https://jahwobble.bandcamp.com/album/guanyin
Genre: Dub
Rating: 4/5
released on bandcamp February 5, 2021
Correcting the world’s wrongs is said to be therapeutic. I don’t know about that. A physician assistant was telling me how he adopted stoicism and learned that “giving back” is the key to self healing. I bet a six figure salary is pretty fucking healing as well. I “gave back” as a teacher but when I needed “healing” I leaned into my health insurance instead of my good deeds. So by making this effort to give back by correcting the wrong of music journalism’s shameful lack of attention to Jah Wobble I’m not trying to heal myself. God help me, but I’m probably banging my head against a wall. Thus is the nature of living on a planet packed with 8 billion idiots and me, a man who can’t fix a doorknob.
Liao Zilan, Wobble’s music collaborator and wife, is a talented player of an instrument until now I’ve always known as the zither. In fact, it’s called the guzheng. The Japanese counterpart is the koto. Before looking into this, I thought, perhaps somewhat correctly that the zither was the Chinese instrument and the koto was basically a Japanese zither. OK—> Chinese zither = guzheng and Japanese zither = koto … for good measure the Korean zither is known as the gayageum or kayagum which is the instrument I was first exposed to, as a fan; not a musician, when I was teaching English in Pusan (now commonly spelled Busan).
So anyway Zi-Lan, has her name is spelled on the bandcamp page is an equal piece here.
And am I going to get to it? Yes, this a great fucking record. Sorry it took so long to get to it. Dub is a great genre and I think its Jamaican roots make it especially useful as a tool for “world music” expression. Dub has a special malleability for incorporating any kind of sound from anywhere without sounding stereotypical or cliche. Wobble, who perhaps has had his share of fame overall, is being unfairly overlooked as a pioneering force in dubstretching and this is an important statement in the process of that advancement. So just check out the fucking record. Thanks.
Warmth Highest 