January 2006Issue 386



Songs of the Volcano

Under the shadow of the Tavurvur volcano of East New Britain in Papua New Guinea, a remarkable project has been taking shape in the form of Songs of the Volcano, a double CD and DVD from guitarist Bob Brozman and 60 local musicians from the tiny town of Rabaul. It’s not often that we can say that an album represents the heart of a community in the way that this one does. Brozman, a New Yorker with an indefatigable passion for collaboration on the one hand and the metal-bodied acoustic instruments known as National guitars on the other, has long been pursuing a project he terms ‘world blues’.

With the five-stringed bands that he joins on this album’s 16 tracks, this doesn’t translate into a generic 12-bar blues of the Delta kind but more of a sing-and-strum style, which mostly favours unison over counterpoint. Tuned up high, the guitars and ukuleles of the New Guinean bands have a style that sounds like a raw Hawaiian orchestra, one shorn of all so-called exoticisms.

Brozman takes a back seat for the album’s songs, leaving the spotlight to bands with such splendid names as Eagle Voice, Drop Sun and Lions 2000. It’s only a pity that translations of the songs aren’t provided, and it’s to Phil Donnison’s fascinating documentary that we turn for added flavour: volcanic ash, lush forests and stringbands playing a defiant beat.

Product information
by Papua New Guinea Stringbands with Bob Brozman
Publisher
Riverboat
Product number
TUGCD 1040CD
Star rating
***

Louise Gray




also by...
THIS AUTHOR

Folk Songs for the Five Points
Change is at the heart of this.

Segu Blue
Ngoni ba – ‘the big lute’

Volk

Burlesque

Language Tools
Powered by Ultralingua

Join over 10,000 people just like you. Get e-mail updates about new content, issue alerts, contests, and more!

other articles
FROM THIS ISSUE

Urban Explosion: the facts

The Best of 2005

Welcome to Squatter Town
By 2030 there will be over two billion squatters worldwide. Richard Swift reports on their attempt to carve out their own piece of urban space.

At the top of the hill
A poet’s view of from Rio’s favelas by Gabriela Tôrres Barbosa.

Squatter citizens
Profiles from the frontlines: the politics of survival in some of the world’s grittiest slums.

recently
IN THIS COLUMN

Soul Science
Fusion of West African proto-blues and Western electric guitar

Kala
Sri Lankan artist from West London

Afriki
by Habib Koité & Bamada

Fucking Cowboys
by Gnawa Diffusion

Nights at the Circus
Nights at the Circus by Bishi

Comicopera
Comicopera by Robert Wyatt






Voices from the margins:

Multimedia: video, podcasts, and more.