World Music
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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
Papa Noel: Latin Reverie
Benjamin Escoriza: Alevanta! (Riverboat/Elite)
17 Jun 2007 | <1 min read
This may be a tough call for most, unless you have heard and loved Radio Tarifa, a rocking Spanish band that brought together a happy marriage of North African music, Spanish flamenco, Latin and gypsy rhythms, and plenty of pop smarts. Their albums Rumba Argelina ('93) and Cruzando El Rio ('01) are well worth seeking out. Escoriza was one of the voices and songwriters in that now... > Read more
Benjamin Escoriza: El Raton
Various: Colombia! (Soundway/Southbound)
17 Jun 2007 | <1 min read | 1
Serious ethnomusicologists could analyse this and identify all the various musical styles on display, but that would rather miss the point. This collection -- pulled together oddly enough by the Brighton-based label Soundway -- is a sampling of tracks recorded between 1960 and '76 on the Disco Fuentes label, a Colombian record company which started recording local musicians in 1934. So... > Read more
Fruko y sus Tesos: A La Memoria Del Muerto
Various: The Rough Guide to the Music of Vietnam (Rough Guide/Elite)
15 Jun 2007 | 1 min read
Frankly my two periods travelling around Vietnam didn't involve much searching out of music -- although by my desk I keep a photo of a poor woman singer leading her blind guitar-playing brother through a market in the village of Hoi An. She sang songs of such ineffable sadness that tears flowed from her eyes and the market came to halt to listen. I took the photograph to constantly remind... > Read more
Kim Sinh: Li Giao Duyen
Various: The Rough Guide to North African Cafe (Rough Guide/Elite)
14 Jun 2007 | <1 min read
About two decades ago in a parody of Jon Landau's famous comment about Bruce Springsteen I wrote a world music column which started, "I have seen rock and roll's future, and it is North African". By way of supporting evidence I noted rock people's love of Led Zeppelin's Kashmir and other such things, and firmly believed then -- as I do now -- that music from this region is... > Read more
Tarik: La Foule
Cheng Yu: Chinese Masterpieces of the Pipa and Qin (Arc/Elite)
19 May 2007 | <1 min read
This young virtuoso on the traditional Chinese instruments of pipa and qin (the former like a lute, the latter an unfretted seven-string zither) has been hailed for her deep understanding of the instruments and for reviving the art by using a recreated five-string pipa which had not been heard since the 8th century. She also wrote a book about her historical research into this formerly... > Read more
Cheng Yu: Dragon Boat
Various: The Rough Guide to Africa Blues (Elite)
10 May 2007 | <1 min read
Many decades ago now Paul Oliver wrote his then-definitive and still useful The Story of the Blues (Penguin, 1969). My recollection was that at the time there was also a tie-in double album which he compiled, and which I taped from a friend's copy. The startling opening track -- startling to me anyway -- was by the Fra Fra tribesmen from somewhere in West Africa and it sounded just like it... > Read more
Corey Harris and Ali Farka Toure: Special Rider Blues
Various: The Rough Guide to Bollywood Gold (Rough Guide/Elite)
29 Apr 2007 | <1 min read
More scholarly heads than mine would able to discuss whether this 15-track collection is a fair reflection of the Bollywood scene: but it certainly contains the big names like Asha Bhosle (two tracks) and Lata Mangeshkar (two also) who have probably recorded over 50,000 songs between them, Mukesh ("The Man With The Golden Voice") and Mohammed Rafi. So the name players are all... > Read more
Asha Bhosle: In Aankhon Ki Masti
Toufic Farroukh: Tootya (Ode)
29 Apr 2007 | <1 min read
World music purists will moan that there is very little "authentic" about this album by Lebanese saxophonist Farroukh and they may well be right: the sessions in Paris doubtless account for the slightly synthetic and polished quality, and the clubland feel of some tracks. But . . . . With the core of the recordings seeming to have been done in Beirut that might account for the... > Read more
Toufic Farroukh: Cendres
Vieux Farka Toure; Vieux Farka Toure (World Village) BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007
22 Apr 2007 | 1 min read
In the Western world the offspring of famous musicians often have a hard time if they choose to follow in the footsteps of their parents: witness the case of Julian and Sean Lennon. But in other cultures, notably in India and parts of the African continent, there is not only an acceptance but an expectation that children will take up the same calling as their parent. Oddly enough this... > Read more
Vieux Farka Toure: Diabateli Farka Toure)
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007: Ibrahim Ferrer: Mi Sueno (World Circuit)
15 Apr 2007 | 1 min read
Knowing that these were the final sessions by the late Buena Vista Social Club's star singer means that perhaps many will cast a more sympathetic ear over them than they might have otherwise. And let's be honest the other "final session" thing -- his duet with Omara Portuondo on As Time Goes By which appeared on the Rhythms Del Mundo album recently -- was dodgy if not downright... > Read more
Ibrahim Ferrer: Deuda
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007: Tinariwen: Aman Iman/Water is Life (Filter)
26 Mar 2007 | <1 min read
The previous album Amassakoul by these extraordinary musicians and desert tribesmen from the southern Sahara was one of the Best of Elsewhere 2006 and turned up in quite a few critics picks of last year. If anything, this album -- dense, driving, intense, poetic and shot through with mercurial, stinging guitar work -- is superior to Amassakoul. Those mesmerisingly repetitive rhythms are... > Read more