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A Thread In Honour Of Kaisfatdad

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I know I take the Michael out of him something rotten, have been for years and years (can you remember his Nude Trampolining Camp, readers?), but he is a stalwart pillar of this community, a reliable content provider (unlike chiz, say – just a name pulled at random) who kept the Afterword flag flying – well, fluttering – during the Dark Ages, and whose good humour is a tonic in these terrible times. So please take a minute or so to attach a YewChewb clip you think he might enjoy, as a way of saying – “thanks, old chap!”

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    • A very pretty track there by April Yang.

      I like my thumb piano a little more raucous. Feed it through a fuzz pedal and then turn the volume up to 11. Konono No 1 sound like no one else on the planet. Best experienced live: Thoroughly hypnotic!

      If you want some serious thumb piano weirdness, hipster DJ Dan Deacon, fits the bill.

  6. My favourite Afterworders are KFD and that Burt Kocain lad. The latter created a lot of the content in the early days of this site, which helped it establish itself. There’s nothing inevitable about this place.

    However, I reckon Our Man in Siam won’t mind too much if I say that KFD shades it. As Moose mentions elsewhere, his creation of the Facebook site after The Drupal attack shouldn’t be forgotten. Like i said, theres nothing inevitable about this place. As a lazy devil, I admire folk who roll their sleeves up and do things.

    KFD is generous, self-deprecating and a screaming, out-and-proud pollyanna. Fine by me, positivity is underrated.

    I’m going to say it with gamelan.

      • Now there’s an interesting thought, H.P. I would certainly be on for that meeting.

        A lot of laughing sounds excellent.

        Thank you so much for all those kind words @Hawkfall. Very thoughtful of you. It is nice to be appreciated.

        My mental picture of myself is of a tough, gruff, cynical, hard-boiled gumshoe.

        ” A man with a thousand Gs: G-men, girls, guns, guts”

        Which to my amusement, doesn’t quite tally with your description …….

        “A screaming, out-and-proud pollyanna”

        That gamelan track was a treat. Usually there is a small, noisy army of gamelanists.

        This more subdued approach works very nicely.

  8. Gooosh! My flabber is truly gasted! No words seem really appropriate for this momentous occasion.

    And I’d I thought today was going to be a very ordinary day ..

    Instead it is as though suddenly there’s a Breton pipe band marching down my street playing the Led Zepellin songbook and Eamon Andrews has just popped up from behind a bush, greeting me with the magic words:

    “Kaisfatdad, this is your jive!”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsJ-8JYwBhU

    I have a few clips to share too.

    Such as this new Tiny Desk session by Korean band ADG7.

    They played a blinder of a set at Roskilde 2022. They came to entertain and succeeded in spades.

    https://www.npr.org/2022/08/19/1116915187/adg7-tiny-desk-concert?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20220820&utm_term=7135154&utm_campaign=music&utm_id=10734345&orgid=&utm_att1=&fbclid=IwAR1tGBbMOFpUzp-qEzWn9itMxUQUi4PUw-HDmN1Ds2VipPyntEd35SeWTi8

      • Gosh! @thecheshirecat! You spoilt us rotten there!

        Those Bretons can dance! Talk about cutting a rug. My face lit up with an enormous smile to see that footwork!

        I just can’t get enough!
        So let’s have some more.

        Those modern apartment blocks in the background give it all a perspective, We are in 2022 and this dancing is as much fun as ever.

        Damn right! A cry of delight! That reaches all the way to Stockholm!

        Time for the gentlemen to strut their stuff!

        I bet you are in like Flynn, Chesh!!

  14. I was hoping to meet KFD this year, but now it shall be year the next.
    I’ve never seen GOT so I don’t know how accurate this is, and I couldn’t find a consort of crumhorns playing Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head which I once heard.
    So have some racketts instead.

    • An Australian curtal consort! Now we are talking! An Early Music combo with a great sense of humour. Unholy Rackett are my new favourite band of the week.

      Here they are getting Wuthering

      How can anyone not enjoy this?

