Monday, December 18, 2006

Fiebre, Radio Tarifa

To coin a cliché: if there wasn'ta group like Radio Tarifa already, you would have to invent one. The affinities between North African and Spanish gypsy music are so overt as not to need any sophisticated World MusicPR exercise in product placement. The similarities just scream out at you when you listen to traditional airs like "Jota Bereber" or the wonderful version of Tarifa's self-composed classic from the album of the same name,"Cruzando el Rio".
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Made in Medina by Rachid Taha

Since rai music scrambled up from the slums and street markets of the Algerian port city Oran about 80 years ago, it has remained ineradicably urban, restless, acquisitive, and gregarious. As a lyric-heavy outlet for the female underclass, with slanguage extolling sex and nightlife while aggressively opposing French colonialism, rai was the original urchin rap. Since the European oppressor withdrew, rai's main opponents have been fundamentalists, both Marxists and Muslims. Well before the Armed Islamic Group assassinated love man Cheb Hasni in 1994—and the same gang or others gunned down progressive star producer Rachid Baba Ahmed in 1995—the rebel music was a target for terrorists.

Polyglot Oran was called the "little Paris" of Algeria, so no surprise that of late the important rai action has shifted to the big Paris of France. The only rai performer on the international marquee, Khaled, who recently canceled a major American tour just as he did after the Oklahoma City bombing, has headquartered there since the mid '80s, proving a reliable hitmaker in an almost respectable genre. Only a sturdy fan foundation could support an item like the double-CD 1, 2, 3 Soleils (Barclay), which showcases Khaled, second-generation star Rachid Taha, and young buck Faudel in a 1998 blowout-budget Paris concert featuring full string and horn sections and a foreign legion of guest players. Often the vocal interactions suggest Nashville duets or the Three Tenors, but from "Chebba" and "Le Camel" to "Didi" and "Ya Rayah," the choice material wins out.
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Thursday, December 07, 2006

Aterciopelados

Colombian rock band Aterciopelados has been on the verge of a major U.S. crossover breakthrough for oh, about six years now.

The buzz started with the band's acclaimed 2001 album, "Gozo Poderoso." That record reached the Top 10 of Billboard's top Latin albums, spawned the upbeat hits "Luz Azul" and "El Álbum," and earned Aterciopelados a coveted spot on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" – a rarity for a rock en español act.

The band – which revolves around the duo Andrea Echeverri and Hector Buitrago – released a "best of" collection on BMG U.S. Latin in 2002.

But rather than follow that up with a major album on a major label, Echeverri and Buitrago took some time off and worked on their own solo, indie projects. Echeverri had a baby, Milagros, who was the inspiration for many songs on her self-titled solo debut. The album, released on independent label Nacional Records in 2005, won critical praise and received nominations for a Grammy and a Latin Grammy.
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Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Concerto Em Lisboa by Mariza

Thanks to three albums and a batch of memorable concerts, Mariza has transformed the international status of fado, the Portuguese answer to the blues, and rightly established herself as an international diva. So far she hasn't put a foot wrong, and now comes a live set recorded last year at what was clearly a memorable outdoor event in Lisbon, at which her sad-edged, passionate and dramatic singing was exquisite as ever, and she was backed by the Sinfonietta de Lisboa, conducted by the celebrated Brazilian arranger and producer Jaques Morelenbaum.
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Putumayo - Radio Latino

On Radio Latino, Putumayo, returns to its Latin roots with this collection of contemporary musicians standing at the forefront of the thriving "Rock en Español/Latin Alternative" movement. Most of these musicians are household names within their home countries, but have yet to realize their full potential in the rest of the world. While acknowledging their heritage by intertwining traditional rhythms and instrumentation with elements of popular music, Latin musicians are demonstrating that you don't have to sacrifice your cultural roots to appeal to a mainstream audience.
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Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Holy Heathens and the Old Green Man by Waterson: Carthy

