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Scavenged sounds gone global

Sublime Frequencies taps into the hum of faraway lands -- with a decidedly modern twist. By OTIS HART.

The record label Sublime Frequencies scours the landscape of distant countries to find the finest music you've never heard. The label's latest batch documents music from Iraq, North Korea and Burma. (AP Photo/courtesy of Sublime Frequencies)

Monday, 17 October, 2005, 21:08 EDT, US

Let's blame Coke.

Ever since that all-American corporate juggernaut declared, "I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony," in 1971, we've accepted nothing less. Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled musicians -- we'll stick 'em in a slick studio and unearth the noble-savage de rigueur of coffee shops and clothing chains.

But corporations don't rule the world. And they still haven't taught the world to sing, thank God. Indigenous culture perseveres, and unencumbered noise still happens.

Sublime Frequencies, a Seattle record label run by Alan Bishop and Hisham Mayet, documents the artists and genres that for one reason or another have been ignored by Western gatekeepers. The duo have released 20 CDs and five DVDs since 2003, ranging from Syrian field recordings to street ballads from the Tibetan capital of Lhasa to radio collages from Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Bishop alone has visited Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Japan, Korea, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, India, Indonesia and Nepal -- and that's just off the top of his head.

Bishop and his contributors often treat their tour diaries like mix tapes, splicing snippets of rambunctious village festivals with hilarious commercials from the local Top 40 radio station. If there is a purity that pervades all the recordings on Sublime Frequencies, it's the directors' advocacy of the unknown.

Listen to Ja'afar Hassan:

Mark Gergis has put together four discs for Bishop's label, including "Choubi Choubi! Folk and Pop Sounds from Iraq," one of the label's most revelatory collections. Gergis, whose father was born in Baghdad, assembled the album from over 400 recordings he found during travels in Syria and Europe, as well the Iraqi communities of Detroit.

"Choubi and the few other Iraqi folk styles featured on this collection have never been properly showcased" in the United States, Gergis says. "There are elements that may sound familiar to those who have paid attention to Arabic music, but the rhythms -- particularly the machine-gun style rhythms pounded out by the Khishba drum -- the raw energy and some of the incredible string and reed styles are absolutely unique and exclusive to Iraq."

While mostly Choubi (pronounced CHOE-bee), the album also features three cuts by 1970s socialist folk singer Ja'afar Hassan that will blow away anyone into the current freak-folk revival. The songs were recorded just before Saddam Hussein's rise to power and incorporate fuzzed-out organs, funky bass lines and gorgeous claustrophobic production.

Aside from Hassan's songs, the music on "Choubi Choubi!" is distinctly apolitical. This is street music made by everyday people; over half the songs are unattributed, and some don't even have titles. Designed for parties, weddings and nightclubs, these reflect a side of Iraqi society that's easy to forget amid updates on suicide bombers and death tolls.

"You avoid framing countries that are nothing but framed in the media," Gergis says. "You listen to this beautiful music from Iraq, and you hope these musicians are still alive, or are still able to make this music."

This slice of propaganda sounds like a roller rink tribute to Kim Jong Il:

Another recent frequency is "Radio Pyongyang: Commie Funk and Agit Pop from the Hermit Kingdom," a bizarre blend of disco, strings and sycophancy for "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il. Compiled by Christiaan Virant, the set is overflowing with shortwave numbers stations and day-glo pop, the hard and soft extremes of North Korea's propaganda network.

"`Radio Pyongyang' is essentially an audio snapshot of North Korean pop culture from 1994 to present day," Virant says. "Technically, in a socialist state, all art is meant to serve the party, so this means much of the music is dedicated to promoting the leadership cult of Kim Jong Il."

Commiespeak or not, the land north of the DMZ suddenly sounds a lot more textured.

"We feel that our excavations deserve to be considered in the public arena as alternative perspectives from two historically important and culturally rich locales with (unfortunately) a current limited access to information," Bishop says.

Listen to the Iggy Pop of Myanmar, Saing Saing Maw:

Bishop's latest compilation, "Guitars of the Golden Triangle," lacks the politics of Iraq or North Korea. Bishop, who also plays guitar in the Sun City Girls and alone as Alvarius B and Uncle Jim, traveled around Myanmar's Shan State, one the world's largest opium suppliers. Judging from what he found, the musical tastes reflect the agriculture. This collection, Sublime Frequencies' second documenting Myanmar's pop music, rivals anything on the psychedelic standard-bearing "Nuggets" box set.

The most compelling artist here is Saing Saing Maw, a truck driver from the 1970s who combined psych rock with traditional songcraft from the region. Like most of the music from the Shan State, any record of his existence has disappeared. Before Bishop's scavenging sessions, all that remained were the deteriorating cassettes and the truck drivers who played them.

"We are immortalizing these people-musicians-cultures and implying that they are as real, honest, clever, savvy, and brilliant (and perhaps even more so) as the ones we are more familiar with in Western cultures," Bishop says.

It's enough to make you smile. No soft drink required.

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Otis Hart is an asap staff writer.

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