  19. Here is the whole film of Evenings On A Farm Near Dikanka, which I remember KFD saying was “better than anything starring Linus Roache” and that he would “happily forgo the pleasures of family life and gainful employment just to watch it again and again.” IIRC.

    • My very words! How do you remember these things, Gary?

      As I always say: Who needs Google when you’ve got Gogol?

      For no apparent reason I suddenly thought of this ….

    • What a find! Who would not be delighted to encounter him while out on a forest walk?

      That Mr Handpan is a versatile chap!

      I suspect that @locust will agree this chap bears a similarity to Näcken, the Swedish water spirit, who sits naked on the rocks having a fiddle.

      Here are Black Magic Fools with a Näcken polska.

      • Magic! Great clip @Mike_H! I’m sure Hermeto would have welcomed Mr Handpan to his Beardy Amazon Band!

        Here’s Hermeto “playing his beard” and a bunch of other stuff too!

        If any of you are new to Sr Pascoal, here’s a whole live set recorded in Sao Paolo.

        • I share your frustration, H.P.

          Letritia Kandle started to play with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra in 1937.

          Here’s a remarkable clip of the band from 1930 from the colour movie King of Jazz.

          The notes about the clip are very informative. “Broadway Classics looks like a great YT channel.

          “King of Jazz” was the first motion picture to use a pre-recorded soundtrack made independently of the actual filming. Whiteman insisted that the entire soundtrack be pre-recorded in order to obtain the best sound, avoiding the poor recording conditions and extraneous noises found in a movie studio. Universal opposed the idea, but Whiteman insisted and prevailed over the reluctant studio executives. After the sound was recorded, the scene was filmed. Later, the film was synchronized to the soundtrack. This allowed the movie to be directed in the same manner as a silent film, with resulting sounds not affecting the completed film.”

          Just imagine what the audience i 1930 would have made of that amazing opening sequence of the dancers.

          Another clip from Paul.

          I’d never heard of him , so this was very informative.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q90fRY-kwI

          Here he is with Lady Day …

          • Well done @Hubert Rawlinson! You really opened a fascinating door for us here. And you know me! If I find an interesting door and a bottle labelled Drink Me, Odd I go, just like Alice!

            Here’s another piece about Letritia Kandle and the Grand Letar and where this remarkable instrument is today.

            https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/555223

            “In addition to the Letar instruments, Kandle also played National Resophonic guitar and electric laptop and double-neck steel guitars with the Kohala Girls, an all-female group she formed that played Hawaiian steel guitar music in the Chicago area throughout the 1930s and 1940s. She also directed a 49-piece ensemble, the Chicago Plectrophonic Orchestra, that featured acoustic and electric guitars and lap steel guitars, mandolins, banjos, accordion, string basses, percussion and theater organ..”

            Bullseye! A Here are some photos of the Chicago Plectronic Orchestra and some more information about them.

            https://hawaiiexhibit.web.illinois.edu/photographs-of-the-chicago-plectrophonic-orchestra-1941-and-1946/

            Interested in Historic Steel Guitars? Of course you are!

            https://hawaiiexhibit.web.illinois.edu/instruments/

            All this comes from a site Called American’s Hawaiian Imaginations which looks at the rise of Hawaii i US culture.

            “America’s fascination with Hawaiian culture reached its peak during the Great Depression. The country needed a temporary escape from the Depression’s daily uncertainties, and its people eagerly embraced Hawaiian music for their imaginary travels to exotic places. By this time, “slack-key” guitar had already become a part of mainstream American musical culture with its use of altered tunings and finger picking techniques first popularized in Hawaii by Portuguese sugar cane workers. Slack-key styles of the 1830s blended western-European performance techniques on a six-stringed instrument, called the guitarra portuguesa, and traditional Hawaiian melodies played on a four-stringed instrument originally called the ukeke, but today referred to as the ukulele. ”

            https://hawaiiexhibit.web.illinois.edu/

  35. Some tunes are very popular for cover versioms.

    Take Five! Ok, then. I will!

