A Song For Friday: Christopher Trapani

The American composer finds an underdog's song in every port

Six years ago, I first encountered the work of Christopher Trapani, a composer and educator from New Orleans, and it was one of those moments that changed my musical life. As I wrote in my review of the subsequent recording of the piece I first heard in concert, “Waterlines brought me back to the first time I heard Barstow by Harry Partch, to that feeling like it had been with me all my life.”

Concluding my write-up, I noted: “While Trapani's music has been played by many distinguished performers over the years, and included on some fine albums, Waterlines is the first album devoted solely to his work and its display of his scholarship, emotional depth, and originality could not be more successful or musically satisfying. I can only imagine what he will do next.” The album landed on my Top 25 for 2018 and my list of the 100 best albums of the 2010s - it’s that good.

In 2022, Horizontal Drift followed and it was another ear-opening album of surpassing excellence. That review ended with this declaration: “Trapani continues to prove himself to be a smart, playful, and fearless explorer on this triumphant collection.”

Well, I might have used up my accolades too soon. Today, Trapani released an absolute knockout: Noise Uprising, a 90-minute song cycle named for and inspired by Michael Denning’s book. Published in 2015 with the subtitle The Audiopolitics of a World Musical Revolution, the book takes a deep dive into the early days of electrical recording, when nascent record companies traveled the world, setting up makeshift studios in port cities and putting the local talent on shellac.

Thus, after Radiola Prelude, an “AI reconstitution” of an ancient recording, we get 19 songs, each one named after a harbor town, touring the world from Jakarta to Honolulu, with stops in Lisbon, Clarksdale, Zanzibar, and Smyrna along the way. Trapani has found the ideal collaborators for this journey, including Zwerm, a Belgian electric guitar quartet, and two extraordinary singers: Sophia Burgos, a Puerto Rican soprano, and Sophia Jernberg, an experimental singer with roots in Ethiopia, Vietnam, and Sweden. Trapani himself is all over the album, playing lap steel, melodica, resonator guitar, Omnichord, and more.

The musical settings include a variety of old and new strummed and plucked instruments and minimal but propulsive percussion, none of which is necessarily tied the cities in question. A perfect example is Havana (Son), with the parenthetical referring to the Cuban style of song first recorded in 1917. Kicked off by Trapani on Mandole, an Algerian stringed instrument, and driven forward by Kobe Van Cauwenberghe on claves and cowbell, the track also features Toon Callier on guembri, a three-stringed Moroccan bass, and Johannes Westendorp on a Telecaster with microtonal frets, the track develops a skein of evocative sound for Burgos and Jernberg to harmonize over.

Watch it all take shape in the video, or just listen.

In his liner notes, Trapani makes a number of righteous points about the moral imperatives behind Noise Uprising, so I’ll give him the last word:

Above all, Noise Uprising is intended as a celebration of the underdog. Not the “top down” approach of conservatories and concert halls, but a “bottom up” vector, rooted in street-level, waterfront exchange.

Get to the whole album and celebrate the underdog while taking a fascinating and deeply involving trip around the world that you won’t soon forget.

Catch up with most of the songs for Friday in this playlist or below.

Also Out Today:

Freddie Gibbs - You Only Die 1nce After the too-well-titled $oul Sold $eparately, his first album on a major label, Gibbs returns nearly to form with this witty and single-minded dose of pure hip hop.

Thus Love - All Pleasure A sleek and sensual second album from the Brattleboro, VT post-punk band.

Night Court - $hit Machine A blast and a half as the Vancouver-based punk/power-pop (a world away from pop punk!) band burns through 17 songs in 26 minutes.

From the archives:
Record Roundup: Songs And Singers
Best Of 2018: The Top 25