Happy Tuesday, BiNgos,
Remember when I talked about that metal band, Usnea, and used them as a convenient segue into goofing about capes in metal? Well I ran into the drummer of Usnea at a bar last weekend and he was super nice and, although I meant no disrespect, I did kind of laugh at the cape situation so I would like to offer an official retraction of said laugh and say that Usnea is cool and seem like very nice gentlemen.
Let’s get into it.
Santana's Daughter - Fimber Bravo
I sometimes worry about the future. In the era of instant availability, it’s tempting to view the world through the lens of what’s in front of you. The huge repercussions of this are the digital echo chamber that leads to the confirmation bias that buoys things like “alternative facts” and the whole Q conspiracy situation. The lighter repercussions are that beautiful pieces of art get lost in the waves of digital chatter. If you haven’t fed your output into the machine, it becomes difficult to discover.
Not that I am advocating for feeding one’s art to the ever-hungry maw of social media content, but I sometimes worry about future generations ability to stumble upon outsider art and music that blows their mind as physical media continues to go the way of the dinosaur. For instance, to look at Fimber Bravo’s Spotify presence, you might imagine that he just started making music in 2013. Combine that with his lack of presence on places like Wikipedia and other digital publications and he becomes a difficult artist to research outside of his most recent offerings.
The truth is, Bravo has been honing his skill as a master of the steel drum or pan drum for decades. First in the 60s in groups in Trinidad where the steelpan had been outlawed for the first half of the 20th century. Then in England where Bravo was a part of the 20th Century Steel Band who’s song Heaven and Hell is on Earth was sampled by everyone from Grandmaster Flash to the Jungle Brothers to Jennifer Lopez not to mention being interpolated by Gwen Stefani for the hook of Hollaback Girl.
Although the two solo records you can find online were both released well into the 21st century, I’m guessing there is a lot more to Bravo’s discography. In an interview with Huck Magazine, the interviewer mentions a collaboration with Senegalese kora player Kadialy Kouyate from 2004 that resulted in an album called Small Talk. Bravo happily offers to send the interviewer a copy of the record, but sadly for the rest of us, the only traces are a Discogs entry where one has the option of paying 32 British pounds just for shipping the CD and a live version of one song posted to YouTube that has 444 views.
Fortunately, we do have the two solo records by Bravo in our digital echo chamber here. The combination of masterful musicianship and fiery politics on his 2021 record, Lunar Tredd, make for an enticing counterbalance that has me itching to learn more.
Habibi - Ali Hassan Kouban
Another artist who, despite a career as bandleader in his native Egypt since the 1950s, has relatively little recorded presence, digital or otherwise. Kuban is known as the godfather of Nubian music in Egypt, a cultural heritage of black Egyptians who’s significance can be overlooked in the cultural aggregate. Novelist Tom Robbins writes:
“Virtually everything that sparkled in the golden age of Greece was borrowed from the Egyptians, and the Egyptians adopted their routines from the royal blacks of Nubia. We moderns overlook Nubia, we forgot how proud and fancy it was. Nubia played Professor Longhair and Big Mama Thornton to Egypt’s Elvis.”
Although many of the towns his people called home were flooded to make room for Lake Nasser and the Aswan dam, Ali Hassan brought that fanciness, that rhythmic intricacy and mournful sense of melody along to the capital city of Cairo when he was a young man in the 1940s. There he found an abundance of outside influences, from other regional music like the burgeoning Ethiopian jazz scene to western pop music. Incorporating these elements with the traditional music of the Nubian people, Hassan spent decades leading groups and playing clubs in Cairo.
Why he wasn’t able to put tracks to wax until his 50th birthday escapes me so far, but once he started putting out records, his unique blend of Nubian folk and funk, jazz and pop was instantly recognizable as something special. I particularly like his second record, the cheekily named Walk Like a Nubian. Hooks for days, rump-shaker beats and production that often borders on dubby psychedelia is exactly what I’m looking for. Although Ali Hassan passed away in 2001, I’m glad these documents of his particular vision of heritage, culture and global groove live on.
That’s all for today. Thanks for listening.
I saw Usnea at the HiDive in Denver a few years ago. Love their sound. The bass players amp caught fire and he got really really mad.