Equa
Produced by Sadia and Stephen Tayler
Mercury through Polygram
Reviewed by Norm Dixon
When the promo material recommended Equa with: "If you liked Deep Forest you'll love this", alarm bells rang.
You remember the formula: stitch together tunes, songs and rhythms pilfered from indigenous communities by beach bums with tape recorders masquerading as "ethnomusicologists", or raided from the vaults of university and museum sound libraries, add a club-friendly disco beat and some noodling synthesisers, credit the resulting "arrangement" to the digital whiz-kid producers, package it with appropriate-sounding references to the wisdom of indigenous cultures and then count the cash as it rolls in.
If you can put such doubts behind you, Equa is quite an engaging, if a little predictable, album. It weaves together ambient nature sounds with performers from a diverse range of "tropical" locations: the kora from Senegal, drumming from Senegal, India and Cuba, singing from Thailand and India, ankle bells and marimba from Tanzania and Taarab (music of Arab origin) from Zanzibar, Andean flutes, clapping from Fiji and bamboo mouth harp from the Torres Strait.
Layered over the top is the annoyingly mandatory club beat and synth. All this is a little patronisingly lumped together in tracks with titles like "Environment", "Love", "Independence", "Nature" and "Spirit Song".
The only artist given credit other than the producers, the original sound recordist (David Fanshawe) and other technical contributors is Tanzania's Hukwe Zawose. Zawose's contribution and the inputs of the unacknowledged African performers give the album a lift it would not otherwise have.
Zawose is perhaps a little too well known (with a recent release on the Earthworks label) not to receive any credit at all, unlike the rest of the unfortunate performers. While the producing and mixing skills of Sadia and Stephen Taylor are no doubt prodigious, it seems to stretch the truth a bit to claim "All tracks written by Sadia/S.W. Taylor" when whole slabs of tracks seem to be traditional songs performed by the unnamed "tropical" artists.
With a mind full of cynical thoughts, I spoke to Sadia, one of the London-based co-producers. "When we sat down and looked at the source material, it became really obvious that people around the world sing about the same things. People sing about love, people sing about politics, people sing about the environment, people sing about nature. The record was built by constructing tracks that use what linked common human concerns as a focal point", she explained.
Things got a little testy when I suggested that the indigenous peoples' songs, rhythms and sounds had been reduced to sampled "musical instruments". Wasn't the original performers' music being appropriated for the producers' own purposes?
"I think that is a rather unfair accusation. What the project is trying to do is bring people together. That's quite a divisive comment. Surely people all over the world learn from their own music and each other's music. You can't say that somebody in Africa isn't influenced by western music and we are not influenced by theirs. I think that's a wonderful thing. I don't believe in protectionism as far as creativity goes. The whole idea of maintaining an ethnic purity, either politically or creatively, I can't agree with that."
But did the actual performers have any input and control over the final tracks? Why are the individual artists not credited? What does that mean in terms of royalties for those people?
"We just used the source material. The completed work has been played for Zawose, who featured on the two tracks, and he really liked it, which made us very happy.
"It is almost physically impossible, if you have people spread out all over the world, to go to them and engage them in the creative process of making a record in central London. One of the things we did try to do was maintain the integrity of the source material as far as possible.
"As for royalties, there is a trust fund being set up and the royalties will be distributed among the artists on a pro-rata basis. But that is not something I'm involved with. I don't get into the business administration end of things."
OK, but if the performers and artists don't have much input or control over the final product, doesn't it become a bit artificial? If you brought in session musicians, you would credit them and pay them. In the album's credits, it says the songs were written by particular individuals, when obviously some of those recordings were indigenous songs, presumably written and arranged by the people performing them.
"The idea is to take all these sources and create something new from them. Surely there is integrity in creating something new, particularly in this way."
The promo material was right. If you loved Deep Forest, you'll love Equa.