​1 - African Classical Music Ensemble & Kasse Made Diabate | There Was a Time | 2009
2 - Hugh Masekela | Still Grazing: The Musical Journey of Hugh Masekela | 1966-1974
3 - Hallelujah Chicken Run Band | Take One | 1974-1980
4 - Hurray for the Riff Raff | My Dearest Darkest Neighbor | 2013
5 – Faces | Ooh La La | 1973
6 - Heartless Bastards | A Beautiful Life | 2021
7 – Tulus | Manusia | 2022
       Maliq & D’essentials | RAYA | 2020     
       Kunto Aji | Mantra Mantra | 2018
10 - Orchestre Régional de Kayes | Orchestra Régional de Kayes | 1970
OOC – Juluka | Universal Men | 1979
 
I’m back with my Top 10 Albums list for the year 2023. If you haven’t been following along, here’s a refresher on how this works: instead of rating the top ten albums that were released this year, like the Grammy’s, Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed and the vast majority of bloggers and opinion writers you’ll hear from, I’m rating the top ten albums that I heard for my first time this year. I don’t keep up with contemporary pop, personally, because a lot of it is machine-manufactured and without artistry – the same thing sculptors would say about the $100 factory-made Julius Caesar bust on your desk and the same thing artisan weavers would say about your cheap mass-produced washable rug. If you want to save money and get affordable and immediate satisfaction, I won’t judge you for listening to today’s typical pop. But if you want good music – check out some of these.
 
Of course I’m not saying that no contemporary music is good – just look at the more recent entries on this list and the other Top 10s I shared the past few years. 2022 had an album from 2022 (by Natalia Lafourcade) and this year features a 2022, a 2021, and a 2020. But I also look further back in time for my lists and I reach farther out into the broader world of music, because while it’s easy for the music of Harry Styles to reach ears in Indonesia, it’s not nearly as easy for the music of contemporary Indonesian artists to reach the ears of Americans.
 
I would also like to take a moment to recommend that, if you have to stream your music, DON’T USE SPOTIFY. Spotify has regularly paid some of the lowest royalties to artists per-stream, and they are the ones who started the streaming craze and forced a lot of very creative people to move on from recording music because you don’t have a chance to make a living at it anymore. VIRPP ranked streaming payouts in 2023 and here are some data points:
 
Tidal: $0.01284 / stream (a little more than 1 cent)
Apple Music: $0.008 / stream (eight tenths of a cent)
Amazon Music: $0.00402 / stream (less than half a cent)
Spotify: $0.00318 / stream (piss)
(YouTube, Pandora, and Deezer all pay even less)
 
 That said, let’s begin with Good Ovidius’ Top 10 Albums of 2023
 
Heard Out of Competition:
Juluka
Universal Men (1979)
Best Song: “Deliwe”
 
Universal Men isn’t rated in the Top 10 because technically speaking I had heard it before, back in 2021 or ’22, but it was on vinyl, and when I added the album to my Apple Music some of the songs weren’t included because there are different versions out there (Johnny Clegg albums can be labelled under his name or the names of the two different bands he was a part of, Juluka and Savuka, and the algorithms can struggle with this). Well in 2023 I finally heard the whole album over my car radio and really started getting to know it.
 
For me, this is some of Johnny Clegg’s best work. It was released in 1979 by Clegg and his long-time collaborator Sipho Mchunu under the bad name Juluka, which is Zulu for “Sweat.” Clegg was a white South African who spent a short while a history professor before launching his music career. He studied Zulu language, dance, and music and befriended many Zulu people, including Mchunu, and worked with members of the Zulu community to create a popular music style based on their own traditional musical language. Their live performances incorporated Zulu dance and costume, and over the years their work together was a major factor in bringing international attention to the Apartheid and ultimately ending it. Clegg was a leader of two different bands: Juluka (1979-1985) and Savuka (1986-1994; their song “Dela” was part of the soundtrack to George of the Jungle starring a young Brendan Frasier), and he had considerable solo success, but of all the work Clegg was involved in, Universal Men is some of the greatest.
 
Before you even listen to the music, Juluka made several bold statements on the album cover. The one I will highlight for now is that the work “Juluka” (Zulu for sweat) is stamped on a bar of gold – the gold that was the source of the wealth that was extracted from South African mines via the sweat of the Zulu and other indigenous peoples.
 
Musically, the melodies and instrumentations are lush. Pulsing bass drums, twanging guitars, musical bows (look it up – it’s a string on a bent stick, like a bow for an arrow, plucked while held up to the mouth; the opening and shape of the mouth is adjusted to emphasize certain overtones of the bow’s vibration to create harmonized melodies), vocal harmonies – pretty much everything you could want in classic rock and then some with the addition of southern African influence.
 
The lyrics, however, are perhaps my favorite thing about this album and about Clegg’s work in general. Each song tells a story, and the way he does it - in this album in particular - shifting back and forth between Zulu and English, creating songs-within-songs, is beautiful. The title track, Universal Men, tells the story of the Zulu people, once proud, forced into a life of slavery living at the bottom of a society built by the labor of the indigenous people but designed for outsiders. The opening verse is revealed at the end of the song to be the mournful tune sung by the Zulu workers who are the “Universal Men” of the title.
 
But my favorite song on the album is “Deliwe” which translates to something like “rejected.” This one is sung by a guy trying to convince his lover not to go away to Europe by invoking all the things about home, her family, her heritage that she will leave behind when she goes. The chorus, sung first in Zulu, then in English, then in Zulu and then English again to close the song after the saxophone-solo bridge, is a prayer to the gods for protection (whether it’s a traditional prayer I do not know). When you translate the Zulu version, it’s not literally the same as the English version – it’s close -  but the juxtaposition of the two with the same melody is fantastic. What really got me deep down amidst my heartstrings when I first heard the song this year – when I myself was in the middle of working through very painful heartbreak due to separation from someone I really cared about – was the final line of the pre-chorus, a doleful yet direct “oh Deliwe won’t you stay a while with me?” [Chorus drops here]
 
Transliteration of the chorus of “Deliwe” from the liner notes, shared with me by a member of the Johnny Clegg tribute page on facebook: Sicela kwabadala / besibhekele kulomhlaba / so’babongela
Translations of the two Zulu track titles: Unthando Luphelile – Love is Over | Inkunzi Ayihlabi Ngokumisa – The Bull Does Not Stop
Lyrics for another great song from the album, “Old Eyes” are here thanks to Cameron and Thembinkosi: https://www.chordie.com/chord.pere/www.guitaretab.com/j/juluka/270788.html
 
 
 
Number 10:
Orchestre Régional de Kayes
Orchestre Régional de Kayes (1970)
Best Song: “Sanjina”
 
I don’t know nearly as much about the history or context of the music of this album as I do about Clegg and Universal Men. Kayes is a city currently in western Mali, sitting on the Senegal River and relatively close to Mali’s border with Senegal the country. Mali, a former French colony and still an officially francophone country, covers a broad swathe of land and is home to many different groups of people with diverse and often unrelated traditions. Mali is the home of the wooden mallet keyboard instrument called the balafon and is perhaps best-known to modern musical audiences for the Mali Blues Guitar ensembles, like Tinariwen, that play traditional-esque melodies on electric guitar. The perceived relationship with American Blues music is not a coincidence, because the traditional music of Mali shares roots with the traditional music of many of the people who were kidnapped into slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries whose descendants developed the American Blues style. It’s not going back in a time machine and giving the ancestors of the Blues players an electric guitar, because those traditions have continued to develop in West Africa over the past few hundred years – instead it’s putting the electric guitar in music that shares centuries-old roots with the blues, and you still feel the connection.
 
This bit of history about the Orchestre Régional de Kayes comes from Radio Africa out of Australia ( https://www.radioafrica.com.au/Classics/Kayes.html )
 
“Kayes is situated on the Bamako-Dakar railway line in north-western Mali, just near the Senegalese border. The town is a regional capital of one of Mali's eight administrative regions. Shortly after independence Mali adopted a cultural policy which stipulated that a local orchestra must represent each region, hence the formation of the Kayes orchestra. Each year the orchestras would compete at the national arts festivals. Commencing in 1962, these "semaines" were held annually until the coup of 1968, whereafter they were held bi-annually and were known as the Biennales. At the arts festivals the Regional Orchestra of Kayes would compete against the other orchestras from Ségou, Tombouctou, Sikasso, Mopti, Gao, Koulikoro and Bamako for the championship prize. The above LP represents the orchestra's only recording - on the excellent Bärenreiter-Musicaphon series. It is a travesty that with the exception of a few tracks on the double-CD "Musiques du Mali vols 1 & 2" these seminal LPs have never been released on CD [This was written before the album became available for streaming]. They represent some of the finest modern music to have been recorded in West Africa. The Kayes orchestra were particularly outstanding, with arresting, searing guitar solos performed in classic Mandé songs such as "Duga" and "Malisajo". Some of the regional orchestras, such as those from Tombouctou, Gao and Koulikouro, missed out on being released through the Bärenreiter-Musicaphon series, but were recorded by Radio Mali, so there is certainly incentive for a wonderful series of re-issues...”
 
I first heard this album when I was visiting my dear friend the renowned composer Brandon Carson, who has written a lot of music for the also-amazing Dark Circles Contemporary Dance company. We both studied world music together for a few years and the funky-feeling rhythms of the melodies and humanist (as opposed to over-filtered & perfectionist) timbres of the voices and instruments brought me back to those times when our lives seemed a lot simpler, and the musical possibilities were endless. The opening track, “Sanjina” (possibly Bambara for “rain”) is a jazzy bop, but I’d say that my favorite is “Nanyuman” (again, possibly Bambara, for “afterwards”). An elegant guitar riff swirls around beneath the entire song while the vocals trade off with electric guitar expressions that would put the greatest American guitarists to shame while a saxophone hovers beneath, breathing heavily in anticipation of its starring role on the next track, “Duga”.
 
(Track title translations from Bambara via Google: Sanjina – The Rain | Kayi – Kayes (the city) | Nanyuman – Afterwards | Duga – Naïve | Malisajo (from Swahili)* – Pasture | Tèrèna – Terrain | Badage – Badges)
*Google’s Bambara translation of Malisajo was “Massage Therapist”
 
 
Number 7:
(Three-Way Tie)
Tulus – Manusia (2022) – Best Song: “Remedi”
Maliq & D’essentials – RAYA (2020) – Best Song:
Kunto Aji – Mantra Mantra (2018) – Best Song: “Saudade”
 
For Christmas 2021 my brother gave me a gift card for Half Price Books. I decided that, as a someone who claims to be familiar with a certain amount of Indonesian tradition (gamelan music and accompanying dance, Balinese masks, shadow puppets) I really needed to get on board with some of the more modern art. I figured one way I needed to broaden my perspective was through reading contemporary Indonesian novels. I got two – Saman, by a female author named Ayu Utami, which I read in early 2022 and was an amazing book; and Cantik Ita Luka (Beauty is a Wound) by male author Eka Kurniawan, which in part due to its greater length and its magical-realism dive into the past few hundred years of Indonesian history up to the present day, I found to be even more amazing. I wanted to live in that book, and I would be ready to go back and read it again any day. Part of what made the experience so intense was that for Kurniawan’s book I downloaded a few albums of contemporary Indonesian pop music to listen to while reading. These are my three favorites.
 
