Tribal Musette - CD

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In 2007 the iconoclastic French band, Les Primitifs du Futur (Primitives of the Future), co-founded by the legendary American cartoonist/guitarist Robert Crumb and guitarist/composer Dominique Cravic, released their Sunnyside debut, World Musette: a centuries old, hot and hybrid mlange of Auvergne-originated regional dances, balls, and pompe-styled polkas that merged with jazz, and Caribbean rhythms in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. On their follow-up, Tribal Musette, these troubadours of tune and tempo featuring vocalist Claire Etziere, Jean-Michel Davis on the vibraphone, xylophone and drums, Daniel Colin on accordion and bandoneon, saxophonist and scat singer Daniel Huck, and Fay Lovsky on vocals, theremin, and ukulele continue with their engaging, musical world travels with over fifty guests artists, from singers Marcel Azzola and Alain Leprest, to South American accordion master Raul Barboza.

Brazilian tabla player Silvano Michelino conjures up some subcontinental swing on La Valse Hindou, contrasted by the North African vibe supplied by percussionists/vocalists Khireddine Medjoubi and Mohammed El Yazid Baazi on Je Cherche Aprs Titine, and the Afro-Cuban-cadenced La Dernire Rumba de Django, with the Tokyo-based, Parisian crooner Pierre Barouh. La Grande Truander features the impassioned Italian voice of Sanseverino and ukulele maestro Tony Truant putting some reggae touches on the chanson, La Grande Truanderie. Mingus Viseur, Esquisse is an ingenious melding of a Charles Mingus-style, Wednesday night prayer meeting with a Gypsy dance, while the legendary Tex-Mex guitarist Flaco Jimenez drops his Texas-twanged, Lone Star lyricism on Les Anges de San Antonio.

The Old World/New World sound of Les Primitifs du Futur started in 1986, when the Philadelphia-born cartoonist Robert Crumb, a renegade artist known for his Sixties-era, underground comic creations Honeybunch, Kaminsky, Fritz the Cat, and album covers including Big Brother s Cheap Thrills, traveled to France to attend a comic book festival and ended up staying there. A gifted mandolin, guitar and banjo player, Crumb was collecting vintage 78 musette discs, when he met the guitar geniuses Dominic Cravic and Jean-Claude Asselin. They jammed and played at a number of Parisian venues including the Utopia, and later met scat singer/saxophonist Daniel Huck, harmonica player (and Sunnyside artist) Jean-Jacques Milteau, and accordionist Florence Dionneau. They released a ten-inch disc, Cocktail d Armour, and in 1995 released the follow-up, Trop de Routes, Trop de Trains et Autres Histoires d Amour as Les Primitifs du Futur, which was reissued on the Paris Jazz Corner and La Lichere labels.

The enigmatic Crumb, whose artwork adorns this CD, lives full time in Nimes, France, and although he is no longer with Les Primitifs du Futur, nevertheless, his cohorts on Tribal Musette have created a time-traveled, international sound that translates into any language that moves and grooves.