Coming out of my music funk

By Kathy Edwards McFarland

Ted Gioia (Photo by Dave Shafer)

Mr. Ted Gioia, http://tedgioia.com/TedGioiaBio.html, just released his Top 100 recordings for 2017.

This may not be a big deal for some of you, Dear Readers, but his compilation, to me, is not only impressive, but boldly inspiring.

His journey through more than 1,000 albums during this past year, culling his top picks and testifying against the lack of accessible information about the lush, wide range of quality music in all its vibrant genres and forms is priceless.

I enjoy sharing my favorite music with others. But in the last few years, a different
motivation has spurred me. I believe that the system of music discovery is broken in the current day. There is more music recorded than ever before, but it is almost impossible for listeners to find the best new recordings.  

The most creative work in music is increasingly found on self-produced projects and releases from small indie labels— to an extent hardly conceivable only a decade ago.  Very little of this music ever shows up on the radio, where formats seem to get narrower and narrower with each passing year.  

Music fans once heard good new music at indie record stores, but most of them have closed. Or they could read reviews in the newspaper, but both the newspapers and the music reviews are shrinking or disappearing.

And the big record labels are the worst culprits of all, picking acts for their looks or their potential appeal to fourteen-year-olds, or some other egregious reason, and in general jumping on the most trivial passing fads.

On the other hand, the Internet presents an almost infinite amount of music and music commentary—yet where do fans even begin to separate the good from the bad and ugly?  

My personal solution to this dilemma has been to listen to lots and lots of music, and try to identify recordings of quality and  distinction.

This year, Gioia relinquished his numerical ranking, instead, alphabetizing the best recordings, “because each of these albums deserves recognition and the sequential ranking tended to focus too much attention on just a few recordings.

The full list appears soon enough. My take on Gioia’s epic undertaking is one of shear admiration. His work as a musician and writer has set him above most critics and music writers. With passion and attention to fairness and detail, he once again has offered a beauteous musical mix: Pointillistic Anti-Jazz (huh?) to Contemporary Music for Youth Chorus, Illegal Ethiopian Dance Music to Anonymous 16th Century Polyphony for Nuns … Yes, Jazz of all stripes is in there – tip of my hat to the Bernstein piano pieces, Miles Davis’ works, and a new album by Ahmad Jamal. I am also glad to find one of my personal favorites, Americana artist Rhiannon Giddens, on the list.

For the complete blog post and and the 100 Honorable Mention roster, visit http://tedgioia.com/bestalbumsof2017.html

Here’s my list of the 100 best albums of 2017 (in alphabetical order this year). They are drawn from all styles and all genres. Happy listening!

• John Luther Adams
  Canticles of the Holy Wind
  Contemporary Choral Music
  
• Teddy Afro
  Ethiopia
  Illegal Ethiopian Dance Music
  
• Arca
  Arca
  Fragile, Ultra-Slow Latin Electropop
  
• Daymé Arocena
  Cubafonía
  Contemporary Afro-Cuban Music
  
• Sam Baker    
  Land of Doubt  
  Raw, Self-Produced Singer-Songwriter from the Texas Prairie
  
• Scott H. Biram
  The Bad Testament
  Funkish Punkish Country Music
  
• Björk
  Utopia
  Groove-Free Techno with Flutes & Birdsong
  
• Theo Bleckmann
  Elegy
  Elegaic Jazz
  
• Stefano Bollani
  Mediterraneo: Jazz at the Berlin Philharmonic
  Jazz with Classical/Cinematic Ingredients
  
• Brooklyn Youth Chorus
  Black Mountain Songs  
  Contemporary Music for Youth Chorus
  
• Betty Buckley
  Story Songs
  Cabaret/Broadway
  
• Sarah Cahill
  Eighty Trips Around the Sun: Music by and for Terry Riley
  Piano Music Composed (or Inspired) by Terry Riley
  
• Celestial Sirens/Musica Secreta
  Lucrezia Borgia’s Daughter
  Anonymous 16th Century Polyphony for Nuns
  
