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  • News & article

    Tunes from out of space

    Life, John Clewley, Published on 23/08/2016

    » The cosmic connection in music has spawned colourful characters and great musicians like Sun Ra and George Clinton. The innovative bandleader Ra said he'd been born in outer space, a claim also made by Clinton (although the latter's sister reportedly said that she thought he had been born in North Carolina). Listening to their music or watching Clinton's huge Mothership descend onto a stage that included at least one musician dressed in adult diapers, you'd certainly be excused for thinking these talented musicians were indeed from outer space.

  • News & article

    New releases for June

    Life, John Clewley, Published on 23/06/2015

    » Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba continue to dominate the top spot on this month's European Broadcast union Top 10 World Music chart. The Malian, who has brought the ngoni or Malian lute, to global fame, is on a hectic summer touring schedule that sees the band play in European and US festivals. Catch him if you can but if you can't get his new album Ba Power.

  • News & article

    Latin soul with a Thai twist

    Life, John Clewley, Published on 29/03/2022

    » Amaru Tribe, a Latin band based in Melbourne, Australia, released their second studio album, Between Two Worlds, on March 18. The band visited Thailand in 2019 for a mini-tour, which culminated in a full band concert at Studio Lam, for which they jammed with phin and khaen players from Toom Turn Molam Band.

  • News & article

    New grooves for your perusal

    Life, John Clewley, Published on 09/11/2021

    » The legendary Peruvian singer-songwriter Susana Baca tops the November Transglobal World Music Chart with her new album, Palabras Urgentes (Real World), which was released last month. The album celebrates the 50th anniversary of an amazing career, which has encompassed ethnomusicology, researching folklore and teaching, a long career as a singer, and a stint as Minister of Culture.

  • News & article

    That's entertainment

    Life, John Clewley, Published on 28/01/2020

    » When we invoke the term "Jazz Age", we tend to think of the US in the 1920s and 1930s. But while its impact was felt most keenly Stateside, this major cultural movement was a global phenomenon.

  • News & article

    Lift up your voice

    Life, John Clewley, Published on 10/10/2023

    » South Africa has a long tradition of harmony singing, stretching back to Soloman Linda's famous 1933 song Mbube, which created a genre of its own to isicathamiya folk singing that led to one of the country's most potent popular genres, mbaqanga and on to gospel choirs.

  • News & article

    Keep on rockin' in a lockdown

    Life, John Clewley, Published on 14/04/2020

    » The sonic landscape of my life in central Bangkok has changed dramatically over the past few weeks of social distancing. Gone are the sounds of construction drills, booming pile drivers, honking horns, unmuffled motorcyles and throbbing tuk-tuks. I can hear birdsong of all kinds in the mornings and, at dusk, the whirring and squeaking of different bat species as they zoom around hunting for insects.

  • News & article

    Independent in Indonesia

    Life, John Clewley, Published on 21/12/2022

    » Interest in recorded music, led by DJs and "crate-diggers", has shone a light on some fascinating popular music genres over the past 20-odd years. Soundway Records, set up by Miles Claret in the UK, released its first compilation in 2002 on Afrobeat, funk and fusion from Ghana in the 1970s, and since then has released compilations on African, Caribbean, Latin and Asian music (mainly focusing on the period from 1950s to 1980s, when popular genres were being created by newly independent countries).

  • News & article

    Keeping a culture alive

    Life, John Clewley, Published on 25/06/2019

    » How do you make folk music relevant in these postmodern times? Traditional music is under threat everywhere you look, as are minority languages, arts and crafts and the habitat and environment that helped create them.

  • News & article

    Fusing different musical worlds

    Life, John Clewley, Published on 13/02/2024

    » Klezmer is the music of Ashkenazi Jews, who created the music in Central and Eastern Europe in the 16th century. Although mainly instrumental, the music is usually sung in Yiddish. It was hugely popular before the destruction of Yiddish communities in Central Europe during the Holocaust. Professional Klezmer musicians who escaped to the US founded large klezmer orchestras in the first two decades of the 20th century, who competed with jazz ensembles and Irish big bands in New York.

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