DakhaBrakha - Little Hare/Mermaids

 #DakhaBrakha #folk #Ukrainian folk #world music #Eastern European folk #folk rock #music video

Until you hear the music, the most striking thing about funky Ukrainian folk band DakhaBrakha is the headgear. Made of coarse, black lamb’s wool, the group’s towering hats evoke a faraway world of Cossacks and shepherds, dramatically complementing the traditional lace wedding dresses, thickly draped beaded necklaces and embroidered tunics that make up their costumes. The band’s music is just as captivating. DakhaBrakha’s sound, which the group calls “ethno-chaos,” is an anarchistic reinterpretation of traditional Ukrainian folk songs blended with eclectic influences like Middle Eastern sounds and a touch of R&B. “There’s nothing like it out there,” says Bill Smith of Riot Artists, DakhaBrakha’s North American agent. (The group’s members speak very little English.)
The four musicians — Nina Garenetska, Olena Tsibulska, Iryna Kovalenko and Marko Halanevych — play a variety of instruments, including cello, piano, bass drums and darbuka, accordions, jew’s harp and the didgeridoo. Even more impressive are the vocals: harmonies layered with riotous birdcalls, eerie whistles and wails, and Halanevych’s falsetto, Smith says. The quartet came together in 2004 as the house band for Kiev’s experimental theater company DAKH, but has only recently made inroads on this side of the Atlantic. After its North American debut at Toronto’s Luminato Festival in 2013, the group gave rousing performances last year at New York’s globalFEST and at Bonnaroo, with Rolling Stone singling out the band as the Tennessee festival’s “best breakout.”
DakhaBrakha, which means “give/take” in Old Ukrainian, draws on a repertoire of songs that the band’s three female performers — all of whom trained in folklore and ethnomusicology — have spent years researching in rural Ukrainian villages. Yet DakhaBrakha’s thoroughly contemporary compositions represent such a departure from the original Eastern European melodies and styles that their sound can seem as unfamiliar (and intriguing) to native Ukrainians as it can for American listeners. “It’s difficult to describe what they do; you’ve got to see it,” Smith says. “And then people just get hooked. It’s mesmerizing.”  From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/express/wp/2015/04/02/get-to-know-funky-ukrainian-folk-band-dakhabrakha/

Nil Lara - Baby

 #Nil Lara #indie/alternative rock #singer-songwriter #Latin rock #rock en Español #world music #1990s

Nil Lara accomplishes an innovative lyricism rooted in traditional, Latin rhythms in this self-titled follow-up to his debut album My First Child. His Cuban heritage serving as catalyst, Lara weaves English and Spanish lyrics to communicate universal themes. From the first song, "Money Makes the Monkey Dance," which reflects upon the struggles and suffering of selling out, to the celebratory last, "Mama's Chant," the track titles consistently allude to the passion embedded in the melodies and words. The album's highlights -- "Baby," "Fighting for My Love," and "Vida Mas Simple" -- each distinctly explore love and liberation. Lara's incorporation of the Cuban three-toned tres guitar, the cuatro (a small, Venezuelan four-stringed instrument), the electric guitar, and various percussion instruments -- congas, chants, beads, and a pandeiro -- enhances his music's originality and eclecticism sprung from Cuban roots. Whether or not listeners comprehend Spanish is irrelevant; Lara's style is compelling and understandable in any language.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/nil-lara-mw0000183498

Nil Lara (born 1964) is an American musician from Miami, Florida who is a singer, guitarist and songwriter, playing the tres, the six-stringed Cuban guitar, and the cuatro, a Venezuelan guitar. Lara was born in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Cuban immigrants, but much of his childhood was spent in Venezuela, moving to Caracas at the age of 7. At 8, he had mastered cuatro - a four-string Venezuelan instrument from which he graduated to the guitar. He moved with his family to Miami when he was in junior high. While studying electrical engineering at the University of Miami in Florida, he rediscovered his Cuban roots in guajiro, the Cuban equivalent of country, and "Son" - Cuban music's answer to the blues. This led him to the tres, a Cuban instrument with a unique sound and with the status of a grassroots instrument in Cuba.
Lara's music is based on Cuban and Venezuelan folklore, with inspiration from Western musicians like Stevie Wonder and Pink Floyd. He formed a group called K.R.U. while at the University of Miami, with whom he released two albums before they disbanded, after which he became a teacher at New World School of the Arts. In December 1993 Lara released My First Child with his new band, Beluga Blue. He signed to Metro Blue/Capitol Records in 1995, releasing Nil Lara in 1996, produced by Susan Rodgers. He wrote little new material for the next few years,[4] finally releasing Testimony and Da in 2004.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nil_Lara

BraAgas - Live World Music Festival, Bratislava, Slovakia 2019

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

#BraAgas #Balkan folk #medieval #Scandinavian folk #world music #Sephardic folk #traditional #ethno #Czech Republic #live music video

BraAgas is an all female quartet created in 2007 after the split-up of the band Psalteria. The first two albums were hard to define genre-wise. “The first album called No.1 was a mix of everything – medieval and folk songs as well,” says Katka Göttlich (Katerina Göttlichova). The four members of BraAgas have been playing for a long time. In addition to the previously mentioned Psalteria, the musicians played in other bands. “Our experiences from other bands have merged here – for me and Karla it was the Psalteria band, for Beta it was Gothart. Michaela had been sometimes the guest in different groups (e.g. Krless) before BraAgas originated,” says Göttlich.. The fact that the band was formed by professional musicians helped them record albums immediately and also with touring. Live playing is one of those things BraAgas can do really well. Their third CD, Tapas, is the result of their live concert art. The band won the music competition Česká spořitelna Colours Talents at Indies Scope Festival organized by Indies Scope Records and the Colours of Ostrava Festival supported by Česká spořitelna. The recording of an album was part of the Česká spořitelna Colours Talents prize. “The second one called No.2 – Media Aetas was purely medieval long single and the album Tapas has already nothing to do with ‘medieval times’. It’s an album containing songs which we have discovered and adapted and also those few ‘hits’ which we’ve taken the liberty to modify; those that the listeners of world music will definitely recognize.“ The four musicians play mostly ethnic instruments and historical replicas. Many guests helped them at the studio and there were also some electronic elements. Thanks to the electronics, a new modern sound was developed for Tapas, which was produced by David Göttlich and Petr Koláček. Tapas includes songs from various parts of Europe, including Spanish, Balkan, Nordic and Italian sources, originally dating back to anywhere within a thousand years time span, interpreted in a very modern way. Current members include: Katerina Göttlichova on lead vocal, cittern, guitar, bagpipes, shawms; Alzbeta Josefy on vocal, davul, darbuka, duf, riq; Karla Braunova on vocal, flutes, recorders, clarinet, shawms, chalumeaux, and bagpipes; and Michala Hrbkova on vocal, fiddle, cittern.  From: https://worldmusiccentral.org/2017/01/09/artist-profiles-braagas/

The Czech band BraAgas traveled all the way to India to perform at a respected world music show. Honza Hrbek entrusted us with the experiences of this for us exotic country. During the first seven years, a number of top world music bands from many countries performed at the Sur Jahan festival in India, but there was no Czech performer among them. BraAgas and I were lucky enough to be the first.
To play in India at a festival with such a good name as Sur Jahan (formerly Sufi Sutra) is an opportunity that can be refused, but the reason for such a refusal is very hard to find. Especially when in the Czech Republic the thermometer is determined to stay around minus fifteen, while in Goa it is a tropical thirty and small. So we went to the airport on a frosty Prague morning, expecting the perfect care of Qatar Airways for a music festival in a much more favorable climate.
The journey was not as easy as we had planned, but in the end we reached Calcutta in the same six pieces in which we left Prague. And that certainly wasn't the only departure, because if you've never been to India, Calcutta will probably leave you breathless. From the way cars, animals, people, motorbikes and rickshaws move on local roads, ants could learn, the luxury hotels that grow from the tin sheds of local slums, to the hundreds of thousands of Calcutta's special breed dogs, all under the unrelenting haze of smog, Calcutta is not easy to believe.
In Calcutta, the stage was set up in a park in front of the Queen Victoria Memorial. About eight meters next to the stage was the main road, which (thanks to the very specific Indian traffic) somewhat disturbed the listeners, especially in the back rows, which the sound engineer solved by turning up the volume. The equipment on the stage and the general conditions for playing were otherwise exemplary, and the festival itself, with its organization, boldly competes with the most famous European counterparts of a similar rank. Carefully selected bands from Europe and India, excellent transport and facilities at the festival, with the added value of the organizing team, who showed immense willingness and a positive attitude, whether it was a wish to see a temple dedicated to Kali or to visit musicals.
The move from Calcutta to Goa brought another culture shock. From a bustling metropolis that could fit all the inhabitants of the Czech and Slovak Republics, to a former Portuguese colony that resembles a Caribbean paradise and evokes an atmosphere of absolute calm that even the ever-present cockroaches trying to get into your drink cannot disturb. Goa is an oasis of everything you need on vacation, beautiful beaches, nice people who don't hesitate to take you home, and low excise taxes. So we weren't there on vacation, but some details can be appreciated even in a limited period of time.
At Sur Jahan, bands met enthusiastic music fans not only at concerts. Workshops were part of the festival - in Calcutta we performed with an Indian band, then in Goa alone, and we explained to the audience what life is like in our homeland, the history of our instruments and other details about our life in Europe.  Translated from: https://www.ireport.cz/clanky/rock-blog/rockblog-rejzi-nechci-ani-videt-aneb-po-indii-s-kapelou-braagas