• Bill Charlap
  Uptown Downtown
  Jazz Piano Trio
  
• Billy Childs
  Rebirth
  Jazz
  
• Clann An Drumma     
  Order of the Stag
  Tribal Drumming with Scottish Bagpipes
  
• Gary Clark, Jr.
  Live in North America 2016  
  Electric Blues
  
• Anat Cohen Tentet
  Happy Song
  Semi-Big-Band Jazz
  
• Jessi Colter
  The Psalms  
  Gospel/Country/Folk
  
• The Como Mamas
  Move Upstairs
  Gospel
  
• Andrew Cooperstock
  Leonard Bernstein: Complete Solo Works for Piano
  Modern Classical Music
  
• Danish String Quartet
  Last Leaf   
  Nordic Folk Music/Chamber Music
  
• DeJohnette/Grenadier/Medeski/Scofield
  Hudson
  Old Rock in New Jazzy Guises
  
• Del Sol Quartet & Gyan Riley
  Terry Riley: Dark Queen Mantra
  Music for String Quartet and Electric Guitar
  
• Ani DiFranco
  Binary
  Singer-Songwriter
  
• Emerson String Quartet
  Chaconnes and Fantasias: Music of Britten and Purcell   
  Chamber Music
  
• Emika
  Melanfonie
  Czech Orchestral Art Pop
  
• Brian Eno
  Reflection  
  Ambient Music
  
• Heloísa Fernandes
  Faces
  Brazilian Music/Jazz
  
• Fink    
  Fink’s Sunday Night Blues Club, Vol. 1  
  British Blues for Moderns
  
• Champian Fulton
  Speechless
  Jazz Piano
  
• Galley Beggar
  Heathen Hymns  
  British Folk-Rock With a Touch of Metal
  
• Molly Gebrian & Danny Holt
  Trios for Two
  New Music for Viola, Piano and Percussion
  
• Rhiannon Giddens
  Factory Girl
  Americana
  
• Stanley Grill
  At the Center of Things   
  Contemporary Chamber Music Inspired by Early Music
  
• Erik Griswold
  Ecstatic Descent   
  New Music for Prepared Piano
  
• Jo Harman
  People We Become   
  Moody British Singer-Songwriter Comes to Nashville
  
• Stephen Hartke     
  The Ascent of the Equestrian in a Balloon
  Contemporary Classical Music
  
• Fred Hersch
  Open Book   
  Solo Jazz Piano
  
• Jennifer Higdon
  All Things Majestic   
  Ecology-Inspired Contemporary Classical Music
  
• Ifriqiyya Électrique
  Rûwâhîne  
  Sufi Trance Music from Tunisia with a Post-Punk Twist
  
• The Infamous Stringdusters
  Laws of Gravity
  Bluegrass
  
• Vijay Iyer
  Far From Over
  Jazz
  
• Ahmad Jamal
  Marseille
  Jazz
  
• Jasper String Quartet
  Unbound
  Contemporary Chamber Music
  
• Jlin
  Black Origami  
  Percussion-Driven Multicultural Dance Music
  
• John Joubert    
  Jane Eyre  
  Contemporary Opera
  
• Mari Kimura
  Voyage Apollonian
  Music for Violin & Interactive Computer
  
• The Kraken Quartet
  Separate / Migrate
  Dance & Trance Music for Percussion and Electronics
  
• Julian Lage & Chris Eldridge
  Mount Royal
  Folk/Americana
  Nguyên Lê & Ngô Hồng Quang
  Há Nôi Duo   
  Vietnamese Music/Jazz
  
• Charles Lloyd
  Passin’ Thru
  Jazz
  
• The Magnetic Fields    
  50 Song Memoir   
  Pop-Rock Art Songs
  
• Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Indo-Pak Coalition
  Agrima
  Jazz/South Asian Music
  
• Laura Marling
  Semper Femina   
  Singer-Songwriter
  
• Hayes McMullan
  Everyday Seem Like Murder Here
  Previously Unreleased Country Blues Recorded in 1960s
  
• Björn Meyer
  Provenance
  Ritualistic Music for Solo Bass Guitar (Six-String Electric and Acoustic)
  
