One of these is the subject of a song by Barry Manilow. (Okay, Manilow scholars -- the song is about a hotel, but you can see the hotel from the beach.)
The other is an even bigger hit from a decade earlier -- the Girl from Ipanema. The stage decor in this version mimics the pavement patterns common on Portuguese and Brazilian public places, including the sidewalks near both of these beaches.
This version is the most familiar. Another YouTube video includes two interesting versions, one from a movie and one from a jazz club in Germany.
In many ways, my introduction to world music began in Rondônia, the state in the western Amazon of Brazil where I completed my dissertation research in 1996. I was there to study the connections between urbanization and deforestation, but the friends I met during my three-month stay were eager to teach me other things about their country, and many of them were particularly interested in music.
The CDs that were recommended during that stay and during briefer research trips in 2000 and 2003 formed the basis of Music of the Americas in Global Context -- a web page and public lecture series I offered in the mid-aughts.
With a couple of delightful exceptions, the music they shared was from elsewhere in Brazil. The local music scene in Rondônia has flourished in recent years, along with the arts in general. Thanks to social media connections, I learned just yesterday of a YouTube playlist dedicated to the very local music of Rondônia.
I am glad to be able to explore these performances with students who are studying global music in general and the Amazon in particular.
It was written, produced, and performed by artists born in the United States.
But I include it on this blog because it is has a story -- a big, beautiful story that overlaps with many of the stories of world music.
Fast Car -- and the story of its recent revival -- is best told in several videos. The 1988 song is the second track on Tracy Chapman's eponymous 1990 album (CD/vinyl/cassette), which we played repeatedly in our home and (not-so-fast) car in the years after its release.
Chapman's success was as ground-breaking as the song was ubiquitous. The Grammy she earned with it was among many firsts for a black female artist. And the song stayed with an entire generation of men and women, regardless of race.
The live version recored at Nelson Mandela's 70th birthday celebration has garnered over 5 million views on YouTube alone. (Read "the story behind this performance" for the bittersweet details of how she ended up on the Wembley stage for the second time that day. She was originally scheduled only to perform Talkin 'bout a Revolution -- which is equally amazing and important.)
Among the white folks who enjoyed the song was Chester Combs, a North Carolinian more or less my age. Like me, he played the song so much that it became one of his son's favorite songs. Luke Combs was born two years after Chapman released the song, the same year as it was released on the album.
Young Luke grew up to become a country musician and in his mid 20s he started singing Fast Car at his live shows. People sang along. Again, everyone of a certain age already knew the words. His cover is the same song, beautifully reimagined but at the same time only subtly different from the original.
This version of the song did several things at once. It helped to earn awards and set records for Luke Combs. It earned Tracy Chapman Song of the Year from the Country Music Association -- something nice to go along with multiple nominations and one award from the Grammys and MTV a full generation earlier.
And like all great cross-over successes, it introduced artists to new audiences. I am willing to bet that there as as many "Tracy who?" as "Luke who?" questions being asked when this news broke. I remember learning of a group called Black-eyed Peas only after they recorded a few songs with Brazilian bossa nova singer Sérgio Mendes (speaking of world music).
From NPR's All Things Considered, we learn about two of the 2024 Grammy Award categories: Best African Music Performance and Best Alternative Jazz Album. Best Pop Dance Recording is another new category not mentioned in the NPR report. As reporter Rodney Carmichael points out, the inclusion of an African category comes far too late and is far two small a vessel for the music of 1.4 billion people in 54 countries with at least 30 music genres, but it is a start. I could not help notice the irony that even on NPR, his comments were tucked into the back half of a story on two new categories, rather than a stand-alone piece on African music. But here we are.
Winners in all 94 categories will be announced on February 4 in an arena now known for bogus currency. Meanwhile, five nominees in each category are listed on the Grammy site. It was easy for me to find an "official" video on YouTube for each nominee in the African Musical Performance category, which I share here. I notice that all of these have had dozens of millions of views so far.
I cannot think of Grammys and Africa without thinking of the incomparable Angélique Kidjo of Benin, who has won a number of Grammys and who performed her Afirika at the Grammys in 2020, shortly before I saw her perform the same amazing work in Providence, Rhode Island, about two weeks before the world shut down.
This song sustained me through the very hard times that were to come and still always brings a song.
I often say that "It's what you learn after you know it all that counts." When I decided to repeat it here, I decided I should find out who said it. And I learned that it was basketball coach John Wooden, who apparently learned and taught many things in his 99-plus years.
I was reminded of this aphorism because I grew up Baptist -- very Baptist -- and therefore know the song "Amazing Grace" quite well, and I know something about its origins and context. But in 12 minutes with NPR journalist Samantha Balaban and historian James Walvin, I learned quite a bit more.