BeauSoleil - Kolinda

 #BeauSoleil #Michael Doucet #Zydeco #Cajun music #traditional #world music #folk

The formation of BeauSoleil, one of the best known and most highly respected Cajun bands in the world, is due to fiddler Michael Doucet's desire to keep the unique southern Louisiana culture and music from extinction. But while BeauSoleil originated to help preserve his Cajun musical heritage, over the years it has also been known for its innovation. They are continually adding spice from other musical genres including jazz and Caribbean. In this way, BeauSoleil keeps the music vital and contemporary.
Doucet was born and raised in Cajun country surrounded by the old French songs that comprise the basis of the music. But from the time of his birth to his adulthood in the 1960s, Cajun culture began to disappear. Young Doucet, thinking Cajun music antiquated and passé, began his musical career playing rock with New Orleans influence. He began getting into folk-rock towards the end of the '60s and even tried singing a few of his numbers in French. It was a song from the British folk group Fairport Convention and their song, "Cajun Woman," that re-sparked his interest in his native music. He went to France and England in 1973 just before he was to enter grad school in the U.S. He ended up staying many years studying with Scottish fiddle great Barry Dransfield, who eventually introduced him to his idol Richard Thompson. Later, Doucet credited Thompson for influencing his own compositions. The young fiddler's stay in France also had a profound influence. There he saw that the roots of Cajun were still very much alive. The old songs were still sung, and he heard their centuries-old influence in newer folk songs. It made him realize how modern Cajun music was in comparison. In the mid-'70s, Doucet joined Coteau, an improvisational folk-music based French group that was known as the Cajun equivalent to the Grateful Dead. After a time with them, he returned to the U.S., determined to immerse himself in Cajun musical history. A grant from the National Endowment for the Arts supported him as he located the nearly forgotten early composers and performers of Cajun music.
Armed with many traditional Cajun songs, Doucet formed BeauSoleil with some of the finest Cajun musicians, Dennis McGee, Dewey and Will Balfa, Varise Connor, Canray Fontenot, and Bessyl Duhon. Their band name literally means "good sun" and is a reference to a fertile region in Nova Scotia. In the 17th century, French speaking Acadians lived in the Canadian province until conflicts with the French and British forced them to migrate down to Louisiana where they became called Cajuns. BeauSoleil cut its first record in 1976 and released it only in France. They made their American debut the following year with The Spirit of Cajun Music. It was an eclectic work illustrating the many musical styles from which Cajun music is derived. Since 1985, the band has been nominated for (and won) numerous Grammys. They have played on movie soundtracks such as The Big Easy, Passion Fish, and Belizaire the Cajun. They have played at jazz and folk festivals around the world and have also appeared on numerous television shows ranging from CNN's Showbiz Today to Austin City Limits to Late Night with Conan O'Brien.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/beausoleil-mn0000161612#biography

Love is Colder Than Death - Holy Thursday

#Love Is Colder Than Death #darkwave #neoclassical #world music #ethereal #neo-medieval #1990s

It's hard to believe that Love Is Colder Than Death have been around as long as they have. Chronicling the years 1990 through 2005, "Time" is an expanded, updated version of their previous compilation album, "Auteur". The sleeve is laid out in a gatefold manner and the track listings wisely are divided along the lines of their more electro/classical works from their time on Hyperium Records being concentrated on the first disc and their newer more acoustically classical tracks being on the second disc. Smart move utilizing two tracks from their stunning 1995 maxi single "Spellbound" to bridge the gap. Photos abound of the band throughout the years from their first publicity shot right up to a recent look at the band at work on their new album.
For the first half of the 1990s, this band were in the vanguard of the neo-classical movement which came about for a number of reasons, the primary one being to create something new. Remember that everybody? My my, how times have changed. With their blend of sleek electronics and cathedral-esque vocalizations, LICTD were one of the most enigmatic and popular bands of the darkwave scene. "Mental Traveller", released in 1992 secured their place in the musical world as a darkly engaging outfit with a luminescence that was timeless. "Oxeia" came in 1994 and featured a band in transition, the dancefloor tracks were shoved to the end of the album, with the more inquisitive notions of found sound design coming to the fore.
This act vanished between the years 1995-98. They re-activated with 1999's "Atopos" which was more classical than ever and was devoid of any upbeat tunes whatsoever, due in large part to two new members joining the band. With the release of 2003's "Eclipse", original vocalist Susann Porter re-joined Love Is Colder Than Death and with the aid of the other long-standing member Sven Mertens, it triumphed with world influences and floor politics balanced. A live album, "Inside the Bell" followed shortly after.  From: https://www.releasemagazine.net/Onrecord/orloveiscolderthandeatht.htm

Firewater - Fell Off the Face of the Earth

 

#Firewater #ex-Cop Shoot Cop #gypsy punk #world punk #dark cabaret #alternative rock #eclectic #indie rock

New York-based band Firewater incorporated a global range of musical influences into their highly dynamic sound. A loosely knit ensemble centered around the lead vocals of ex-Cop Shoot Cop bass player Tod A. (born: Tod Ashley), Firewater tied together such influences as Klezmer, Indian wedding music, art-punk, and Tom Waits-style cabaret poetry to create their heady, often quite danceable sound. Coupled with Tod A.'s acerbic, post-apocalyptic, and death-obsessed lyrics, Firewater was a band to be reckoned with almost from the beginning. Shortly after forming in 1995, Firewater released its debut, Get Off the Cross, We Need the Wood for the Fire. Both it and 1998's The Ponzi Scheme featured guitarist Duane Denison of Jesus Lizard, drummer Yuval Gabay of Soul Coughing, and saxophone and accordion player Kurt Hofmann of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. The sultry vocals of Elysian Fields' Jennifer Charles also drifted through both albums. Charles returned for 2001's more pop-oriented Psychopharmacology; other contributions came from saxophonist Ori Kaplan and sitar player Oren Bloedow. In 2003, Tod A. and his "wedding band gone wrong" returned with a stripped-down, razor-wire-wrapped effort for Jet Set entitled The Man on the Burning Tightrope. The covers album Songs We Should Have Written appeared early the following year. Tod A. then went on an extended trek through Thailand, India, Pakistan, Turkey ,and Indonesia, which he chronicled on his blog Postcards from the Other Side of the World. A. also recorded music on his travels, collaborating with producer Tamir Muskat and local musicians along the way. The results were The Golden Hour, which Bloodshot Records released in spring 2008. After touring in support of that album, A. settled in Istanbul, and recorded there and in Tel Aviv during 2011's Arab Spring, reuniting with Muskat as a collaborator. International Orange arrived in September 2012.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/firewater-mn0000143617#biography

Toni Childs - Welcome To The World

 #Toni Childs #alternative rock #folk rock #world music #contemporary folk rock #art pop #singer-songwriter #1990s #music video