All of them carry hints of traditional music that I’ve heard (I am familiar mostly with Javanese and Balinese music, which are some of the most well-known traditions, but Java and Bali are only two of the 6,000 populated (out of 17,508 total) islands that make up Indonesia. All of them are also innovative in their own ways. I listed them here in the order they were released, and I’ll just highlight my favorite moments from each one.
 
Kunto Aji was born in 1987 in Slemen, near Yogyakarta, on the island of Java. He started his music career on Indonesian Idol in 2008, and Mantra Mantra is his second album. From opening of the first song on the album I was hooked. A delicately sung acapella melody in a musically tense pelog scale glides blissfully into lush vocal harmonies with a soft backbeat played on a single piano note. Then the guitar gently enters, and within a minute you’re transported to a sound world unlike anything you’ve probably ever heard before. My favorite song, “Saudade” (a Portuguese word describing the sense of loss and longing that is an innate part of being alive), opens with a beautiful synth-brass fanfare which establishes the general melody followed by the rest of the song (like the concept of Balungan, or “skeleton,” in Javanese gamelan music). The song, like the entire album, creates a soundscape wherein you can meditate and reflect on your own personal saudade until the end of time.


Track Titles translations from Indonesian via Google: Sulung – Eldest | Rencange Rencana – Design a Plan | Pilu Membiru – Sadness Turns Blue | Topik Semalam - Last Night’s Topic | Rehat – Take a Break | Jakarta Jakarta (Jakarta is the current capital of Indonesia) | Konon Katanya – It is Said | Saudade (this is a Portuguese word with no real English equivalent – it is close to “Longing” or in Indonesian “Kerinduan”) | Bungsu – Youngest (remember the name of the first track?)
 
Maliq & D’Essentials is a Jazz/Soul group that started in Jakarta, Java, in 2002. The music is complex, clean, and passionately inspired. And it’s damn good fun to listen to. Several months after I first listened through it, the chorus from “Good Lovin’” popped into my head one day. I went into my library to find the song and I was shocked to realize that it wasn’t one of the random American pop songs I heard playing at the bars all year – it’s so well-produced and in my opinion is very approachable for a typical American listener. I also love the incredible flow of the lyrics in “Memori” - Mulai hari ini / Janji-janji berterbangan menari / Yang terjadi ya terjadi saja / Karena cerita hari ini / Kemarin dan esok takkan terganti / Yang terjadi ya terjadi saja / Menjadi memori .
 
Track Titles translations from Indonesian via Google: Bertemu – Meet | Memori – Memory | Bilang – Said/Say | Good Lovin’ – Cinta Baik | Semoga – Hopefully | Sesuatunya – Something
 
Muhammed Tulus (stage name: Tulus) was born in 1987 in Bukittinggi on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. Since 2016 he’s been a judge on The Voice Kids Indonesia. Manusia (Human) is his fourth album. It’s got a great combination of slow-paced and more upbeat songs. To me, the sound seems often to flow from retro-style intros into clean, modern verses, followed by almost Disney-esque choruses. I can picture Rafiki holding up Simba on Pride Rock during the high points of the opening track, and I can imagine the closing song showing up at that point in the stereotypical Disney movie where the hero is right on the verge of seeing everything fall apart before they need to put it back together – but for right now they’re still getting to celebrate how great this magical life is. My favorite song is “Remedi” (Remedy), and I might only care about the neo-noir horn opening. The rest of the song is great, but honestly I would like that little fanfare played at my funeral, on a loop, all the way through the whole ceremony.
 
Track Titles translations from Indonesian via Google: Tujuh Belas – Seventeen | Kelana – Wander | Remedi – Remedy | Interaksi – Interaction | Ingkar – Deny | Jatuh Suka – Fall in Love | Nala (a woman’s name) | Hati-Hati di Jalan – Be Careful on the Way (Hati-Hati is what they put on Caution signs in Indonesia, and Hati by itself can mean heart, psyche, etc.)| Diri – Self | Satu Kali – One Time
 
Number 6:
Heartless Bastards
A Beautiful Life (2021)
Best Song: “Doesn’t Matter Now”
 
Heartless Bastards is a rock band out of Cincinnati Ohio fronted by lead singer Erika Wennerstrom. They’ve been going since 2003 and A Beautiful Life is their sixth full-length album. I’d heard music from their albums The Mountain (2009) and Arrow (2012) many years ago when you actually had to pay for music. In those days you could find bundles of “free samples” of indie music on various websites like NPR every once in a while.
 
I wanted to see what these heartless bastards were up to these days, and it turns out they’ve taken a turn for the optimistic – at least this latest album is more forthrightly so. If you’ll allow me to wax poetic, their earlier music seems pretty punk. A Beautiful Life sounds like those same punks a decade later became parents and realized instead of singing their punk lyrics they wanted to sound a little more positive for the sake of their kids.
 
But even with that shift, most of the same grit and style of Heartless Bastards is still there. The positivity is refreshing without making them bland, in my opinion. My favorite song, “Doesn’t Matter Now,” is incredibly simple in terms of lyrics (basically one verse and chorus that gets repeated, with a bridge thrown in there) and chords (according to Ultimate Guitar, the verse and chorus contain just two different chords), but that perfectly complements a importantly simple message about the importance of simply accepting and moving on. I read that one of the band’s motivations for this album was being a part of promoting reconciliation after the crises of 2020. That’s certainly a worthy cause and I think they nailed it.
 
Number 5:
Faces
Ooh La La (1973)
Best Song: “Ooh La La”
 
Speaking of Rod Stewart. I think everyone who has seen TV or been around social media sometime in the last five years is aware of the song “Ooh La La” (the album’s closing number) even if you don’t know it: “I wish, that, I knew what I know now, when I was younger” (everybody in the bar chants unmelodically as they try to remember how that song from whatever meme that is goes).
 
I have no idea where I heard it first but this Summer I was really vibing with that very sentence (which is the first line of the chorus), and I looked up the song. It turned out to be the very last song on the entire original studio discography of the British band Faces, which released only four albums during their original run from 1969-1975. Rod Stewart was the face of the band for most of that period of time, but towards the end was getting so famous for his solo work that their relationship strained. On this final album, his contributions were limited - the vocals for the title track are actually sung by Ronnie Wood, who joined the Rolling Stones shortly after Faces disbanded.
 
All of Faces’ music is classic blues-derived Rock & Roll, and I think this album is their peak and one of the best rock albums I’ve ever heard. It’s got a wonderful balance of contemplation and agitation, it’s thoughtfully produced (listen in stereo and pay attention to when the arrangement of different instruments, when they enter and where they are located in the sound-space), and it never seems to get old. I think the final one-two punch of “Just Another Honky” (featuring an unforgettable piano riff) and then “Ooh La La” (which could be the final word in any textbook on life and human nature” is one of the greatest closes to an album in the history of time. Go give it a listen.
 
Number 4:
Hurray for the Riff Raff
My Dearest Darkest Neighbor (2013)
Best Song: “People Talkin’”
 
I hear country music is becoming more popular. Oh wait, no – you’re actually talking about just more pop music, but it has a banjo and they’re singing about trucks and dogs. No offense to anyone who likes their folk music to include a lightshow, but when I want to hear about country, I go to places like Hurray for the Riff Raff. Gimme some god damn fiddle or it ain’t no country music.
 
Alynda Segarra, originally from New Orleans, has been releasing music under the name Hurray for the Riff Raff, in collaboration with various other extremely talented musicians, since 2008 – this was their fourth full-length album. Segarra’s music that I’ve heard consists of original songs that sound like they could have been sung in a saloon somewhere in Louisiana, or Texas, or Arizona, back the days of the wild west. The recording style pushes that sense that you’re listening to something truly old even further - it’s grainy and it sounds like they’re just recording live performances in a small room in a building made entirely of wood planks (which may well be exactly what they’re doing). The songs are about love, loss, and finding ways to be satisfied -   and maybe even excited - about life, despite the disappointment it often turns out to be.
 
Segarra yodels, whispers, growls. The guitar licks are timeless, and the fiddling is bomb. Listen to Hurray for the Riff Raff, then go listen to Prince Albert Hunt’s Texas Ramblers (“Blues in a Bottle” from 1928 captures the earliest stages of the Texas Swing genre), and then check out Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. These are that which passeth show.
 
Number 3:
Hallelujah Chicken Run Band
Take One (1974-1980)*
*Compilation of publishes singles, released in 2006
Best Song: “Alikulila”
 
Thomas Mapfumo (born 1945 in Mazowe, Southern Rhodesia – now Zimbabwe) is called the father of Chimurenga music. “Chimurenga” is Shona for “struggle” and the word is used to refer to (a) the pair of revolutionary conflicts against the British colonial government that at long last resulted in an independent, self-ruled Zimbabwe in 1979 and (b) the style of music that fused rock & roll with traditional Shona instruments (primarily the several local forms of the thumb piano including the mbira dzavadzimu) and Shona songs – this music was the soundtrack of the Second Chimurenga (1967-1979) in a similar manner to which songs like “A Change is Gonna Come” were the soundtrack to the Civil Rights movement in the United States.
 
If Thomas Mapfumo (who I saw perform in the Student Center at SMU in 2016 – will always be one of the greatest concerts I got to witness) is the Father of Chimurenga, the rest of the members of the Hallelujah Chicken Run Band were the uncles. Mapfumo was the vocalist of this band that originally performed more generic African rock music in performances for copper mine workers. They eventually started to incorporate the mbira and traditional Shona songs and this new fusion took off. Thomas Mapfumo went on to record more than 20 albums with his band The Blacks Unlimited; traditional Shona mbira music has “gone global” with books, workshops, and Instagram pages on the subject; and hundreds of Zimbabwean musicians have been able to get their own recordings published – many performing very traditional music, and others, like the late Chiwoniso Maraire, evolving their traditional music in a new way to develop a totally unique style (her single, “Zvichapera” is one of the greatest records of all time and is a cover of a Thomas Mapfumo track).
 
Back in the ‘70s in Africa (and still for the US in some cases) the single was the dominant format for music releases – it would be played in the jukebox or over the radio. People didn’t buy their own copies all that often because it took a lot of expendable income to afford a personal record player. Take One is a compilation of all of the Hallelujah Chicken Run Band’s singles. Once again, I love this album for its balance. A lot of the songs are popping pepping dancing rock & rollers. But then other lay bare the suffering that took place under colonial role in Rhodesia and throughout southern Africa (Zimbabwe is the northern neighbor of South Africa, where the music of Juluka and Savuka fought against the Apartheid). If you listen closely to the instruments, you’ll hear just how ridiculously skillful the playing is – the intricate plucking on “Ngoma Yarira” and “Tamba Zimba Navasha,” and the peppy guitar part on “Tinokumbira Kuziva” that is joined by the icy-clean horn section. The recordings you hear are just snippets of what the songs would sound like in a love performance – each could go on for 10 minutes or more – it’s music for dancing plain and simple.
 
My favorite track, “Alikulila,” features a creeping bassline, understated call-and -esponse vocals, and one of the all-time great horn section melodies.
 