They discuss how Walvin decided to write Amazing Grace: A Cultural History of the Beloved Hymn, and play excerpts from several notable recordings -- including a very surprising one that was his real impetus. I won't spoil this, but I will advise that I listened to this story twice (so far) and was moved to tears both times. The discussion begins with the sonorous tones of the great Paul Robeson and includes Detroit legend Aretha Franklin as a pivotal figure in the history of the hymn.
My search for an image of Robeson led me to Rutgers University, which remains proud of this 1919 graduate, only the 3rd African American to attend.
At this point, readers might be asking what this has to do with a class in World Music. This song, after all, has just about the deepest possible roots in U.S. culture, and world music is sometimes describes as "local music from out there."
The story is included here for a few reasons. First, it is an excellent example of the work of using music to explore cultural geography. Second, it reminds us that no single song fully can represent a place. Those who know the United States will recognize that this sheds important light on some aspects of the country but by no means all.
Third and perhaps most importantly, it provides a perfect opportunity to discuss whether. world music encompasses the Gospel, Motown, Jazz, or other music of importance to this country's African diaspora.
Lagniappe
As the interview makes clear, this hymn has been recorded countless times, so it is not surprising that my personal favorite was not included. I remember being truly astonished the first time I heard the 1997 recording by LeAnn Rimes, who was only 15 years old at the time. She captured Amazing Grace with amazing gravitas.
The Planet Sings playlist on Spotify is a convenient spot to find the music used in the course. If we use it in the class and it is on Spotify, the intention is for it to be on this list.
As convenient as the list is, it is not sorted, categorized, or annotated. The purposes and contexts of some selections might not be evident until we get to them in class discussion.
One benefit of such a list is the ability to play and replay certain selections. This can be especially helpful for music that we enjoy but that uses languages we do not speak fluently. I have sometimes noticed something interesting in a song only after hearing it a 50th time.
We will have a lot to say about David Byrne in this course, so this blog post is likely to grow over time. I remember the first time I heard of his band The Talking Heads, from a radio ad that was popular when I was in high school. A booming baritone voice intoned, "Talking Heads has a new album; it's called Fear of Music." We had albums back then; I became a big fan during college, when my friend Karl (who coincidentally, perhaps, is the guy who introduced me to geography) gave me a cassette mix tape he had created and labeled "Talking Heads and Grateful Deads." Karl also took me to my first and only, Dead show, incidentally.
Photo: Jordan Cronenweth / A24 by way of Smithsonian Magazine
All of which is to say that I was immersed in the music of David Byrne and pleased to find out that he and I had lived in the same town (Arbutus, Maryland), albeit many years apart. I watched Stop Making Sense during its first run -- and I'm delighted to see that this groundbreaking concert film has been re-released forty years later.
After Talking Heads, Byrne moved on to what I consider more important work. I used to say that he was instrumental in the foundation of "world music." I just found his 1999 New York Times article entitled Crossing Music's Borders: 'I Hate World Music' -- so I might need to modify that narrative. Might need to. He describes some difficulties with the production and consumption of "world music" in an article that also explains why it is essential and why it is equally difficult to define with any clarity.
His complaint is essential reading for anyone exploring a vast category of music that he helped to make available to us through his label Luaka Bop. I learned a lot about several genres of music in Brazil and Cuba because of his efforts, so I welcome his cautions. (I recommend the article without hesitation, but with a small caveat: it is astonishing that the NYT editors did not catch "Columbian" used for "Colombian" and "it's" used for "its." Egad!)
Despite the gloomy title, the article includes this important passage:
For example, there are guitar bands in Africa that can be, if you let them, as inspiring and transporting as any kind of rock, pop, soul, funk or disco you grew up with. And what is exciting for me is that they have taken elements of global (Western?) music apart, examined the pieces to see what might be of use and then re-invented and reassembled the parts to their own ends. Thus creating something entirely new.
Here Byrne offers an encouraging counter-example to the kind of musical "tourism" he warns about throughout the article. The musicians he admires most are not riding the world-music bus; they are driving it. The innovation is not just from American and European musicians sampling and absorbing the work of others, but rather from musicians worldwide creating as equals.
A very fine example of this is the work of his good friend -- and my hero -- Benin-born superstar Angelique Kidjo. I had been enjoying her work for years -- often including her homage to Yemaya in my teaching about syncretism -- before I learned of her friendship with David Byrne.
Her re-imagining of his Once in a Lifetime (another song I often use in my teaching) closes the creative circle. She takes elements of his work and incorporates it into her own. The result is a series of videos like the one above and an entire concert tour, which I was lucky enough to experience in Providence in February 2020 -- my last hurrah before the pandemic sent us into our houses.