Toni Childs’ musical compass has taken her north, south, east and west. Seeking inspiration for her third album, the American singer decamped to Madras, India, with a 24-track digital recording unit. It wasn’t her first field trip though. Childs’ debut, Union (1988), had been partially recorded in Swaziland, where she incorporated African voices into her art pop. (Fun fact: Union also features Marillion’s Steve Hogarth on keyboards.) Working with Indian musicians, Childs demoed four brand new songs in November 1992.
Womb, lyrically about a baby that is apprehensive about leaving its amniotic nest to enter the unknown world, suggested a conceptual direction for the rest of the album.The Woman’s Boat starts with that song of birth and ends with Death. The intervening nine songs trace a lifecycle of womanhood with all its triumphs and tribulations. Heavy stuff. But then Childs had plenty of life experience to draw upon. At 15, she ran away from the religious home she was raised in. Her early music career in Los Angeles foundered when she was briefly imprisoned for smuggling cocaine. A move to London heralded a fresh start. It was there that Childs befriended Peter Gabriel’s guitarist, David Rhodes, who became a key player on her early albums.
The Woman’s Boat was recorded at Gabriel’s Real World studios, which accounts for the album’s credits reading like a WOMAD festival bill. It features players of non-western instruments such as tamboura, mridangam, moorsing and didgeridoo, plus Pakistani superstar Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Belgian/African group Zap Mama. Producer David Bottrill also enlisted Talk Talk drummer Paul Webb, Trey Gunn on stick and Robert Fripp on guitar. Oh, and Peter Gabriel himself duets with Childs on I Met A Man.
Toni Childs’ utterly distinctive voice — as earthy and celestial as that of a gospel singer — sits atop the album’s verdant textures. On I Just Want Affection, the sultry desire of her vocal breaks through the cool reserves of the ethereal, bowed notes of an Indian sarangi. Her voice darts between the sinister shadows of Fripp’s soundscapes on Predator, and she sings with force-10 gusto over the heavy artillery of programmed beats on Lay Down Your Pain.
Upon release, The Woman’s Boat sunk without a trace. It would be 15 years before Childs released another record. Now living in Australia, she has since released several excellent albums via her website but The Woman’s Boat remains the album in which her musical compass pointed true north.  From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/toni-childs-the-womans-boat-its-prog-jim-but-not-as-we-know-it

Żywiolak - Bóstwa

 #Zywiolak #Slavic folk music #folk rock #world music #folk punk #folk metal avant-folk #neo-pagan folk #Polish #music video

Żywiołak, initially formed in Warsaw in 2005, is a Polish folk rock band steeped in mythos. Its name references the Elemental, a magical being said to harness the power of nature in the form of air, fire, water, or earth. Their lyrics sing of epic battles (in Wojownik, or Warrior) and explore the traditions of the early peoples of Poland, including the Vandals, a Germanic tribe that originally lived in Southern Poland and whose conquests spanned throughout Europe (in Epopeja Wandalska, or Vandal Epic). Żywiołak revives the history of its native nation while also connecting to a larger global community.
Before the release of their debut album, Nowa Ex-tradycja (New World Tradition) in 2008, Żywiołak’s line-up was in flux. A percussion instrumentalist, Maciej Dymek, joined original members Robert Jaworski and Robert Wasilewski and was followed by two female vocalists named Anucha Piotrowska and Izabella Byra. From 2008-2011, singer Monika Sadkowska replaced Byra. Following her stint with Żywiołak, Sadkowska pursued climate activism and worked with the World Wildlife Fund.
Musically, Żywiołak blends classical folk instruments with rock and metal elements like distorted guitar and heavy bass. Many tracks feature the hurdy gurdy, a crank-operated instrument with similar range to a violin found across cultures in Medieval Europe. In addition, the female vocalists occasionally utilize diaphony, a dissonant vocal harmony found in traditional Slavic cultures, to create tension and contribute to the witchy feel of many of their tracks.
Despite Catholicism’s religious dominance in Poland, Żywiołak is unafraid to reference pagan magic, evil spirits, and witchcraft. Oko Dybuka (Eye of the Dybbuk), a track on their first album, references a malevolent ghost from Jewish folklore. Czarodzielnica (Witch’s Night) is a vivid incantation, a song that invites in a myriad of mythical mischief makers including Slavic folk icon Baba Yaga, who often appears as an old crone who lives in a house with legs.
The song Bóstwa (Deities), included on 2017 album Pieśni pół/nocy (Midnight Songs), mirrors Żywiołak’s place as an ambassador between Slavic folk tradition and modern, Western rock through its depiction of Kupala, a pagan holiday celebrated on the longest day of the year. Originally practiced as fertility rites and an homage to the Sun, Kupala became Ivan Kupala, and fused with the Christian John the Baptist in a process known as syncretism.
Istanbuł (Istanbul) begins with an acknowledgment of the social effects of Catholicism and embraces Europe’s religious diversity. This track is featured on Żywiołak’s concept album Globalna Wiocha (Global Village), where the band composed songs based on major cities in Europe, including Moscow, Berlin, and Oslo. Through this album, Żywiołak reveals its modern, pan-European stance without losing the pride of its original Polish source material.  From: https://popkult.org/zywiolak/

Daemonia Nymphe - Deos Erotas

 #Daemonia Nymphe #neofolk #darkwave #neoclassical #folk #ancient Greek music #theatrical #traditional

The Greek band, Daemonia Nymphe, based in London, tours and participates in the most popular medieval, folk and fantasy festivals in Europe and America with musical performances featuring sounds of ancient Greek instruments. "The Daemonia Nymphe was born out of a love for the world of ancient Greek art for sculpture and architecture of the archaic and classical eras," explains Spyros Giasafakis, the musician, who studied at the School of Fine Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. After many years of searching for the ancient sound, the first tracks were recorded and the first album was released. Along the way came the meeting and collaboration with Nikolaos Bra, manufacturer of "ancient" Greek instruments and the band created their own world that attracts haute couture companies and representatives of cinema and theater.
"From the beginning, we had proposals in both theater and cinema, perhaps because our music tends to create images," says Spyros Giasafakis, who founded the band in 1994 with his brother, Pantelis Giasafakis, noting that in recent years the band has a stronger presence in theater scenes. "The audience that does not know us can imagine a musical documentary" he mentions, hastening to clarify that in the performances of the team, musicians and dancers from different countries, the sounds of the lyre, the varvitos and other instruments act in a modern context. "In the beginning, we had an endless desire to experiment, discover and form our own original sound" emphasizes Spyros, referring to the band's first steps.
”We didn't want to imitate what we heard, but cultivate our own style. At the same time, there was a love for the world of ancient Greek art and, in particular, for the sculpture and architecture of the archaic and classical eras. Thus began a search for ancient sounds that inspired us to create our own world. In the process, of course, we had no choice but to compose music without the restrictions of a supposed reproduction of ancient Greek music."
In explaining the elements that music today lacks that was characteristic of the ancient world, he clarifies that there was a greater variety of styles because there were many more "scales". However, he notes that there are still musical traditions today that have just as great a variety of scales and sounds. "The system with notes was clearly different and letters of the Greek alphabet were used to show the progression of the melody. So if archeologists found carved letters on a slab that didn't make sense as a language, or there were lyrics underneath, it was obvious that it was music," he responds to the question of how to locate the musical pieces of ancient Greece.
The reconstruction of the ancient instruments is the work of Nikolaos Bra, "a very intelligent technician who devoted his life to the study of ancient instruments,"as Spyros Giasafakis describes. The band has selected from these instruments from time to time the lyre, the varvitos, the triangle, the formiga and the samviki. Commenting on research in foreign universities to reconstruct ancient Greek music so that we hear it for the first time as it was heard thousands of years ago, he assesses that "all efforts to approach ancient Greek sound are interesting" but notes that "remarkable efforts have also been made outside the university”.
Regarding the music created by Daemonia Nymphe for cinema and television, he notes that almost from the beginning the band had proposals in the field of both theater and cinema, perhaps because their music tends to create images. "In recent years, we are more into theatre, and we've been lucky enough to work in London with Theater Lab Company, founded by the talented director Anastasia Revi. We have performed "Oresteia", "Antigone", "Medea" and "Lysistrata" in London theaters and then "Macbeth" at the Central Theater of Northern Greece, directed by Anastasia Revi. It is very creative and interesting to work as a composer in a context that is meant to serve other senses besides the auditory. In this respect, there is a common element between live performances and theater, he points out.  From: https://www.greecehighdefinition.com/blog/daemonia-nymphe-ancient-greek-music