Track Title Translations from Shona via Google in tandem with my copy of the 1996 Standard Shona Dictionary: Mudzimu Ndiringe – The Spirit is Against Me | Kare Nanhasi – Past and Present | Tamba Zimba Navashe – Play House with the Lords | Ngoma Yarira – The Drum Beat | Sekai – Like | Manheru Changamire – Good Evening Sir | Gore Iro – That Year | Mukadzi Wangu Ndomuda – I Love My Wife | Alikulila (Arikurira) – He is Growing Up | Tinokumbira Kuziva – We Ask to Know | Mutoridodo (Mutorododo) – A Burden | Ndopenga – I’m Crazy | Mwana Wamai Dada Naye – My Cousin is Proud of Him | Chaminuka Mukuru – Chaminuka the Great (Chaminuka is an ancient mhondoro, an ancestral spirit who can still communicate with and lead the Shona through possessing living members of the community; perhaps the most famous medium through whom he spoke was Pasipamire Tsuro, who was a Shona leader in the late 19th century and foretold his peoples’ subjugation by Europeans and the century of suffering that would follow - more here)
 
Number 2:
Hugh Masekela
Still Grazing: The Musical Journey of Hugh Masekela (1966-1974)*
*Soundtrack to his 2004 autobiography
Best Song: “Been Such a Long Time Gone”
 
You’ve seen this commercial. That song is the great flugelhorn and trumpet player Hugh Masekela’s “Grazing in the Grass,” originally an instrumental composed by Philemon Hou and recorded first by Masekela in 1968 (Masekela also played cornet and was a kick ass singer). A year later it was also recorded by The Friends of Distinction with lyrics added – it became a hit that sold more than one million copies (again, back when you had to actually pay for music).
 
Of course, Masekela’s version was also a hit. Though that particular song was recorded in a studio in Hollywood, Masekela’s musical corpus, like the man himself is thoroughly and fundamentally South African. He lived from 1939-2018, was affectionately referred to as the “father of South African Jazz,” and like fellow South Africans Johnny Clegg, Sipho Mchunu, and the other members of Juluka and Savuka, helped fight for justice and human dignity with his music.
 
In 2004 he published an autobiography called Still Grazing: The Musical Story of Hugh Masekela, and like any self-respecting master musician should, he included a soundtrack with the book. This album is that soundtrack – Masekela’s own self-selected greatest hits recorded between 1966-1974. It has great variety – instrumentals like “A Felicidade,” “Up Up and Away,” and “Grazing in the Grass” are elevated examples of jazz and instrumental song – and Masekela’s actual songs (music with words – “songs” are sung) put masterful lyric-crafting talents on display. “Gold” shares basically the same message as Juluka’s Universal Men album cover – Gold pulled from the mountain to build wealth for the colonialists out of the sweat of the native people who don’t get to reap any of the benefits themselves. “Stimela” talks about the system of migrant labor – native South Africans forced to find work in mines far from their homes who ride the coal train (“stimela”) for their commute – complete with percussive vocalizations of steam-release sound effects.
 
My favorite song, without a doubt, is “Been Such a Long Time Gone.” I’m planning a Music That Moves short video focusing on this song so I won’t go too in-depth, but basically it takes you on a journey across Africa in the storyteller’s dream as he tries to get home to South Africa, but ultimately when he arrives at the border (the Limpopo river) he is shot by white soldiers who have claimed his home as their own. But “home” isn’t just the physical place – it’s a sense of identity, emotional safety, tradition – and that home is being kept from him in all its different senses. The lyrics are poetry and evoke stunning visual imagery, as he names and describes the rivers, valleys, and ecosystems he passes on his doomed journey home. There are a few other recordings of this song by Masekela available on Apple Music – I recommend listening to all of them so that you can hear how his voice and style changed over the years – and you can also hear what didn’t change and how he never lost a beat. Truly an all-time great.
 
Number 1:
African Classical Music Ensemble & Kasse Made Diabate
There Was a Time (2009)
Best Song: “Sundiata”
 
Kasse Made Diabate (1949-2018) was a musician from Mali. He was a griot – a member of a hereditary profession responsible for tracking history orally and for recounting (hi)stories through poetry and song. He sang with a group led by his brother Abdoulaye Diabate called Super Mande, and in 1973 they won the Biennale festival (see Orchestre Régional de Kayes section in this same article). He went on to have an incredible career and work with some of the greatest musical artists of his time. The African Classical Music Ensemble was started by Malian musician Tunde Jegede “to celebrate the distinct acoustic classical musical traditions of Africa,” and consists of Jegede himself along with Juldeh Camara and Sona Maya Jobarteh. They’re collaborated with a number of other great artists in addition to Kasse Made Diabate.
 
From ACME’s website: “There Was A Time is a timeless album that touches on an ancient sound within a contemporary setting. This is completely acoustic Malian music at its very best. The soaring voice of Kassé Mady takes us back to time immemorial where past and present submerge. The lyricism of this album is a living testament to the inherent classicism of this music in its original form. It is a music that creates feelings of joy and melancholy in a single moment. There Was A Time brings us back to the time of our earliest memories.”
 
I agree – this music is incredible. Any words I could say about it here would be a “nothing burger” – words for the sake of words that really don’t contribute anything. Please just go listen to this album.
 
My favorite song is Sundiata – it’s the collaborative group’s take on a traditional song named after the great Sundiata Keita – founder of the Mali empire which was ruled about 100 years later by his great-nephew Mansa Musa, who is believed to be the wealthiest person in the history of the world. This song contains the wealthiest flute solo of all time, played on a Malinke style flute (see it in action). Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to figure out exactly who is playing the flute on this recording. Whoever it is deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. Put this song on your biggest, best speaker; turn out every single light in your house; and just lie there on the floor and enjoy this masterpiece. When you open your eyes again you will be living in a world where it really is possible to put the greater good ahead of your own benefit – where it’s possible for peace and friendship to win out over greed – where dreams, really do come true.
 
 
That’s it for Good Ovidius’ Top 10 Albums of 2023. I hope you have as much fun listening to these albums this year as I did listening to them last year.
 
Sincerely,
 
Lawson
 
17 January 2024
Downtown Phoenix, AZ

FINALLY we're back again for an Albums of the Year countdown. Sorry I missed 2021, but that was a heck of a jacked up year. As usual, this is the list of my favorite albums that I heard in their complete form for the first time in the calendar year 2022. They did not all come out this year, and I may have heard a song or two a while ago. For example, I heard "The Body Electric" from Small Town Heroes for the first time back in 2014, and finally got around to hearing the entire album 8 years later. Music. Wow.

Rank - Artist - Album Name (Year)
Bonus: Live Album - La Santa Cecilia - Amar Y Vivir (En Vivo Desde La Ciudad De México, 2017)
This live recording from a show in Mexico City is pretty much exactly what all performing musicians should aspire to: variety, fun, excitement, and, most important of all, damn good music. In the Uber I took from Harlem to JFK after my performance in Brooklyn last April, I had a conversation in Spanish with my driver and asked her what kind of music she liked. She told me to look up these guys and, I admit, I didn't listen to the full album until December. But when I did, I loved every minute. Every song is fantastic, the performance aspect of it is wonderful, and the surprise Beatles cover was a bonus.

10 - Galt McDermott, Gerome Ragni, James Rado - Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical (1967)
The first of two musicals to make my list this year. I did my listening pretty much exclusively to the film soundtrack special anniversary edition (which has incredible drumset and bass guitar playing). Everyone has heard "The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In)" at some point in their lives but it took until I saw a trio including Hugh Panaro (whom I also got to see on Broadway as Erik (The Phantom) back in 2012) do it as the encore to a Best of Broadway show with The Phoenix Symphony this past Spring before I realized it came from Hair. This musical is funky and the lyrics are evocative. The questions raised by the Hippie movement remain unanswered and the full depth of its cultural impact is yet to be determined, and the way Hair captures the zeitgeist of that era makes it still incredibly relevant today. Especially now that astrology is making a comeback.

9 - Willis Alan Ramsey - Willis Alan Ramsey (1972)
When you realize that one of the final lyrics of this album is "those Dallas women standing up beat the others lying down" it suddenly becomes awkward that my parents told me about it. Apparently some article about "the songwriter's songwriter" legendary for only ever recording one album. Well, having listened to the music, it does make for a pretty good legend. Hits like Muskrat Love/Muskrat Candlelight and The Ballad of Spider John have been covered by numerous other artists, like Captain & Tennille and Jimmy Buffet. It's all great music, but honestly, for me, it really is all about the last track. Often what makes or breaks an album is the final word - the last song - and the final word (thus far) of Willis Alan Ramsey's entire recording career is a love letter to the women of Texas, and in particular, Dallas, TX (there aren't enough good songs about my hometown). God bless the Trinity River and any man who's unaware of Northeast Texas women and their cotton candy hair.

8 - Mohammed El-Bakkar and his Oriental Ensemble - Port Said: Music of the Middle East (1957)
Sex Sells. I always cringe when I'm at the record store and I see an album of music from Southwest Asia and the cover is a belly dancer. It just seems weird for me. But my parents got me this album on vinyl as a graduation/birthday gift and I gave it a shot and, lo and behold, beneath the seductive image of Nejla Ates (a Turkish belly dancer who starred in the musical Fanny along with El-Bakkar and had a very dramatic life story) are some real bangers. And these aren't just cliche Arabic-sounding tunes - I found three of the songs in the Southwest Asian version of the Realbook - The Real Arab Book (buy it here). One of those is the classic Ah Ya Zayne (Ah Ya Zain - Beautiful One) which I performed dozens of times with Jamal Mohamed and the Meadows World Music Ensemble. You can play this album at a party, or a wedding, or while you're having your morning coffee, really anywhere. It's worth looking past the cover. And then once you appreciate the music, maybe learning how to appreciate the cover art, too (you really can't pick and choose which correlated traditions you appreciate and act like the others don't exist).

7 - Melody Gardot - The Absence (2012)
I usually don't like jazz. In the same year as El-Bakkar released Port Said, Chuck Berry hit the nail on the head decrying jazz for too often "[losing] the beauty of the melody." Melody Gardot has a really crazy life story that I will leave you to look up on Wikipedia (brain trauma leads to being superhuman, the usual). My psychotherapist told me to listen to some of her music and one quiet night I popped her on the bluetooth, and I heard the sultry harmonic and rhythmic ethereality that I associate with later jazz, but with real solid Melody, too. I found another album of Gardot's - I think The Absence was that second one. WOW. It's songs, but with complex accompaniment that goes so far beyond the poppy trash we hear all too often blaring in gas stations and shopping malls that you're almost tempted to say these aren't songs at all - rather they're "pieces" of music. But then mixed into the album are a few straight up bops, like Amalia and Iemanja. This is great music.

6 - Natalia Lafourcade - De todas las flores (2022)
Ok now I'm seeing a trend. Just like how Gardot's music is songs, but deconstructed to where the structure of verse-chorus-verse-(bridge?)-chorus is unrecognizable and the music accompanying the singing is really just that - straight up music, happening, evolving throughout the piece, Lafourcade is moving in that direction. Should it be called "Post-Pop?" I don't know. It's really cool to observe how Lafourcade's style grew, though. She started as normal pop as a youngster, then crafted an album nearly entirely made up of pop-style covers of the great Mexican composer Agustin Lara (you've heard his Granada), then another more advanced pop album, then a two-volume masterpiece with the guitar duo Los Macorinos featuring some new tunes and some more covers of Latin American classics (like Simon Diaz' Tonada de Luna Llena), then her two-volume Canto por México where she did what many thought unthinkable - she covered HERSELF. By the Canto albums, the music accompanying Lafroucade's vocals had become incredibly complex - the first volume reminds me a lot of lush "Golden Age of Cinema" sounds. Well now she's just gone full Post-Pop with her latest album. All the beauty of her lyrics and her voice combined with utterly transcendent performances by her backing musicians, and the way it all comes together I couldn't help but think of the Gardot albums I had just heard earlier this year. Natalia Lafourcade has always been great, and its really cool to see her continue to develop and evolve her style and continue to nail it siempre.

