world music
CD: Iness Mezel - Beyond the TranceWednesday, 16 February 2011
No, not “trance” in the sense of galloping four-to-the-floor electronic music made by people on Ecstasy for people on Ecstasy. This trance is the original ritualised half-conscious state produced by fast, intensely repetitive, rhythmic tribal music... Read more... |
The Creole Choir of Cuba, BarbicanTuesday, 08 February 2011
As a world music critic one gets used to the stream of superlatives that generally arrive in the wake of whatever big new act is being plugged. World music promoters have a particularly hard job because they don’t just want to preach to the... Read more... |
CD: Aurelio Martinez - Laru BeyaSunday, 06 February 2011
This is one of the most eagerly awaited albums of the year, at least in world music circles. And for impeccable reasons. It is brilliantly produced and joyously sung; it swings with a rare soulfulness and conveys a sense of the Garifuna community.... Read more... |
CD: Mama Rosin - Black RobertTuesday, 25 January 2011
What’s not to like about this Swiss trio with an unquenchable love of the most obscure American roots music? As well as having the ability to evoke the spirit of early Cajun and rock’n’roll recordings without resorting to staid academic imitation,... Read more... |
Cheikh Lo, The ScalaFriday, 14 January 2011
As part of my homework before last night’s gig at the Scala I played Senegalese singer Cheikh Lo’s latest album Jamm over and over again, waiting for some of its tunes to lodge in my mind - waiting to be compelled rather than feel duty bound to play... Read more... |
Year Out/Year In: New Music To Look ForTuesday, 28 December 2010
In the next instalment of our Year Out/Year In series, theartsdesk's New Music writers cast a critical eye over 2010, and offer some recommendations for 2011, incorporating some very funky videos. Our selection of recommended albums from the past... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Musician Femi KutiWednesday, 24 November 2010
When the hit Broadway musical Fela! reached London last week, Femi Kuti joined the ovations on opening night with more feeling than most. The musical’s subject, his father Fela Kuti, was a government-taunting mix of James Brown and Che Guevara, a... Read more... |
Interview: Alim Qasimov, Mugam MaestroThursday, 16 September 2010
With his sublime renditions of Azerbaijan's classical music, Alim Qasimov is one of the world's great performers. On the eve of the singer's appearance at the Barbican’s Transcender Weekend of spiritual trance music, where he is performing this... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Borneo: The Rainforest World Music FestivalSaturday, 04 September 2010
The group Pingasan’k “calls for good spirits”. The name refers to “a bucket to put rice in, tied with the bark of a tree”. Regardless of rice or spirits, this band touched my heart. The gentle, haunting sounds come from the bamboo tube zithers (... Read more... |
The Musical Pygmies of the Central African RepublicSaturday, 04 September 2010
As there's something of a forest theme this weekend on theartsdesk, with the Royal Opera House's If-A-Tree festival curated by Joanna McGregor with Scanner, and a report from this year's Borneo Rainforest World Music Festival, and here, a diary of... Read more... |
New Music CDs Round-Up 12Sunday, 29 August 2010
This month's top releases are headed up by a brilliant covers album by Brazilian singer Seu Jorge, and the Manic Street Preachers and Richard Thompson on peak form. Elsewhere there is South African pianist Kyle Shepherd, Argentinian "eccentric... Read more... |
Omar Souleyman, New World Music Sensation?Friday, 27 August 2010
The world music scene is hungry for new sensations - and Omar Souleyman, about to hit London and the Shambhala Festival, well deserves to be one of them. In the early 1980s the hunger for the exotic focused on anything that came from the parallel... Read more... |
