Jon Hassell

oh yeah, possibly the first true "4th World" record in the sense Hassell meant it

pre-Can Holger Czukay ca. 1968 splicing up Vietnamese folk music, unsurprisingly v post-Stockhausen

again, appropriately hovering on the edge of the appropriation discussion

IdleRich said:

Ibliss?

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yeah. there's a bunch of krautrock things that could be mentioned.

tons of the jazz-rock side of krautrock, which doesn't really interest me, has "ethnic" leanings. Niagara, anything heavily percussive.

fun fact the drummer from Ibliss played drums on the first Kraftwerk LP, but only the first side, the second side being the immortal Klaus Dinger

I like a lot of Klaus Weiss (NIagara drummer) stuff but not Niagara so much somehow. It's not really relevant here though.

getting outside Germany, The Taj-Mahal Travellers

some of the Third Ear Band, i.e.

surely some bits from the Italian and French 70s avant-rock scenes, tho it's bee awhile since I familiarized myself with either

IdleRich said:

It's not really relevant here though

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yeah idk I haven't listened to Niagara specifically in awhile, I don't remember how much of it is Afro-Cuban vs an extended trap set jazz drum solo

something like Et Cetera (Wolfgang Dauner), as well as Between and the other things I mentioned, is maybe closer to the mark

it doesn't really matter the exact things, rather the idea that "4th World" was a de facto thing long before Hassell theorized it

Sorry wasn't clear, I'm not saying NIagara isn't relevant, I mean his other stuff is different and not relevant here.

Klaus Doldinger, Dave Pike too I guess but yeah that's enough German stuff.

It's a bit late to write, but thank you for the tunes and discussion everyone, thread has been busy

IdleRich said:

Dave Pike too I guess

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yeah there's a million of them ethno jazz type records I think, from the turn of the 60s or so on, of varying novelty/exploitation levels

lotta Indian stuff especially after the psychedelic boom with the trends for sitars and all things Indian

this one is alright

one of the few big female names in 60s-70s Euro free jazz/improv, backed by a future 2/3s of Guru Guru, collaborating with Indian musicians

there's just a lot of things I'd call "4th World" in one way or another, by praxis, whether or not the conceptual level is there

everything August Darnell was involved with, for example, especially Kid Creole + the Coconuts

high concept, dancefloor functional disco (not disco/post-disco) that exemplifies creolized pop music

Hassell's theorizing is an academic claiming intellectual space, which is what academics do, and as it goes it's not bad theorizing

certainly it's a better way, more nuanced way of engaging with influences than guilt and appropriation

but he also gets a ton of retrospective credit that he doesn't really deserve for something many people were doing, have always done

not saying he is/was seeking such credit (unlike Eno, who's always happy to credit for anything) but the academic imparts an air of intellectual legitimacy

the Optimo guys released a 4th World inspired compilation a few years ago btw, and it's pretty fucking bad tbh

kinda shocking miss as JD Twitch is generally one of the best curators in the biz

but it's mostly ambient New Age biz. and not even the good kind, the waffling toothless kind

real shame cos as noted there's a great wealth of music, much of it relatively obscure, that could go into a real 4th World compilation

other odds and ends I like

great post-disco take on Rodgers + Hammerstein's Pacific exotica (tho I guess South Pacific is meant to have a proto post-colonial angle to it?)

not as sonically 4th world as you'd think from the artwork, more of a cod Grace Jones (appropriately, as it's two German models), still pretty good

the great Yugoslav post-punk scene has a ton of weird records, including some 4th World biz

perhaps in part due to the Balkans history as (enforced, under Ottoman rule) cultural crossroads? idk

my dude Rex Ilusivii (RIP) doing a kind of 23 Skidoo on copious amounts of cough syrup thing

high-end Serbian cod synthesizer reggae

more recently, these guys are probably my favorite current 4th World-type producers

we've talked about them before in some thread - music that seems to simultaneously come from both all cultures, and no culture in particular

Blade Runner music not in the Dillinja sense, but in the "city talk" sense, a seamless lived-in mashup of cultures

Acid Arab is another modern one I'd call out, once again perched on the edge of appropriation vs. barrier-breaking

their banging remix of the Yemenite-Israeli sisters group A-Wa (Israel being actually a pretty interesting place for 4th world type cultural mashup)

Always automatically thought of Saada Bonaire along with Grace Jones, Cristina, Gina X...

You got Vladimir Ivkovic digging a lot of that Yugoslav post-punk stuff but doesn't really count as exotic in any way cos he's from Belgrade.

padraig (u.s.) said:

great post-disco take on Rodgers + Hammerstein's Pacific exotica (tho I guess South Pacific is meant to have a proto post-colonial angle to it?)

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my good friend Angela is the vocalist on this. she played in pigbag for awhile, a lesser ZTT band called drowning craze, did things with bush tetras, David Cunningham and Simon Raymonde. and sang at my wedding.

btw' sun city girls' "torch of the mystics" is a really good album. some weird shit but one of their least avant-weird, lots of bishop guitar rave ups.

IdleRich said:

Always automatically thought of Saada Bonaire along with Grace Jones, Cristina, Gina X...

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accurate. Grace Jones hovers in 4th World territory herself, coming from the other side, inserting JA into the most chic fashion and music.

all them killer post-disco records she did with in the early 80s with Chris Blackwell, Levan, Sly + Robbie

creole musics like creole anything often featuring liminal figures operating between the cultures in question

and I haven't heard of Ivkovic but there's a few people digging thru the ex-YU postpunk scene I think

social control was much looser than most of the Eastern Bloc, so there's a wealth of material, a lot of it fucking weird even by postpunk standards

and it hasn't yet been wrung dry like most things by the reissue industry

I assume partially due to language barriers, esp with Cyrillic, and (I'd guess) the massive upheaval caused by the wars? perfect for digging, anyway

I just feel like I keep hearing fucking crazy postpunk or synth records from there, like unique to their contemporaries

I don't want to post more here cos it's probably off-topic.

but this is kinda 4th World I guess? that vocal is...a lot

Leo said:

my good friend Angela is the vocalist on this. she played in pigbag for awhile, a lesser ZTT band called drowning craze, did things with bush tetras, David Cunningham and Simon Raymonde. and sang at my wedding

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amazing

your downtown NYC scene cred is, as always, impeccable

just waiting to hear you loaned a guitar to Arto Lindsay in 1980 or something

padraig (u.s.) said:

and I haven't heard of Ivkovic but there's a few people digging thru the ex-YU postpunk scene I think

social control was much looser than most of the Eastern Bloc, so there's a wealth of material, a lot of it fucking weird even by postpunk standards

and it hasn't yet been wrung dry like most things by the reissue industry

I assume partially due to language barriers, esp with Cyrillic, and (I'd guess) the massive upheaval caused by the wars? perfect for digging, anyway

I just feel like I keep hearing fucking crazy postpunk or synth records from there, like unique to their contemporaries

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Interview with VI here, he says pretty much what you just said at one point.


Edit - also he talks a lot about Illusivi

@padraig (u.s.) you’ve got to do a mix of these picks, a quality playlist all round.