Various Artists - The Last LP (1987)

Year: 1987
Style: Whirled Music, field recordings, avantgarde
Country: various
Format: MP3
Quality: CBR 192 kbps
Size: 87 MB (5% recovery information + artwork and extensive liner notes included)

Assembled by Canadian artist Michael Snow and subtitled "Unique Last Recordings of the Music of Ancient Cultures," this hard to get and now pretty expensive album passionately compiles rarely heard music from all over the world.

"THE LAST LP"
Assembled by Michael Snow, 1987
Art Metropole #1001, WRC1-5128 (LP/CD)

1. Wu Ting Dee Lin Chao Cheu 6:09
(Announcing the Arrival of the Emperor Wu Ting)
The Orchestra of the National Music Institute, Seoul, Korea
2. Si Nopo Da 3:42
(By What Signs Will I Come to Understand?)
Women of the Bo-sa-so-sho tribe, Niger, S.E. Africa
3. Ohwachira 9:34
Water ceremony performed by Miantonomi and Cree tribespeople, Quebec, Canada
4. I Ching Dee Yen Tzen 3:41
(The Strings of Love)
Tam Wing Lun on the Hui Tra, Ontario, Canada
5. Póhl'novyessnikh 0:29
(Full to the Brim)
Performed by a 16-member male choir, Varda, Carpathia, USSR
6. Speech in Klögen 2:12
by Okash, Northern Finland
7. Mbowunsa Mpahiya 7:59
(Battle Song of Bowunsa)
Performed by male members of the Kpam Kpam tribe, Angola, West Africa
8. Quuiasukpuq Quai Gami 2:14
(He is Happy Because He Came)
Performed by Ani'ksa'tuk of the Tornarssuk tribe, Siberia, USSR
9. Amitabha Chenden Kala 6:32
(The Simultaneous Welcome of Amitabha)
Performed by the 12 monks of the Kagyupa sect, Bhutan
10. Roiakuriluo 9:36
(Dawn Ceremony)
Performed by Sabané, Elahe, Brazil
11. Raga Lalat 2:53
Performed by Palak Chawal, Benares, India

When Balkanopithecus kindly requested — for the occasion of this forum's first anniversary — to post one's favourite 'world music' album, I had a long thought about what to contribute.

For a variety of reasons, I actually don't like the term "world music" at all. (David Byrne wrote a fine article regarding that matter.)
Anyway, I started to consider some of Marta Sebestyen's slow, melancholy songs, or Mali's trance-inducing Oumou Sangare, or maybe funeral marches from Sicilian brass bands, Java's tender and soothing gamelan, cattle calls from Sweden, duduk music from Armenia and Georgia, rough saz tunes from Turkey, the amazingly wild and weird Ethiopian jazz'n'soul influenced output from the mid 60's -mid 70's, or the otherworldly crazy 'Congotronics', not to mention the hardly known (in the West, that is) singer Dragoslav Pavle Aksentijevich from Serbia.

However, as every decent birthday party also requires a strange and weird guest (and as I admittedly do have a soft spot for rather peculiar stuff and do not mind miming the fool), I finally decided to offer "something completely different"...

Originally released in 1987 on vinyl, and reissued in 1994 as "The Last LP CD", this album with rare recordings of lost cultures is now long out of print and became meanwhile a collector's item.
Let's start with some excerpts from the liner notes by the Canadian avantgarde filmmaker (and also musician) Michael Snow, who bravely and thoughtfully compiled this collection:

"The title of this album – while hopefully an exaggeration – refers to the eventual disappearance of the 33 1/3 rpm microgroove vinyl/stylus format. The passing of the long-playing record seems inevitable as newer recording formats advance and earlier ones evolve new forms. This technological forced obsolescence within the “industrial world” resembles the effects of the technology-based societies on the ancient traditional societies.