5 - IBERI - Supra (2022)
Not many of you know this about me, but as an ethnomusicologist, I love medieval choral church music. Actually though - I love going back and listening to recordings of music by Thomas Tallis (England, contemporary of Henry VIII) and Hildegard von Bingen (Germany (Holy Roman Empire) 11th Century). Well I have no idea how I found this album, Supra, by the Georgian (🇬🇪) male choir IBERI, but it's got a very similar vibe (for obvious reasons - the Georgian traditional music they are singing can trace its origins back to the same traditions from whence came the music of Tallis and Hildegard out in Western Europe). This feels more fresh, though, more energetic, perhaps even more human. While many of the more historical recordings wash the sound of the voices with acoustical reverb, natural or otherwise, to mimic the sound of a towering cathedral (for the record I'm sure some of those recording are actually made in cathedrals), IBERI is just brash and in-your-face. I like to play this album driving through downtown Phoenix with my windows down, hoping someone will ask me who it is and I can shout "IBERI. They're from Georgia!"

4 - Cheikh Lô - Bambay Gueej (1999)
This is another one that I cannot recall why I added it to my library, but I'm glad I did. Most of the album is a really solid Afro-Cuban-Mbalax (Senegalese Cuban-inspired music) type of sound. Music you can dance to or that you can throw on at a party, and is absolutely complex and thoughtful enough for you to just sit down and listen to it with a nice cold bottle of root beer. But what shoots this album all the way to the #4 spot is the reward you get for listening through to the end. Holy Cats. When you talk about the final track making or breaking the album, THIS IS WHAT I MEAN. Zkir is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard in my entire life. It's a complete changeup from the sound and style of the rest of the album, dropping the energy down a few notches so that the heart of the musician emerges above the fray, pulsing violently, but with a sense of absolute peace. It's a true encore - the kind that is deeply personal and makes you want to immediately listen to the entire album over again so that you can remember what it felt like for the curtains to open one last time and you hear . . . THAT.

3 - Dale Wasserman, Mitch Leigh, & Joe Darion - Man of La Mancha (1965)
2022 was the Year of Don Quixote for me. I had started re-reading the epic in fall of 2021 and completed it in the Spring of '22 as I was finishing my masters degree. That same Spring, I filmed a Don Quixote-inspired music video for my single, Here & Everywhere, that I presented in Brooklyn as the last hurrah of my time at ASU. Shortly after I graduated, one of my professors held a moving-away stuff-giveaway party where I found myself the proud second-hand owner of a number of vinyl records. One of them was the film soundtrack to Man of La Mancha, starring Peter O'Toole and Sofia Loren. I listened to the record, then decided I needed to see the movie. Having just finished reading the book, I loved both for their charming references to the original text, their sincere humor, and what I found to be great music. There's one scene in the movie (and I can only assume it's similar in most productions of the musical) where Sofia Loren's character is treated quite rudely and it makes me wonder how people ever survived in olden times when things were even worse than they are now (oh wait - isn't there a song about that called Two Thousand & One?) The plot of the musical is a creative twist on Don Q, and there are several real worthy earworms throughout. The best by far is The Impossible Dream, which was the butt of most criticisms when the musical first came out for being a glorious ode to a madman. But to me it's really about trying to be better, to live in a way that's about more than just surviving for oneself (clawing for money) and instead trying to truly live a life of goodness, and to share that desire and motivation for a better life and better world with others. I'll never forget when I drove back to Phoenix from Mexico in August '22 and I listened straight through the entire musical on the desert highway through Sonora. Keep dreaming, Alonso Quijana - I'm right there with you.

2 - Jimmy Cliff - Follow My Mind (1976)
I love Jimmy Cliff and I have for many years. First, many years ago, I found a compilation of his top hits including  Many Rivers to Cross, Hard Road to Travel, Hello Sunshine, and Use What I Got. I found his album Music Maker when I was nearing the end of my time in Dallas (the song Been Dead 400 Years made my one and only top 10 songs list in 2019, before I decided to stick to full albums). Then I saw his movie in the Spring of my first year at ASU - The Harder They Come, which was responsible for introducing many outside of Jamaica to Reggae music for the first time - and listened to its soundtrack, which featured Cliff and a number of other early Reggae and Rocksteady groups. It's all incredible.  I found Follow My Mind on vinyl at the Ghost of Eastside record store across the parking lot from where I was stationed when I first moved to the Valley of the Sun - the same pad where I first saw Cliff's movie. It opens with a bang and never stops being perfect. Beautiful ballads, rocking dance tunes, and lyrics that bite. Cliff's cover of No Woman, No Cry is worthy, but my favorites are Look at the Mountains (especially poignant living in Phoenix) and Who Feels It, Knows It. If you know, you know.

1 - Hurray for the Riff Raff - Small Town Heroes (2014)
Every time I go home, my accent gets a little more Texan. I've been carrying on a tradition for a while where every time I drive back to Dallas, I take more rural highways instead of the big interstates and I stop in as many small towns as I can, take a quick wander around and try to absorb what life might smell, taste, and feel like from the perspective of each place. It's made me an expert in patterns of urban growth and decay, but it's also given me a glimpse into what the history of larger cities like Dallas and of my hometown, McKinney, TX, might have looked like. Small Town Heroes is the music of the rural highway. It's the music of the sun setting beyond the grain elevator. It's the music of a quiet, slow, patient, and difficult life. It's music that feels like home to me and I spent the week or so after I came back from the holidays pretty thoroughly obsessed with it. I first heard The Body Electric on an NPR top indie free downloads playlist in the same year this album was released but didn't come back to listen to the entire thing until late Fall 2022. In the intervening years, I saw the very Blue Ridge Mountains that she sings about in the opening track. In those years I got stuck in the backup on the two-lane highway in the mountains between Holbrook and Payson because of a crash multiple times. I met someone named Levon. I found and lost every love that I've had so far and grown to become a person who can listen to this music and reflect - in 2014 I was only able to imagine. As I grow older, I find myself longing more and more for a quieter lifestyle. I drive through the small towns and wish that I could simply pick one, stop, and never leave. Duncan, Arizona - Idalou, Texas - Payson, Arizona - Mesilla, New Mexico. In these places, forever seems like just a day. Especially if you don't like country music, this album is worth hearing.

Listen to all these albums in my Good Ovidius: 2022 Top 10 Albums playlist on Apple Music:
https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/good-ovidius-2022-top-10-albums/pl.u-GgA52JVHdpMoqp

Love music, love each other, keep dreaming, find your pace and find your place, and here's to a kick ass 2023.

Lawson Malnory
Phoenix, AZ
7 January 2023

just barely touches on the metaphorical surface of the beautiful instrument behind the plaque. [Note: I was introduced to the instrument with the name being pronounced "JHEE-lee" with a soft G and two distinct syllables. The word looks more like -- and a lot of other people I've heard call it -- "JHEE-el" like "eel" with a soft G at the front].

According to the liner notes of Sublime Frequencies DAGARA: Gyil Music of Ghana's Upper West Region, "gyil players remain central to religious and cultural life, playing an indispensable role in funerary rites and festivals and imbuing daily life with music. There are several overlapping gyil traditions in this region that extend over Ghana's border to neighboring Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso and are related to a larger network of xylophone traditions that exist through the Sahel region" (Colter Harper 2020). In the same liner notes, Brian Nowak says that the Dagara demonstrate a deep respect for "the unseen in everyday life. . . . Respecting and honoring the [Kontomble] spirits is a deeply important part of Dagara spirituality. The gyil is the sound of the spirits' song, and a link between the community and the spirit world, a symbol of the sacred in Dagara society" (Nowak 2020). 

Nowak adds that "Even for musicians, gyil music provides a deep sense of exploration and is manifested as the spirits' song. The music is said to attract the Kontomble spirits that have provided the knowledge about the instrument and its music. Sacrifices and rituals start at the birth of all new instruments as well as all traditional gyil players who are identified at birth with their thumb tucked between the index and middle finger, born to hold mallets. Becoming a gyil player is a sacred responsibility and a life of self-development and community service by means of the instrument." 

I am not a gyil player in any traditional sense. I was not born into it, I have not participated in any rituals to bond me with the instrument, and (it probably goes without saying) I am not Dagara and I am not from Ghana. But I love the living you-know-what out of this instrument and I deeply relate with certain aspects of the philosophy laid out above. Perhaps most importantly, my choice to pursue a career in music was based entirely on what I felt to be a personal obligation for community service. Uncle Ben (Spiderman) says "with great power comes great responsibility," and while my pockets aren't full up with power, I can tell that I'm a lucky person - that I have opportunity - and when I made the decision to make a career out of music, I believed (and still do) that it would be a waste of my opportunity to not use it for some kind of good beyond myself. At the time, I was sure I would be a music teacher. Plans changed. I don't really know where my life will take me, right now, but one thing is for certain - the mission is still a go. Everything I do with music, I do for love. Love of the people I'm performing with and performing for, love of myself (when playing music is therapeutic), and love for music itself.

But what is music? The Dagara say that the music of the gyil is the song of the spirits. Somebody told me something similar once when I was out gigging with my gyil in the early days, and it clicked with a feeling that I had long been able to perceive, but struggled to put into words. Before I can tell you that story, though, I need to go back to the beginning.

​I purchased my 2 gyil through the Africa Heartwood Project using a grant from my undergrad, SMU, in the late stages of 2016, in the middle of my senior year. AHP is a 501(c)3 non-profit in the US and registered as an NGO in Ghana. They work in a number of ways to support underserved populations in Ghana, and one of their methods is connecting traditional crafts-makers to broader markets by helping make their products available on the internet - including major marketplaces like Amazon. Yes, I bought my gyil on Amazon. 

My relationship with the gyil started on awkward footing because I had originally wanted to get a couple of balafon (from Mali, part of the "larger network of xylophone traditions" in the region that were mentioned by Harper). You see, the director of the World Music Ensemble at SMU, Jamal Mohamed, had a pair of balafon that I had the opportunity to play on occasion throughout my undergrad, and I so thoroughly enjoyed the music I was able to create with them that I needed to get my own so that I could take them home for practice and use them for gigs. AHP had a balafon available, but the rub was this: Jamal's balafon were laid out in a pentatonic major scale (1,2,3,_,5,6_,1--or "the black keys {starting on F#}") and that's why improvising with them was so intuitive. The rindik, a bamboo xylophone that I had learned to play in Bali, is also typically laid out in something that is near to a pentatonic major scale (the rigid idea of pitch that we have in European-American music does not exist in Bali {and a lot of other places for that matter} where neighboring towns or villages can have sets of instruments with their own unique tuning; the pentatonic major scale is near enough to certain tunings that you could play an approximation of a Balinese rindik song on a European-American instrument using that scale). The balafon sold by AHP was in a heptatonic major scale, so it would be a completely different playing style than what I had become used to. However, they also sold gyil that happened to be in the pentatonic major tuning with which I was familiar. The rest, is ... well, I mean keep reading because I'm about to tell you the rest.

