New Music Tuesday: Can’s ‘Tago Mago,’ Adanowsky and David Lynch’s Debut by Drewtewksbury

HOST: Our regular music critic Drew Tewksbury reviews three new albums. He takes a listen to the latest from the Mexico City performer known as Adanowsky. He also talks about music from the legendary German band Can and the first album by director David Lynch.

Adanowsky’s Amador

DREW TEWKSBURY: Adanowsky is the project of Mexico City singer songwriter Adan Jodorowsky. His intimate album, “Amador” explores love ballads from around the world. There’s creaky saloon pianos, gentle strums, and Adan’s Serge Gainsbourg-style croons. The album is music for rainy mornings with a French press brewing in the kitchen. It’s melancholy music for the last couple on the floor, slow-dancing after the bar has cleared and the chairs are stacked.

Adanowsky – Un sol con corazón from Adanowsky on Vimeo.

If the name Jodorowsky sounds familiar, that’s because Adan is the son of Chilean cult film director, Alejandro Jodorowsky. His father’s films “El Topo,” “Santa Sangre” and “The Holy Mountain” are mainstays of film schools and midnight cinemas across the world.

Adan grew up in a avant-garde household in Paris, where George Harrison taught him his first guitar chords, and James Brown showed him how to dance. As a boy, Adan starred in his father’s grotesque horror film, “Santa Sangre.” His music, however, is all about beauty and love.

Can’s Tago Mago

Can is the kind of band that can only happen once. With their minimalist rock beats and far out sonic textures they laid down the foundation for future bands like Kraftwerk, Sonic Youth, Radiohead, and even Kanye West. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of their landmark album “Tago Mago,” the band has reissued the record, with expanded live sessions. The reissue reveals Can’s visionary sound that came straight from Germany, before punk and funk.

Everything about Can sounds so modern, that it’s hard to believe that they were playing in the same time as Led Zeppelin and Captain & Tenille. Later, the band devolved into making theme songs for game shows and eventually split up. But Tago Mago remains one of their greatest experiments.

David Lynch’s Crazy Clown Time

David Lynch is known for making creepy and captivating films like “Blue Velvet,” “Mullholland Drive” and “Eraserhead.” Now, at 65, Lynch gives us his musical debut, “Crazy Clown Time.” Like you could expect, the album is evocative and otherworldy, it’s moody, and sometimes creepy. Lynch has created a pretty good collection of outer space blues and electropop.

Lynch sings and plays bluesy guitar, while his producer Dean Hurley provides the lurching drumbeats. When his vocals aren’t processed to sound like a robot, Lynch’s untrained voice strains for notes, and crawls along as he tells twisted stories. Like Lynch’s movies, not every part of this album works. Often his experiments are too esoteric. But overall, David Lynch’s debut album is fascinating piece of outsider art from one of world’s greatest innovators.

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Tony Cox speaks with Mulatu Astatke, godfather of Ethiopian jazz, or “Ethio jazz.” Astatke explains how his music has reached a global audience.

Listen to Mulatu Astatke

Produced by Drew Tewksbury

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Transcript:
TONY COX: Like many developing countries, the images out of Ethiopia are often bleak. The images of poverty, war and famine are all too familiar. But few people outside Africa are familiar with the sounds of Ethiopia.

(Soundbite of music)

COX: That is Mulatu Astatke. He is the godfather of Ethiopian jazz and thanks to crepe-digging(ph) DJs and the 2005 movie, “Broken Flowers,” his music has now reached a global audience. Mulatu joined us recently to talk about his long legacy of music making. I started by asking him why Ethio jazz was becoming popular with international audiences today.

Mr. MULATU ASTATKE (Jazz Artist): It’s been taking like actually very long time for this music to be accepted, you know? So from places I play, places I perform, and you know, things like that, and also during recording, lot of musicians seems to love it and seems to like it very much.

COX: How would you describe it, that sound?

Mr. ASTATKE: So how I described it is – is five tone against 12 is how the Ethio jazz is, like the five tone being Ethiopian scales and the twelve tone will be international known very famous permissions(ph). So it’s actually the connection of these two cultures, I should say, makes a (unintelligible).

COX: It has to me, as a listener, kind of an eclectic sound, which means to me that it’s – you’re drawing from different types of music, different cultural sounds. Is that correct or not?

Mr. ASTATKE: (unintelligible) is very Ethiopian, and what you have, actually, combined is the harmonic stretches, what we call the twelve-tone musical stretches because our musical instruments hasn’t reached to that stage, so I have actually to use pianos or guitars to actually combine three- to five-tone scales.

COX: Really. So you’re saying that the instruments that are made or created in Ethiopia don’t have the musical range for you to do the things that you want?

Mr. ASTATQE: Yeah. What I’m trying to say actually is – you see, our music usually is based on five-tone scales or what you call pentatonic. Our cultural musical instruments hasn’t been developed.

COX: Let’s go back to the 1960s in Addis Abba. Talk about the jazz music climate in your country at that time.

Mr. ASTATQE: I started the new format in America. I was at Berkeley in Boston. You know the situations mostly in the third-world countries, their attitude to music was actually very low. They have – they were taking music as a science or as a regular subject like math or physical something, whereas in developed country music has been taught in high schools, elementary schools and kindergarten as compulsory like in every subjects, you know. So I been one of the lucky African to attend high schools in England. Actually, that’s where I found out my talent because I got a chance.

