- Cloud Valley Music website -
- Andrew Cronshaw website -
- Andrew Cronshaw MySpace -

- Back to Reviews Introduction page -

Written in fRoots issue 197, 1999

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Big Red
Nascente NSCD 053 (1999)

RAKOTO FRAH
Flute Master Of Madagascar
Globestyle CDORBD 027 (1999)

On the big red-earthed island of Madagascar CD players are a rare rich person’s commodity, so the radio and cassette remain the main electronic media, but CDs released by foreign labels and touring abroad have made some Malagasy musicians and bands well known on the world music circuit.
      International success for the more rooted aspects, rather than for the bland global-pop derivativeness toward which Malagasy radio and cassette music was drifting, has over the past few years aided a re-energising of the island’s commercial pop by some degree of reconnection with the unusually varied and characteristically lively, jubilant music most Malagasy have known and participated in all their lives, at home and at social events such as the famadihana re-burial ceremony or the remarkable, crowd-stirring performances by hira gasy troupes.
      Big Red, compiled for the mid-price Nascente label by Ian Anderson, is an attractive, timely introduction to the varied riches of Malagasy music already available on the world market, drawing on eighteen of the hundred or so extant CD releases. It’s not label-tied; the tracks are from a number of foreign labels (though, as usual with compilations, the occasional transnational wouldn’t release a desired track) and from Madagascar’s Mars label.
      Here are many of the most creative performers, commercial bands to brilliant soloists and legendary players, international tourers or not, from around the island, with key instruments such as valiha, marovany, guitar, kabosy, accordion, harmonica, sodina, fiddle, snickety hand percussion and drums, and intricately syncopated dance rhythms such as salegy and tsapika. Throughout there’s the exuberantly melodious, tightly harmonising Malagasy singing.
      The distinctive playing styles are often personal rather than simply regional or tribal; the most talented musicians evolve new approaches, such as accordionist Regis Gizavo with his dazzling right-hand syncopation over big, rolling left-hand chordal grooves, or Solomiral’s Haja, who has installed extra transducers in his electric guitar to give it an unusual dry plucked sound which connects with the music of valiha and marovany (the Madagascan tube and box zithers, heard here in the hands, among others, of Justin Vali, Rakotozafy and Madame Masy).

      Of course, there are fine musicians and bands who haven’t recorded, even for cassette. Way back in 1985, when the outside world was fairly familiar with televised lemurs and chameleons but very little was heard of the Malagasy people or their music, Ben Mandelson and Roger Armstrong went in search, and recorded material for Globestyle’s Madagasikara series of LPs.
      Volume 3, now released on CD with an extra track and new booklet notes, is devoted to Rakoto Frah, the most famous player of the breathy, end-blown flute, the sodina, with a dancing, syncopating style. He’s been a prolific maker of tunes and songs, leading both hira gasy and famadihana groups, with their different requirements and musical styles, and both aspects are featured on Flute Master Of Madagascar, in which he plays with a group comprising two other sodina players, thrumming kabosy, ambio (claves), military-style rope-tensioned snare and bass drums, and the voices of two of his young grand-daughters. For a taste, there’s a track on Big Red.


© 1999 Andrew Cronshaw
 

You're welcome to quote from reviews on this site, but please credit the writer and fRoots.

Links:
fRoots - The feature and review-packed UK-based monthly world roots music magazine in which these reviews were published, and by whose permission they're reproduced here.

It's not practical to give, and keep up to date, current contact details and sales sources for all the artists and labels in these reviews, but try Googling for them, and where possible buy direct from the artists.
CDRoots.com in the USA, run by Cliff Furnald, is a reliable and independent online retail source, with reviews, of many of the CDs in these reviews; it's connected to his excellent online magazine Rootsworld.com 

For more reviews click on the regions below

NORDIC        BALTIC        IBERIA (& islands)   

CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE, & CAUCASUS   

OTHER EUROPEAN        AMERICAS        OTHER, AND WORLD IN GENERAL

- Back to Reviews Introduction page -