Beautifully played and sung, illuminated by Martin Carthy's scholarly sleevenotes, Holy Heathens and the Old Green Man collects together festive songs. The Passiontide carols and May Day songs hark back to a lost past, while the Christmas songs link to the present, proving that the English's weirdly masochistic attitude to Yuletide - that it's something one endures rather than enjoys - has deep historical roots.
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Monday, December 04, 2006

Interview with A Filetta's frontman Jean-Claude Acquaviva

Jean-Claude Acquaviva's charisma shines through his icy grey eyes that greet me on a beautiful Paris October morning. It emanates from his solemn, almost timeless voice, with which he has led 'A filetta' to the artistic heights of Corsican music. The very evening before I meet him, this 'a cappella' voice, together with those of the other group members, enchanted the audience at 'La Mediterranee des Musiques', in the auditorium of the Institut du Monde Arabe.

Never forget 'A filetta'

However, the Parisian venue was acoustically surpassed by the rural church in which I first heard 'A filetta'. ‘It's true,’ admits Acquaviva in easily understandable Corsican. ‘Concerts like the one at Rogliano (on the Corsican coast) allow us to keep a link with our homeland.’

Indeed, the group tries to keep the simplicity of 1978, when it was founded ‘by amateurs, mostly school teachers or priests. The then thirty-year-old Jean-Claude Acquaviva was already amongst them. ‘For our first trip abroad, to nearby Sardinia, we had to pay our own way.’ Then, in 1994, things began to change. ‘We were at a turning-point, either we continued as we were, or we could start to take it more seriously. We decided to go professional, motivated by the will to do it, and the help of the composer Bruno Coulet and director Jean-Yves Lazennac. We had one duty though - to stay true to our name.’
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Rhythms Del Mundo

Rhythms Del Mundo is an electrifying album that fuses music of different cultures and comes up with a melting pot of rare sounds. Arranged by Demetrio Muniz, Miguel Patterson and Kenito, the main recording sessions took place in Havana at Abdala Studios from the April 2005 to June 2006. While the majority of the vocals remain the same, The Buena Vista Social Club musicians took the original orchestration from each song and created something utterly unique casting their trademark mastery over each track. Their noted and exceptional musicianship seduced even the notoriously protective Arctic Monkeys into handing over their track. As a rule, the band has never licensed their music for compilation albums, but were so enamoured with the result that they were happy for it to be included on the album. As well as The Arctic Monkeys' track 'Dancing Shoes', Rhythms Del Mundo included reworked tracks such as Clocks by Coldplay, Better Together by Jack Johnson, She Will be Loved by Maroon 5, High and Dry by Radiohead and others.

Rhythms Del Mundo also includes music by famed Cuban singers Omara Portuondo and the last vocal recording of Afro-Cuban bolero singer, Ibrahim Ferrer, who died tragically in 2005. The other Cuban musicians from The Buena Vista Social Club who perform on this album are as follows: Barbarito Torres, Amandito Valdes, Virgilio Valdes, Angel Terri Domech, Manuel 'Guajiro' Mirabal, Orlando Lopez 'Cachaito' and Demetrio Muniz.
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Lura - Cape Verde

Cape Verde hardly seems well positioned to elbow its way into the highly contested world music marketplace. Made up of 10 main islands off the coast of Senegal, it is barely larger in size than Rhode Island. Cape Verde's population is about 420,000 (though the country's endemic poverty has resulted in a far-flung diaspora of another half a million people).

Cesaria Evora's rise to prominence in the late 1980s put the West African nation on the international musical map, and outside the Lusofone (Portugese-speaking) world she has continued to reign as the sole voice of the nation. But with a confluence of influences from Portugal, Brazil, and West Africa nurturing a musical culture as rich as the islands are barren, a new generation of Cape Verdean singers is coming to the fore.

Sara Tavares , Fantcha , Maria de Barros , Gardenia Benrós , and Maria Alice have all released impressive albums with distribution in the United States and Europe. None, however, is better placed to step onto the world stage than Lura , who returns to the Berklee Performance Center on Saturday for a reprise of her triumphant September 2005 debut.

