World Music
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Carolina Moon: Mother Tongue (Moon)
14 Mar 2011 | <1 min read | 3
Although this enchanting album -- songs of the Sephardic Jews of Spain -- might seem a departure for Wellington-based jazz singer Carolina Moon, she has previously explored what we might call world music, although never with this depth and resonance. These glorious songs -- intimate, yearning, emotional -- come from centuries ago but are here arranged for delicate piano (Kevin Field),... > Read more
Carolina Moon: Yad Anauga
RAJENDRA PRASANNA AND THE SPIRIT OF INDIA (2011): Family matters
24 Feb 2011 | 4 min read
In many ways, the Indian musician Rajendra Prasanna is an emblem of his country's classical tradition. As with so many Indian musicians, he grew up in the gurukal system where he was one of a long lineage who had been taught by their musician father who would pass on the knowledge acquired from the previous generation. Prasanna's father and grandfather were both musicians, but in some... > Read more
Hassan Erraji: Awal Mara (World Village)
14 Feb 2011 | 1 min read | 1
One of the delights of "world music" is that it is a constant journey of discovery and so you have no qualms picking up an album by an unknown name (Hassan Erraji? Never heard of him myself) and taking a chance. And in this case you stumble on someone you wished you'd discovered many years ago -- especially when you read in the liner notes he is "a man prone to oud-flailing a... > Read more
Hassan Erraji: Akhadh Aqli/She Blew My Mind
Mundi: In the Blink of an Eye (Monkey)
14 Feb 2011 | 1 min read
Every now and again New Zealand throws up a group which has a jazz/improv aspect but looks to diverse world music for influences. Elsewhere has posted albums by Superbrew from the Eighties and, from the past decade, releases by the Mamaku Project. The prog art-rock band An Emerald City also incorporate elements from Middle Eastern-and-beyond musics as well. Mundi -- fronted by flute... > Read more
Mundi: Berimbau
Various Artists: So Frenchy So Chic 2011 (Border)
13 Feb 2011 | 1 min read
These annual double CD compilations of recent music from France -- from pop to, yes, chic, but not alt.rock etc -- are the unofficial soundtrack to the Alliance Francaise French Film Festival (details here) but afford us the opportunity of hearing a swag of music from a country with a reputation of making the most awful pop. At least that's what the British would tell you. Of course it has... > Read more
Disiz Peter Punk: Dans le ventre du crocodile
Various Artists: Womad; Sounds of the Planet 2011 (Border)
13 Feb 2011 | 1 min read | 1
A Womad festival -- like the Big Day Out -- rather sells itself these days: many people will go knowing only a couple of names in the line-up but will make discoveries on the day. This 14 track sampler of acts at the Taranaki Womad (March 18 - 20) might be a useful intro to some of them and it kicks off fine fashion with the upbeat rocksteady sound of Calpyso Rose from Trindad/Tobago who... > Read more
Hanggai: Togur Gin Mountain
TAGAQ INTERVIEWED (2011): From out of the frozen north comes a sound . . .
7 Feb 2011 | 12 min read
Inuit throat-singer and painter Tanya Tagaq Gillis – who often performs simply as Tagaq – grew up in remote Cambridge Bay (pop. 1500) in Canada's remote north. She went to high school in Yellowknife where she still lives, but these day is in demand on the concert circuit for her innovative throat-singing which is grounded in a long tradition – Inuit women would sing in... > Read more
Tagaq: Still (from Sinaa)
Syriana: The Road to Damascus (Real World)
6 Feb 2011 | 1 min read
The last time Nick Page (aka Dubulah and co-founder of London's terrific Transglobal Underground) appeared on these pages it was as Dub Colossus with the album A Town Called Addis in which he recorded local Ethiopian musicians in situ then worked on the tapes back in the Real World studios in England. There has always been an authenticity and integrity in his work with musicians from around... > Read more
Syriana: Al Mazzeh
Custodio Castelo: The Art of Portuguese Fado Guitar (Arc Music)
6 Feb 2011 | <1 min read | 1
For the past few years it has seemed impossible to go to some well-travelled person's home without them extolling the many virtues of Portugal -- and of course fado, that aching folk style sung in bars and clubs late at night. And of course artists such as the striking Mariza have become world music stars (although I can't seem to persuade many of the virtues of the modernist take on the... > Read more
Custodio Castelo: Amsterdam
Various Artists: The Sound of Siam (Soundway)
31 Jan 2011 | 1 min read
Increasingly the globe becomes a village -- and the local radio station is broadcasting oldies and archival stuff. Consider the recent excavating of music from Ethiopia, Nigeria, Sixties South Africa, Dengue Fever's take on Cambodian psychedelic pop, the Shanghai lounge divas project . . . You sometimes get the sense that in every small town and recording studio there's a British... > Read more
Panom Nopporn: Sao Ban Pok Pab
