world music
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHMartel Zaire (Evil Ideas)Montenegro-born, Cyprus-based producer Martel Vladimiroff is a hard man to find out about. His meagre online imprint and extensive global travels make him seem more like “an asset in the field” than a musician. Whoever he is, his new EP, four tracks drawn from his second album of the same name, is a unique idea, well-executed. Inspired by the imperial ravaging of Africa and the ongoing horrors of its modern equivalent, with the Congo as prime exemplar, it’s a conceptual head-trip. A dense gumbo of African field recordings and tribal drums play off Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
The tour by the 81-year-old Mulatu Astatke which is currently under way and this album seem to be giving off different messages. Coming to London on 16 and 17 November, it is being marketed as a farewell. Last night's show at Ancienne Belgique in Brussels had lured a full house through being billed as “his very last concert on Belgian soil". Paris’s Salle Pleyel mentions “une grande tournée d’adieu”.And yet the video trailer for Mulatu Plays Mulatu, his first major statement since Sketches of Ethiopia from 2013, asserts directly, and this fine album absolutely Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A lot is going on during Yasmine Hamdan’s third solo album. Despite all ten songs of I Remember I Forget بنسى وبتذكر drawing from the lyrics and music of Palestinian folklore, what is heard is avowedly non-traditional. Hamdan is sticking with the electronica she has been associated with since the late 1990s.The title track exhibits an acid house pulse. “Seven vows سبع صنايع” begins as a smoky ballad but quickly incorporates ominous washes of sound and echoing, gun-shot percussion. “Shadia شادية”, the most linear track, has a Seventies film-theme vibe. “Mor مرّ التجنّي” evokes a desiccated, Read more ...
mark.kidel
At the start or her show, the white-robed singer Ganavya does something unusual: while other performers usually warm their audience up before suggesting they sing along, she plunges straight in, a minute or so into chanting “a love supreme”, and gets everyone to join her in what can only be described as a communal act of devotion. This is a kind of high-wire daring, and it works, suggesting as well that she's assured of a large group of listeners for whom she can do no wrong.Now well-established as a purveyor of spiritual jazz and traditional South Indian chants, born and raised in New York Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
You can't explain stage presence like Anoushka Shankar’s. It just "is". When she steps out in front of a completely packed Royal Albert Hall, and utters a welcoming, exploratory, London-ish “Hi... welcome to my Prom… Oh, my God!”, a friendly connection with audience is made. Instantly and with disarming ease.Then come memories: she thinks back to having participated with her father in the Ravi Shankar Prom in 2005 and her further three appearances since then, notably one in 2020 with no audience: “It’s so much nicer to have you guys all in here.”And then, from the moment she starts to play, Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Eva Quartet are four outstanding Bulgarian voices of polyphonic purity and depth, drawn from the legendary choir Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares, who guested on Kate Bush’s classic Eighties album The Sensual World.Soprano Gergana Dimitrova, mezzo-soprano Sofia Yaneva, alto Evelina Christova and contralto Daniela Stoitchkova began performing as a quartet in 1995, and are celebrating their 30th anniversary this year with this, their first concert in the UK since 2008’s Balkan Fever festival, at St Cyprian’s, a High Gothic revival church between Baker Street and Regent’s Park.They perform in full Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
With WOMAD not happening this year, where could one go for a feast of global sounds? Fes in Morocco has been presenting its sacred music festival for 29 years. I’ve been several times and although this wasn’t an absolute classic, it was as ever, full of extraordinary moments. The Fes Festival came into existence as a response to the first Gulf War, given further impetus by 9/11 and is important in reflecting a more tolerant side of Islam, with lots of respect to other faiths. “There are many ways up the mountain” as a Sufi practitioner told me here.Fes was the old capital of Morocco, the Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Songlines Encounters is your round-the-world ticket to great world music and performances, a chance to travel widely in music and culture without the burden of check-ins, passport control, flight delays, or transfers. All you need do is get to Kings Place over this weekend for a festival of world music that encompasses Mali in West Africa, with Rokia Kone from the striking and sensational Amazones d’Afrique on Friday night’s menu, paired in Hall 2 with Kurdish-Anatolian singer Olcay Bahir, who mixes her own songs with Anatolian folk songs.To open on Thursday, audiences had a pairing of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Soul Scene,” by Echoes Limited, is built from elements of the James Brown sound. But it’s put together in such a way that the result is unfamiliar. The angular drum groove edges towards a 5/8 shuffle. The circularity of the guitar suggests Congolese rumba. Funk, but outside recognised templates.Then there’s “Anoshereketa” by Oliver & The Black Spirits. The swirling township structure is recognisable but the drums and the nature of the guitar playing – clipped and spindly, respectively – give an edge. This music is hard to place aesthetically and geographically.Add in the loping, reggae- Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Stereo Instrumental Music was recorded in July 1976 and originally issued only on cassette. The release was organised by what was credited as the “Sun Shine Music Shop,” an enterprise which seems to have left no additional imprint. No further “Sun Shine Music Shop” albums are known.In contrast, Ibex Band, the outfit which recorded Stereo Instrumental Music, had a lineage outstripping that of the label which released the album. In 1975, they had issued an album and four related singles where they backed established vocalist Mahmoud Ahmed. They also backed Aster Aweke on one of her early albums Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Chapter III: We Return to Light is an unashamedly gentle and soothing escape from a hectic world. The last in a travelogue triptych which has so far incorporated Anoushka Shankar’s influences from living in Europe and then California – this album returns to the source of her music and inspiration.Chapter III, however, is resolutely not buried in the traditional Indian sounds which were first brought to the attention of Western audiences by Anoushka’s father, Ravi. That said, there certainly are some classical Indian raga sounds in the mix with more modern melodies and tones, which rub up Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
The latest in Peter Culshaw’s peripatetic radio shows is a conversation with Joe Boyd whose recent tome, published by Faber, is a magisterial sweep through global and popular music called And the Roots of Rhythm Remain. TO LISTEN TO THE SHOW https://www.mixcloud.com/MusicBoxRadioUK/the-arts-desk-with-joe-boyd-thursday-9th-january-2025/Boyd bridled when called a Zelig because “Zelig was just there and didn’t do anything” whereas he, au contraire, was definitely an active participant. He was at the sound desk when Bob Dylan shocked all by going electric at the Newport Festival in 1965 Read more ...