A-Wa - Habib Galbi

 #A-Wa #Yemenite music #Mizrahi #world music #ethnic #Middle Eastern music #electronica #traditional #music video

Let us introduce you to a band of sisters with the last name Haim. No, not the ones you’re thinking of. Tair, Liron, and Tagel Haim are sisters from southern Israel, and together they form a band called A-WA (Arabic for “Yes,” pronounced AY-wah). “It felt like music chose us,” Tair Haim explains. “We really have so much love to give, and so much good music, and we are all about bringing people together.”
Their musical style is unique — it’s a combination of traditional Yemenite songs, electronic music, and hip-hop. In 2016, their song “Habib Galbi” (“Love Of My Heart”) went viral, becoming the first song in Arabic to reach the top of the Israeli charts. Their debut album, also called Habib Galbi, uses traditional Yemenite folk chants and re-imagines them with electronic beats, pop music, and more. Their music is a powerful mix of modern and traditional, emphasizing their Jewish Arabic roots. And they’re the coolest. Seriously. “Since a very young age, we all discovered the love of music. I am the oldest sister, and I was always dancing and singing around the house. We grew up in a very small desert village in southern Israel called Shaharut. There weren’t many kids around so we were always best friends,” Tair told me. “We were known at school as the musical family from Shaharut.”
Their new album translates to My Home Is In My Head, and it tells the story of their great-grandmother Rachel’s journey from Yemen to Israel. “She used to say, whenever she was asked in Yemen, why are you always traveling from one place to another? Why don’t you stay in one place, and she said, ‘I can’t stay in one place. My home is in my head.’ She was a very legendary character in our family; we heard a lot of stories about her from our grandma, and from our dad,” Tair says. Their great-grandmother came to Israel from Yemen as part of Operation Magic Carpet, in which 49,000 Yemenite Jews were airlifted to Israel between 1949 and 1950. She wouldn’t agree to stay in an arranged marriage, Tair explains, and so she traveled as a single mother. Now the Haim sisters want to tell her story. It’s a “courageous story – traveling from Yemen to Israel, coming to Israel as a refugee, and starting from scratch. And being such a strong woman. We always laugh and say she was a feminist without even knowing what one was,” Tair explains. “We had so many things we already wanted to say, and we felt like we could use her life story and her voice — things she wanted to say, but couldn’t – and kind of blended with our voices. Each song on the album represents a piece of her life.”  From: https://www.heyalma.com/a-wa-a-band-of-yemenite-jewish-sisters-want-you-to-feel-at-home/

Dengue Fever - Uku

 #Dengue Fever #Chhom Nimol #psychedelic rock #Cambodian rock #alternative/indie rock #world music #garage rock #surf rock #retro-1960s 

Even when you consider the cultural cross-pollination that goes on in large metropolitan areas, L.A.'s Dengue Fever had perhaps the strangest genesis of any band in recent memory. It's odd enough for a group of white musicians to cover psychedelic rock oldies from Cambodia, but finding a bona fide Cambodian pop star to front the band -- and sing in Khmer, no less -- is the kind of providence that could only touch a select few places on Earth. Formed in L.A.'s hipster-friendly Silver Lake area in 2001, Dengue Fever traced their roots to organist Ethan Holtzman's 1997 trip to Cambodia with a friend. That friend contracted the tropical disease (transmitted via mosquito) that later gave the band its name, and it also introduced Holtzman to the sound of '60s-era Cambodian rock, which still dominated radios and jukeboxes around the country. The standard sound bore a strong resemblance to Nuggets-style garage rock and psychedelia, heavy on the organ and fuzztone guitar, and with the danceable beat of classic rock & roll. It also bore the unmistakable stamp of Bollywood film musicals, and often employed the heavily reverbed guitar lines of surf and spy-soundtrack music. Yet the eerie Khmer-language vocals and Eastern melodies easily distinguished it from its overseas counterpart.
When Holtzman returned to the States, he introduced his brother Zac -- a core member of alt-country eccentrics Dieselhed -- to the cheap cassettes he'd brought back. They started hunting for as much Cambodian rock as they could find, and eventually decided to form a band to spotlight their favorite material, much of which was included on a compilation from Parallel World, Cambodian Rocks. In addition to Ethan Holtzman on Farfisa and Optigan, and Zac on vocals and guitar, the charter membership of Dengue Fever included bassist Senon Williams (also of slowcore outfit the Radar Brothers), drummer Paul Smith, and saxophonist David Ralicke (Beck, Ozomatli, Brazzaville). Ralicke shared Zac Holtzman's interest in Ethiopian jazz, further broadening the group's global mindset. Thus constituted, the band went combing the clubs in the Little Phnom Penh area of Long Beach, searching for a female singer who could replicate the style and language of the recordings they had.
After striking out a few times, the Holtzmans discovered Chhom Nimol, a onetime pop star in Cambodia who came from a highly successful musical family (analogous to the Jacksons). According to the band, Nimol had performed several times for the Cambodian royal family before immigrating to Los Angeles. Initially not understanding the band's motives, she was suspicious at first, but after several rehearsals, everything clicked. Dengue Fever made their live debut in 2002, with the charismatic Nimol in full traditional Cambodian garb, and soon won a following among Hollywood hipsters, not to mention L.A. Weekly's Best New Band award that year. Purely a cover band at first, they started working on original material after putting out a four-song EP locally. The Holtzmans wrote English lyrics and music, then sent the lyrics to a Khmer translator in the state of Washington, after which Nimol would adjust the melody and words to her liking.
Dengue Fever counted among their fans actor Matt Dillon, who included their Khmer-language cover of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" on the soundtrack of his 2003 directorial debut, City of Ghosts. However, disaster nearly struck when Nimol was arrested in San Diego in accordance with the stringent, post-9/11 INS policy: she'd arrived in the U.S. on a two-week visitor's visa and simply stayed on. She was thrown in jail for three weeks, and it took nearly a year for the band's lawyer to secure her a two-year visa (his fees were paid through benefit concerts). In the meantime, Dengue Fever released their self-titled debut album on Web of Mimicry, a label run by Mr. Bungle guitarist Trey Spruance. Most of the repertoire consisted of Cambodian covers, many originally done by pre-Pol Pot star Ros Sereysothea, but there were several originals and an Ethiopian jazz tune as well.
With Nimol's limited English improving, the band members considered putting some English-language material on their follow-up, but intended to stick with Khmer for the most part, in keeping with the music that inspired them. In 2007, Dengue Fever not only released Escape from Dragon House, but also starred in the documentary Sleeping Through the Mekong, which saw them performing their music in Cambodia for the first time. Venus on Earth debuted on the M80 label the following year; it was eventually picked up by Real World for worldwide distribution. In 2009 they released a CD/DVD entitled Sleepwalking Through the Mekong, which included the documentary and a compilation album.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/dengue-fever-mn0000237528/biography

Laura Love - Sessions at West 54th 1998 / Philadelphia Folk Festival 1997

Sessions at West 54th 1998 

Philadelphia Folk Festival 1997

 #Laura Love #folk #Afro-Celtic #Americana #Afro-Carribean #folk rock #funk #R&B #world music #singer-songwriter #live music video