Two gyil arrived in giant boxes on my front doorstep. They took up the entire entryway to my small apartment and, because of the size of the instruments, each one was actually contained in two separate boxes with the open ends facing each other and taped over each other to create one single mega-box. AHP had gone out of their way to send me a pair of gyil that were pretty well pitch-matched, and they ended up being almost perfect. The slight dissonance between each pairing of notes across the two gyil creates a sort of chorus effect that reminded me of the Balinese tradition of de-tuning one instrument in a pair to create a beat frequency (I've been told the ideal is a 7 Hz difference). It's a natural shimmer or vibrato built into the instruments through physics. 

Right off the bat, I started jamming. Probably my first original record (unpublished) was "Gyli Rock" [sic], the SoundCloud track embedded at the top of this post that I recorded in my bedroom on GarageBand using my guitar, some shakers, and the two gyil. In that recording, I played one melodic line simultaneously on both gyil, with a mic hanging over the middle of them. The same chord progression eventually became "The Fox and the Lion," the headliner from my first album "The Front of the Line." But before that, I had to go through heartbreak.

Ever since I read Part I of Don Quixote in high school, I've been a hopeless romantic (Hamlet didn't help, either). When My first girlfriend and I separated shortly before Christmas 2016, it was incredibly difficult for me. I came out on the other side of it with a heart full of pain that needed to be expressed, and I found a way to express it through music in general and through the gyil in particular. A few months later (the date was March 3, 2017), I was still on the path to recovery. I had a lot of doubt about choices I had made for my career and my personal life - "being a musician is childish." "world music? you can't make a living doing that." "you need to grow up and do something that's actually productive and meaningful. not just something fun." But then something happened that brought me back into myself as if I had been zapped with jumper cables.

March 3 was "Have Donuts and Coffee with a Cop" day in the Dallas area. I was playing a solo gig with one of my gyil for Music on Mockingbird (the weekly outdoor concert series I established with Bridge the Gap Chamber Players). I took a moment's break to get coffee from the food truck that was just across the way while the host from Mockingbird Station watched the gyil. When I returned, somebody was playing it. It just so happens that one of the transit officers (Mockingbird Station is a major stop for the DART urban train in Dallas) had grown up in Ghana and was taught to play gyil in school as a kid (pictures above). He showed us a couple of tunes and went back to his patrol. 

Then, just when I thought the day couldn't get more crazy-cool, another dude showed up. I couldn't see him all that well because he approached from the direction of the sun. He walked right up to the gyil, told me he liked my playing, and asked if he could try. I handed him the mallets and he played for about a minute while singing something that could have been flamenco style or something else. It was visceral and improvised and fluttering. It was beautiful. He handed the mallets back, thanked me, and left me with this nugget of wisdom that has shaped my life ever since. "Music is God here on Earth."

​That was the moment that I told you about at the beginning of this post. In that moment I felt like God had seen me in my emotional turmoil and set me up to run into this guy and hear exactly what I needed to hear to snap my head out of the doldrums where I had been aimlessly rocking to-&-fro for the past few months.  I knew in that moment that I was on the right track - whatever that track was. Music was where I belonged. Bringing music from other parts of the world into the spotlight for people in my community to open their hearts and minds to other people and other perspectives (my primary goal as an ethnomusicologist and "world music" performer) was what I needed to be doing. And there I was, doing it.

Valerie, it turns out, is a superstar. She has been in the SNL band for a number of years and played in the pit for the Broadway version of The Lion King. She is also a key reason that women in Ghana are allowed to play the gyil now. Valerie, from Southern Colorado, studied the gyil here in the US as well as in Ghana, and became such a virtuosic performer that "her playing of the gyil's traditional repertoire in Ghana's Kobine Festival of Traditional Music [1988] led to the declaration of a chiefly decree in the Dagara nation that women be allowed to play the instrument for the first time" (from her bio on the NYU website).

I connected with Valerie and, with her input, transposed "Nite Song" back to gyil for my senior recital (I say transposed because I never wrote anything down - I simply read off the full-staff marimba arrangement and mentally converted what was on the page to fit the instrument I had in front of me). Here's a link to my performance of "Nite Song" on YouTube (image above is from this performance). 

Since then, I've performed frequently on the gyil. With some of my best friends, Brandon Carson, Sam Park (in the wide image earlier in this post), Austin Allen, and others for improvised duets, and sometimes solo (including my solo debut at the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas in 2018 - see the instagram post below). 

When I'm hurting, I can play the gyil to help heal. When I'm joyful, playing the gyil helps me celebrate. It would be a mistake to think that an instrument that is easier to play is "less" "sophisticated" than anything else. The gyil is an incredible piece of technology. The resonating frequency of each gourd is matched with that of the bar it hangs under to amplify the sound pitch. Spider egg casings (or, as on mine, paper) cover small holes in the gourd resonators to add a buzzing sound effect (see my lecture on altuceciance and latuceciance with the Cuyamungue Institutehere).  And complex musical-theoretical traditions govern the music that is played on the instruments in traditional contexts. The fact that the gyil is so versatile and so adaptable is the icing on the cake. It's the reason the gyil has overtaken so much of my heart that when I drove home to Dallas for s couple of months in the summer between my two years of grad school with a car full of textbooks and clothes that I absolutely had to make space for one of my gyil. I would not be going "home" without it. 

When you look at me, you shouldn't see a gyil player. You should see someone who is played by the gyil. After loving my gyil and they sounds they make for so long, it was my honor to feature them on the record that is the culmination of my time at ASU. My latest single "Here & Everywhere," is made up of some of my favorite sounds and instruments, but right in the middle (well, actually slightly panned to the left and right) are my gyil, carrying on the rambunctious jam melody during the bridge sections and commenting on the other instrumental lines throughout. The album cover shows myself and one of my gyil, and though it may seem to be the other way around, the instrument in this picture is in fact holding me up, as both my gyil have done now for more than half a decade.

I hope that you will go listen to more gyil music, traditional and otherwise, and that you enjoy "Here & Everywhere."

Lawson Malnory
Phoenix, AZ
​11 April 2022

2020 was whacked out. For obvious reasons. Pandemic. Protests. Presidential elections. imPeachments. War with Iran? And beyond all these, people were all still trying to live their lives.

The other pandemic of 2020 was people pushing their personal problems onto everybody else - "levelling the playing field,"  whether intentionally or not, by spreading emotional distress. And don't get me wrong - people who know me will tell you that I am stupidly empathetic. Awareness is important, empathy is important, compassion is important. But I think an individual's right to fight to be emotionally healthy is equally important. No one can be expected to come out on top in a daily struggle against the personal trials and tribulations that we all face in our lives with the distress of all the global social and environmental problems that no one individual can fix layered on top. Sometimes, the only way forward is focusing your efforts on what you as an individual can control and improve, and putting your blinders on to the rest. In other words, sometimes you need to be able to ignore things.

One of the most common themes of 2020 was people saying something like "if you don't think my problem is the most important problem in the world right now, you're a bad person." Of course no one really said it exactly that way, but this sentiment is the ultimate extrapolation of what so many were saying, and what so many more were feeling. On a macrocosmic scale, the widespread sense that 2020 was a turning point, an iconic moment, the "before and after" year of history, grew from the same egotistical problem. Everyone has moments in their life and in their era when they think that both are the most stressful, most awful, and most impossible to make it through, like, ever. But they're never right. Every day is different, every life is different. I thought a lot about this last summer, and it ultimately turned into a song. The proverbial lesson is this: history, and life, are utterly complex. None of us is or are the center of the universe. Focus on what you can give, rather than take away - especially if you're taking away someone else's emotional health. That's just evil.
​Below is a series of recordings I made early in the development of the song. It started with a couple of my favorite instruments, the mbira dzavadzimu and the ukulele . . .

In my studio garage that my parents gifted to me via their sweat, time, and tears, on May 31st, 2020, while my neighbor was having what I would call a "carefree-pandemic-pool-party," I started writing.
​I looped a couple of ukulele grooves on top of each other, featuring the uke in "drop-b" tuning because I wanted to be punk ("drop-b" also made it easier to play in E major, the key of my mbira). I jammed on that for a hot minute while I got the feel of it into my bones. I did some whistling too, then I added in the mbira. Aside from a couple minor note-changes and a switch of the feel from swung to straight, the original mbira pattern from that first day made it into the final version of the song. Once I got everything sounding pretty nice, I looped the uke and mbira parts on top of each other and started improvising some lyrics. The first go at it included a more straightforward message that expressed what I was feeling in the moment: "We've all got our burdens to bear, please don't add to theirs."
I kept working on it throughout the night, and the next day I was back at it. The lyrics changed a lot that next day and the song took on a more specific problem. I was concerned that we, as a modern society, don't have enough respect for the enormity and complexity of history ("how did we get to where we are today? I don't know, this I will avow"). This under-appreciation and under-education allow us to think that we are living in the worst times when in fact, most all of us alive today have it a lot better, in relative terms, than our respective peers from the past ("how did we get to where we are today, if before, things weren't like they are now?"). That's not to say there are no problems, but rather that we need to keep perspective in mind. The chorus of the song was pretty much set that second day, as well as a lot of the verse lyrics. I made an entire afternoon of playing and singing along with those loops, trying to capture the right feel for everything. The last holdout, if memory serves, was the bridge melody. It took me until the end of the week, when I was sitting in the parking lot of Chip's hamburgers waiting for a COVID-safe food transfer, that I nailed it. I visited that parking lot again a year later to enjoy the memories.

A couple weeks after I finished writing "Two Thousand & One," I got a major surgery that put me in recovery for a month. I was lucky that I had a nice play where I could recover comfortably, but I will never forget the physical and emotional pain I experienced every day for that month, and the fear that enveloped me during that transitional moment in my life. I say transitional because, two weeks after my recovery was completed and my tube was removed, a month-and-a-half after the surgery, I left everyone and everything I knew behind to go and study in Arizona. It turned out to be one of the best decisions I've ever made, but to this day I'm still coping with the pain I went through after that surgery and the abrupt extraction of so many dear friends from my life without really having the time to properly say goodbye.
After about a month in Phoenix, I found one of my favorite places in the world: the Houston Mesa outside of Payson, AZ. I went hiking there on the Labor Day holiday and found myself at peace. Something that I had learned to really pursue and love since everything went crazy in March. At the mesa, I filmed myself playing an acoustic version of "Two Thousand & One," stripped down to just the vocals and the mbira. This was the song's introduction to the rest of the world:

I kept playing it and singing it. Then, in the Spring, I had the opportunity to participate in ASU's DBR LABspace seminar. guided by Daniel Bernard Roumain, Jeff McMahon, and Malena Grosz, and collaborating with four other incredible student-artists, I recorded "Two Thousand & One" and parts of several other songs in preparation for the program's annual performance (this year, it was moved to zoom, rather than being a live performance, for obvious reasons). My part of the show was "Two Thousand & One: The Music Video," featuring the song that I recorded and mixed as a solo effort, and mastered with the help of DBR, accompanied by a self-directed, filmed, and edited music video recounting the experience of the Greek Philosopher Euclid when he time-travelled from his own era way back in history (2001) to 2020 and was astonished by how different the world had become. I filmed the video over the course of a single day, wearing a few different costumed to represent different characters, creating a faux-protest banner out of an Indiana Jones poster, using my mom's old suitcase as a stand-in for a time machine, and hiking up South Mountain with said suitcase while wearing a toga. What a day. The video featured the final version of the song, which, after I got back to Dallas for the summer, was then published and set up for release on streaming platforms on July 15.

