Remembering Jay, especially today.
A few years ago, one of my birthday gifts was a portable cd & tape player for my studio. Since I still had a plethora of cassettes from the 1980s, I was wondering if they would still work. Even now, I haven’t gone through them all, but most that I played still worked with only a few being immediately eaten up by the mechanism.
Sadly, one of the first tapes that I tested, which got chewed, was “Jayze Crazed Musical Holiday”. This was a mixtape that Jay had made for one of my birthdays in the early to mid-1980s and which I credit for opening my heart to World Music.
For my birthday this year, my husband, James Hayes, diligently searched the internet for the songs on the playlist. He was not able to find all the songs for me but managed to salvage enough of the chewed cassette to lift the missing songs from it and re-create all Jay’s choices on a cd for me. Needless to say, the gift was bittersweet as we spent the evening listening to the music and telling stories of our special times with Jay.
For interest’s sake, the songs that James was unable to find on the net are (with his notes):
“Shenandoah” - The Red Army Choir
“Bamboleo” from Club Latino Medley (replaced with decent version of Bamboleo by Los Reyes)
Unidentified song from Latin America Medley
Unidentified song by Yomo Tora & Spanish Dancers
“Se Acabo” - by Amoretto Rae Serrano & Yomo Toro on the Garcias Album
“A Ritual Mask” - Peter Hammill, found on the "Loops and Reels" album 1983
“Pengosekan” - Vic Coppersmith-Heaven, both this and “Ritual Mask” are from "Music and Rhythm: A Benefit Double LP for A World of Music, Arts and Dance" 1982, to raise funds for Peter Gabriel's WOMAD initiative.