    By the Osesp Bassoon Quintet from Brazil

    North East Ska Orchestra – from Italy

    Tito Puente – the Latin maestro

    Plankton -bluesy

    Al Jarreau

  36. Those talented Aussies, Unholy Rackett, (who Hubert introduced us to above) are my favourite band of the week.

    I was very pleased to to discover on their homepage that there is such a healthy Early Music scene in Australia.

    https://unholyrackett.com/friends/

    Here are a few artists they mention.

    Ensemble 642

    Pinchgut Opera

    A lively bunch!

    Van Diemens Band

    What is more, Unholy Rackett are bringing instruments back from extinction. It’s like a kind of musical Jurassic Park with crumhorns, theorbos, hurdy gurdies and rackets instead of velociraptors and pterodactyls.

  37. Wow! Trent Hamilton from Kiwiland is a Tuber after my own heart. Here he is talking in wonderful detail about five obsolete musical instruments including the rackett.

    And now the Couturier Conical Bore Cornet. Trent has such a wonderful enthusiasm for obscure instruments.

  38. An astonishing feat of design and engineering, a beautiful machine, thousands of person-hours labour, all coming together to create a piece of music so monotonous and banal it makes Jean-Michel Jarre sound interesting.

    • Those bass players are sensational. It reminds me that The Faces had a Japanese bass payer: Tetsu Yamauchi.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetsu_Yamauchi

      We can’t leave Japan without an exuberant sugar rush of up-tempo J-pop from Momoiro Clover X. They put on a show and a half!

      Dua Lipa must be a tad jealous to see this no expenses spared show, What’s the Japanese for kitchen sink???

  40. Some music seem weird because of the language barrier, And then there’s the stuff which is plain weird, Like Italy’s Elio e le storie tese.

    If you are intrigued by these, there is lots more on Yer Tube.

      • Impressed, Tigger? I am overawed.

        H,P, Saucecraft IS Kaisfatdad

        HP, you are better at being KFD than I am which is a little spooky. If I want to take a long vacation, I know where to find a sub.

        Thanks a lot for starting this thread. It’s been a hoot sharing exotica with you and all the other contributors,

        As we retreat to our space age bachelor pads for some shuteye, who better to sing a lullabye than Peruvian, Yma Sumac, The Queen of Exotica.. Performing in Moscow of all places.

        I’m trying to imagine how this Technicolour Peruvian Princess, who sung to parrots and hugged trees must ave gone done in drab, dull, black and white, ration card world of Post WW2 Britain.

        Invigorating, Refreshing. But utterly bonkers.

        The gamine, doe-eyed Astrud Gilberto was a far less terrifying pin up.

        Here she is winning hearts in the Netherlands in 1962. Exquisite!

        I’ve not seen that clip before todays and it really captures her charm not to mention the respect the Dutch jazzers have for her,

  42. We’ve enjoyed watching Hermeto tootling in a warm. tropical lake. Now it’s time to head further north again. Sr. Pascoal will need his woolly jumper if he is going to join us.

    Time for a recital performed on ice instruments i temperatures of minus 12 Centigrade.

    There’s a spooky, ethereal quality to it all.

    The driving force behind this recital is Norwegian percussionist, Terje Isungset, who has a long history of creating ice instruments.

    https://www.npr.org/2013/02/24/172818754/turning-a-glacier-into-a-tuba-ice-music-from-norway

    “Quite often, I don’t actually know how my instrument will sound. So I just have to listen to the sound that is being created and try to create music out of this sounds,” he says.

    But Isungset was trained as a jazz musician, and he appreciates the improvisation that is fundamental to working with ice.

    “If you work like this, then you suddenly can be led into something else — some other kind of music that you did not think of, that you did not plan,” he says. “It’s like you find a new flower, maybe. A new color.”

    His record company is All Ice Records.

    https://www.terjeisungset.no/

    One artist whose voice embodies the landscape of Northern Norway is Sami singer Mari Boine.
    I don’t understand a word she is singing but there is an amazing, elemental power to her performances.

    Jojk, the reindeer herding music of the Same, is an important aspect of her style.

    And if you were surprised how popular Morrissey is among the Latinos in California, just watch now as Mari Boine trascends all cultural barriers and goes down a storm in Guanajuato, Mexico.

    Mike Scott would call this The Big Music.

