Filati Home From N 59, 2015

A genre that influenced a variety of artists from Shaking Stevens to Robert Plant this is a music of the highest order. Jump, jive, jazz, blues… Stop analysing and start enjoying this treasure trove of influential tracks from American music s golden age. You may not have heard some of it before, but you can bet your heroes have!

1865 focuses on the personal experience of men, women, and children from the North and from the South, toward the end of the Civil War and in its immediate aftermath – as told in songs originally written for the stage and for the parlor, and in songs and instrumental tunes from the hills and back roads of America. Many of the songs in 1865 were published between 1861 and 1865; others first appeared in print earlier, but were sung constantly during the terrible war years, perhaps in an effort to bring to mind the familiar and the good. Yet other songs and instrumental tunes are not datable; by the year 1865, they had already been passed down from generation to generation without the aid of the printed page.

A while ago, the Afro-Cuban die was cast when certain musicians from Cuba and northern Africa felt as if they grooved to a similar drummer. The traditions of that subgenre thrive today as more and more musicians like Cuban pianist Roberto Fonseca and Malian guitarist/vocalist Fatoumata Diawara feel inclined to bridge the Altantic through the power of music. Their chance meeting led to a 45 day tour of Europe as a seven-piece band and At Home: Live in Marciac is the resulting album. Right from its opening bars, this album crackles. Fonseca’s clavinet lays down a funky foundation, the crowd begins to clap along on the second and fourth beats, and the entire band are off and running. “Sowa” quickly becomes an Afro-Cuban call to worship. And for her part, Diawara is just getting warmed up.