Bitter Funeral Beer

Ghana via Stockholm. Afro-Jazz without a single afro in the studio. And almost 45 years on from this recording, plenty of people are going to have a problem with this, calling it gentrification at best and appropriation at worst. Ethnomusicologist Bengt Berger, a Swede, studied music for a short time in Ghana, however, learning not only the music but the culture surrounding the music at the ground level. He approaches the funeral dance and other indigenous music with the utmost respect, not looking to exploit it but rather share it with Western audiences. To have something colorful and different fly into their rooms and brighten things up. To open their ears to something outside their experience, long before the Internet made everything and anything around the world instantly accessible. Berger took what he heard and learned in Ghana and returned to Sweden, arranging the music for European ears and recording all the music with not a single Ghanaian. Don Cherry, incidentally, is what led me to this album, because I'll pretty much follow his trumpet wherever it leads!