  43. Here’s a piping hot track for you @Fitterstoke.

    It was dropped only two days ago by the Goddesses of Bagpipes who you introduced us to a the beginning of the thread. Thanks for that!

    Archy Jay, The Snake Charmer, from India.
    Jane Espie, The Phantom Piper from Scotland.
    Chelsea Joy, the Dame of Drones from the USA.

    It’s brilliantly done and very exhilarating. Best enjoyed after a few pints of heavy,

    But perhaps, a little like one of those pizzas with EXTRA EVERYTHING. What’s that slice of haggis doing on my Capricicosa??.

    But no doubt about it!

    These lady pipers could easily lead me badly astray!

    PS. Do people in the UK still talk about “getting their oats”?

    It sounds very odd in Swedish!

  45. Those lady pipers are smashing a tartan glass ceiling. Piping, just like tossing your caber, was considered a man’s work. Nothing for the lassies.

    But thing are changing. In 2020 Celtic Connections had a concert to celebrate female pipers.

    https://bagpipe.news/2020/01/20/women-in-piping-at-celtic-connections/

    An interview with some of the participants.

    https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/here-come-the-skirls-women-pipers-from-all-around-the-world-head-to-glasgow-for-landmark-celtic-connections-concert/

    Before the 1970s female pipers were not even allowed to compete in national contests.

    Lady pipers have made more progress perhaps in Galicia where the new generation of gaiteras like Susana Seivane, Mercedes Peon and Christina Pato have made international waves.

    Here’s an excellent article about the history of the Galician pipes, the gaita.

    https://www.bagpipesociety.org.uk/articles/2017/chanter/summer/pipes-and-pipers/

    Spanish bagpipe academic, Javier Campos Calvo-Sotelo, has some useful things to say on the matter.

    “In the extreme northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, Galicia has remained for centuries isolated from its neighboring communities, due to its rough terrain and underdeveloped communications systems. As a result, progress and modernity arrived there later, allowing the survival of interesting cultural practices, including some anachronistic remnants and demographic constrictions, although not necessarily deterrents of the contemporary emergence of female pipers studied in this chapter. In fact, the gender marker was reified in unique ways around the instrument assumed as soul par excellence of the Galician community and outstanding androcentric (that is, male-dominated) fetish, which is the bagpipe.”

    That’s enough of male-dominated fetishes!

    With 96 comments, we are nearing Hampertime for HP.

    And ladies and gentlemen, we are going out in style. It’s the final countdown….

  46. I haven’t thanked you, @Black_Celebration for Quentin and his Birdbox Orchestra. What a remarkable chap who is in a class of his own.

    It does make me think of some of my favourite kids TV programmes.

    And raises the question: why are all the best books, poems, TV shows and films for young children, produced by people who are clearly out of their gourds on jazz tobacco or magic mushrooms?

    Back in the day ….Trap Door with Willy Rushton

    More recently …. the magnificent Yo Gabba Gabba with special guests The Flaming Lips.

    Or with Bootsy Collins, Erykah Badu and friends!!

  47. Here’s a Karachi Bump.

    I’m sure you all want to know about the artists I saw at Roskilde this summer. Two of the very best were from Pakistan,

    Many of you know about Arooj Aftab, the singer (now based in New York) whose Vulture Prince was on several Best of the Year Lists. It was just her, guitarist Gyan Riley and bassist Shahzad Ismaily.

    The small Gloria stage was in semi-darkness, allowing her magnificent voice to enchant us, Gyan is a stupendous guitarist.

    I suspect not many of you have heard of 76 year old Ustad Saami from Karachi.

    Same stage, same time of day, same minimalist presentation. Yet another magical performance. The first song lasted 30 minutes. I just disappeared into the music.

    There’s little movement on stage so it’s a performance that is difficult to film. What a joy to watch the way that he was in complete control of his band, directing through eye contact, finger pointing etc. The line up is similar to the late, great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan..

    He’s 76 so unlikely to be touring too much. I’m very glad I got to experience his music live.

    https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/mar/03/ustad-saamis-mind-boggling-album-god-is-not-a-terrorist-its-superhuman

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