"Cesaria is like our mother," says Lura, 31, who was featured on an extensive 2001 European tour, Cesaria & Friends. "She makes Cape Verdean culture known all over the world. She does it very seriously, and I learned a lot with her. I learned where my place is in music from Cape Verde and what I have to do."

Delivering contemporary songs in Cape Verdean Crioulo with her deep, sultry contralto, Lura is a captivating performer steeped in traditional styles but interested in a vast range of sounds. Born and raised in Lisbon, she started her career as a dancer, but realized she had a gift for singing when Cape Verdean-born zouk star Juka recruited her to record with him. The duet was a minor hit, and the teenage budding singer suddenly started receiving requests from established figures such as Tito Paris, Paulinho Vieira , and Angola's Bonga.
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Saturday, December 02, 2006

Second volume of Lagrimas Negras on the way

The spectacular album ‘Lagrimas Negras’ released by Cuban pianist Bebo Valdés and Madrid Flamenco Singer Diego El Cigala in 2003 is set for a sequel.

The first album, recorded in just three days, beautifully mixes flamenco with coplas, tangos and Cuban boleros and has sold just short of a million copies. It also won a Grammy in 2004.

Now Diego El Cigala has announced that a second volume will be in the shops in March or April next year. The 37 year old singer goes from strength to strength, picking up two Grammy’s this year for his latest solo album, ‘Picasso en mis Ojos’.
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Heartplay by Charlie Haden/ Antonio Forcione

Admirers of unplugged world-guitarists such as Ralph Towner and Egberto Gismonti are natural recruits for the remarkable Antonio Forcione. Born in Italy but living in the UK, Forcione plays delicate jazzy love songs, stamping flamenco, Astor Piazzolla tangos, the blues, and a lot more. He has an untamed aspect that sets him apart from most guitar virtuosos, though; it's expressed in slewing, unresolved runs, gunshot single notes and feverish hammerings on the soundbox (he used to be a percussionist). These duets with the great American jazz bassist Charlie Haden feature reflective but restlessly mobile originals by both players, plus pianist Fred Hersch's lovely Child Song.
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The Idan Raichel Project

While recent headlines are dominated by news of conflict and war in the Middle East, an Israeli musical collaborative has achieved success by looking beyond intercultural differences and celebrating the value of diversity. With its blend of traditional Ethiopian folk music, Arabic poetry, Yemenite chants, Biblical psalms and Caribbean rhythms, The Idan Raichel Project has already taken Israel by storm with multiple number one hits and triple platinum sales. On November 7, 2006, the recently formed record label Cumbancha will present the powerful music of The Idan Raichel Project to the world with an international CD release of The Idan Raichel Project.

The Idan Raichel Project is the brainchild of Israeli keyboardist, composer, producer, and arranger Idan Raichel, who invited over 70 different musicians from a wide variety of backgrounds to participate in the recordings. In particular, Raichel has long been fascinated by the music of Israel's growing population of Ethiopian Jews, and many songs feature members of Israel's Ethiopian community. The recordings also include Arab musicians, traditional Yemenite vocalists, a toaster and percussionist from Suriname and a South African singer, among others.

The Project released its first album in Israel in 2002 and quickly became one of the biggest success stories in the history of Israeli popular music. The haunting Ethiopian chorus of the first single, "Bo'ee" (Come With Me), sounded completely unlike anything most Israeli's had heard before. The groundswell of interest propelled the album to heights rarely seen in the local music scene and firmly established Idan Raichel as a new type of Israeli pop star. Now a musical icon in the Israeli community worldwide, The Idan Raichel Project has performed to sell-out crowds in prestigious venues in Paris, Brussels, New York, Los Angeles, Singapore and beyond.
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Friday, December 01, 2006

Interview with Rahat Fateh Ali Khan

Renowned Pakistani singer Rahat Fateh Ali Khan loves performing in India and says he perhaps receives a warmer welcome there than anywhere else in the world.

