Return of the World Music Thread: 2012

The Pomp & Clout Mix Series is premiering a new mixtape by The Very Best, Anzanga: http://bit.ly/TgITpn. Volume 22 of the ongoing series (which also features mixes by Diplo, Nadastrom and others),

Busy guys

i was not so into their last mixtape but i'll still def check this one out. new album just gets better every day. perfect summer album.

Sorry to live up to my name, but I find the new album less interesting with every listen. I understand not wanting to duplicate Warm Heart, but the new one only utilizes what I like best in their sound, Esau's vocals on several cuts. The song using Amadou & Mariam and Baaba Maal just kinda meanders, and I don't find the autotuned vocals or distorted synth sounds and club beats that memorable.

that's fair. it's not as consistent as warm heart and probably not as good - but the songs i like i really like ("kondaine" is great for instance) and i'm sure this will be a contentious comparison but it sounds to me like a cross between MGMT's Oracular Spectacular + Warm Heart - esp when the distorted sounds have that bubbly swimming pool tone. nb i might only feel this way bc the album title MTMTMK kinda phonetically reminds me of MGMT.

i liked the first 3 minutes of the new mixtape, btw, but it quickly made my head start to hurt about 4 minutes in. i gave it a chance, but why listen to a mixtape when i haven't fully exhausted listening to the album yet

I listened to a bunch of it. Not bad. Gonna see the Very Best tonight.

Maybe I should put this on ILE but since I post about Malian music here and things keep getting worse in North Mali:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/10/world/africa/islamists-in-northern-mali-amputate-mans-hand.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120810

Just 11 days ago, in the desert town of Aguelhok, Islamist allies of Mujao publicly stoned to death a young couple accused of having children outside wedlock. The stoning and now the amputation appear to signal an acceleration of the Islamists’ determination to apply Shariah law to the territory they conquered from the Malian government in March and April. Already, the Islamists have driven nearly 400,000 people to flee northern Mali and have spurred calls for a regional intervention force.

“The extremists who are occupying northern Mali have cut off the hand of an inhabitant of Ansongo, adding a new ignoble act to the long list of atrocities they have inflicted on the people,” the Malian government said in a statement from Bamako. “The actions of the terrorists and drug traffickers, cloaked in a false veil of religion, reinforce the inevitability of military action.”

In recent days, young people in Gao have resisted the harsh punishments, blocking Mujao’s plan to amputate a robbery suspect publicly in the town by descending into the streets to protest.

Saw a W. Post editorial calling for that group of African nations to go into north Mali.

http://sahelsounds.com/

Looks like some good stuff I need to catch up on at this blog

So at my local Vietnamese shopping center I noticed a huge poster for a Vietnamese show at the Harrah's in Philadelphia. I didn't write down the names. Sorry

Mmmm. Banh mi. I actually have a great selection of Vietnamese restaurants in my neighborhood (because I live in the so-called "War Zone," officially known as the International District).

Does anyone who regularly posts on this thread currently live in Philly?

yay, my club just booked Omar Souleyman with DJ Hutz and Janka Nabay and The Bubu Gang. $15 on September 7 in Brooklyn if anyone's around. Curious to see Nabay after the buzz now.

So at my local Vietnamese shopping center I noticed a huge poster for a Vietnamese show at the Harrah's in Philadelphia. I didn't write down the names. Sorry
I see these all the time! I work like 1 block from Vietnamese food/store central.

Anyway if someone desperately needs me to mail them kafir lime leaves, just tell me. I don't think they would go bad if I send them 1st class (overseas prob not, though, sorry)

omg sorry
i thought this was the cooking thread!
such an idiot

I live in Philly!

The Vietnamese show posters at Eden Center in suburban Virginia (near W. DC) always look like they are for schmaltzy middle of the road pop/cabaret/disco singers, with Vietnamese and English phrasing on them. I have no idea what these performers actually sound like.

There's a big Vietnamese population in the DC area so I was surprised that folks would have to go up to Philly for a show. Maybe because it's at a casino

Curious to see Nabay after the buzz now

I need to check out the Luaka Bop label album and watch the archived gig with the band on the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage site

X-post -- I guess Souleyman is back in the US. With the situation in Syria he may as well tour. Speaking of touring because of life during wartime, I see that Tinariwen are coming back for more North American shows.

Mordy, I did not know you were in Philadelphia. Hey you should go look at my Company of Thieves thread. You could sort of consider Genevieve Schatz (lead vocalist) a singer-songwriter, though it's not clear how much of the music she really composes. Lyrics are mostly or all hers. I think she has some musical input without necessarily having the music theory skills.

La Lechera, don't worry it totally fits.