Singer-songwriter Laura Love has seemed like music's Next Big Thing for years now, a Northwest favorite occasionally brushing with national acclaim for her "Afro-Celtic" mix of exuberance, social conscience and heart. At 44, with a decade of comfort-level success behind her, the West Seattle resident has published a memoir with an accompanying CD. But "You Ain't Got No Easter Clothes" has nothing to do with Love's career, her Carnegie Hall showstopper or her folky-bluesy-jazzy soulful sound. Instead, it's about a child's bewildered love for her mentally unstable mother and a childhood so harrowing it could be used to argue for leniency if she ever committed a crime. Consider this, for instance: The scene where Love slips a noose around her own neck on her mother's command -- after being ordered to kill the pet cat as part of a planned family suicide -- is only a crest in the book's hills and valleys of tragedy. The memoir could have been a horror show, but it's eased by wry humor and amazing grace. And for Love, whose music often has been more global than autobiographical, the publishing debut is "just gravy" after the cathartic process of writing down her life. She wrote without expecting anything to come of it, she said, and found a literary agent through an Internet search after the manuscript was complete.
"I just wanted it to be written down somehow, even if it was just for me.” said Love. "There are few experiences in adult life that loom as large in my head and are as close to the surface as those childhood memories." Love and her older sister, Lisa, were raised in Nebraska by their mother, a highly intelligent, gifted teacher who was fearsomely mentally ill. Their father, Preston Love, one-time sax player for Count Basie, they were told, had died in a car crash when the girls were young. With novel-worthy characters and plot twists, Love describes how she and her sister stumbled through youth in an orphanage, a series of foster homes and their unstable home. Their poverty reached the point where a burglar who kicked down the door told the frightened children who were home alone, "Damn, y'all got less than I do."
The breaking point came not with those life-and-death struggles, but when a neighbor girl mocked Love as she walked home from church with her family.
"You ain't got no Easter clothes!" the girl taunted, as if Love's mother walking right beside her could provide no protection. Love attacked the girl like an animal, with claws and teeth. It's a scene that's hard to square now, with her generous voice and laid-back grin. "I just fell from grace that day, so hard," she said. Love knows she could have tipped either way in life. She said she needed to decide in those years "whether I was going to be a thug or enrolled in society." She was saved, she thinks, by the safety net of social programs such as Head Start and WIC, and the loving example of good teachers and social workers. "To be kind has always felt more powerful to me than to be mean and cruel," Love said. That goodness more than balanced the harsh realities she saw, such as the landlords who tried to turn her away when she began supporting herself at age 16, saying "we've never rented to coloreds."
Love committed her own cruelties and mistakes on the way to adulthood and they're also recounted in the book as plainly as if she were speaking from the stage, telling the whole story beginning to end. Where she did end is with understanding and forgiveness for her mother -- and for an unexpected figure, her father. As a teenager, Love stumbled on an advertisement for a Preston Love concert, talked her way into the show despite being underage and saw, in a shocking flash, that her father wasn't dead after all. He had fathered Love and her sister while married to another woman and raising his own family, she wrote. He was pleasant enough to Love, but never a father figure who took responsibility for her and her sister or felt any blame for the catastrophes they suffered. In her youth, "I was very angry about that and bitter," she said. As an adult, she worked on finding her own forms of family instead of brooding on all that she had lacked. College helped give her a broader perspective. "I've always lived better than 90 percent of the world," she said.
Today, Love is focused on those big-picture wrongs, more inclined to be angry about political cuts to the social programs that helped her, for instance, than to brood about the individual wrongs she endured. "For the most part, I'm grateful for all those things that happened," she said. "All the bad things, too." There's a joy in not being a powerless child anymore, she said, in not being forced to wait for the car that will take you to another dreadful foster home or bleak room. "I exercise every modicum, every bit of choice that I have now," whether it means voting in elections or choosing to eat only humanely raised meat, Love said.
Love supports herself full time with her singing career. She said she's hugely fortunate that she can spend only short blocks of time touring and long periods at home with her family. She and her partner, Pam, along with her best friend/business manager and her older sister, share a West Seattle home. They're now building a solar-and wind-powered house in the Okanogan, "swinging hammers" together, hoping to raise their own food and reduce the amount of natural resources they use and even create a cat sanctuary to protect songbirds from Love's beloved strays.
After 16 years of not knowing if she was alive or dead, Love tracked down her mother in Colorado a few years back with the help of fans who read the request on the liner notes of Love's albums. "I just love her dearly and feel like her mind has been like a torture chamber for her," Love said. In a last unexpected twist, Love is now a mother herself, to an angelic blue-eyed toddler who came to her and Pam in 2002 as a 7-month-old foster child with eight broken bones. "It had to be that bad for me to think I could be a better parent than someone," Love said. She has found patience and enjoyment over the past two years that she couldn't have imagined in herself and a happiness in responding to her daughter the way she wishes her mother could have responded to her.
Love describes the genesis of her singing career in her book as a soaring talent show where "I understood that I would never do anything else for the rest of my life but sing." She loves playing shows and festivals and the applause her music brings. And yet she isn't consumed with thoughts of selling out arenas or signing with another major label (she was represented by Mercury records a few years back), or otherwise seeking fame. Music doesn't define her, she said, it's only one of her great loves. She's truly thankful that she can play bass guitar and sing. "But, really, it's thank God I'm alive."  From: https://www.seattlepi.com/entertainment/music/article/musician-laura-love-survived-a-miserable-1151077.php

Light in Babylon - Baderech El Hayam

 #Light in Babylon #Michal Elia Kamal #world music #Mediterranean folk #ethno folk #Turkish folk #Middle Eastern folk #music video

The Ingathering: What’s the band’s story, did you get started playing on the streets?

Michal Elia Kamal: We started playing on one specific street, called İstiklal Avenue [İstiklal Caddesi, or Independence Avenue], not everywhere.

Specifically just that one street in Istanbul?

Yes, İstiklal Avenue, it is a very special place. We started around 11 years ago in Istanbul on İstiklal Avenue, which is in the city center near Taksim Square. It’s very specific and a very special place. That was in 2009, almost 2010, and that moment was also a very good time in Turkey, culturally. Istanbul was chosen to be the cultural capital of Europe, and that period was like a golden time. It is not like that anymore, by the way, but then it was a place with a really big potential for musicians, and artists in general. İstiklal Avenue is a huge avenue with no cars. There are more than two million people passing through there every day. It is very crowded, very touristy, and it was like an artists’ avenue. You had bands playing there—even half-organized—proper bands brought their equipment and put on concerts. You had a puppet show. It looked like a festival. It was not an organized festival, but it was like that every day. It was so intense.

Is that where you met Metehan Çifçi (Mete)?

I wanted to learn music, and I wanted to start my own project. I traveled in India, worked a bit in Europe, and decided I was going to dedicate my life to music. I had even already looked at music schools in Israel. But I looked around, and many of my friends studied music in Israel. I saw them struggling, actually. They are really high-level musicians. They put a lot of money and effort and study into it, and I didn’t see them achieving what they deserved. That changed my mind a bit, and I thought that maybe music school was not the place for me.
I continued to travel. I passed through Turkey almost by chance. It was just before I was about to go back to Israel to figure out what I was going to do, and I just discovered Istanbul. I discovered it not only in a musical way, because it was also a place that’s attractive to me in a much more personal way, too. I arrived in Istanbul, and I started to feel my heart beat. I arrived at İstiklal Street, and I asked my friend — I was with a Turkish friend — I said, “Is this like a holiday or Independence Day or something?” And she told me, in this heavy accent, “No, this is Taksim, baby.” Something was happening there. That was normal, every day. I saw all the musicians, everybody was playing, and I realized that this was the place for me.
I had met Julien, and together we were thinking about building up a project. I knew I could find musicians in Istanbul. Julien said, “There’s İstiklal Street, let’s play there a little and see how it goes. Maximum, it doesn’t work.” We rented a small room in a neighborhood nearby. We earned a little money. Then he said, “There’s this one santur player. I saw him play solo on İstiklal Street. He’s very shy. He doesn’t speak English. But he’s really, really good. We need to find him.” Every day, we went to İstiklal Street, and finally, we found him. We approached him — I had my own songs already that I wrote — and we said, “Can we play?” He said, “Yes,” and I think that moment was when we played our first song as a band. We didn’t know Turkish. He didn’t know English. But it was like, bam. At that moment, something was created. A crowd started to form, and that was the very first moment, 11 years ago. It was like this magical moment, like the spark was there, and all the rest is history. We played one song, a second song, and 10,000 songs since then.

You had instant chemistry.

Yeah, I don’t think that’s happened to me before or after like that. I don’t know what it is in Mete. He’s Turkish, but today he’s family, after all we’ve been through.

What language do you speak with him?

At first, we spoke with our hands, plus a little English, and a little Turkish. Now he’s learned English. I taught him English, and he speaks English like an Israeli [laughs]. We’ve also learned Turkish. Nowadays, we speak English and a bit of Turkish. But in the beginning, we started from scratch. It started from music, which is the main thing. I think it’s what’s beyond language that makes the connection. Even Julien, he’s from France — today he is my husband — I am Israeli, Persian, and Jewish. But the three of us, we say we are dreamers, and that’s what we had in common. We had this culture of dreamers. We decided to go out from our comfort zones, and achieve some inner dream or inner wish, and to take that risk. Choosing music as a lifestyle is a risk. Playing in the streets is a risk. It is not conventional. That was the first thing that brought us together. It was very clear. You didn’t even need to explain it in any language. It was something that was very clear for the three of us, and that’s why it worked.