Thus, this collection of rare music derived from threatened, obsolete, or now-extinct cultures from around the world is perhaps, unfortunately, a factor in their disappearance. However, we feel that ethno-musicology can be and has been helpful to the entire human species, by assisting in the possible continuity of ancient directions. In further defence of recording technology and the effects of its intrusion into other cultures, it could be said that living in certain cultures in the past might not have been pleasant for many people. Be that as it may, we feel that as much of the music of these cultures that can be perpetuated should be. This record was produced in memory of the creativity of these ancient cultures.

Not even millions of LPs could adequately present samples of the incredible range and richness of the remaining traditional musics of the world. This LP was not composed to attempt that. Created under the direction of the noted Canadian musician and visual artist Michael Snow, several criteria for this LP have intersected. A primary consideration for inclusion here is musical excellence, admittedly from an educated but ethnocentric point of view. Further, the music in each case represents the only known or last-recorded example of a rare ancient music. The work had survived in ancient notation preserved in monasteries, palaces, libraries, or it had been passed on acoustically and orally. These ancient pieces have continued to be performed in cultures which were at the time of their recording losing their age-old cohesive social structure, or since the recording have indeed lost it and are now destroyed, dispersed, ruined or thoroughly altered.

Mr Snow chose to compose what he hopes will be considered as a single work, albeit made up of discrete, distinctive individual elements: the LP record, the music, the texts and the jacket."

The music on this record was assembled from diverse sources. French, German, Russian, English, American, and Canadian musicologists have all made contributions. Each track is detailed annotated, often providing informations on the social and political background of the music (though I actually do miss photographies of the recorded people and their instruments).
Many of these recordings have exciting origins: one of the African field recordings (track 7), made under rather threatening circumstances, was in example provided by German trombone player Albert Mangelsdorff and his crew. Another tape (track 8) had to be smuggled out of the (back those days still intact) Soviet Union — supplied actually by Dr Mischa Cemep, director of the Moscow Institute of Ethnomusicology, who — recording in the Siberian steppes — is also depicted on the front cover.

Some of that stuff is even tragic and rather sad, ie. the last track (11) which just documents an 'alap', the opening of a raga by an young, highly talented and promising Indian musician, Palak Chawal (actually a relative and student of the well-known Shehnai player Ustad Bismillah Khan). Chawal was the first one who seriously (and of course at the same time provokingly) made use of a Casio keyboard (!) besides the harmonium in classical Indian music. Unfortunately, this recording (the only existing one) ends after two and a half minutes — with an explosion! This fragment of the recording survived, but he himself did not: that very same performance literally was blown up by a bomb, which killed him and several other people.

As unlikely and confusing it may sound, other pieces of music on this album indeed even refer to J.S.Bach (track 5) or to Whitney Houston (track 2). Therefore they may point unintentionally to some — despite all cultural differences — globally shared common human ground — but you have to figure these strange cross-cultural coincidences out on your own.
This is a special album, indeed.

As I only do got the vinyl release and don't have the equipment to digitize records, the rip was taken from the Lamaraba blog. (Thanks). Unfortunately they didn't offer neither artwork nor the liner notes — which are, though sometimes rather dryly written and maybe a bit too academic, absolutely essential and indispensable.
Texts and the cover image were scanned from my copy of that album and are now included here, slightly reworked to the measures of a CD package (@300 dpi, RGB). The liner notes were turned via OCR processing into a 42 pages PDF document (apologies in advance for any possible software hiccups left).
Please note that a small portion of the text, for what reasons ever, was printed reversed on the LP jacket. In order to stay true to the appearance of the original album, this layout (or maybe just that mistake, who really knows?) kept maintained in the new booklet (if in doubt, just use the mirror in your bathroom to read it). Same goes for the preservation of the rather conservatively and simple-minded applied classical typefaces (Helvetica, Times, Gill), and the heavy use of capital letters throughout the text.

However, I would like to end my celebrating toast by making use of Laurie Anderson's "Born, never asked":

"It was a large room, full of people, and they all arrived at more or less the same time.
And they were all asking themselves the same question:

You were born, so you are free... So happy birthday!"

So happy birthday, worldmusic.nnm.ru, and živeli, Balkanopithecus!

(And for the weird ones who maybe would like to have even more informations... you can do it here andthere;-)