You can never quite pin down what New York’s Luaka Bop Records is going to release next. However, diversity, in the best possible sense of the word, still reigns.
The label’s history goes back to the late 1980s, David Byrne and his former band, the Talking Heads. Byrne had long been releasing side projects complementing Talking Heads albums, but when he signed a solo contract with Warner Brothers Records, one stipulation was the creation of his own label. Luaka Bop was
the result.
For the past decade or so, Luaka Bop has signed a cadre of unique recording artists from all corners of the world — from the “hick-hop” folk sounds of the Florida-based artist Jim White to the Brazilian, tropicalia-infused pop of Tom Zé. The label has also released a steady stream of complications of hitherto unknown forms of music — from Brazil, Africa, Cuba, Brooklyn, Peru
and India.
Luaka Bop releases approach music as a form of art capable of inspiring the listener’s mind and body. If it weren’t for the label’s existence, it’s unlikely some of this music would ever be heard by a wide audience. The label has been incredibly successful in giving listeners a context for the music’s political, historical and cultural roots. This is especially notable in the compilations. In “I Hate World Music,” a 1999 article Byrne wrote for The New York Times (also available at the Luaka Bop Web site, www.luakabop.com), Byrne said: “The term is a catchall that commonly refers to non-Western music of any and all sorts … It’s a marketing as well as a pseudomusical term.”
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Byrne himself put together Luaka Bop’s first compilations, and only recently has returned to this occupation again. He compiled Luaka Bop’s two most recent releases, “Cuisine Non-Stop” and “The Only Blip Hop Record You Will Ever Need, Vol. 1.”
“Cuisine Non-Stop” is subtitled as an “Introduction to the French Nouvelle Generation.” The genre is steeped in the traditions of afrobeat, funk and musette music. The artists are contemporary, but an awareness of history contributes to their identity and music. Some tracks are sung in multiple languages; some of the tongues are hardly spoken anymore. The notable tracks are “Naïve Derviche” by Arthur H, which is a seven-plus minute musical movement brimming with horns and strings and Louise Attaque’s “De Nord Au Sud,” a song that flirts and saunters with the fleeting, beautiful immediacy of life in just a few short minutes.
“The Only Blip Hop Record You Will Ever Need, Vol. 1,” is diametrically opposed to “Cuisine,” but no less creative. The album is filled with electronic music of the strangest order. This doesn’t equate to typical repetitive, techno-house beat fare, but rather, samples, mixed and matched with odd rhythms and the occasional human voice.
“Blip Hop” is a joint effort with the International Center for Comparative Sound, which, according to its Web site at www.comparativesound.com, “exists in order to catalog, classify, quantify and compare all varieties of recorded sound.”
The great thing about these complications is that they act as a launching point to explore any of the artists. Each track has the potential to lead the listener to discover hordes of new and different musicians.
Although Luaka Bop is an independent label, its music is distributed by Virgin Records. This means these releases should be easy to find at most record stores.