You said you’re Persian, do you speak Farsi, too?

I understand Farsi, but I don’t speak it that well because I grew up in Israel. I was born and grew up in Tel Aviv. My parents spoke Farsi at home, but I didn’t speak it. People who came to Israel from Iran had to leave something behind. They realized that they were not going back there. That was also something my parents realized. They ran away from Iran so I would have a better future and have a normal life. I am very grateful for that. I have singer friends in Iran, and it is not a place I want to be. I think my parents made a decision to sacrifice something so I would be able to integrate better in Israel — that my first language would be Hebrew and that my first identity would be Israeli.

But did you hear Iranian music around the house?

Yes. You need to sacrifice something, but there are some things you cannot take out. I grew up in a Persian home, with the huge carpets, Persian music, and only Persian food. I think that is why I found myself, eventually, in Istanbul, because it is like a bridge for me. It’s my personal bridge between Iran and Israel. When you grow up in Israel and come from an Iranian family, you grow up in a sort of conflict. My parents told me about a world that doesn’t exist anymore, because it’s the Iran from before the revolution, and today Iran is something else. I also think my parents were conflicted. They came from Iran, but at the same time they are Jewish and Israeli.
That conflict for me is not only between being Israeli and Iranian, but it is also a conflict between east and west. I grew up in Ramat Aviv, which is a very good neighborhood in Tel Aviv and very Ashkenazi. I was the only Mizrahi in my class in my school. I was always very different, and I grew up in a very Mizrahi and Iranian home. On one hand, I enjoyed the privilege of growing up in modern society, in Israel, where women are more empowered, for example. It gave me confidence as a women in this world, and all the benefits you get that come from the west, including the education. But on the other hand, I still have the rich culture from home — the colors and the smells and the music and the warmth and all this stuff they brought from Iran.
I think that is also a conflict you find in Istanbul — between east and west — and sometimes, it’s not always a conflict. It isn’t always a negative thing. It’s a positive thing. It’s a mix. It’s something that is always there, the question of identity, and it is something I speak about a lot in my music. However, after 10 years of meeting people from all over the world and making music and having fans from many religions and cultures and countries — including countries I can not even enter — I am learning more and more about the common things we do have. Maybe it sounds like a cliché, but east, west, Jewish, Muslim, Christian — we all have a choice. Every individual chooses, and takes responsibility for his own choices. It doesn’t matter what his background is. In every language, we feel love, or anger, it is something we all have, and we have a choice, to either choose the positive side or to chose the negative side. That is something that I found in many people, and I find it again and again at every concert.
About the question about identity, that is getting blurrier with time. Not blurry — it is always inside me — but it is becoming less important. For me, Mete is not a Turkish guy from a Muslim country, to me, he’s family. His religion or his background isn’t relevant, because you have a different kind of connection with the person. He’s a human being. But why is that connection possible? Because he made a choice similar to my choice. And then you spread that to a big amount of people and fans.  From: https://theingathering.substack.com/p/light-in-babylon-and-the-universality

Sheila Chandra - Ever So Lonely

 #Sheila Chandra #world music #world fusion #worldbeat #Indian music

Born in South London to a South Indian immigrant family, Sheila Chandra discovered her voice at the age of twelve and whilst at Theatre Arts school. From this moment her chosen path was to be a singer. Lacking any real contacts or access to the music business, she nevertheless honed her vocal skills as a labour of love, spending up to two hours a night throwing her voice into the tall, drafty and uncarpeted stairwell of the family home: “I didn’t know how to manufacture an opportunity, but I was determined that when a chance came my way I would be ready.”
A chance did come her way, perhaps drawn by the weight of such unshakable belief. Steve Coe, a writer and record producer, was about to form a band, Monsoon, as an outlet for his increasingly Indian influenced material. He came across Chandra’s voice on an old audition tape, lying in a box at Hansa Records and knew that he had found his singer: “The richness, fluidity and quality of her voice struck me immediately. And then when I requested a photo from the file and found that Sheila was Asian, everything else seemed to fall into place.” Monsoon put out an EP on Steve Coe’s newly formed Indipop label and were signed by the far sighted Dave Bates at Phonogram. The band’s first single ‘Ever So Lonely’ took a song written around a raga and, utilizing the new production techniques available, came up with an irresistible but radical modern pop fusion sound.
Eventually, Chandra walked away from it all, frustrated by the increasing lack of communication between Phonogram and Monsoon over artistic direction. She went back to the Indipop label to learn her craft as a writer and musician. Free from business constraints and in complete control of her creative life, there followed a remarkable and prolific two-year period. Her first four solo albums for the label chronicle a profound transformation in the quality and depth of her work, both as a singer and increasingly as a writer, in her then chosen field of Asian fusion — learning from the very structures she had ignored throughout her childhood.
Her new found ability to cross continents in a single vocal line and weave seamlessly the vocal styles of the Arab world, Andalucia, Ireland, Scotland, India and more ancient structures such as that of Gregorian plainsong made for a true fusion within one mind and one voice. Weaving My Ancestor’s Voices established Chandra as a spiritual heir to a ‘whole world’ vocal tradition, whilst Coe’s sensitive and painstaking production enhanced this further and acted as an integral part of the recording, particularly on the virtuoso vocal percussion pieces ‘Speaking In Tongues’ I and II. After touring the USA with Peter Gabriel’s 1993 WOMAD tour, there followed The Zen Kiss and ABoneCroneDrone. The latter was a daring minimalist strategy to lure the listener out of long accustomed passivity to hear, as Chandra does, the living symphony of harmonics within the simplest of drones.
In 2001, Sheila released a one-off collaboration album with The Ganges Orchestra called This Sentence is True (The Previous Sentence Is False) on the tiny Indipop Records; a project she said helped her break out of her voice and drone box. In the meantime, Sheila’s transcendent vocals from the Real World trilogy had became a staple ingredient of unauthorized dance remixes.  From: https://realworldrecords.com/artists/sheila-chandra/

Laboratorium Piesni - Karanfilče Devojče

 #Laboratorium Piesni #world music #European folk #Eastern European folk #traditional #polyphonic chant #Slavic folk music #a capella #white voice #Polish #music video

Things you can learn from traditional folk music: You know what’s the least cool thing on Earth when you’re a teenager in Poland? Traditional folk music, that’s what. Only village grandmas would perform it when I was a kid, they sang in regional dialect which sounded weird and archaic, and the lyrics never made any sense. “A rose grew in my garden, tell me dear Marysia if you’ll marry me. How can I tell you this, how can I know if my mom will agree.” Totally relatable for a kid who’s not going to marry anyone for at least the next six hundred years, and is certainly not going to ask her mom for permission if she finally decides to do so.
But the worst thing of all was “Marysia”. In Polish and other Eastern European languages every name comes in several different forms. There’s an official version for adults you don’t know very well, there’s a “naughty kid” version which in my days was the only acceptable form to be used among teenagers, and there’s Marysia. This is a form of my name Maria used either when speaking to little children or to someone you’d like to be tender with. When you’re a teenage punk rebel it almost sounds like an insult. Somehow in the old times people weren’t as creative in naming kids as they are now, so literally every traditional Polish song had a Marysia or Kasieńka in it. Being the only Marysia in class that had a lot of such songs assigned in the school curriculum was a great opportunity for all other kids to make fun of you. It took me many years to find traditional music pleasant to listen to, or even acceptable.
The first band that did this for me was Arkona, who sneakily smuggled traditional folk influences into their heavy metal songs. They sang in Russian, so even if the lyrics were still ridiculous and archaic it didn’t bother me at all cause I only understood a few words. I fell in love with Arkona because of their incredible lead singer, a five foot blonde girl with the most Earth-shattering voice. She could start with a touching, lyric melody and change it into a demonic growl a few seconds later. I hadn’t thought I would find female growl attractive, but Masha carries such power in hers it’s fucking unbelievable.
With time I got to enjoy other traditional Eastern European songs, even if they didn’t come together with growl and heavy guitar riffs. I learned to appreciate the ancient wisdom in these ridiculously archaic lyrics that puts my remarkably modern life in perspective. Yes, I’m an independent, self-sufficient woman who can choose whether or whom to marry, but this simply wasn’t the case for my female ancestors. Life in a village used to be incredibly hard, and making a living independently wasn’t an option for anyone, not only women. No one would think about independence when they struggled to survive. Even my own grandma got married at the age of eighteen to a 30-year-old she just met, as she explained, mostly to escape from her abusive stepfather.
It also serves as a guiding anchor through different stages of life. This is not a kind of music you would create as a masterpiece to be performed on stage. These were ordinary songs sung by ordinary people as they went through different events in their lives. There were at least a few for every occasion. Birth and death, love and heartbreak, work and rest, joy and sorrow, marriage and pesky in-laws, sowing and reaping, there was a song that could help you make sense of any of these experiences, and process the emotions that arise with it.
Music creates a kind of emotional resonance that words alone will never do. Singing together synchronizes minds and souls in a way that is difficult to describe, as I learned in traditional music workshops. If you’re going through childbirth, death, marriage, or breakup, everyone singing with you validates your experience, shows you that they understand what you’re going trough, and that what is happening is a normal part of life. It integrates your emotions into the whole community, and helps you heal the challenging ones.
I have my own wedding coming soon and I want a ceremony that won’t be just a government official talking about civil rights and obligations. Even if they prepared the most touching speech, it would still be processed through the rational parts of the brain first. I’d rather go directly into the hearts and souls. So though the irony is not lost on me, I’m going to bring some of the ancient wedding ritual songs I used to despise so much as a kid to guide us and all of our guests through the most important moment of our lives so far. I even put a “Marysia” on our wedding invitation cards.  From: https://madeincosmos.net/things-you-can-learn-from-traditional-folk-music/ 

