Showing 1 - 10 of 23
Modernising Mexican groove
Life, John Clewley, Published on 28/03/2026
» The Mexican Institute of Sound (MIS), founded in 2004 by Mexico City-based DJ and record producer Camilo Lara, is a project to bring together fusions of folk and traditional music with digital production and electronica. MIS started as a side project, based on Lara's own remixing of popular tracks.
Exile songs resurface
Life, John Clewley, Published on 27/09/2025
» From the early 1970s to the 80s, Mogadishu boasted one of the Horn of Africa's liveliest night scenes with groups from this "Golden Era" like Dur Dur Band entertaining at clubs and hotels across the city. A coup in 1991 and subsequent civil war put a stop to the music and musicians had to go underground or migrate. Those who went by the latter route took their music and culture across the Somali diaspora (one of Africa's largest).
Isan sound goes global
Life, John Clewley, Published on 13/09/2025
» Last month, World Beat was invited to join a government sponsored event to promote molam music from Isan on the international stage. The event was held on Aug 12 at Queen Sirikit National Convention Center in Bangkok as part of the National Science and Technology Fair 2025.
The sounds of Kinshasa
Life, John Clewley, Published on 18/02/2025
» Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is one of Africa's centres for music. With a population estimated at 17 million, the city is a melting pot of ethnicities and cultures.
Fresh new sounds
Life, John Clewley, Published on 24/12/2024
» Justin Adams and Mauro Durante's second album Sweet Release (Ponderosa Records) tops the Transglobal World Music Chart for December. This fusion album carries on the collaboration from the success of their debut Still Moving, in 2021.
Satanic sounds from the jungle
Life, John Clewley, Published on 02/07/2024
» In the 1960s in Peru, a funky popular style emerged in the oil-boom cities of the Amazon. It was largely based on Colombian cumbia and Andean tropical music but using the pentatonic scale of Andean music. Additional ingredients include highland huayno, Cuban percussion, psych and surf rock (especially twangy guitars, with as many as three playing together) and plenty of spacey keyboards.
Celebrating three decades of discovery
Life, John Clewley, Published on 27/02/2024
» World Beat celebrates 30 years on the music trail this month. The column started in Feb 1994 when Chuan Leekpai of the Democrat Party was in his first term as Prime Minister.
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.
Let the good times roll
Life, John Clewley, Published on 06/06/2023
» Last month, one of the great explorers and producers of American vernacular music, Chris Strachwitz, passed away. He was 91 years old. He was the founder and co-owner (with Tom Diamant) of Arhoolie Records which since its first release in 1960, Texas Sharecropper And Songster by Texan bluesman Mance Lipscomb, has put out an astonishing 44,000 records.
When East meets West
Life, John Clewley, Published on 17/01/2023
» In 2017, the Japanese band Minyo Crusaders released their debut album, Echoes Of Japan (P-Vine, Japan), to great acclaim. The band's reworking and updating of Japanese folk music, or minyo, on a rhythmic bed of Caribbean, Latin and Afrobeat was truly inspired, and perhaps pointed the way for other fusion bands in East and Southeast Asia. The aim was to revive minyo as "music for the people", as quoted by World Music Central.