Mar 29/07
Vaovy
Maybe it’s my Ukrainian ancestry bubbling to the surface of my music taste, but I love a good accordion. Squeezyboy, you know what I’m saying.
Régis Gizavo plays a mean accordion for a group called Vaovy from Madagascar. The band is led by Jean Gabin Fanovona, a prolific Antandroy singer and composer, who has only recently risen out of obscurity on the world music scene.
I love the mix of sounds, rhythm and harmony on this album. The Antandroy violin sounds amazing over the multi-part harmonized vocals, traditional percussion and rather Western-sounding harmonica and accordian.
Music from Madagascar has a tendency to drive me a bit nuts, but I find I can listen to this album over and over.
Doesn’t the harmonica on Mafé sound a bit like an African Blues Traveler?
You can grab Vaovy’s two album over at Calabash.
this is the kind of African music I can’t really get into… it sounds like a Disney soundtrack for the Lion King or something like that.
Too melodic, too clean, too flat… and then again, I am biased and I can only tolerate accordions in the hands of Tango musicians or Eastern European gypsies.
I once went to Malawi and bought a bunch of tapes of Alan Namoko and Kasambwe brothers band. I lost them. Do you have any of that.
Cheers, d
Brilliant !
Thank you so much, I’m loving it.
By the way, have you found the free African Dance album on Emusic ?
http://www.emusic.com/album/11021/11021810.html
There’s some good stuff on there.
I don’t have any idea what Mafé means. I can only think it means gorgeous!
He put out a fantastic record “Stories,” in 2006 with Louis Mhlanga and David Mirandon. Accordion, Guitar, Drums –Madagascar, Zimbabwe, France. Amazingly beautiful.
(If you have other African accordion music, we’d like to play it on our Accordion Noir radio show in Vancouver, Canada. I only have a bit and I like it a lot.)
I just heard that there’s more accordion students in Japan than any other country. We play some weird rock and roll coming from there.
Bruce,
There’s lots of African music featuring according, particularly on the islands off southern Africa like Mayotte, Rodrigues, Reunion, etc.
Check-out these posts:
http://bennloxo.com/archives/2006/04/21/island-accordimania/
and this
http://bennloxo.com/archives/2006/04/19/cane-harvest-expressions/
and this
http://bennloxo.com/archives/2005/01/24/franco-deux/
and this
http://bennloxo.com/archives/2006/05/25/gnawa-a-little-further-south/
Cheers,
Matt
re. Alan Namoko and Kasambwe Brothers Band
Alan Namoko CD and many other Malawian CDs books etc. can be bought from http://www.pamtondo.com/index.php?sectionid=1
I love accordion… did you know I actually drove to St. Catharines, ON to interview Walter Ostanek, “Canada’s Polka King” and randomly ask people there if they’d even heard of him (most didn’t; one girl said, “I think he’s the guy who owns this building”… it was a hair salon). I think he even tops Celine Dion in Grammy nominations. You can read about him here: http://www.canadaswalkoffame.com/inductees/01_walter_ostanek.xml.htm
Clearly, though, this Gizavo dude is way cooler.
nice cuts, thank you.
The harmonised vocals remind me of a lot of Polynesian and Melanesian music I heard back home in New Zealand and in the Pacific Islands. I know that malagasy is linked to the malayo-polynesian language family, but maybe there are long undiscovered musical links too…?