• Father John Misty
  Pure Comedy
  Faux Ecclesiastical Singer-Songwriter
  
• Stanton Moore    
  With You In Mind: The Songs of Allen Toussaint
  New Orleans Funk
  
• Randy Newman
  Dark Matter   
  Mordant Singer-Songwriter
  
• North Mississippi Allstars    
  Prayer for Peace
  Roots & Blues
  
• Víkingur Ólafsson
  Philip Glass: Piano Works    
  Minimalist Piano Music
  
• Ed Palermo Big Band
  The Great Un-American Songbook, Vol 1& 2
  Irreverent Rock Repertory Big Band Music
  
• Aaron Parks
  Find the Way  
  Jazz
  
• Maurizio Pollini
  Chopin: Late Works
  Classical Piano Music
  
• Billy Porter (with Guests)
  The Soul of Richard Rodgers
  Flamboyant Updatings of Broadway Tunes
  
• Chris Potter
  The Dreamer is the Dream  
  Jazz
  
• Awa Poulo
  Poulo Warali   
  Peulh Music from Mali
  
• Quercus
  Nightfall
  Folk/Jazz
  
• Jason Ricci & The Bad Kind
  Approved by Snakes
  Dirty Harmonica Blues
  
• Pepe Romero/Vicente Coves    
  Federico Moreno Torroba: Guitar Concertos 2
  20th Classical Music for Guitar
  
• Ryuichi Sakamoto
  async
  Soundtrack Without a Film
  
• Cécile McLorin Salvant
  Dreams and Daggers
  Jazz Vocals
  
• András Schiff
  Encores After Beethoven
  Classical Piano Music
  
• Adam Schoenberg
  American Symphony/Finding Rothko/Picture Studies   
  Neo-Romanticist Contemporary Orchestral Music
  
• Raymond Scott
  Three Willow Park: Electronic Music from Inner Space 1961-1971
  Previously Unreleased Electronic and AI Music from 1960s
  
• SFJAZZ Collective     
  Music of Miles Davis & Original Compositions
  Jazz
  
• Peter Silberman
  Impermanence
  Singer-Songwriter
  
• Songhoy Blues
  Résistance
  West African Desert Rock as Political Protest
  
• Tyshawn Sorey
  Verisimilitude
  Pointillistic Anti-Jazz
  
• Wesley Stace
  Wesley Stace’s John Wesley Harding
  Singer-Songwriter
  
• Colin Stetson
  All This I Do For Glory
  Experimental Saxophone Trance Music
  
• Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly and James McAlister
  Planetarium   
  Introverted Pop for Star-Gazing
  
• Quinn Sullivan
  Midnight Highway  
  Bluesy Rock-Pop
  
• Systema Solar    
  Rumbo A Tierra
  Cumbia/EDM/Hip-Hop
  Tale of Us
  Endless
  Tech-Noir Chillout Music from Deutsche Grammophon
  
• The Tangent
  The Slow Rust of Forgotten Machinery
  Neo Prog Rock
  
• Otis Taylor
  Fantasizing About Being Black  
  Trance Blues
  
• Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau
  Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau  
  Jazz/Folk Hybrid
  
• Thundercat
  Drunk
  R&B/Hip-Hop
  
• Tinariwen
  Elwan
  African Desert Blues
  
• Tohpati Ethnomission
  Mata Hati
  Indonesian Jazz-Rock
  
• Ralph Towner
  My Foolish Heart
  Jazz Guitar
  
• Tribalistas
  Tribalistas
  Contemporary Brazilian Popular Music
  
• The Unthanks    
  Diversions, Vol. 4: The Songs and Poems of Molly Drake
  Brooding Songs by Nick Drake’s Mother Molly Drake (1915-1993)
  
• Kamasi Washington
  Harmony of Difference
  Jazz with a Tinge of Soul/R&B
  
• Dale Watson and Ray Benson  
  Dale & Ray
  Roadhouse Country
  
• Willie Watson
  Folksinger, Vol. 2.   
  Folk Music
  
• The xx
  I See You   
  Dream Pop
  
• Miguel Zenón
  Típico  
  Jazz