1. What is World Music?
Well - it's a commercial genre label, and, broadly speaking, it's usually used to cover musicians who don't sing in English, or who play music in styles that don't fit into the well-known categories of rap, hip-hop, pop, alternative rock, classical, and so on. Imagine all these genres, and then imagine a bin sitting next to them marked 'Other.' That's world music.
2. Don't you realise that any tag which lumps qawwali, calypso, enka, Bollywood, taraab, himene and soukous together as if they were the same thing, is meaningless?
You were about to add and patronising as well, weren't you? I've heard the arguments. I look at 'world music' as a useful piece of common-language shorthand. I agree that it's a nebulous blob of a phrase, but I use it because it works.
3. Why are you doing this?
When I see the amount of advertising space given over to the popular genres - to rap, to pop, to hip-hop - my brain lets out a stubborn grumble. Unfair! it thinks. Why should other kinds of music be left out? Why should only a few genres get all the attention? This ezine is my way of quietening that grumble.
Don't take this to mean that I dislike or dismiss those other kinds of music. I like them, parts of them. I just don't review them. (I decided to add this assurance after finding yet another reader's letter in the classical music magazine Gramophone in which the writer sniffs at rap and hip-hop. I think Gramophone is a terrific publication, (there are backcopies kicking around on my bedroom floor as I write) but letters like that make me laugh. It's funny to watch the mine-is-better-than-yours otaku spirit crossing all boundaries of age and fandom. These sixtysomething classical music buffs sound like D&D players telling you that their game is more advanced than everyone else's because it's got an extra-super-duper-specially complicated and inclusive scoring system.)
4. How many people contribute to the zine?
One. That would be me. If you'd like to contribute something, scroll to the bottom of the page for my address and email me. I'd love to hear from anyone who can say wise words about a particular instrument or style, or tell us about the time they visited WOMAD, or met the world's greatest kora player smoking in the back streets of Senegal - or anything else that seems world music-y and relevant.
If you send an email and get no response then you've probably been put in the spam box by mistake. You have my apologies. Try putting 'Gaisberg' in the subject line.
5. Where do you get the music from?
I buy CDs or borrow them from the library.
6. If I send you a CD will you review it?
As long as it's not English-language rock, pop, rap, etc, yes. I know that those kinds of music are part of the world as well, but they get covered in detail elsewhere. Email me and ask for an address to send it to.
You should probably read one of the negative reviews first and decide whether you want to risk us saying rude things about your labour of love. Try this one.
7. When do new issues come out?
A new issue comes out around, roughly, the 25th of each month.
8. Why are there two dead Cuban musicians doing your album reviews?
They appeared when I started writing my very first review, which was Pepesito Reyes' Pepesito Reyes. Both of them knew him when they were alive, you see, so it seemed natural for them to comment. After that they moved on to Omara Portuondo and so by stealth established themselves as reviewers.
I prefer writing reviews in the form of a dialogue. I've tried it in the single voice and it always feels strained, as if I'm leaving out too much or glossing over my thoughts for the sake of a neat ending. When I'm writing as somebody else then I don't have to worry about any of this because it's not really me making the mistakes, it's the imaginary they.
9. Who are they anyway?
Compay Segundo was a Cuban son troubadour who died in the middle of 2003 at the age of ninety-five. He was part of The Buena Vista Social Club documentary which brought him a burst of international success. "The really important things nearly always occur unexpectedly, one never knows when that opportunity you dreamed about, success, love ... is going to present itself," he says in the introduction to Las Flores de la Vida, which he recorded when he was ninety-three.
If you look at the notes inside the Gracias, Compay CD you'll find a neat little story about a New York police officer asking Mr Segundo to put out his cigar. I don't envy anyone the job of telling a man who has been smoking for almost a century that tobacco is bad for your health.
Joseito Fernandez wrote and sang 'Guantanamera,' although some people say that he picked it up from a folk tune rather than inventing it himself. He was, says Compay Segundo, "a great friend." Joseito Fernandez died in 1976. There is a small museum in his honour in the neighbourhood where he used to live. (I seem to remember reading that it was set up and is maintained by his daughter, but I could be wrong.)
10. Aren't you worried that their relatives will see what you've done and feel offended and sad?
Ah, yes I am, actually, but I think the chances of them coming across this site are slight. I should emphasise now that I have no evidence that the gentlemen Segundo and Fenandez had anything like the two characters I have given them in the reviews.
11. Why is it called Gaisberg's Tempting Leg?
I'm going to write a piece about that in the future. Until then - guess.
