, the whole of art for that matter. Not until years later my horizon broadened and I knew our gypsy painting was kitsch, art for the masses. In that same decade, and well into the 70s, gypsy records were popular in our country too, on the continent, and from what I find in thrift stores these days, in the United States as well. A gypsy violinist was synonymous for virtuosity in music. Times have changed, the gypsies go by the name of the Rom people now, their music celebrated in the most advanced cultural cycles, but the records of the 60s, made for a mass audience, commercial as they are, still hold moments of brilliance, magic, and that equivalent of the “tear-in-the-eye painting” for me.
My latest 25 cent gypsy record is one of George Boulanger, the “King of the Gypsy Violin”. The best tunes are like that painting on the wall of my parent’s house, a tear running down the cheek. The tracks on the record are partially standards and partially Boulanger’s own compositions. The stand-out track is Gloomy Sunday, a song recorded by many singers in the western world. Billie Holiday’s version is one of sheer beauty. I did not know until recently that it originally was a Hungarian song, written by Rezsö Soress. Gloomy Sunday in Hungarian is Szomolá Vasárnap. On Boulanger’s record the title is listed in English, Boulanger is from Romania.

With friends we sometimes play the game “YouTube-off”, in which each participant selects a YouTube video within a certain category, the participants then vote on the winner. In the category “sad” I nominated the song Szomolá Vasárnap in the version by the Hungarian actress Erika Marozsán. The video was just a still, a photograph of a sad statue of a woman’s face that was rained upon (so it looked like tears).
It didn’t get any votes :_(

But I didn’t take the opportunity to elaborate on the song’s history. It was written in the direst of circumstances and myth has it that many people committed suicide after hearing the song. It may well be the saddest song ever written.