Various - Give Me Love - The Brokenhearted Of Baghdad 1925 - 1929

'give me love' is the second in honest jon's series of albums exploring the 78s held in the emi archive at hayes. drawing on the full range of nearly one thousand recordings made in baghdad in the 1920s, it is a wondrous, deeply poignant glimpse of social living since obliterated, in which ethnicities, faiths and traditions appear woven richly and meltingly together, however precariously. there is dance music featuring arab folk singers from the countryside, backed by professional jewish musicians in iraqi styles popularly termed 'egyptian', and perfected in nightclubs where the first duty of the secular women singers on this album was prostitution. also including some arabic word-play, in a nod to the musical form of the arabic mawwal, a hebrew hymn is kick-started with a cry of 'allah!' - most likely from one of the jewish performers. there are pieces from bahrain and kuwait; sometimes mixed together in one performance, the different dialects are far-flung. there are beautiful high and lonesome kurdish violin improvisations; and some unaccompanied circular breathing on a zourna so unearthly it seems to cross late coltrane with sun ra. all of the songs are characterized by searing emotion and crisis of feeling; many by erotic urgency. as with the other titles in the series, the recordings have been startlingly restored at abbey road; and they are presented with full translations, rare photographs (in this case, several performers), and notes - including an extensive interview with a citizen of baghdad throughout this period, who knew many of the musicians here personally.