World Music
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WOMAD ARTIST 2013; AMIN ALAEV OF THE ALAEV FAMILY INTERVIEWED (Tajikistan)
25 Jan 2013 | 4 min read
Interviewing world music artists is often interesting, sometimes fun and frequently frustrating. Speaking to Amin Alaev of the Alaev Family – who play the Taranaki Womad – is all three. First of all he's in a phone shop because his mobile is going to die on him any minute, and second he speaks little English beyond a few polite sentences so we go through the group's... > Read more
Imshab Shabi
ELSEWHERE'S FAMOUS WOMAD QUESTIONNAIRE: Kris Drever of Lau (Scotland)
21 Jan 2013 | 3 min read
With some slight variations on our Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire to suit the world and worldly musicians playing at this year's Womad (details below), we now offer Elsewhere's Famous Womad Questionnaire . . . and I'm delighted the first to be posted is by a group from the country where I was born, Scotland. Lau are an award-winning three-piece who play a unique mixture of traditional (but... > Read more
Gallowhill
Perunika Trio: A Bright Star Has Risen (ARC)
21 Jan 2013 | <1 min read
While there can be a few problems with "file under rock" or "file under world music" on your album cover, having "Voices of Bulgaria" on your cover as a subtitle inevitably invites comparisons with the great ensemble Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares. Almost 30 years ago that group arrived with a remarkable album of unaccompanied vocals which were heart-stopping in... > Read more
Na horoto
Kristi Stassinopoulou and Stathis Kalyviotis: Greekadelia (Riverboat/Southbound)
7 Jan 2013 | <1 min read | 1
Adding the suffix -adelic to a style (folkadelic) or album title as in this case, isn't always quite as helpful or true as it seems. This well-established traditional-into-today duo – who employ loops and electronica alongside harmonium and lauto (lute) – don't live up to the tripped-out suggestion of this album title, however this (like a previous outing) has topped... > Read more
Anamesa Nissirou
Ana Alcaide: La cantiga del fuego (ARC)
2 Jan 2013 | <1 min read
Although perilously close to New Age music in places, this gently beguiling album should find wide favour because within it are familiar melodies and chord progressions found in Celtic folk (think Clannad) and Northern Europe, but she also brings North Africa sounds too which add exotic spice. Quite a seductive mixture by this Spanish singer, songwriter and practitioner of the nyckelharpe (a... > Read more
Khun caravan
Balkan Beat Box: Give (Crammed Discs/Southbound)
29 Dec 2012 | <1 min read
The cover here -- megaphone as gun/gun as megaphone --gives you a clue to the BBB out of New York who mash up dance culture, dub, Balkan styles and much more into often bruising techno-rock . . . and throw in socio-political messages about how people are exploited, the evils of greed and Enemy in Economy. All this to club-shaking and block-rockin' beats. They can be superficial... > Read more
Urge to be Violent
RAVI SHANKAR (1920 - 2012): More Than One Lifetime
13 Dec 2012 | 18 min read | 3
My collection of schoolboy poetry which I would agonise over late at night, laboriously using my Scripto fountain pen and Radiant Blue ink, has long since vanished. Thank God. I’m sure it was full of adolescent anxieties -- one “poem” was about Oedipus, about whom I knew nothing other than I liked the name. But one piece remains with me in the memory. It was called... > Read more
WOMAD NEW ZEALAND 2013: When the world comes to town
1 Nov 2012 | 5 min read | 1
Time for all good citizens of the global village to get their passports stamped at yet another Womad New Zealand, once more in the beautiful site at Taranaki, New Zealand. Over three days in March 2013 (15 - 17), musicians and performers from all parts of the globe will bring their music and culture to entertain, illuminate and thrill those looking for something just a bit different, new... > Read more
Many Rivers to Cross
Staff Benda Bilili: Bouger le Monde (Crammed Discs/Southbound)
29 Oct 2012 | 1 min read | 1
Recently while looking out music for a DJ night of African music I played dozens of tracks at home back-to-back searching for the best sounds . . . and one thing became very clear. Most of this stuff would drive people crazy and I'd get booted out the bar. The relentless chant-sing style of so much of what I played at home became off-putting even to me, and I like this stuff . . . so I... > Read more
Ne me quitte pas
Mucca Pazza: Safety Fifth (muccapazza.com)
28 Oct 2012 | <1 min read
What with the funky lineage out of New Orleans, the woozy sound of the late Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy and the likes of the free-wheeling Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, the ground has been well prepared for this big band (like HBE, from Chicago). These heretics throw funk, rock, avant-garde jazz, imagined movie themes, a smattering of world music (tango in the house!) and a dozen different... > Read more
