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 Paris March 2008 Branly Museum
 Mahsa Vahdat | Iran
Mahsa Vahdat talks of the challenges of teaching a millenium-old music tradition to neophytes in the French capital. She compares the experience to those in Tehran where she is professor of the maqam traditions that have forged classical Persian music. The exchange between us moves onto her recent album releases and the realities of being an artist in Iran where public performances by women are partly banned.
SETTING: In March 2008, the music department of the Branly museum in Paris invited Mahsa Vahdat to lead a workshop on Iranian vocal music. The three-day exchange preluded the April 12 concert at the prestigious Théatre de la Ville by Mahsa and her equally-gifted sister Marjan.
The interview with Mahsa is part of a 20-minute programme by Radio France International (RFI) on two contrasting music forms in present-day Iran. The other is a fascinating hybrid of Persian, Arab, Indian and African styles created in southern Iranian cities like Boushehr. For years, it has been performed by the Paris-based Shanbehzadeh Ensemble and its leader Saieed Shanbehzadeh. The Cité de la Musique and its music director Alain Weber invited them to be part of a weekend called “Via Zanzibar: Africa in the Orient”. This programme was first broadcast by RFI’s weekly music show World Tracks.
April 16th 2008
2008-04-15 |
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Paris, March 2008.
Richard Bona | Cameroun, États-Unis
What characterises Richard Bona’s music career is his creative drive; his fecund exchanges with fellow-artists; and his unquenching desire to perform live. Bona’s concerts are adrenalin-pumping affairs punctuated by humour and innovation. Bona finally releases an album that distils these raucous exchanges with the public. Richard Bona Makes You Sweat includes nine songs that the Cameroonian promises will help listeners lose some weight. He chose to record the CD in Budapest, one of 170+ venues he visited in 2007 because, as he says, a friendship has developed over the decade he has passed coming through the Hungarian capital. But the punishing concert schedule he has imposed on himself has not stopped Bona from recording his eighth album, set to come out in 2009.
SETTING: Richard Bona jetted into the French capital in March to promote his first live album which includes a DVD extract of his energy-packed cocnert in July 2007 in Budapest. This exclusive exchange was first broadcast by Radio France International and its weekly programme World Tracks.
April 16th 2008
2008-04-15 |
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Interview Bourges 2007
Mystic Revelation Of Rastafari | Jamaïque
Part ONE : Producer and manager Brother Sam has been part of the Mystic adventure since the early Sixties. He and his fellow-travellers describe the prejudice and hostility the band overcame to continue their music based on the three drums, the bass, the fundeh and the repeater. And we also hear from the controversial Capleton, whose homophobic lyrics fuelled a campaign to boycott his music that ended in June 2007.
Part TWO : The Abyssinians were part of a memorable evening of reggae at the Zenith concert hall in Paris in mid-2007. Backstage they reveal their antagonism with Coxone in Jamaica. We also have further exchanges with the livewire Capleton and the pioneers of reggae music, the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari.
SETTING :
The 2007 Printemps de Bourges festival devoted an entire evening to Jamaican music, from the pappies who helped invent the reggae genre, the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari, to the fiery dancehall style exported by Capleton. Two generations, two philosophies that who met in this town in central France. They music and philosophy are explored in this two-part radio programme first broadcast by World Tracks, a weekly show produced by Radio France International.
March 19th, 2008
2008-03-18 |
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Music Freedom Day, 2008
Louis Mhlanga | Zimbabwe
Louis Mhlanga is one of several artists featured in this 24-minute special on Music Freedom Day 2008. The others are his colleague Eric van der Western, the Basque singer Fermin Muturuza and the Ivorian reggaeman Fadal Dey. All of them have had to survive the pressures of censorship and other forms of human rights abuse.
SETTING: On the eve of his concert at the Satellit Café in Paris, Louis Mhlanga and Eric van der Western were invited to the studios of Radio France International to talk about their long collaboration around the sounds and rhythms of southern Africa. They also brought up the forms of censorship they have been confronted with in the course of their long collaboration. These comments are part of a special programme devoted to Music Freedom Day 2008, organised every March 3rd by the Danish-based NGO Freemuse.
February 27th 2008
2008-02-28 |
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Raul Midon, Paris October 2007
Raul Midon | États-Unis
Midon goes over the challenges he has had to meet in order to assert himself as a major solo artist. He describes the musicians and styles that have influenced his distinctive sound. Despite his recent success, he says, he continues to struggle in the United States and believes European audiences are more receptive to his music and one-man shows. And he has a hard time relating to the policies of his current rightwing government.
SETTING: In the Zebra restaurant of Paris’ 16th district, Raul Midon cuts an unusual figure. Draped in his khaki overcoat and necessarily dark glasses, he opens up with a little bit of shyness to the probes and queries of the journalist. But once he warms up, Midon is hard to stop in his passionate defence of his music and his denunciations of the world around him.
This interview was made possible thanks to the precious work of the French PR company LC Les Filles and its gregarious founder Christine. It was first broadcast by the English department of Radio France International and its flagship programme World Tracks.
