#90's sodina music

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Tarika Rakoto Frah - “Zanak’iza” A World Out of Time, Volume 3: Music of Madagascar 1996 Sodina Music / Malagasy Music / World Music

I’m going to do something a bit different with today’s post and write about music that hardly any of us are ever exposed to. For whatever reasons, African music doesn’t get much attention in North America or Europe and that’s really just a total shame. But over the years, there have been two American men, both accomplished guitarists and ethnomusicologists, Henry Kaiser and David Lindley, who have been able to successfully bring African music to American shores. And one of the greatest focuses of their long-running project has been the wide variety of music from the island nation of Madagascar

.Resting in the Indian Ocean and located off of Africa’s southeast coast, Madagascar can probably claim itself as the continent’s most unique country. Because of a culture that mixes Indian, Middle Eastern, Polynesian, and South African traditions, the Malagasy people have consistently managed to generate some of the world’s most extraordinary and inimitable music. And up until 1991(!), nearly all of America remained completely oblivious to that fact. But that began to change when Kaiser and Lindley returned from Madagascar with about six CDs worth of recorded material. The result was a series called A World Out of Time, named after a photo-book by the same name that depicts Madagascar’s beauty.

One of the musicians that Lindley and Kaiser had the pleasure of meeting and recording was perhaps Madagascar's most famous: Rakoto Frah. In his 60s at the time, Rakoto Frah had already lived quite the life. He had risen to national fame decades earlier as a master of the sodina (a native flute made of bamboo) and he famously played when French president Charles de Gaulle came for an important visit. He was also featured on Malagasy currency!

By the time Kaiser and Lindley had met Rakoto Frah, he was already a known entity on the world music circuit, though still virtually unknown to Americans. The liner notes from the second volume of A World Out of Time heap a ton of praise upon him:

Rakoto Frah is one of the most amazing master musicians and individuals anywhere, by any standards. His mastery of the sodina is at a level that you could only compare to other great, instrumental masters like John Coltrane, Ali Akbar Khan, Billy Pigg, Bill Monroe, or Miles Davis. Rakoto Frah certainly seems to know mysterious things about the phrasing of melodies that nobody else knows. During Rossy [another Malagasy musician] & Rakoto Frah's American tour, Ornette Coleman remarked to Rossy and Henry that Rakoto Frah must be the greatest phraser on the planet. Rakoto Frah says he has written over 500 songs [he tapped out at about 800 before his death in 2001]. He seems to have been present at many of the major political and cultural moments of 20th century Malagasy history. He's a real character. Rakoto Frah, paradoxically, is wise & crazy, young & senile, traditional & eccentric, foolish & crafty, con man & exemplary citizen, dark & light...all at the same time.

Not mentioned in those liner notes is that Ian Anderson, the lead flutist of Jethro Tull, also counted Rakoto Frah as one of his biggest influences. I wonder how Anderson discovered him.

One of the many things that Rakoto Frah became renowned for were his performances at famadihana ceremonies (the "turning of the bones"), a sacred funerary Malagasy tradition, described by Musical Traditions Magazine in the following way:

Famadihana ceremonies feature troupes of sodina and amponga (a European-derived military-style drum) players. The events are rooted in the immense respect which the Malagasy people show their ancestors, manifesting in day or even week long celebrations of the dead. Far from being sombre or macabre occasions, they are infused with joy and celebration, reflected in the wild, frenetic music that the musicians play for dancing (to please the dead).

It's not stated anywhere in the liner notes from A World Out of Time's third volume, but I'm willing to bet that the song I'm posting today, "Zanak'iza," which is performed by Rakoto Frah's band, Tarika Rakoto Frah, is from a performance at a famadihana ceremony.

Feast your ears upon this song because it's probably one of the most novel pieces of music you’ll ever hear. "Zanak'iza" has no formulaic song composition like the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus structures we’re largely accustomed to in North America and Europe. The amponga in this song isn't there to hold a steady rhythm and there's no consistency to the multitudes of sodinas that concurrently play. "Zanak'iza" is free flowingly virtuosic and its unpredictability is key in just about every way. It's that level of unexpectedness, that total mystery of what sets of notes or rhythms are to cone next that keeps the listener so engaged. And it's amazing how just two types of instruments, flutes and drums, can combine to produce music like most of the rest of the world has never heard or ever come close to imagining.

A stunning piece of music from this Malagasy master of the sodina and his band. Really incredible stuff.