Sexy Bull
Victor Ghannam and Jacco Muller: Palace of Dreams
22 Oct 2012 | <1 min read
Regrettably like the proverbial curate's egg, this is good in parts. But then again, too few to mention. Following their Viento del Desierto collaboration in 2009, Dutch flamenco guitarist Muller again teams up with oud player Ghannam. And on paper this looks an even more daring bridging of cultures and styles which brings in electric guitar, tabla drums, synth-strings and... > Read more
Old Snake Boots
Vusa Mkhaya: Vocalism (Arc)
17 Oct 2012 | <1 min read
The recent Paul Simon concerts and reissue of Graceland doubtless reminded many of the vocal power of the great South African ensemble Ladysmith Black Mambazo who were on that album and Simon's subsequent tours. If you yearn for an artist who can hit the middle ground between Mambazo, genius juju guitarist King Sunny Ade and a kind of fine-grain sandpaper soul style, then Vusa Mkhaya... > Read more
Diaspora
Janka Nabay and the Bubu Gang: En Yay Sah (Luaka Bop/Southbound)
11 Oct 2012 | 1 min read
This excitingly duffed-up world beat/low-rent psychedelic rock has a wild urban pedigree which comes through in its stupidly different but absolutely addictive Afro-meets-Manhattan groove. Juju goes downtown NYC via an old school Yellow Cab, parks up outside a Warhol event and pulls out incessant machine-gun groove to blow away Lou and Candy Darling. Fronted by singer-songwriter Ahmed... > Read more
Eh Mane Ha
Choban Elektrik; Choban Elektrik (CDBY)
24 Sep 2012 | 1 min read | 1
Among the more irritating people on the planet are those who ask you if you've heard such'n'such a band (usually utterly obscure, not available to hear on Spotify or buy through some on-line source) or a DJ who bangs on about rare grooves from some far flung corner of the planet only available on massively expensive limited edition vinyl import. When you say you haven't heard these things... > Read more
Koftos
The Malawi Mouse Boys: He is #1 (Southbound)
17 Sep 2012 | <1 min read | 1
Their name alone sends you to You Tube to find out more about the Malawi Mouse Boys . . . and indeed that is exactly what they are. They sell mice kebabs on the roadside as a kind of snack-to-go for passing cars and trucks in some remote and dusty part of Malawi. But then you see them walk behind a house into the garden, pick up the most battered of instruments imaginable and sing.... > Read more
Mtsilikali (Soldier)
Koo Nimo: Highlife Roots Revival (Riverboat)
6 Aug 2012 | <1 min read
An educated man who studied science in London in the Sixties and spent two years as a professor of ethnomusicology in Seattle in the late Nineties, 78-year old Koo Nimo from Ghana also immersed himself in the Western classical tradition and is a fan of Thelonious Monk's complex jazz compositions and flamenco, the latter two evident in his deft guitar work. He is however part of the... > Read more
See Wo Nom Me
Rob: Make It Fast, Make It Slow (Soundway)
1 Jun 2012 | 1 min read
In a reproduction of what must have been the original cheap cover, this minimal and curiously religious/sexual album by Rob from Ghana has all the look -- and resonance -- of a rare reggae album from Jamaica, the kind of music which comes with an air of mystery because you are hypnotosed by the sheer peculiar nature of the thing. Singer/writer Rob was something of an enigmatic figure by all... > Read more
Make It Fast, Make It Slow
Jennifer Zea and the Antipodean Collective: The Latin Soul (Mama Wata)
28 May 2012 | 1 min read | 1
Venezuelan singer and songwriter Zea must be thanking the gods that in 1994 she saw The Piano . . . and was so seduced by the New Zealand landscape she decided to move here. And that she brought with her a background of various musical styles picked up on home turf, American soul from the radio and time in Detroit, chanson in Paris, Brazilian and Caribbean sounds . . . In this country she... > Read more
Mi Nina
The Funkees: Dancing Time (Soundway Records)
28 May 2012 | <1 min read
The band name might be slightly misleading -- there is more Afrogroove than funk here -- but we will take the subtitle (The Best of Eastern Nigeria's Afro Rock Exponents 1973-77) at its word because this is 18 short songs full of punch and fire. In fact is there's a complaint it's that these songs are too short. Most come in at fewer than four and half minutes and you wish they could... > Read more
Akula Owu Onyeara
Amadou Diangne: Introducing Amadou Diagne (World Music Network)
28 May 2012 | <1 min read
Singer/songwriter Diagne from Senegal comes from impeccable pedigree. He was born into a griot family, started on drums at age four, played in the Senegalese National Band and his song Senegal won a Battle of the Bands on the World Music Network's website. And there is no doubt Senegal is a moving piece with Diagne's quavering but strong vocal filled with emotion and is offset by gentle... > Read more