So, at that time, my teachers there, European teachers there would actually teach the musicians rave and play charts from different bands here from America, actually, music charts and things like that. They could play very nice, but as far as improvisations, as far as the jazz feeling, actually, was not alone. I remember always teachers telling us at Berkeley, said, we can only give you the tools. After that it’s you what’s to do with it.

COX: Now, you were the first African student at Berkeley, correct?

Mr. ASTATQE: Exactly.

COX: What was it like for you to come from home to there, to be put in that musical surrounding, particularly given what you just described about the lack of really foundation of support?

Mr. ASTATQE: Actually, I went from England to America. So by the time I came to America, I think I was OK. I know exactly what was happening. You’re also going to Berkeley, that was like class too, to work(ph) little to what I wanted to do. So always telling us we can give you only the tools, and then I came out – off to New York. I created a music called the Ethio jazz.

(Soundbite of jazz music)

COX: Now let me ask you this. Talk about your interaction and your meeting and your involvement with the great Duke Ellington. How did that come about?

Mr. ASTATQE: Well, that was great. Duke was one of the great musician I’ve admired always in my life. Even I was staying in America whereas at Berkeley, and we also used to study his compositions, his arrangements as well. And I always wanted to, you know, to meet a great man like him. So, he came over to Ethiopia for the jazz ambassador’s tour, and that’s when I met him. So, in fact, the American embassy make me his escort, you know. I was supposed to be his escort by the American embassy.

So we’re staying at the Hilton Hotel. There we’ll be discussing about music, and I took him around, and I showed him some of our very interesting musical instruments for him to borrow it and talk about. And finally, I had the opportunity to write music for this event and perform together at the Addis Abba Hilton.

COX: That should have been something.

Mr. ASTATQE: I tell you, that was – that was my really great dream, and it happened with Duke’s band, you know. So, we’re privileged. I really thank him so much. I played my music, and all in my life, I will never forget what he said. He said, I’ve never expected this from African. That’s what he said.

COX: Interesting.

Mr. ASTATQE: So, it was very interesting.

COX: Talk for a minute, if you can, about how your music has changed. You’re the godfather, the founding father of Ethio jazz in the ’60s. Compare what that sound was then with what your sound is now.

Mr. ASTATQE: It’s about 45 years since I’ve done my recordings, you know.

COX: Mm-hmm.

Mr. ASTATQE: My dream of Ethio jazz, the future would be to upgrade Ethiopian musical instruments so they can be able to play 12-tone music. So to play Ethio jazz with our cultural instruments using all our traditional and musical instruments will be my dream.

COX: Hip-hop artists have been sampling your songs, repurpose them into new compositions. How do you feel about that?

Mr. ASTATQE: To tell you the truth, I don’t feel very well about that because my line is different than hip-hop. What I’m dreamt to those music, to those melodies, to those rhythms actually was different from the Ethio jazz. But what they did to those melodies and things and arrangements are totally different approach towards our thinking about those melodies. But anyway, people seems to love it. And I’ll just watch and see what the next move is going to be.

COX: You recently recorded an album with the UK band, the Heliocentrics. You don’t want the hip-hop artists to sample your music but you don’t mind doing this. Why is that?

Mr. ASTATQE: Well, I mean, Heliocentrics is not very hip-hop. So we try to come up with something different, work from there. So it’s like jazz fusions, all kind of things is happening on this recording, you know.

COX: I was caught by one of the songs because it had an Afro-Cuban sound to it, Cha-cha. I would not have ordinarily thought of it, Ethio jazz expanding to Afro-Cuban sound.

Mr. ASTATQE: Well, to tell you the truth, all this rhythm you mentioned are belong to Africa. That’s where the roots is and where it comes from. So, Cha-cha-cha.

COX: This is great. Thank you so much for coming here.

Mr. ASTATQE: Thank you so much.

COX: It’s been our pleasure.

Mr. ASTATKE: Great man, thank you. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.

COX: That was Mulatu Astatke, godfather of Ethiopian jazz. He joined us here at the studios of NPR WEST.

Next on News & Notes, do you know the story and intrigue behind the building of the nation’s capital? We’ll have some surprising answers from the author of a new book on the history of Washington, D.C. You’re listening to News & Notes from NPR News.

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News & Notes , November 14, 2008 · When and how do children look in the mirror and ascribe race to their identities?

As part of News & Notes’ month-long series on race, Farai Chideya takes an in-depth look at how kids develop a racial consciousness.

For insight, she speaks first with Christia Brown, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky.

Then, we hear from Marti Guzman, a mother of two bi-racial children living in Anchorage, Alaska.

Plus, independent journalist Sara Catania opens up about her childhood as one of the only whites at a predominantly black Chicago school.

 Listen In…

Behind the story: In the mornings at NPR, we usually are scrambling to get our stories done right before we go to air. For some reason or another, I had a little more time for this story, so I decided to go the extra mile. I wanted to find an African American who had been raised in predominantly white neighborhood to talk about what it was like to grow up in a place where no one looked like you. So, I aimed for the whitest place I could think of: Alaska.

After calling around in Alaska, I found Marti, a sweet woman who worked at a local elementary school. We chatted for a while about Alaska and her experience raising her bi-racial kids there, when she coyly dropped some information on me: Alaska is very racially diverse. With many different indigenous peoples, Russians, Asians, Latinos, and everyone in between, Alaska was as multicultural as it comes.

Now as for Maine, that’s another story.

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