Ouzo Bazooka - Clouds of Sorrow

 #Ouzo Bazooka #psychedelic rock #neo-psychedelia #Middle Eastern rock #garage rock #Middle Eastern psych rock #desert rock #psychedelic surf #Isreali #music video

Ouzo Bazooka was formed in Tel Aviv, a city with its own unique lifestyle, where one can feel that the vibrant urban scene is driven by cultural coexistence and vigorous creation. Drawing influences from this melting pot and exotic Middle Eastern feel, along with classic hard rock, psychedelic art, garage rock and surf – Ouzo Bazooka’s sound is a dizzying concoction of east meets west.
Leading the pack is renowned musician and local guitar hero, Uri Brauner Kinrot, who grew up on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean sea, absorbing surf culture and playing a mean rock guitar. Uri has been active in the music scene for over a decade, throughout which he has played with, recorded for, and helped shape the influential sounds of big names such as Balkan Beat Box, Shantel, Firewater and Kocani Orkestar. Uri is also the leader of the critically acclaimed Mediterranean surf band Boom Pam, who are currently collaborating with Turkish psychedelic-folk legend Selda Bağcan. His unique sounds have made their way to far corners of the world, rocking out major music festivals such as Roskilde, Glastonbury, Fuji Rock, Lollapalooza and many more.
After roaming the globe and spreading his mediterranean-chic love, Uri felt the urge to pursue a new project using earlier influences that had always echoed in the back of his mind. He returned to the sounds and artists that have shaped him since his teens; Cream’s blasting energies, Link Wray’s surfed-up style and The Sonics’ soulful garage feel. Uri’s kaleidoscopic vision exemplifies good ol’ rock n’ roll with an oriental tinge, which is undoubtedly heard in his latest endeavor, Ouzo Bazooka. Recorded with local giants such as Adam Scheflan on bass and Kutiman on drums, the album consists of several catchy hits granting a melodic-pop feel that brings a sweet sound to the ears with a tangy middle eastern twist. Ouzo Bazooka’s self-titled debut album was released in 2014 and kicked off the bands career with a brilliant start.
Uri then decided to team up with drummer, Ira Raviv (Monti Fiori, Boom Pam) and keyboard player Dani Ever Hadani (Rami Fortis, Boom Pam) to form the present band and create the second album, Simoom. The album is an elegant demonstration of Uri’s ability to combine all of his influences and experiences together in the smoothest way possible. The album takes you on a dreamy psychedelic journey through heavy fuzzed guitars, colourful synthesisers, roaring drums and “garage-esque” fun. This well-performed blend can easily be heard throughout the album, from the spacey psychedelic keys and vocals on Look Around, to the traditional heavy dabke groove of Clouds of Sorrow, and up until the swinging thundering drums on Black Witch.  From: https://www.stolenbodyrecords.co.uk/ouzo-bazooka

Kula Shaker - Govinda

 #Kula Shaker #psychedelic rock #neo-psychedelia #raga rock #post-Britpop #psychedelic revival #world music #1990s

By reviving the swirling, guitar-heavy sounds of late-'60s psychedelia and infusing it with George Harrison's Indian mysticism and spirituality, Kula Shaker became one of the most popular British bands of the immediate post-Brit-pop era. More musically adept and experimental than many of their contemporaries, Kula Shaker brought the overpowering rush of Oasis to psychedelia. Led by vocalist/guitarist Crispian Mills (born January 18, 1973; the son of '60s actress Hayley Mills and film director Roy Boulting), Kula Shaker were initially a psychedelic quartet called the Kays, which formed in 1993. In addition to Mills, the Kays featured his teenage friend Alonza Bevan. The two had previously played together in a band named Objects of Desire; during that time they also ran a psychedelic nightclub in the back of an ice rink. Following the dissolution of Objects of Desire, Mills made a spiritual pilgrimage to India, and upon returning he formed the Kays with bassist Bevan, drummer Paul Winter-Hart, and vocalist Saul Dimont. Within a year, Dimont had left and organist Jay Darlington had joined the band; prior to joining the group, Darlington had played in several mod revival bands. After spending two years touring and recording, releasing two EPs on Gut Reaction Records, the group had not made any headway. According to Mills, the band changed its name and direction in the spring of 1995, when he had an epiphany that the group should be called Kula Shaker after a ninth century emperor and pursue a more spiritual direction. For the next three months, they performed as Kula Shaker, and they quickly received a record contract with Columbia, which was eager to sign another band that had the multi-platinum crossover appeal of Oasis.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/kula-shaker-mn0000776408/biography

Kula Shaker’s Crispian Mills, now 27, is the son of actress Hayley Mills, so he met a lot of artists (including David Gilmour) when he was growing up in the '70s and '80s. Some of those artists introduced him to Indian music and philosophy when he was only 10, and by the time he was 16 an interest had grown into an obsession. "I finally got on a plane to India when I was 20," he says. "When I got there, I was very lucky to meet people who understood the best aspects of India, especially the older devotional traditions. I was lucky because India is sinking more and more under the weight of the industrial world we live in. A lot of the time they don't notice the treasures they've got because they want to stock up on Coca-Cola and get a satellite TV. I don't know how long it will last, but it's still there." Mills didn't become a classical Indian musician, however. Instead he tried to integrate elements of Indian culture into the rock'n'roll he had grown up with. He found that the droning guitar tones and repeating rhythms of psychedelic-rock were especially easy to blend with Indian music. "Because psychedelia in its purest sense, putting aside all the drug associations, is about mind expansion, it fits in nicely with the Indian concept of transcendence. Both want to take us beyond what we already know into fresh territory, fresh experience, a fresh outlook. They complement each other.” "The world has shrunk to the size of an orange," he adds, "so we're rediscovering our planet and all these interesting people in different places. In the West, we have a monopoly on technology, but we have a lot to learn in other areas. And we should learn it before it disappears forever."  From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1999/07/09/kula-shaker-what-a-concept/1baea3a4-0d82-4b3f-b7dc-b923da508b7e/

Planxty - 'P' Stands For Paddy, I Suppose

 #Planxty #Christy Moore #Andy Irvine #Irish folk #world music #Celtic folk #traditional #1970s

 Irish stalwarts Planxty begin Cold Blow and the Rainy Night -- their third record for Shanachie -- with a rousing version of the Scottish battlefield classic "Johnnie Cope." It's a fitting opening to a record that essentially rounded out their recording heyday as the members splintered off to form equally influential Celtic acts like the Bothy Band, Moving Hearts, and De Danann. Co-founder Dónal Lunny, despite contributing instrumentally to a few tracks and taking a seat in the production chair, left the group, allowing newest member Johnny Moynihan to take over bouzouki and -- along with Andy Irvine and Christy Moore -- vocal duties. The title track is one of the finest of their career, utilizing Liam O'Flynn's expert uillean pipes and the band's peerless harmonizing to a tee. Moore's gorgeous "Lakes of Pontchartrain" and Irvine's moving closer, "Green Fields of Canada," showcase the group's timeless mastery of balladry, a style that would greatly inform their later solo works. Cold Blow and the Rainy Night, along with The Well Below the Valley, and their legendary debut, are essential listening for those in love with, or merely intrigued with, the genre.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/cold-blow-and-the-rainy-night-mw0000206988

P Stands for Paddy / T Stands for Thomas

Planxty sang ‘P’ Stands for Paddy, I Suppose on their 1974 album Cold Blow and the Rainy Night. They noted: We first heard ‘P’ Stands for Paddy a long time ago from Joe Heaney but we didn't get the words until recently. These came from a recording of Colm Keene of Glinsk Co. Galway. The verses are a strange mixture as if made up from different songs and it has a fine air.