Strange, given the bitter rivalry between the two South Asian neighbours. But such is the world of Khan's music, which draws on the ancient musical traditions of the subcontinent.

To the sound of the "tabla", Khan weaves and wails verses in praise of Allah in his baritone, as he renders the "qawwali", or Islamic devotional song.

Heir to the legacy of his uncle, the legendary "qawwali" singer Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, alongside whom he performed for many years, Rahat spoke to Reuters in New Delhi on Thursday ahead of his latest performance in India.

Q: What are your first memories related to "qawwali"?

A: "Mr. Khan initiated me into it when I was seven years old. On that day, I remember Mr. Khan was rehearsing, I listened to him with a child's curiosity and wondered what was happening. I went inside the music room and sat next to him and he told me to start singing and I started singing."
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Burlesque by Bellowhead

When Jon Boden and John Spiers appeared on the English folk scene, they quickly made their mark as a gutsy duo, reverently belting out their songs and tunes with complete conviction. With Spiers on melodeons and concertina and Boden on fiddle and vocals, their youthful fervor added to the growing and vibrant roots movement, and Spiers and Boden were tapped to add texture to Eliza Carthy's Rough Music album in 2005. But by then, Spiers and Boden were already looking to expand their palette of sound. In 2004 the duo released an E.P. from a new project of theirs called Bellowhead, and it became clear that what Spiers and Boden were about was something different.

Bellowhead brings big band arranging to English music, featuring a full-on horn section and the Bellowhead of 2006 is most certainly a large band, with eleven members kicking up a wall of sound. Burlesque set me scrambling for comparisons. Perhaps Brass Monkey, which featured Martin Carthy and John Kirkpatrick with a horn section? Not really, as Bellowhead's rhythmic flair is more dynamic and diverse than even Brass Monkey had imagined. Perhaps The Barely Works? Well, not even the Barelies are a fair comparison, as that band combined horns with more of a bluegrass/Irish influence, although the sense of experimentation and having fun is certainly apparent in Bellowhead's music.
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Electric Griot Land by Ba Cissoko

No, this is not the West African answer to Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland, despite the title, but a brave attempt to match traditional styles against contemporary Western pop. The Guinean Ba Cissoko is a griot, from a long line of traditional musicians, and a distinguished kora player, like his better-known Malian counterpart, Toumani Diabate. Cissoko starts out in conventional acoustic style, matching his rippling playing on the West African harp against other traditional instruments, from the xylophone-like balafon to calabash percussion. Then he adds in bass guitar, a gentle wash of programming and effects, and the input from a series of African special guests.
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In some parts of Africa you are born into music. Musicians playing in West Africa today share surnames - Diabaté, Kouyaté, Cissoko - with ancestors who have handed down craft and songs to their heirs for centuries. They are the griots: the musical caste. With that history, if you're a Cissoko then you are born to play the kora - the 21-stringed instrument that is a cross between a harp and a guitar and which has the sweetest, most hypnotising sound.

Ba Cissoko, however, is a maverick. Not satisfied with traditional griot ballads, he has put together a band, invited the hippest African musicians as his guests into the studio, and with his cousin, kora player Sekou Kouyaté, plugged koras into wah-wah pedals, backed them with driving beats and thick, throbbing bass and created an exciting, compelling sound.
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With its 21 strings, the long West African instrument called the kora delivers a sound rich in nuance and finesse. It also requires lengthy study. Together these factors have made it a vehicle for the preservation of traditional music by griots -- the praise-singing troubadours of Mali and Guinea -- rather than innovation and fusion with modern genres.

Then Ba Cissoko came along, with the band that bears his name. The Guinean combo, which visits the Somerville Theatre tonight on its maiden US tour, has jolted tradition by matching Cissoko's conventional kora with an electric version invented and played by his cousin Sékou Kouyaté . And they have taken their koras into unlikely terrain such as reggae, salsa, and rock without jettisoning traditional themes.