And that's the story of "Two Thousand & One" from its birth in my garage in Dallas, to its first recording at the Houston Mesa, to the recording, producing, filming, and publishing. It's been a journey that crossed over and between several critical parts of my life that filled me up with all different kinds of energy and emotion that I channelled back into the music and the video. I'm incredibly proud of the song, the recording, the video, and everything about it. I'm incredibly grateful to everyone who made it all possible, from my parents building the garage, to everyone in the LABspace who shared their input with me, to my buddie Laurie who did the album cover. Thank you all so much! And everybody else, I hope you enjoy the song. But if you don't, I don't care. I made this song for me.

Love,

Lawson
14 July 2021
MacTown

PS: Lyrics
Afore I had this 12-inch cellphone sitting in the palm of my hand
The only thing that I could talk to was a friend
Oh my God how sad life was in the year Two Thousand & One
I tell you back then, they didn't have a word for fun
No facebook, Snapchat, LinkeIn, Uber weren't no Instagram
Even had to go outdoors if you wanted to get a tan
They was all so happy and pretty and young no they didn't stand a chance
When the darkness that lives within us asked to have the next dance
 
CHORUS
How did we get to where we are today?
I don't know, this I will avow.
How did we survive all the yesterdays,
If before, things weren't like they are now?
 ------

Elon Musk hadn't yet invented electricity
And you could see candles through the windows of the college dormitory
A light so faint they strained their eyes, yeah they all got cataracts
Served 'em right, those candles weren't vegan, no, they were made of beeswax
A rudimentary system of weights and measures is all they had
I saw Euclid ranking skyscrapers with a compass and a pad
Then the two of them fell, it all went to Hell in a handbasket real fast
That's why all we hear about Two Thousand is "Oh! the price of gas,"
 
[CHORUS]

BRIDGE
It all goes so fast these days
Maybe we need to take some time to chill
Seems like the fifties were the Stone Age
And the Great Depression is when they had Jesus killed
It's hard to believe it took us this long to get to where to* we are
But we've come so far

[CHORUS AGAIN]

*This is not a typo. We should practice thinking about history and time not as moments, but as a broader trajectory. Even if where we are now is not perfect, we may be well on the way. Let's instead talk about "where to" we are.

     I remember when we were kids procrastination was the 8th Deadly Sin. Right after not saving your progress on a Word doc every time you finished a sentence. But there have since been books, and lectures, about how procrastination has really been a misunderstood antihero all this time. I'm not going to name any of the books because I'm really just here to flex my intuitive psychological muscles and, like the title implies, I'm keeping this one short.
     When we were kids, they had to tell us that procrastination is a sin, because we weren't self-aware enough to handle it safely, and the time-management paradigm we existed within left no room for it anyway. Like kiddie scissors that are dulled, the rigidly through-scheduled days, weeks, quarters, and years of public (or private or whatever) school education gave kids the positive element (a plan for staying on-track ~ something that cuts paper) without too much risk of the negative (falling behind ~ getting cut yourself). In this case, the procrastination was basically done on our behalf - we needed to learn a set number of things in a given year, and teachers would plan to delay half of them until next semester, and 1/4 (hypothetically) of them would be put off until the very last quarter of the year. This allowed students to not have to worry about all the different topics they would be covering simultaneously, so instead they could focus on the topic of the day, week, &c, and learn it more thoroughly.
     College starts weaning you off of this reliance on "total institution"-type planning out of tasks. They tell you to go read the syllabus and expect you to keep yourself on track - many professors (as is their right to do) never remind students of upcoming assignments because if they followed the first instruction (read the syllabus), they should know when everything is due. Here, young people get to begin playing with the procrastination fire. They know from before the first day of class when the final assignment is due, and the choice of when to begin working on it is entirely in their hands. And thus, the journey to discovering the dazzling beauty of procrastination begins.
     And now I'm gonna jump out of the timeline: a lot of people just never figure out that procrastination is ok. This can manifest in a lot of ways, but something I see pretty often (and have experienced plenty in my own head) is a faulty thought pattern that goes like this: "I have things that I need to do, but I don't want to do these things. I can't do other things, because those things I have to do need to get done [ergo, I can't procrastinate]. But since I really don't want to do those things and don't have the energy to do them right now, I'm not going to do anything at all." To be clear, I'm displaying this as a conscious, rational decision, but that's usually not actually what's going on. It starts with a subconscious feeling of dread (or similar ingredient) directed at the idea of doing whatever it is that needs to be done, then a subconscious image of doing something fun appears and is immediately crushed by the subconscious hatred of procrastination that was cultivated in the early years when there was neither need nor time-space for it. Then, in the end, rather than being a conscious decision to do nothing, what we're really looking at is a subconscious indecision that leaves the "user" of this particular brain confused about why they apparently are unable to do anything at all, and consequently feeling quite helpless. The subconscious attack on potential procrastination is also tinged with a hint of self-disrespect that lingers at the back of the tongue like the taste of $5 wine. 
     But procrastination is actually great! When you do it the right way. When you do all the planning the teachers used to do for you, and make sure in advance that you know a) how much you need to do in a given timeframe and b) how long each thing will take, you can put together c) how much time you need to work and d) how much time you can set aside for appreciating life, or going to the grocery store. And you don't always need an excel spreadsheet to figure this out. In some situations, you can just work off a sense of a) and b) and don't need to get down into the details too far. These situations aren't necessarily un-complicated times - the more life experience you have in doing things, the better you will get at thinking about doing things, and the less planning you'll need, so some people can accomplish very complex sets of tasks with very little planning and still have plenty of room for procrastinating. 
     Why procrastinate, though? Why not just fill up every minute of every day with tasks if you can plan ahead that well? Well, person's gotta eat. Person's gotta sleep. Those are the first great time-wasters. Physical exercise is important too, and not just for the health of everything besides your brain, but for your brain too (whoa - just realized eating and sleeping are good for the brain, and everything else, as well). There's also a thing called "balance." In 2021, most people thing "balance" is a chicken-%&^* metonym for "a weak person compromising," but it actually turns out that all our mothers were right about it after all. Balance is good in pretty much every situation you can think of. Standing on the edge of a cliff? Balance. Trying to run a country where people have diverse viewpoints? Balance. Trying to save money for the future while also enjoying life now? Balance. When you balance your time between "work" and "play" or "things you have to do (because of social obligations)" and "things you want to do (because you're a gorram human being)," you will automagically feel better. You will bring your body, including your mind, closer to a state of peace. And when you're at peace, you will think clearer. And when you think clearer, you can plan better and you need less time to accomplish more difficult tasks. 
     So here's my challenge to everyone - the next time you wake up feeling like there are too many things you have to do and because of them you can't do things you want to do, SHUT UP! Shut your brain up! Get up, and go to a park, and sit there and watch funny-sounding ducks doing their thing. Look at all the stupid-looking trees around you. Grass? What is that even about? Remove yourself from the realm of expectations and drop into the realm of wonder, where the answers don't really matter and the questions can be joyful and dumb. When you're there, your mind can start clearing out the recycle bin of stress and anxiety and free up space for the tasks that you've been putting off so that when you get back to 'em, you'll do 'em easier, and you'll do 'em better. 

Lawson

South Tempe, AZ
16 March 2021

TL;DR – Next time you feel like “cancelling” somebody, reach out to them and try to engage in a one-on-one conversation about whatever they said or did that you take issue with. By ganging up on them and publicly shaming them, you force them to be your enemy. We cannot change the world, but we can change people, and it can only be done one person at a time.
 
An Alternative to Cancel Culture
 
Do you want to improve the world?
I don’t think it can be done.
 
The world is sacred.
It can’t be improved.
If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it.
...
The  [wise person] sees things as they are,
without trying to control them.
She lets them go their own way,
and resides at the centre of the circle.
- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (trans. Stephen Mitchell)
 
And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed. Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.
- II Thessalonians 3:14-15
 
I used to say that the thing I wanted to accomplish most in my life was to make the world a better place. An admirable goal it is, but I was making the same mistake as many other empathic, well-intentioned people who have passed this way before and as surely many more will make before the sun expands to engulf the Earth, an asteroid hits us, or God comes to claim us all. The error is one of focus and specificity. “Making the world a better place” sounds nice and captures the positivity of emotion that we seek to effect, but it is not an actionable strategy, for reasons eloquently explained in the 29th lesson of the Tao Te Ching (Book of the Way) quoted above. The world is already perfect—people are the problem.
 
Instead, what we should really seek to do is to teach each other—to share lessons from our unique personal experiences with life that could help others to pass their temporal existence in a more fulfilling manner. Anybody who seeks “to make the world a better place” should agree that a world where everyone is supportive, collaborative, and considerate, free to pursue individual achievement in a way that works towards, rather than detracts from, the common good of all humanity, is pretty much the ideal. The question of how to achieve this (what seems to me to be the execution of the “objective morality”) is what has been tying us in knots for millennia.
 
One particularly popular method these days has been labelled as “Cancel Culture.” The sweeping term is used to describe the manner in which people with common socio-political views gather together, often on the internet, to publicly shame anyone whose actions or words they believe go against their (the accusers’) idea of morality. Accuser’s often make emotional, rather than rational, arguments in order to stimulate a visceral response from their followers, augmenting their individual power in what can be sympathetically described as an attempt to “make the world a better place.” The problem with “Cancel Culture” is that it doesn’t actually stop the people who are really causing a ruckus out there, instead causing more emotional harm for and damage to the professional careers of people who are trying to do the right thing.
 
While our good buddy the apostle Saul/Paul said some things I find fault with, I think he was pretty spot-on with the above quote from his letter to the church at Thessaloniki. It needs to be interpreted because it’s two thousand years old, but human brains are built to interpret things, so that shouldn’t be a problem. “Cancel Culture” is all about “having no company” with anyone they disagree with and making them feel “ashamed,” but that meant something very different back in 40 AD/CE than it does now. Paul is probably talking about a temporary ostracism from group/community rituals to force the shame-ee to reflect on the error in their ways, not any kind of permanent ban. And way back then, it wasn’t as easy for someone who is banished from one group to go and find another who they agree with. Now, one need only navigate to a different page on reddit, or group on facebook. After the shame-ee had been given some time to think, they are brought back into the fold and forgiven—that’s how somebody should treat their brother or sister.
 
The options “Cancel Culture” gives you are submission or permanent ostracism. This reminds me a lot of Henry the VIII and Thomas More (author of Utopia and long-time friend of the King). Among other charges, More was unwilling to swear an oath giving authority over the Church to the King, sticking to his Catholic philosophy that the Pope was God’s word on Earth, so he was beheaded. “Cancel Culture” has been blamed as a part-cause in numerous suicides since the term was coined, so I don’t think that this comparison is too far off (here’s just one of many examples).
 
I’m going to go out on a limb here and project my own personal experiences onto this conversation—I don’t think the people who kill themselves as a result of “Cancel Culture” are the ones who are part of “the problem” that the accusers are trying to fix. In my experience, people who tend towards suicidal thoughts, including myself, are the ones who really want to be good. When “Cancel Culture” leads to suicide, I think it is a matter of the victims being convinced that they really are contributing to a worse society, or that they simply have no role in helping to build a better one, and therefore we would all be better off without them. To be clear, I do not believe the world is ever better off without anyone who truly wants to do good.  (We can all help prevent suicide. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline provides 24/7, free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones.
​1-800-273-8255).
 