Lal and Norma Waterson sang T Stands for Thomas on the Watersons' 1975 album, For Pence and Spicy Ale, Norma Waterson sang it on the Holme Valley Tradition cassette Will's Barn, and Waterson/Carthy sang it live at the Beverley Folk Club in June 1992. A.L. Lloyd noted on the Watersons' original album: These B for Barney, P for Paddy, J for Jack songs are usually Irish in origin though common enough in the English countryside. Often the verses are just a string of floaters drifting in from other lyrical songs. So it is with this piece, which derives partly from a version collected by Cecil Sharp from a Gloucestershire gipsy, Kathleen Williams. Some of the verses are familiar from an As I Walked Out song sung to Vaughan Williams by an Essex woodcutter, Mr Broomfield. The verses about robbing the bird's nest recall The Verdant Braes of Skreen.

Peter and Barbara Snape sang T Stands for Thomas on their 2008 CD Take to the Green Fields. Barbara Snape noted: This particular version of the song is an Irish/English hybrid! I first heard it in Liverpool some time ago, sung by an Irish singer, Davy Brennan. Having never forgotten it, but never quite fully remembering it either, I have used the version published in The Wanton Seed to supplement the bits I had lost.

Niamh Boadle sang P Stands for Paddy in 2010 on her CD Wild Rose. She commented on this Irish traditional song: A conversation overheard and dwelt on to learn about love. Not a strictly orthodox method of teaching but there you go.

From: https://mainlynorfolk.info/watersons/songs/tstandsforthomas.html

Varttina - Laulutyttö

 #Varttina #Scandinavian folk #worldbeat #Finnish folk #world fusion #traditional #folk rock #contemporary folk #Finland

They are one of Finland's biggest musical exports but they could hardly be described as typically Finnish. They are, simply, Värttinä: musicians with a unique sound, with their feet firmly rooted in Finnish ground, in its language, culture and history, yet with the courage to develop over nearly two decades, something no-one else in the world has been able to copy.
Värttinä’s devoted and loyal fans all over the world may not all be Finnish speakers but they are intoxicated by the voices of Susan, Mari and Johanna, singers with the stage presence of a Wagnerian soprano, acting out roles from fishwives to lovers, while the guys lure the listeners with beguiling bouzouki, sax, accordion playing to die for, searing drums, guitar and bass.
Driving all this forward is the Finnish language itself, with its unique rhymes and rhythms, and spitting throaty sounds; words that launch themselves into the atmosphere and return several syllables later. Think of the pumping rhythms of Longfellow’s Hiawatha and you’re half way there.
For Värttinä it all began in the Finnish village of Rääkkylä in 1983 when a few mothers and grandmothers encouraged the children to sing and play some of the old songs from the Karelian region. Ancient stories once told with a simple accompaniment on the kantele (the Finnish zither-like instrument) suddenly woke up to find saxes, fiddles and guitars in their midst. This wasn’t important just for the birth of Värttinä but for the revival of Finnish folk music in general.
What emerged though wasn’t a folk band but, eventually, a ten-piece pop/rock style ensemble which established the formula of female voices at the front, boys at the back. Blessed by the no-nonsense and sometimes shocking lyrics of the ancient traditional sagas of blood, sweat and a lot of tears, the confrontational style of singing and song-writing won the music world over until the band was propelled into Finnish stardom in 1991.  From: https://realworldrecords.com/artists/varttina/

DakhaBrakha - Live Music Hall Daile, Latvia 2015

Part 1

 

Part 2

#DakhaBrakha #folk #Ukrainian folk #world music #Eastern European folk #folk rock #cabaret #music video

DakhaBrakha has been on the frontlines of Ukraine’s cultural struggle against Russian domination for the past decade, reaching a global audience by infusing raucous traditional music from rural villages with a cosmopolitan mélange of instruments and influences. But the folk-punk quartet didn’t expect to find themselves literally under the gun last year, fleeing Kyiv as Russian troops tried to take the Ukrainian capital on Feb. 24. When shells started falling near the Kyiv airport, the musicians scattered as they sought safety, but by mid-March they’d reassembled in France for a series of solidarity concerts. Vocalist, percussionist and accordionist Iryna Kovalenko made her way to Hungary as the Russian army poured over the border, abandoning her car in a miles-long queue to cross the border. She eventually rejoined her husband and daughter in Seattle, where they had settled about six years ago.
“My wife and my two children are temporarily in France,” wrote Marko Halanevych in an email. Like his DakhaBrakha bandmates, he contributes on vocals and multiple instruments, including the goblet-drum darbuka, tabla, didgeridoo, accordion and trombone. Nina Garenetska, who plays cello and bass drum, is with her family in Lviv, “the western part of Ukraine, which is quite far from the front line,” Halanevych wrote. “But still, Russian missiles fly there from time to time.” Olena Tsybulska, who plays bass drums, percussion, and the button-accordion garmoshka, is with her family in Kyiv, “as well as the rest of the team,” Halanevych wrote. “However, we have relatives who live close to the frontline and even in the occupation.”
Now global ambassadors for a country fighting for its existence, DakhaBrakha hasn’t been able to perform at home since the invasion. Their audiences, particularly in Europe, increasingly include fellow Ukrainians displaced by the war who are eager for reminders of what they’ve left behind. “Often we met with them before or after the concerts, and we felt that these concerts were very important to them,” Halanevych wrote. “For some it is support, therapy. For some it is memories of home.” Supporting each other on the road the band has become a self-contained pod that manages to deliver walloping performances while keeping one eye on the news stream from home. They know they’re in an enviable position far from danger, but anxiety about loved ones serves as both fuel and a distraction.
“More than once I had to go on stage knowing that Russia fired about a hundred missiles,” Halanevych recalled. “Will all your relatives and friends survive these two hours? Being outside Ukraine, we are in constant contact with them, monitoring air alarms, battles at the front, and the needs of volunteers.” Marked by galloping rhythms, extended vocal harmonies, and striking instrumental textures, DakhaBrakha’s music has always evoked extreme emotions and situations. Responding to the conflict with Russia the group has added material directly inspired by the struggle, like the band’s 2018 requiem “Lament,” which is dedicated to all those who’ve died during the war. The women tend to perform with little visible expression, but the song “causes a wave of dramatic emotions,” he wrote. “It’s important for us that it is heard. There is also the composition ‘Boats,’ which is dedicated to all those who are currently defending our freedom, and to those who lend us their friendly shoulder.” American audiences have certainly been lending their eyes and ears as Ukrainian culture has become more visible in the U.S. than ever before. San Jose Jazz’s Winter Fest’s “Counterpoint With Ukraine” programing, which runs through March 3, features some of the Eastern European nation’s most acclaimed improvisers. And Dakh Daughters, an all-women music and theater project from Kyiv, present “Ukraine Fire” at Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage April 24.
Garenetska, DakhaBrakha’s cellist and vocalist, was a founding member of Dakh Daughters, and both ensembles grew out of Kyiv’s influential avant-garde Dakh Theater. She’s been too busy with DakhaBrakha to tour with the Daughters recently, but Garenetska made the Hollywood Palladium performance presented by Sean Penn last June that raised $1 million for Ukraine. Buoyed by enthusiastic audiences and words of support, they cherish their role in the struggle, knowing “that we are doing extremely important things for the victory of good over evil,” Halanevych wrote. “We believe that our concerts can influence public opinion, and civilized countries will be more willing and faster to help us with modern weapons.”
From: https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/02/28/after-fleeing-war-ukrainian-band-dakhabrakha-back-in-bay-area/