"Electric Griot Land," the band's second album, available as a European import, states the group's approach in its title. The Jimi Hendrix reference is no accident, but the interplay of acoustic and electric kora, backed by Kourou Kouyaté, another cousin, on bass and Ibrahima Bah on percussion, is more elegant, less dissonant than the comparison might imply. Contributions from French-African soul duo Les Nubians, Somali rapper K'Naan, and Ivorian reggae star Tiken Jah Fakoly bolster the overall global-groovy feel.

Significantly, the critical plaudits for Cissoko on the world-music circuit have not come at the expense of local credibility. He spends as much time in Guinea as he does on the road, and his music has grown popular with the home audience despite his act of kora-goes-electric heresy.
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If an African kora-led album is called Electric Griot Land, it'll be different. For years, this instrument - a 21-string harp-lute with half a calabash covered with cow skin as a resonator - has been associated with the gentlest, most traditional African music, as exemplified by Toumani Diabaté and Ballake Cissoko's classic album New Ancient Strings. But Cissoko, 38, and his band are plucking the kora sound - and the ancient griot lineage - into the 21st century.

Cissoko says the album's name came about because Sekou Kouyaté, the band's electric kora player, is known as "the Jimi Hendrix of the kora", and because "all the band members are griot and from griot families. The name highlights the link between tradition and modernity." The other band-members include the bolon (a traditional West African bass) player Kourou Kouyaté and the percussionist Ibrahim Bah.

Cissoko's family has a long tradition of kora players, including his father and grandfather: "In Africa, it's common to say the 'Cissoko' play the kora and the 'Kouyaté' the balafon." As a child, he was football-mad and a bit of a rebel - playing the kora was the last thing on his mind. "But my father told me I was from a griot family and I had to at least learn the traditional tunes that all griot should play.
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Electric Gypsyland 2

Classic gypsies meet contemporary gypsies in a new Crammed Records comp, Electric Gypsyland 2. Containing reinventions and reinterpretations of 16 tracks by three Balkan Gypsy bands (Taraf de Haïdouks, Koççani Orkestar, Mahala Raï Banda) on the Belgian label , the album includes contributions from Animal Collective, Nouvelle Vague, Tunng, Cibelle, and 43 Skidoo (which is, according to the Crammed website "a fleeting reincarnation of the similarly named cult 80s band"), plus remixes by fusionists and Balkan club mainstays Shantel, Balkan Beat Box, Oi Va Voi, Smadj, DJ ClicK, Forty Thieves Orkestar, Gaetano Fabri, Russ Jones, and Russendisko.
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Celtic Legends

This is a really outstanding assortment of classic Celtic numbers by top artists and it makes for splendid listening, irrespective if you have Guinness in your blood or not.

Of the 19 tracks collected on this CD, standouts include Fiona Kerry’s stirring 'Riverdance', Daniel O’Donnel’s lump-in-the-throat 'Oh Danny Boy', Dolores Kean’s 'Have I Told You Lately' and the hauntingly beautiful soft good-bye by 'Celtic Woman'.

Lisa Kelly, Loreena McKennitt, Clannad, Mike Oldfield and The Waterboys also wave the Celtic flag with vigour. All of it really good soul touching stuff, beautifully recorded and carefully selected for maximum listening pleasure... almost as good as a return ticket to Ireland and a few pints after a round of golf at the magnificently verdant Hermitage Golf Club on the outskirts of Dublin.
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Lorrena McKennitt

A Turkish note on Loreena McKennitt's album An Ancient Muse

Loreena McKennitt, Canadian singer, composer and pianist most famous for performing world music with a new age/Celtic feel, has incorporated elements from Turkish music in her latest album, "An Ancient Muse."
The album, released this month, is the culmination of a nine-year worldwide journey and meticulous research by McKennitt through which she aimed to gain a global perspective. The music harmonizes Celtic and world melodies and is enriched by acoustic instruments including lute, clarinet, flute and viola.
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