The other form of permanent ostracism that results from “Cancel Culture” is manifested in the new conservative social media platform, Parler. People who really don’t care what the accusers have to say about them will, as I mentioned earlier, just go find another space where they can say the same things. In this way, “Cancel Culture” contributes to a more divided society where individuals are exposed to less diversity of opinions and perspectives—this is the exact opposite of what many participants in “Cancel Culture” claim to be promoting (especially in cases where “Cancel Culture” is used to elevate the voices of members of historically underrepresented or oppressed populations).
 
When someone actually does submit to “Cancel Culture,” they are either lying (maliciously or simply to survive) or they are allowing their opinions and values to be directed by peer pressure, which is the same thing that our parents and teachers told us to avoid because it would lead us into making stupid decisions. They were right about that, but peer pressure also limits the diversity of opinions and perspectives available to us and restricts individuality and freedom—thus it is a key ingredient in most recipes of social dysfunction.
 
But this little essay isn’t about “Cancel Culture,” it’s about an alternative. Don’t worry, I won’t go on much longer, and I don’t have to because in this case the best solution is very simple. Here it is: treat people as individuals, and when you’re offended or concerned by something someone says or does, speak to them as an individual. Have a conversation.
 
I know that seems harder to do when there’s a pandemic going around, but actually it might be easier (for people my age at least). Folks like me hate confrontational in-person conversations, and a debate or discussion about philosophical, social, or political disagreements might be more comfortable over Zoom or Facetime or some other digital medium. Send them a facebook message and say “Hey – I don’t want to be a h8r, and I’m not trying to call you out, so I’m sending this as a DM. I’m a little offended/concerned by (or: I think some people might take offense or disagree with) what you said/did here/there. I’d just like to talk about it, share my perspective, and hear yours because I know I’m not an omniscient expert on all things.” If they don’t want to talk in-person, you can still discuss it over chat. Just remain civil and urbane in deportment. Don’t play “gotcha,” don’t try to “win”—try to understand. That’s how we will move as a society closer to the ideal I described above and that I truly believe most “Cancel Culture” participants, and really most people in the world, want to manifest.
 
I’ve used this method before—I reached out over facebook to someone who I thought was being a little too judgmental about people who disagreed with them on a particular topic. We exchanged several messages, found common ground on the subject, and then became (what I believe to be) really close digital pen-pals who continue to discuss our shared love of music frequently more than a year later. I’ve thrown people out of my life before—unfollowed them, ignored their text messages, or whatever—and I’ll tell you that finding a new friend instead of banishing an old one is much more fulfilling.
 
Don’t try to change the world—it’s not yours to &$^% with. Don’t treat anyone as your enemy. We’re all humans, we all get to share the Earth and this mystifying experience called life together, so we should treat each other as family. Families fight, families argue, families might shut the out “black sheep” for a little while (shoutout to you-know-who-you-are if you’re reading this), but in the end we talk it out, we forgive, we understand, and we keep on loving each other.
 
Stay friendly,
 
Lawson
 
Lawson Malnory
14 December 2020
Tempe, AZ

Imagine, if you will, a world in which a mysterious God-like figure creates and distributes money. Let’s call it: Leslie. Leslie only asks that every person go to a special building and sit in silence for 5 hours a day, 5 days a week. Anybody who does this, gets money. For simplicity, we’re gonna leave the uses of money out of this discussion, but assume for now that everyone wants it. Anybody who follows Leslie’s instructions gets $50k a year, and pretty much everybody does because it’s not that hard and it’s an ok salary.
 
Here’s the question: how do we make rich people? Here’s the answer: by making poor people. Kelly is an entrepreneur. Kelly decides that they are going to offer their friends a place to store their money, so that their friends can have more space in their homes for activities. Kelly only asks an annual fee of 5% on whatever Kelly stores. Assuming Kelly’s friends ask them to store ALL of their money, and they are all the same age (have been earning for the same length of time at the same rate) as Kelly, here is how the numbers work out.
 
For Kelly to get 5% richer, they only need one client, who will get 5% poorer. For Kelly to get 50% richer, they need 10 clients, who will each become 5% poorer. For Kelly do double their money, they need 20 clients. Alternatively, they could up their prices. They could double their money by doubling the rate (to 10%) and only getting 10 clients. With this, we can establish a relationship: the number of poor people negatively correlates with the extremity of individual poverty, or: the more people there are, the less poor they have to be. Moreover, there is an exponential relationship between the growth of an individual's wealth and the number of people who become less wealthy as a result.
 
How is the real world different from this? Well, for starters, TIME and MONEY aren’t the only resources for sale in real life. There are a lot of folks who get rich by taking other people’s money (see: loans and interest), but there are also people who get rich by discovering or developing a new resource. Gold is an example of a resource that can be discovered, while ride-sharing is an example of one that has been developed. Unfortunately, the process for melting down, re-forming, and selling gold requires the time-labor of people who will get paid less than the person who discovered the gold (unless they’re really generous to their employees) and the ride-share company can only run with the time-labor of people who will ... yeah, you guessed it ... get paid less than the person who developed the concept.
 
Ultimately, we discover that, in order to sustain an “Upper Class,” a “Lower Class” needs to exist, and it needs to contain more people. The more opulent the lifestyles of the Upper Class, the more dreary the lives of the Lower Class. For most of the history of “civilization,” the entire population of any political entity served at the pleasure of a single ruling family or individual, who enjoyed lavish luxuries thanks to the toil of the lower classes, potentially consisting of upwards of 90% of the population. In Ancient Egypt, everyone besides the Pharaoh was considered the property of the ruler. We owe the pyramids to a greater wealth-gap than we could ever imagine. For these reasons, the “growing middle class” is a phrase we always hear describing economies that are trending positively. The “middle class” is just poor people who aren’t as poor as they were before.
 
So in the two extremes, an economy can either have an entire nation serving one very wealthy individual (traditional monarchies, authoritarian regimes), or everybody can have the exact same amount of stuff (communism – where nobody has any stuff). It seems fair that everyone should have the same amount of stuff, because equality. BUT – all people are really not created equal. Some people are smarter, some people are stronger, some people develop a passion for overcoming challenges, and some people come to prefer the path of least resistance. Because of factors stemming from both nature and nurture, it is not the case that everyone can contribute the same amount of productivity for the benefit of society, so everyone should really not have the same amount of stuff.
 
A truly fair system is one where people who are willing and able to do more get more, but people who can’t do more aren’t left behind to suffer. This means constricting the amount of wealth people at the top are able to earn (because the more they get, the more people at the bottom must lose). We have a minimum wage to levitate the people at the bottom, but no maximum wage to hold back the people at the top. High taxes may disincentivize atmospheric salaries, but don’t prevent them altogether. Additionally, the redistribution of the wealth of hard workers and people with natural advantages down to people with natural disadvantages leaves out one key group of stakeholders: lazy people.
 
How much help should lazy people get? How much of their laziness is their choice, and how much is due to psychological trauma, bad parenting, &c? If they don’t get any help, they may turn to crime – an easier alternative to getting a job that, as a bonus comes with the opportunity to go to jail and having your food and housing provided by the state for a while. There is a balance point to aim for where the government isn’t giving so much to people at the bottom that there is no incentive to work, but it’s also giving enough that they don’t turn to desperate measures to survive, or simply give up altogether.
 
Really the whole thing is about balance. Can we make a world where nobody has to be at the bottom? No. For something to be higher, something else must be lower. Can we create a world without poverty? MAYBE – by reigning in the wealth of the people at the very top. Mike Trout’s $37.7 million salary is equivalent to 754 individuals making a nice $50k. According to Japan Times, the world’s 500 wealthiest people grew their fortunes by $1.2 trillion, which is equal to 24 million people making a nice $50k. But then there are bad stats, too. Worldpopulationreview.com reports that the 2018 GDP of the entire world was almost $85 trillion. Divvy that up among all 7.8 billion people on Earth, and everyone gets a little less that $11k. GDP is not really all the wealth that is available to be earned and it doesn’t include cash transactions or other barters with legitimate precision, so that’s just a frame-of-reference stat, but it’s sobering nonetheless (it's also a good argument for less procreation).
 
So what are we trying to achieve? What does a “good economy” look like? It looks like talented and hardworking people being able to earn enough that they are encouraged to keep working hard and producing, because the hard work of the most talented people creates jobs, trickling down the ladder to people at the bottom, who don’t have the talent or don’t have the work ethic to create their own jobs. But along this chain, the difference in salary should be limited so that the people at the top don’t get so much that the people at the bottom are left to suffer so much that the system falls apart. If the people at the bottom decide they don’t want to do their jobs, then the people at the top don’t get paid either. The “dark matter” of economics is pain and discontent. Generally, economics just talks about the flow of goods and money, how people act when the supply of one or the other changes, &c. But pain and discontent do crucial work behind the scenes. When the people at the bottom are in too much pain, they can transfer that pain directly to the people at the top, perhaps by going on strike or by starting a revolution and cutting off heads with a guillotine. The people at the top need to make sure they aren’t caught up in their fun while discontent and pain are growing among the people at the bottom, because that’s when the whole system comes crashing down, and everybody is equal in their poverty again. It feels like we’re getting dangerously close to that point these days.
 
I write this as someone solidly in the middle. I am talented and hard-working, but I have suffered quite a bit. Because of what I’ve suffered, sometimes I need to rest. I can’t constantly work my bum off, but when I can work, I want my work to make a difference in people’s lives. When it’s impossible to do work for the good of other people without pushing myself towards the bottom of the “middle class,” and there’s no incentive other than warm fuzzies, it’s hard to convince myself that I really am doing the right thing. My whole family seems to think I’m a communist hippie happy-go-lucky take-nothing-seriously dipsy-doodle. Or maybe it’s just me that thinks that, and I only think that because economic pressures are the only empirical measurement we’ve developed for personal success. Who really knows?
 
There are a lot of problems out there when it comes to money and wealth. We all need it. Some of us are unhealthily obsessed with it. Some of us don’t want to think about it and just want to do the best work we can. Some of us are desperate for it because we want our kids to be able to eat dinner tonight. It’s a lot to think about and I obviously don't have the answers. The only recommendation I want to make is: DON'T OVERSIMPLIFY IT. Economics/wealth/money is a complicated beast and the simple solutions won't work. Equality for all really isn't fair, but neither is whatever the heck we've got right now.

5 July 2020

​Lower Greenville, Dallas, TX

Sometimes life hurts. I think a lot of us are acutely aware of that fact right now, in the midst of a global epidemic and localized peaceful protests and violent riots after the unjust killing of another unarmed African-American person (his name is George Floyd). It's a natural human response to lash out when we feel pain. It's a survival technique that has been programmed into our brains for generations, going back to when we all slept in caves and were under constant threat of big scary animals with large teeth. Fear and pain cause anger. It's a fact.