DENGUE FEVER INTERVIEWED (2008): Taking it all back to Cambodia
31 Jan 2011 | 3 min read
When Pol Pot’s murderous thugs drove people out of Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh and into the countryside in the mid 70s, it was the beginning of the end. Figures vary but some say around two million people -- a quarter of the population -- were killed or died as the Khmer Rouge reconfigured the country based on an agrarian society and a rejection of western ideas. Even before... > Read more
Dengue Fever: Oceans of Venus (from the album Venus on Earth, 2007)
Femi Kuti: Africa for Africa (Wrasse)
24 Jan 2011 | <1 min read
In 1970 George Melly wrote Revolt into Style, a witty and sometimes scathing look at how the revolutionary, anti-establishment figures in pop art and culture had been assimilated into the mainstream as just another fashion/style accessory. You'd wonder what Melly might make of Nigerian firebrand musician and lightning-rod political figure Fela Anikulapo Kuti (1938-97) now the subject... > Read more
Femi Kuti: Cant Buy Me
NITIN SAWHNEY INTERVIEWED (2007): Orchestrating A Throw of Dice
24 Jan 2011 | 4 min read | 1
Ask British-Indian musician and composer Nitin Sawhney what he’s currently working on and five minutes later he is still telling you. Then adding, “Oh and also . . .” Sawney has the kind of schedule that doesn’t allow much time for sleep and even locating him has been difficult. Finally, after numerous attempts, there he is on his cellphone rushing off to somewhere.... > Read more
Souad Massi: O Houria/Liberty (Wrasse/Shock)
17 Jan 2011 | 1 min read
It has been far too long since this Paris-based Algerian singer has graced the pages of Elsewhere -- her Mesk Elil of 2007 contained the sublime psychedelic track Tell Me Why (here) among other delights, and her double acoustic "best of" album of 2009 (although it didn't get a mention here) has been a personal favourite for a long time. Massi has always been a little hard to... > Read more
Enta Ouzahrek
BILL SEVESI INTERVIEWED: Light of the Pacific
14 Jan 2011 | 6 min read
Bill Sevesi says he speaks three languages, but he actually speaks four. The three he will admit to are Tongan (he was born in Nuku'alofa almost 88 years ago), English which he learned when he came to Auckland at age 9, and Italian, picked up during World War II. "I found out that making love to Italian girls was better than fighting Germans," he says with a wicked glint in his... > Read more
Bill Sevesi: Oneroa
Various: Bar Mexico. Classic and New Mexican Flavours (Demon)
29 Nov 2010 | 1 min read
Elsewhere claims absolutely no expertise (or even much prior knowledge) in Mexican music other than what has been picked up on the long journey of life, time in the Tex-Mex territory and an open mind to the likes of Mexican Institute of Sound, Lila Downs and so on. Oh, and having seen the film La Bamba, of course. So we take this as we find it: and we find two 15-song discs neatly... > Read more
Sonidero Nacional: Grande de Cadera
The Creole Choir of Cuba: Tande-la (Real World/Southbound)
28 Nov 2010 | <1 min read
Already tipped to be one of the highlights at next year's New Zealand Womad in Taranaki, this choir of Haitian ancestry certainly sing up a powerful sentiment (see clip). But this isn't an easy album: Cuban creole (a meltdown of French, various words and phrases from African languages and some other seasoning thrown in) means whatever they are singing isn't going to easily understood. If... > Read more
The Creole Choir of Cuba: Lumane Casimir
Tom Ze: Estudando a Bossa; Nordeste Plaza (Luaka Bop)
7 Nov 2010 | 1 min read
Tom Ze was one of the stars of Brazil's Tropicalia movement in the late Sixties and his edgy music and approaches to song structure and instrumentation was collected by David Byrne for the Best of Tom Ze album on Byrne's Luaka Bop label in 1990. It was quite exceptional (Ze used household appliances like a blender and vacuum cleaners to get certain sounds), and lead to a subsequent volume... > Read more
Tom Ze and David Byrne: Outra Insensatez, Poe
Various Artists: Next Stop Soweto Vol 3; Giants, Ministers and Makers (Strut)
7 Nov 2010 | <1 min read
Subtitled "Jazz in South Africa 1963-1984" this is the third volume in the excellent Strut excavation of crucial SA music which has previously picked up Township jive music and mad funk/psychedelic sounds. This collection is the least of three: the improvisations often sound constrained, in other places where the players let go they invite comparisons with their American peers... > Read more
Allen Kwela Octet: Question Mark
SHANGHAI LOUNGE DIVAS: The old world into the new
23 Oct 2010 | 1 min read | 1
Shanghai has always been China's hotspot, the most cosmopolitan of cities in that vast and diverse country. In the Twenties and Thirties the place was awash with jazz, blues and international pop thanks to the international community, and that rubbed alongside the local folk, Mandarin pop and opera. At one time there were 30 radio stations in Shanghai and nightclubs were everywhere. The... > Read more