Clandestino Podcast Clandestino Podcast

Derya Yıldırım is a singer, songwriter and bağlama-player known for her work together with Grup Şimşek. On two albums and a long series of EP:s, this quartet creates captivating songs filled with deep emotions and high degrees of danceability. Turkish psych-rock, synth pop, funk and jazz are some possible references. A fundamental part of Grup Şimşek's music however, is Anatolian folk music – something that Derya Yıldırım first learned to love through her parents, who migrated from Turkey to Hamburg in Germany as guest workers.

Meet the experimental composer and singer Hatis Noit. Inspired by the great American voice artist Meridith Monk, and by a kind of role playing of sounds, Hatis Noit takes us on a journey exploring the human voice and how it can connect us both with our own memories and with nature.
Her music consists of Layers upon layers of wordless singing. Echoing the sounds of opera, Japanese Gagaku and Bulgarian chorals. Many different voices – all belonging to just one individual. In this episode, she explains how she found her very own unique style.

In this episoide we meet Maya Dunietz, a pianist and  composer from Israel, known for her diverse projects within everything from jazz to classical music and sound art. She will tell us about her work documenting and performing the music of the Ethiopian composer, pianist and nun Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou. 
Emahoy was born in Addis Abeba in 1923. As a child she discovered the music of Beethoven and decided to be a composer.

However, when the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie personally put an end to her plans of continuing her music studies in England, Emahoy withdrew from the world to live in a convent. During her years as a nun she continued to write music without really having much of an audience. And perhaps her work would have remained in obscurity, had her old recordings not been re-released by the record label Buda Music in 2006. 

And some years after that, our guest on this epoisode Maya Dunitz had fallen in love with the music and decided to find its all but forgotten composer. 

Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou passed away in the spring of 2023, 99 years old, after this interview was made. 

One of the most exciting jazz albums of this year so far is Yeahno Yowouw Land by Swedish all star quintet Langendorf United. In this episode we talk to the bandleader Lina Langendorf, a saxophonist whose curiosity not only took her on a continuing musical exploration into Ethiopian jazz, she's even jammed with non other than Mulatu Astatke, a.k.a the father of Ethio jazz. Before we get to that part of the story, we ask Lina about the first steps of her musical journey.

We talk to Annie Caldwell, singer and forming member of The Staples Jr Singers. 

They started out as a group of teenage siblings in 1975, covering their favorite songs by Mavis Staples – hence the bandname The Staples Jr Singers.  Most weekends they would play shows across their home state of Mississippi and beyond. 

But like many gospel musicians of the time, they lacked the backing of a record company, and instead self-published an album called When Do We Get Paid, to be sold at performances and from the family’s yard.

The band did eventually split up, but now, almost fifty years after they started, their music is embraced by audiences all over the world. This unexpected chapter in Staples Jr. Singer’s career began when the record label Luaka Bop reissued their album. 

We'll get to that part, but first we'll ask Annie Caldwell to take it from the top – the beginning of The Staples Jr Singers in Aberdeen, Mississippi 1975. 

With a brand new style, from Soweto, South Africa: Meet BCUC
 – Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness. This seven member group is known for their explosive live shows, built on melodic bass lines, intense drumming and sometimes the conjuring of ancestor's spirits. 

In this episode, the two main singers of the group, Nkosi "Jovi" Zithulele and Kgomotso Mokone, talk to Markus Görsch about the group's DIY-philosophy; about their inspiration from punkrock, poetry and indigenous musical styles and ceremonies. And about why their home audience of Soweto was the hardest to win over.