I'm kind of scared to sample Vietnamese pop music, honestly. I've never heard any I've liked.

i'll go check it out. i'm always looking for good local music to check out.

Oh it's not local. Just something I think you might like. Might hate as well, I'm not really sure of your taste but you seem interested in female vocalists.

I'm ex-Philadelphian.

(First video happens to be from the TLA though.)

i'm listening to an album on spotify right now - it sounds like my kind of thing. are you a fan of alice bag btw? had that kind of "spazz" thing i think you see in her. i heard a great presentation about her at IASPM that discussed her as mediating performing bodies w/ audience/receptive bodies and then went into crazy lacan territory. def more poppy than a lot of more out-there vocalists (like that tzadik + post-meredith monk style stuff that i really love)

The albums are good. The second one I think is better realized than the first. The vocals on the first are more subdued, the second are a lot tougher and rockier. But the live recordings are where it's at for the most part. I think her vocals live show a lot more range (not octave range but range in feeling and style).

I don't know Alice Bag. (At work now so I can't check anything out.)

(Also the spazz thing is more about her performance. It's changing somewhat anyway. She's taking dance lessons.)

Also, the first album is 2007, and they've toured a ton since then so their sound has changed a lot.

Let's see. Justification for posting this on this thread. . . I saw an interview in which the keyboardist mentioned being influenced by klezmer music (not particularly evident!).

I'm still liking the first Staff Benda Bilili album (Congolese band led by 4 street musicians who had polio as kids) and need to hear the latest. They're coming to my hood soon.

http://www.afropop.org/wp/4562/spirit-of-angola-granular/

1st of some upcoming Ned Sublette posts from his recent trip to Angola

nice

he mentions Mona Star, Angolan kuduro artist

I also want to check this out:

Alma is the new recording collaboration between six-time GRAMMY-nominated Cuban composer and pianist, Omar Sosa, and celebrated Italian trumpet and flugelhorn player, Paolo Fresu. The CD features guest cello contributions on four tracks by the masterful Brazilian conductor, arranger, producer, and cellist, Jaques Morelenbaum.

Ned did not mention that one. No Angolan aspects to it that I know if

DC based afropop band with horns Elikeh, led by a singer from Togo, have a new album out that's not bad.

The vocals at the beginning of the first track on Sa Dingding's The Coming Ones (which corresponds with the first Sa Dingding video I posted in this thread) sounds a lot of a milder timbre version of typical Mauritanian singing. I am pretty curious about where it's coming from. I spent a little time hunting down Mongolian music on youtube, but didn't hear anything close. I wonder if the sound is emerging from any particular ethnic tradition included within China, or if Sa Dingding is going outside that tradition and simply borrowing ideas from elsewhere. Half tempted to start a thread about the album but I've had trouble finding much to say about it.

The Hmong choir with ridiculously heavy electronic beat version of Ode to Joy on the second track is probably the most grating thing on the album.

You probably saw this broad statement on the internets that may not help much re that track:

Sa Dingding's latest album, The Coming Ones, is inspired by her trip to Sichuan
and Yunnan provinces

Yes. I guess I could look for music from Sichuan and Yunnan but I suspect the sound I'm trying to identify the source for is coming via the Islamic world one way or another, so Mongolian traditions seem more likely.

It doesn't sound particularly Buddhist, that's for sure. It could be a "mountain" sort of sound though. It sounds like the sort of vocal style that might have developed to take advantage of big mountain acoustics. I do think there is something to the notion that different geographies tend to produce different sounds.

have any of you guys heard [about] this? http://www.terprecords.nl/as21.html

i only listened to the sample briefly but the little i heard sounded pretty groovy

i gotta listen more but i really liked what i heard (i bought the album) and i think it's def worth checking out. fwiw here's a blurb from the link if you don't feel like clickingthru

Quite unexpectedly, last year, while here in Europe for several summer festivals, Getatchew Mekuria at the age of 76, expressed an urge to make one more recording. With The Ex. Probably the last one in his life. A great responsibility!
We recorded in December, in Wormerveer and Addis Abeba. The result is stunning. Deep, old, classic melodies. Very different from the last one. Instrumental, more sensitive and fragile, deeper. Amazing horn riffs and solos, but also danceable, with up-tempo war-chants. Many things. He called it “Y'Anbessa Tezeta” (In Memory Of The Lion). Memories of 65 years of playing music! But also always new and forward.

yes! i am too tired to write more about it right now, but it is great!

I saw Getatchew with the Ex live a few years ago and they were a lot of fun together. It worked much better than I expected.

i'm pretty sure this isn't "world" music, but since rudipherous is one of the few ppl on ilx i can think of that might have heard it -- do u know anything about this album and if it is worth picking up?

http://www.museumfire.com/azadi.htm