Bright Dog Red

The cats that are Bright Dog Red are back; this time with two new albums that bring the Yin and Yang back into balance and flow. If you’re new to their vibe it goes like this - gather with your talented friends and pour your spirit into a fully improvised session with nothing but your intent as a guide. Bad Magic and Hegemonetized are the sixth and seventh Bright Dog Red albums released here at ropeadope, and for an ensemble that creates on the spot there is a solid throughline to their art. Each album seems to build upon and outsmart the last. Here are some words from bandleader Joe Pignato on the purpose and reasons:

Bad Magic began with a set of themes to inspire the individual contributors, the prevalence of misinformation, antiscientific thinking, and other forms of deception subverting online platforms and cultural and political discourses.

As we started making Bad Magic, the sessions took on two palpably distinct characters. Some improvisations had a contemplative or atmospheric air, but others were more aggressive, reflecting a kind of urgency. It became clear that we were developing two discrete yet related concepts simultaneously. Those more forceful tracks became Hegemonitized.

The fact this this feels like the musical equivalent of a classic novel is to be savored. Make some time, dust it off, get on that bus, and let it all begin.

New Music | Nation Beat

Funk. Bop. Forró. Brass.
Pounded by calloused hands, blasted from tightened lips,
It calls across time and continents, uplifting hearts and moving hips and feet.
It’s the force that blew through Louis Armstrong in the twenties.
It’s the power that gets Brazilians dancing in the streets for Carnival.
It’s the freedom that sets the music on fire.
It’s Nation Beat.

Everybody get up! The new Nation Beat is on the way and it’s time to shake off whatever is on our minds and have some fun. The full album - Archaic Humans - is due on May 31, but today we jump right in and Give A Little with special guest Christylez Bacon. Come on, come on…

New Music | Erini

Join us on a trip across the ocean and back in time as we welcome Erini to the Ropeadope family. Erini is a vocalist of jazz and Greek traditional music who blurs the lines between genres and explores intercultural dialogue. Her debut album is titled Fos, which translates to light in English, and is a collection of 13 Greek traditional songs from Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). Erini’s intent is to shed light on the rich musical heritage of Greek refugees from Asia Minor. After the Greco-Turkish war (1919-1922), over 1.5 million Greeks were forcefully displaced from Asia Minor. Greatly moved by the story of her great-grandparents, who were among those refugees forced to abandon their homes in 1923, Erini has created Fos in their honor. Erini’s unique musical versatility, cultivated by her Cirque Du Soleil tours and her Berklee education, has birthed a modern revisitation and cross-genre orchestration of the Asia Minor-Greek standards. Co-produced by Grammy-nominated arranger Gonzalo Grau, the album introduces a range of themes including love, sorrow and alienation.

This is compelling music with deep roots, brought to us by a masterful vocalist with powerful feeling. Not only does it carry us away, but also informs and inspires us to learn and embrace her culture.

Fos will be unveiled on June 7th, with the first single - Menexedes Kai Zoumpoulia - available today.

Karl-Martin Almqvist Ababhemu Quartet

We are honored to present a transcendent collaboration between four musicians who begin from different places but arrive as one. Karl-Martin Almqvist, Nduduzo Makhathini, Magne Thormodsæter, and Ayanda Sikade form Ababhemu Quartet, and present their new album The Travelers on April 19, 2024. The seeds of the quartet were planted while recording Makhathini’s ‘Listening To The Ground’ album years ago, and finally the band is in full force with a powerful statement of unity.

This quartet puts forward the message of brotherhood across colored lines, and across geography. Ababhemu Quartet plays against the history of coloniality and puts the sound in the center of how we can imagine a world that is united and goes against the historical catastrophies. The Ababhemu Quartet is all about Trust and Brotherhood.

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Ikaya. Home.

With what density does the earth carry us? With which note? Readily recognizable.

The resonance as our feet touch the ground, the prints we leave behind.

What note calls to you?

The porous limestone, resilient, springy underfoot, the chord of the earth resounds through me.

I hear its echo unclothed in Karl-Martin Almqvist’s reed, the seasons’ gaze in Nduduzo Makhathini’s touch of the keys. 

They carry the dreamy rest of deep forests, the neon lights of a sleepless, unsedated city, a chord that moves upwards through the architecture. In this movement, Värmland aligns with Johannesburg, Stockholm with New York, and that renovated barn where I first heard Karl- Martin play. 

I recognized that voice.

As you will recognize it through the music Karl-Martin Almqvist wrote for the Ababhemu Quartet: pianist Nduduzo Makhathini, drummer Ayanda Sikade and bassist Magne Thormodsæter.

The presence and honesty in asking new questions. Striving to find the road less travelled. This is the road of voices we have not yet heard. Music sprung from a modal tradition. Folk. Church. Freedom.

The resonance of footsteps.

A lightness towards being, a weightlessness of care for the other. Voices building a home where they meet for supper: 

Coltrane, Mankunku, Gullin,

Jan Johansson, Börje Fredriksson, Abdullah Ibrahim.

When darkness falls, and rests upon the quartet, it breathes spirit into Smangaliso – a song of the child as miracle, Ubizo - of music as calling. Ababhemu - of legend as keeper.

”I am because you are”. The radical mutuality of Ntu, the philosophy of the human condition.

”I am because you are”. Music as an expression of a deeper connection.

A communion resting on grounds, stretching beyond. Where earth is dreaming us, like the day carries echoes of those that walked before. 

Those who built their nests of cymbals. Those who breathe the bass lines.

Resting like a shadowy spirit in Almqvist and Makhathini. Children of the collective unconscious.

Home. Ikaya.

(Magnus Östnäs)