World Music
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Anoushka Shankar and Karsh Kale: Breathing Under Water (Manhattan/EMI)
18 Oct 2007 | <1 min read
This soundtrack suffers only major drawback in my book: the presence of Sting on the song Sea Dreamer. Is there a more irritating singer on the planet? (Yep, the yelper in Yes. The screacher in Supertramp . . . ) The rest of the album is a gentle infusion of sitar and global cultures, has Shankar's sister Norah Jones and her dad Ravi helping out, and effects an interesting marriage... > Read more
Anoushka Shankar and Karsh Kale: Ghost Story
Orchestra Baobab: Made in Dakar (World Circuit/Elite)
18 Oct 2007 | <1 min read
The reissue six years ago of this Senegalese band's 1982 sessions Pirate's Choice thrust this exceptional outfit into the world music spotlight where it remains to shine and gleam. They released the equally good Specialists in All Styles five years ago and have played to wide accclaim for their rocking rhumba and laidback late-night styles which come off like the best of Cuban music dipped... > Read more
Orchestra Baobab: Aline
Various: The Laya Project (Elite)
2 Sep 2007 | 1 min read | 1
This ambitious concept and elaborate package (two CDs/a DVD/booklet in the gatefold sleeve) should certainly attract attention -- although some questions hang over it. Essentially the project of music producer and sound recorder Patrick Sebag and Yotam Agam with director Harold Montfils, it involved a crew going to the tsunami affected regions of Asia to film and record local musicians... > Read more
The Laya Project: Glorious Sun Remix
Thione Seck; Orientissime (Elite) BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007
2 Sep 2007 | <1 min read
There are some who think that "world music" is corrupted by outside influences, and that the folk musicians of various parts of the globe should be time-locked so as to retain some degree of authenticity. Such paternalistic purists bang on about how tragic it is that musicians from the Sahara use synthesizers, or that sitar players in India tailor their ragas for radio play rather... > Read more
Thione Seck: Ballago
Various: Next Brel (Barclay)
1 Sep 2007 | <1 min read
The music and lyrics of Jacques Brel (1929-78) have seduced dozens of musicians down the decades, notably Scott Walker, Leonard Cohen, Nina Simone, Dusty Springfield . . . Actually just about anyone who appreciates his melodramatic darkness. Brel wrote and sang of street people, love and loss, was reflective or angry, romantic or satirical. He left a huge body of work for others to pick... > Read more
Emiliana Torrini: If You Go Away
Hossam Ramzy and Samy El Bably; Cairo Nights (Arc/Elite) BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007
26 Aug 2007 | <1 min read
Elsewhere listeners know it is unwise to judge an album -- especially a world music album, and most particularly a bellydance album -- by its cover. Beneath the bejewelled, bikini-top breasts on this unpromising looking album are the two key features: the names of Ramzy and El Bably. Ramzy is a prolific writer (over 20 albums for the Arc label alone, most in equally unpromising covers!),... > Read more
Hossam Ramzy/Samy El Bably: Waheshny
The Silk String Quartet: Contemporary and Traditional Chinese Music (Arc/Elite)
25 Aug 2007 | <1 min read
This London-based group includes Cheng Yu, who previously featured on Elsewhere with her lovely solo album of pipa (lute) and qin (zither) music. She has a command of both instruments and here (playing pipa) with Sun Zhao on zither, Hu Bin (erhu/fiddle) and Zhou Jinyan (Chinese dulcimer) she delivers lively traditional tunes alongside evocative contemporary works. As always titles tell... > Read more
The Silk String Quartet: Three and Six
Cesaria Evora: Rogamar (RCA)
18 Aug 2007 | <1 min read
One of my London-based sons is just back from three weeks on the various Cape Verde Islands off the coast of West Africa. I shall quote him: "loads of swimming, hiking and taking in the traditional island music . . . had a great time meeting villagers as you make your way down the track with many inviting you into their huts to offer some pretty powerful grog made from sugercane. most... > Read more
Cearia Evora: Um Pincelada
The Yamato Ensemble: Japanese Music by Michio Miyagi, Vol 1 (ARC/Elite)
10 Aug 2007 | <1 min read
Although he lived in the first half of the 20th century, the famous Japanese composer Michio Miyagi -- whose works are featured here -- actually belonged to a much older world. He wrote in the tradition of the Edo Period of the 17th to 19th centuries (although he assimilated some post-Edo influences). His popularity and prodigious output made him one of the country's most highly regarded... > Read more
The Yamato Ensemble: Kumo No Anata-ni (The Clouds Over Yonder)
Various: Marabi Africa (Marabi/Ode)
3 Aug 2007 | <1 min read
This excellent 17-track compilation is an ideal introduction to the diverse and exciting music coming out of various parts of Africa these days. It also opens with Nebine, the best track off that thrilling album Nour by the Mauritanian singer Malouma (see tag) whose electrifying Sahara blues is giving Tinariwen a run for their money in the "world music album of the year" stakes at... > Read more
