Smodern - Miss Smodern (South Africa)

From VA - Africa Dances (1972)

8. Miss Smodern (NK 4), South Africa: 'smodern.
This group's singing well illustrates the professional smoothness which South African bands long since reached. More famous groups like the Flying Jazz Queens and the Dark City Sisters, singing in a unique female style which Mirian Makeba introduced to the U.S., have a high gloss; but they are still entirely typical of black South African music (for all the clear influence of American vocalists, especially Ella Fitzgerald, on the vocal production of individual singers). And the sound as a whole contains elements of traditional music as well as 1940s jazz. The title comes from a dance that took its name from the phrase "It's modern."

Review: What The Harder They Come does for reggae this sampler attempts to do for the American-influenced urban music of Africa. Its scope is necessarily broad, but only once does an alien-sounding rhythm (Arabic tarabu) interfere with its remarkable listenability. The mood might be described as folk music with brass, for although the horn techniques are familiar from big-band jazz, r&b, and especially salsa, the overall effect is much less biting than that would imply. There's something penetratingly decent, humorous, and even civil about this music, as if the equanimity of tribal cultures at peace at least with themselves has not yet been overwhelmed by media-nourished crosscultural complexities. If this is my misapprehension, perhaps it is reinforced by the fact that the lyrics aren't in English, although I don't get anything similar from salsa. Anyway, a find. A Robert Christgau

Audio CD Available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Africa-Dances-Various-Artists/dp/B000000NSP/ref=sr_1_1?...

Category:

Music

Tags:

• NK
• Africa
• Dances
• Smodern