 Nonesuch Explorer Series One of the crown jewels of the Nonesuch Explorer Series, Shona Mbira Music collects some early 70s field recordings from Zimbabwe, showcasing the mbira (thumb piano), alone, in groups, and accompanied by vocals, whistling, and/or percussion. It's beautiful, shimmering stuff, cascading down like a soft rainforest waterfall. (Clearly my notion of waterfalls owes more to soft-core porn movies where people pass a waterfall and immediately strip down for lovemaking underneath it, as opposed to the more probable reality of, like, piranhas and shit.) The sound is deeply earthy and evocative of distant African villages where the children all have big smiles on their faces and you are hailed as a hero because you have Nike shoes. Er … perhaps I came away with the wrong evocation. I'm probably supposed to object to that characterization. Well come on now! If you can be a hero for something so simple, wouldn't you? Perhaps this "world music" is clouding my brain, giving me all sorts of distorted colonialist visions that have nothing to do with reality. It probably doesn't help that the furthest out into the world I tend to go is, like, Tower Records. I should therefore probably get back to the review at hand. If you're looking to get beyond your Peter Gabriel Passion CD and get something more "real," this is the disc. If you were to only have one disc of African music, it could easily be this and you'd be in good shape. Well, aside from your fat ass, that is.
Review by Susannah Huffs |