Rumbanella Band: Kellya
Byungki Hwang: The Best of Korean Gayageum Music (Arc/Elite)
3 Aug 2007 | <1 min read
At the Auckland Arts Festival AK '07 one of the most fascinating (if least attended) events was an afternoon concert of tea music by a Korean ensemble -- essentially traditional music about the qualities of tea, and performed while tea was being prepared. While you might have come away thinking it takes a helluva long time to get a cup of tea in Korea, the music was sublime. This... > Read more
Byungki Hwang: Hamadan (second movement, for gayageum and janggu, 2000)
Various: Musica Negra in the Americas (Network/Soutbound)
19 Jul 2007 | <1 min read
Some years ago the estimable Network label released the groundbreaking Desert Blues collection of music from the Sahara region, a superb double disc in a beautiful and informative long-form package. This re-release of the similarly conceived collection of the music of the various slavery cultures of the Americas is its equal: two discs of 33 tracks which is a geographical tour-de-force as... > Read more
The Congos: Fisherman (Jamaica)
Various; Tropicalia, A Brazilian Revolution in Sound (Soul Jazz) BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007
13 Jul 2007 | <1 min read | 1
Don't know about you, but all that cooler-than-thou, soft-voice badha-badha-doobee-doo stuff from Brazil (Bebe Gilberto et al) gets right up my nose. It seems to be favoured by "sophisticated" people and such soft samba seemed obligatory as the theme to any arts show on television for decades. My turning point into Brazilian music was in 1990 when David Byrne (of Talking Heads)... > Read more
Os Mutantes: Panis et Circenses
Te Vaka: Olatia (Warm Earth/Ode)
13 Jul 2007 | <1 min read
This formerly Auckland-based and socially-conscious group have now relocated to Australia, but Te Vaka rarely played in New Zealand anyway. Theirs was always a bigger calling and they spend much time at world music festivals or in the Pacific where their emotional heart remains. Singer-songwriter Opetaia Foa'i has a real gift in bringing together traditional songs and contemporary pop... > Read more
The Incredible Bongo Band: Bongo Rock (Elite)
13 Jul 2007 | 1 min read
Formed in the early 70s by record company exec and musician Michael Viner with composer Perry Botkin Jnr, the Incredible Bongo Band was an informal gaggle of musicians who got together to capitalise on a one-off single lifted from the soundtrack to the B-movie The Thing With Two Heads. Recording in Canada because it was cheap and they would get automatic airplay because of Candian content,... > Read more
The Incredible Bongo Band: Apache (Grand Master Flash remix)
Alan Shavarsh Bardezbanian: Oud Masterpieces (Arc/Elite)
7 Jul 2007 | <1 min read
The oud -- a Middle Eastern ancestor of the European lute -- has an earthy but elevating sound and is heard from Egypt to Armenia, and in Massachusetts where Bardezbanian lives. While a student of composition at Berklee in Boston, he held down a gig playing in a Greek taverna, which accounts for the broad reach of this album: from his Armenian heritage to Greece, Bulgaria to Turkey. The... > Read more
Alan Shavarsh Bardezbanian: Sevan Tsgnorsner
Various: Authenticite; The Syliphone Years 1965-80 (Southbound)
7 Jul 2007 | <1 min read
In a beautiful sleeve featuring stamps from Guinea and with an informative booklet, this double disc collection takes you to the heart of music from this small African state (population about 10 million) and includes material by the very famous Bembeya Jazz National and their peers on the Syliphone label. It seems when Guinea became indepent from Fance in '58 the government encouraged the... > Read more
Orchestre de la Paillote: Kankan-yarabi
Doug Cox and Salil Bhatt: Slide to Freedom (Northern Blues)
24 Jun 2007 | <1 min read
One of the many joys of Elsewhere is the unsolicited and unexpected mail, not the least when a CD like this -- dobro-meets-Indian music -- arrives all the way from a subscriber in Canada. Guitarist Doug Cox -- who produces the Vancouver Island MusicFest and has been a long-time subscriber to Elsewhere -- sent me this terrific album which has since commanded considerable airtime at my place.... > Read more
Doug Cox and Salil Bhstt: Fish Pond
Andy Palacio and the Garifuna Collective: Watina (Cumbancha/Elite)
24 Jun 2007 | <1 min read
If nothing else, Music From Elsewhere can send you to the atlas: this collection of warm, melodic and memorable songs comes from one of the most well-known singers of the Garifuna, a people who live along the Atlantic coast of Belize to Costa Rica. By all accounts they play reggae for the tourists and their own African-influenced music for themselves: this album errs toward the latter and... > Read more
Andy Palacio: Beiba
Papa Noel: Bana Congo presents Papa Noel (Tumi/Elite)
24 Jun 2007 | <1 min read
Congolese rumba (or its pop imitations) accounts for around 70% of all music bought by Africans in Africa, a measure of the impact that the touring Cuban rumba bands of the Forties made, and how pervasive their horn-driven sound has become. Papa Noel is a veteran of the Golden Age of Rumba in the Forties and Fifites, and his guitar sound and vocals have graced hundreds of albums. For... > Read more