So here we are, winter still has its cold grip on the hip and the weak alike, but the sky is full and glorious blue and I'm rooting and tooting in the Goodwill store, looking to find me some fuzzy warbles to make it seem less like the frozen tundra here that it is. Digging, you know, down on my hands and knees going "Dionne Warwick, Dionne Warwick, Randy Travis, Randy Travis, Mason & Profit" and, every so often coming up for air and taking some seriously deep breaths cos its getting stifling in there. The shop is big - football pitch big - and there's a guy standing over by the broken vcr's and midi systems trying every one out and writing stuff down in a notepad. There's an electric typewriter you won't be able to lift, and even if you do you probably won't find a ribbon for it. The clothing is colour coded and there are no jumpers any more but it looks pretty.
Above the records, which are on the lowest shelf so you have to get down on your knees, are cd's - loads of them. In absolutely no order whatsoever and, to make it worse there are CD Roms in there, and other pc games and crap that fell out of a sunday paper. Opposite these are the DVD's, all priced at $5 in spite of many of them being dollar store public domain movies that you can download from the internet for free and totally legally.
Anyway, the vinyl sludge gives way to a stack of Folkways records, mostly from Africa or the middle east. The first couple are so badly scratched that I send them skimming out over the racks of rainbow clothing, whistling past the ears of deaf pensioners trailing oxygen tanks and digging for cigarettes or their heart monitors from their bags to be embedded in the far wall like a series of post-modernist ducks.
The first thing of interest is a belly dancing record - its more of a Persian classical music lp but I'm guessing the selling point was a long forgotten craze in America for suburban middleclass boredoms to shake their hips and serve hummus on friday lunchtimes to other, equally bored suburbanites. But hey! It's the beginning of a stack. Now we've got music from Morrocco, Music from the Ouled Nail and, ultimately before we slip back into mediocrity and Polka albums, The Sacred Guitar & Violin Music of the Modern Aztecs. Its orange, pretty close to Mint as you're likely to ever see and has a big red, felt-tip pen cross in one corner - bound at one time to send it to the dump bin in a store catering for lovers of ABBA, Billy Joel, Badfinger and the occasional doodlings of some long-forgotten punk/folk/reggae band that never sold as many records as they thought. This was just littering up the racks, and, as CD's would be on their way in soon anyhow it didn't really matter that they were dumping stuff that never sold. Maybe one person bought this record - I know that someone did because it was part of a collection - unless the local radio station was clearing out the unplayed. That happens a lot here, there are many records in my shelves that once graced the local community radio's vault, but I'm digressing.
Man and instruments, somewhere in south America (actually Puyecaco, Municipal of Ixhuatlan de Madero, Veracruz) and recorded during 1972-73 and issued in 1977. It's still available from Folkways on one of their custom CD's or as a download so I'm guessing this was quite a find. it didn't take very long for the album to become one of my favourites, I mean its really that good. Somewhere between Cajun/Zydeco and the twee worldbeat pop nonsense of The Penguin Cafe Orchestra. To begin with, the first few seconds are tuning up and then it launches into one of the most glorious, scraping, thruming, see-sawing dance tunes you're ever likely to hear. This really is celebratory music for social gatherings, for days of wining and dining and sniffing the roses. Or for drinking the wine and dancing like nobody is watching before collapsing into the rose bushes. The beat is slightly off but the song never falters - you can hear people talking, perhaps calling out prayers or taking requests whilst the bottle and maybe the hat, are passed around.
Sacred Guitar & Violin Music is music for circles - circles of friends and of strangers and of circles to give thanks for our friends and strangers. It is the never ending heart beating beneath the skin of the earth and it is the sound of birds swarming in the evening sky. I could trip out and say its music for the birds and bee's - or perhaps more honestly it's for a version of the Wicker Man where it all turns out right in the end.
The different tracks are all similar in their meandering and scraping. The second track kicks off by dropping the tempo but the sensation of langour still remains from the first, it is a changing of gears and this time the sounds of voices are more invasive but still the music winds on and on, like a folk dance extending into the small hours, gradually the beat reaches a point where all involved are in some sort of trance. The violin takes on the sound of Cales Viola on All Tomorrows Parties from the first Velvet Underground lp - maybe that was the Modern Aztecs favourite album - until it winds down and the loud cluckering of chickens is heard before a series of chopping thuds silences the bird sounds suggesting either a sacrificial ritual or lunch. I don't know, whatever was on the descriptive notes once included in the sleeve now escapes me because it is lost.
This is ritual folk music but it drifts into drone and you'd be entirely forgiven for thinking it a weird jazz album if you happened to walk in on the middle, but to be honest I always have a blast playing this. Recordings for folkways always leave the impression in my mind of a middle aged couple with a Nagra and some microphones sitting on a log in some dusty village, perhaps sipping champagne chilled in a stream and almost invariably White. Of course, listening is an entirely subjective experience.
These are some notes I found online, possibly the original liner notes, but who knows anymore?
"The Aztecs are one of Mexico’s largest Indian
groups, numbering over 1,000,000 and they are
spread over many parts of contemporary Mexico.
One area they inhabited was the southern and
southwestern fringe of the Huasteca - an ancient
and independent kingdom in eastern Mexico
located along the Gulf of Mexico near the mouth of
the Panuce River. The region is also inhabited by
the Huastecs, the Otomi and the Tepehua Indians.
This recording was made during 1972 and 1973 in
the Village of Puyecaco, Municipio of Ixhuatlan de
Madero, Veracruz. The songs recorded include
Xochipitsauak, perhaps the most widely known
piece of sacred music in the entire Huasteca; a
series of sacred music that accompanies the short
ritual carried out at each house during the winter
solstice fertility ceremony and the Dance of the
Tlamatiketl where the height of the winter solstice
fertility ritual has been reached. Also three
Ayakachmitotia’ rattle dances (Nopalli’, Koatl and
Ehtokani’) that are the typical musical background
for the ritual dancing performed for their fertility
diety Tonantsi’ during the winter solstice ceremony
called Tlaketelilis."
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