The question is, what do we do with that knowledge? Dex, the Besalisk owner of Dex's Diner (Episode II), noted to Obi-Wan ​the difference between "knowledge and wisdom." Knowledge is knowing what the facts are, and wisdom is understanding what to do with that information. There are more and more knowledgeable people everyday, thanks to the internet and cell phones. Unfortunately, so far we have no reason to believe that Wisdom is "scaleable." Wisdom is something that is earned through life experience, through overcoming adversity. And YES, while some people's experiences are certainly more difficult, EVERYONE struggles. I personally have a lot of room to grow, but I've always been someone who was more attracted to wisdom than knowledge. I often seem like a bit of a dummy because I don't keep a lot of facts in my head, but you present those facts to me and I guarantee I will be able to decipher their deeper meaning. Maybe it's all because of that one line in Star Wars - I'm not sure. Regardless, I've sought wisdom through books, movies, music, lectures, scriptures, people, and many other sources for many years, so I want to share something that I believe would help a lot of people re-frame their understanding of this tragic situation we're in (and the many others that will come in our lifetimes).

You see, "Good" and "Evil" are not two different ends of an infinitely long line, with Good on the right side and Evil on the left side. You're looking at it askance. The line you see actually stretches our forever before you and behind you and is the path of goodness. It is less than one atom wide. To live a perfect life, you must tight-rope walk down the center of that line from birth to death, without ever stepping anywhere outside of the line. For beyond the line, on both sides, is Evil - it lies in wait in the dark forests  beside the road, spilling out into the open ground and stretching up to the edge of that tiny, tiny line of goodness. It probably sounds impossible to live a perfect life with this metaphor. As one of my mentors would say, "No $***, Sherlock." Not even Jesus Christ, or Mohammed, or the Buddha lived absolutely perfect lives. "To err is human, to forgive, divine" (Alexander Pope).

Many people believe that they are justified in their actions because they fight against other actions that are clearly evil. To that I say, good is not the opposite of evil. If you cross the path of goodness and go to the farthest end of the other side, you will only find more evil, wearing different camouflage. Or, in the words of an African proverb quoted by Chinua Achebe, "He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down." Nothing will return the lives of the far-too-numerous unarmed African-Americans who have been murdered by unwise members of police organizations or the many more who were killed by private citizens during the Jim Crowe era, and reconstruction, and the Civil War, &c. The world is an unjust, painful place. No one can ever make up for all the lives that have been cut short, all the lives that have been wasted, all over the world throughout history. Like I said at the beginning - sometimes life hurts.

THE ONLY THING WE CAN DO is make it hurt less for our children, or if we don't have kids of our own, for the kids of our friends and family and of strangers we've never met whom we love anyway. We won't make the world a better place by meeting hate with more hate. As Gandhi said, "An eye for an eye makes the world blind." If we keep both of our eyes, we can watch both sides of the infinitesimally narrow path of goodness, and make sure we (each of us individually) are not drifting too far in either direction. There are numerous Eastern religions and philosophies wherein balance is a critical concept. Balance within oneself and balance between all the pieces of the world is what allows things to go smoothly. Is Buddhism, a concept similar to "path of goodness" that I described earlier is called "The Middle Way," and in Taoism it is simply "The Way." Taoism also has two other teachings that are very relevant to this painful situation: "the harder you push, the more resistance you will receive" and "have patience." 

Patience is perhaps the greatest piece of wisdom anyone can earn and there is only one way to get that merit badge - by waiting. It's the critical piece of wisdom that Boomers think Millennials don't have and honestly, they are to a large degree correct (though it must be added that not all Boomers, &c., are as wise as we would hope). "The language of young men is pull down and destroy, but an old man speaks of conciliation" (Chinua Achebe again). I understand, I really do, all of the people calling for racial justice NOW. But the world doesn't work like that. We need racial justice as soon as possible, but it will not be easy and it will not be right now. The Dark Side of the force is not stronger, but is "quicker, easier, more seductive" (Yoda). The quick solution is to destroy everyone and everything that is a little bit racist and exterminate the problem once and for all. But that's just committing more evil. "To answer power with power, the Jedi way this is not." "Wars not make one great." "Patience you must have, my young padawan." Now Chinua Achebe: "It is praiseworthy to be brave and fearless, but sometimes it is better to be a coward. We often stand in the compound of a coward to point at the ruins where a brave man used to live."How many ruins do we need to create before we are ready to leave hate, in all its manifestations, behind?

This last bit is my request to everyone, and I mean everyone, that is ever suffering from an injustice forced on them by this unfair world. Please don't burn the whole place down. There are far more people trying to do good than those trying to do evil  - it's just that the evil ones are a lot louder. Have patience, know that you are not alone. I suffer too. I cannot understand your suffering but you can also not understand mine. Let us turn to art, and create beautiful things to express our pain rather than destroy. My mother always told me to "be the bigger person" when I was in an argument with my brother, or when I was being bullied at school. It was hard to understand as a kid, but for God's sake, we're not all kids anymore. Let's be the bigger people and not resort to violence, not resort to shouting, not resort to venting on social media, not resort to calling out vast swathes of the population as complicit. Let's have a real person-to-person conversation. And yeah, the conversation might be hard, but here's one last Igbo proverb for you, courtesy of Chinua Acehebe: "A person may refuse a request, but they cannot refuse to be asked." In modern English: You may disagree, but you should still talk to each other about it.

Lawson Malnory

31 May 2020

Dallas, TX

In light of all the mbira hype on the internet during Zimbabwe Culture Week 2020, I wanted to take an opportunity to talk about my relationship with this magical instrument. I don't pretend that my mbira experience is more important than anyone else's. Surely the Shona people who use it to commune with their ancestors and other spirits have a much more tangible and authentic connection with far greater longevity. However, I hope that by sharing my mbira story I can provide an explanation-in-part of why this instrument and its music are able to seemingly control a person who thinks to control them. If that's not Lough I don't know what is.

The textbook that we used for the class (Music of the Peoples of the World) included a CD with a marvelously diverse set of example recordings. One of them is the textbook author, William Alves, playing excerpts from "Nhemamusasa." Before showing this and a few other examples to the class, Dr. Kinnett gave us a preface about what to expect to hear from the mbira. He said something like "a piano for tiny angels" or "angels laughing." He was pretty spot on - suddenly there was this beautiful sound that certainly no mortal instrument could manifest. After a good discussion of traditional mbira music, Dr. Kinnett also gave us a little background on Thomas Mapfumo and the Chimurenga experience, and we moved on. Well, the rest of the class moved on, but I remember for the next year I would frequently go back to that Alves example to listen to while doing homework or driving in my car. It was more than just a sound - it was a feeling that accompanied it. One of safety, and peace. Someone who I hope I can accurately call a friend outside of the music world is professor Willie Baronet, and Advertising inspirator who is loved by all his students and passionately maintains the "We Are All Homeless" project. He frequently asks people "what is 'home?'" and in the We Are All Homeless documentary, there was an answer I found quite striking - somebody said "safety." I would expand on that a little bit and say "home," for me, is a feeling of safety and peace. But it doesn't have to be a place that creates that feeling - it can be a person you love, it can be a food you enjoy, or it can be a sound that wraps itself around and throughout you like a metaphysical security blanket. That's what I felt, and still feel, when I listened to the mbira.

"Nhemamusasa," and that the song was a direct transcription of the original Shona song for harmonica and synth. It's a beautiful piece, recorded live somewhere in Rome, I guess, and it renewed my interest all over again. Shortly after this encounter, we had a project in one of my education classes wherein we had to write out a short arrangement and teach it to the class. I chose to arrange PCO's arrangement of Nhemamusasa, and while it's not relevant to this post, I will add that I killed it when I taught it to the class - as a percussionist, demonstrating syncopated parts and patterns comes naturally. During the same semester I was taking Jazz Vibraphone lessons from the superhuman vibraphone master Ed Smith. I'll come right out and say I was terrible in these lessons. My brain and Music Theory have a relationship built on long, logical discussions, that precludes me from thinking fast when it comes to chord changes and anything of that sort. Ed was incredibly patient with my dunderheadedness - he deserves a lot of credit as a teacher on top of his accolades as a performer. One day I was utterly failing in a lesson and he noticed amongst my sheet music was hidden the arrangement of Nhemamusasa I had made for the EDU class and he asked me about it. Turns out, Ed (one of the members of D'drum) was all about the mbira. I told him how absorbed I was with that inimitable sound and the beautifully direct melody. Then he unloaded knowledge on me and told me about some of the OG mbira albums (pictured below in CD and Vinyl forms).

 phone and I turned it into a diatonic mbira with my own key layout that I still play with love years later. The same semester, the SMU Anthropology department brought in a musical act from Zimbabwe to accompany a visiting lecturer who published a book on the interaction of traditional culture and the Church in Zimbabwe during the colonial era. The musical act was none other than Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited. Perhaps one of the most iconic concerts I've ever witnessed took place on a random weeknight in a lecture hall in the basement of the Student Center, the same place where they give orientation to disinterested Freshmen. My friends and I joined the Zimbawean ex-pats at the front of the stage and tried to dance, but we were sufficiently American to embarrass ourselves thoroughly. I didn't care - I was home. 

The floodgates were opened then. I had to get my own Mbira Dzavadzimu - the kind prominently featured on the two album covers and on which Nhemamusasa and many of the most ubiquitous traditional Shona songs are typically performed - to learn to play the music I'd listened to for so long. Thanks to Mbira.com for making that possible, and thanks to Dr. B. Michael Williams for his series of mbira lesson-books that use a uniquely  idiomatic form of mbira musical notation and make it easy to learn many great songs and variations. It was the summer after I graduated from SMU, when I got my Mbira Dzv. and the first of Dr. Williams' books, that the culmination of all those little coincidences and bits of fate was achieved. From thenceforth, all the new music, new books, new instruments, &c, that I encountered were intentionally sought out because of my profound love for the instrument. Eventually I read "The Soul of Mbira" and it was one of the most satisfying literary experiences I've ever had. I got copies of the accompanying LPs and, just yesterday, when the Google Doodle celebrated the mbira, I played them through again. They never get old. I'm now the proud father (or loyal subject) of six mbiras of a variety of shapes, sizes, and tunings (or "chunings" as they are called in Zimbabwe - thanks Paul), and I have a playlist in iTunes called "Mbira Manifesto" that has 368 songs making up apparently 1.5 days of airtime. You can add this playlist to your library if you find me on the social part of Apple Music. There's also an mbira track on my first album, The Front of the Line, coming June 12.

It feels weird looking back on my earliest mbira experiences because so many of them were random coincidences - a course that shouldn't have been, a long-defunct Avant-Pop Band covering the same tune from the course, a professor seeing my homework for another class and making the connection ... this is why I said in the beginning of this post that the instrument controls people, rather than the other way around. Clearly it was drawing me in from the start for a reason beyond my understanding. The more I play, listen, and learn about the mbira, the more I realize that thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people across the planet have been gleefully enslaved by the instrument in the same manner. Everybody has a different reason for their obsession, but I would be willing to bet most of them have to do with that sound that emanates from those innocuous metal tines. The sound of tiny angels laughing while playing the piano - the sound of safety and of peace - the sound of home.

Lawson Malnory
22 May 2020
Lower Greenville, Dallas

PS: Some mbira to listen to on your streaming service of choice
(Song, Artist, Album)
Hallelujah - Simon Mashoko - Hallelujah
Zvichapera - Jacob Mafuleni & Gary Gritness - Batanidzo
Butsu Mutandari - Michael Spiro/Michael Williams - BataMbira
Mbiriviri - Simon Mashoko - Zimbabwe: The Soul of Mbira - Traditions of the Shona People
Toputika neshungu - Mbira Dze Nharira - Tozvireva Tingaputike Neshungu