February 2008
2008-02-26 |
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Bill T Jones
Bill T Jones | États-Unis
Bill T. Jones and Yungchen Lhamo describe the challenge of creating this exchange between dance, the voice and stripped-down percussions. This was a unique experience, the first time Europe’s most famous museum had been transformed for such artistic purposes. Jones describes his emotions and reflects on what in his career prepared him for such an experience.
SETTING: The one-hour dance programme was set in one of the Louvre Museum’s most spectacular locations. It stretched one hundred metres from the “Slaves” sculpture by Michaelangelo (in the Renaissance Arch) to the steps of the “Winged Victory of Samothrace”. Jones danced through the connecting sculpture galleries, created under Napoleon III, as Yungchen Lhamo sent her voice into ethereal heights and Jodelet joined them with powerful Oriental sounds. This choreography was part of the Louvre’s carte blanche invitation to artist Anselm Kiefer who chose the theme of “frontiers”. The piece was called “Walking the Line”.
February 2008.
2008-02-12 |
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Black Umfolosi, Rainforest Festival 2007
Black Umfolosi | Zimbabwe
Final programme in a four-part series on this festival on the lip of one of the few remaining rainforests in the world. The series was broadcast as the world leaders debated at the UN Kyoto Climate Conference in Bali. It seemed appropriate, therefore, to ask participants and observers at this music gathering about the challenges to the music and culture that have been provoked by the disappearance of the primary rainforests of Sarawak. During this programme, we visit a controversial Timber Museum as well as the village of Kampung Mongkos. There, we see that music still has a social and economic role despite the pressures of modernisation. And we return to the tenth edition of the Rainforest World Music Festival to enjoy some of the sounds of the outstanding Zimbabwean group Black Umfolosi.
SETTING: The Sarawak Cultural Village is a 40 minutes drive from the Sarawak capital Kushing. This is where the Malaysian tourist authorities have been organising one of the most unusual music gatherings in the world. Co-sponsored by a certain beer brand, it is set in the heart of the primary rainforest, and attracts tourists and local music aficionados in their thousands. The Ensemble Kaboul were one of almost 20 bands invited in an international line-up of musicians that was eclectic both in origin and in quality. The programme was first broadcast by World Tracks, the flagship music programme on Radio France International.
2008-01-28 |
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Interview Ensemble Kaboul
Ensemble Kaboul | Afghanistan
Part 3 of a four-part series a festival set in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, Borneo. The previous 20-minute programmes featured the likes of sape player Jerry Kamit and the Tuvans Huun Huur Tu (see these artists in the archives of Mondomix). In this part, the event founder Randy Raine Roesch describes the festival’s evolution in the past decade. We also hear from the Ensemble Kaboul who have rarely performed in such difficult conditions of humidity to such an enthusiastic audience. And there is a healthy dose of controversy as representatives of the local Penan tribes protest at the festival doors against the deforestation policies on the island.
The final part features the Zimbabwean group Black Umfolosi.
SETTING: The Sarawak Cultural Village is a 40 minutes drive from the Sarawak capital Kushing. This is where the Malaysian tourist authorities have been organising one of the most unusual music gatherings in the world. Co-sponsored by a certain beer brand, it is set in the heart of the primary rainforest, and attracts tourists and local music aficionados in their thousands. The Ensemble Kaboul were one of almost 20 bands invited in an international line-up of musicians that was eclectic both in origin and in quality. The programme was first broadcast by World Tracks, the flagship music programme on Radio France International.
2008-01-23 |
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Interview Huun Huur Tu
Huun Huur Tu | Tuva (République de)
This is the second part of a four-part series on the Rainforest World Music gathering in Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia. In this twenty-minute feature, two of the 20 groups invited to this tenth anniversary edition, Huun Huur Tu and Tarika Be (Madagascar) discuss their emotions at playing so far from home. But there is also controvery as representatives of the indigenous Penan tribes protest at the festival doors against the deforestation policies on the island.
SETTING : The Sarawak Cultural Village is about 40 minutes away from the Sarawak capital Kushing. This is where the Malaysian tourist authorities have been organising one of the most unusual music gatherings in the world. Co-sponsored by a certain beer brand, it is set in the heart of the primary rainforest, and attracts tourists and local music aficionados in their thousands. The expanded Huun Huur Tu quartet were one of almost 20 bands invited in an international line-up of musicians that was eclectic both in origin and in quality. The programme was first broadcast by World Tracks, the flagship music programme on Radio France International.
2008-01-15 |
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Maison de la Radio, Paris 2007
Marcel Khalifé | Liban
In a long exclusive exchange, Marcel Khalife describes the principle influences in a remarkable career that has touched generations of music-lovers in the Arab world. The audacious player of the ‘oud has revolutionised the classical repertoire and is now sharing stages worldwide with his sons who play the piano and percussions. Khalife’s personal courage has been tested often, having survived a fatwa and government censorship for his compositions.
SETTING
In the company of the talented journalist Maïssa Cortbaoui, Marcel Khalife accepted to answer detailed probings on his glittering career. The interview took place in the studios of Radio Monte Carlo Doualiya where Cortbaoui graciously accepted to translate Khalife’s words. The show was first broadcast by World Tracks, the flagship music programme on Radio France International. January 2008
2008-01-08 |
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