• LIFE

  A colourful hybrid

  Life, John Clewley, Published on 28/05/2019

  » It was the barefoot diva Cesaria Evora who put the Cape Verde Islands on the musical map, with her breakout albums and international tours in the 1990s. She sang a melancholic and intimate style called morna, a hybrid music fused from Portuguese fado music and local traditional styles.

• LIFE

  The beat goes on

  Life, John Clewley, Published on 19/12/2023

  » Molam continues to evolve with time. Musicians, especially from Isan, are experimenting with new musical combinations, creating new hybrids and sounds.

• LIFE

  Northeastern grooves by way of Amsterdam

  Life, John Clewley, Published on 24/09/2019

  » Apichat Pakwan, a fusion or hybrid music collective from Isan and the Netherlands, will release their first album, Esantronics, at the end of October. The band released an EP in 2017 but this will be their full-length debut and fans of Isan and electronic music will be delighted.

• LIFE

  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.

• LIFE

  A timeless musician

  Life, John Clewley, Published on 26/09/2023

  » Eliades Ochoa was a key member of the legendary Buena Vista Social Club, which was established in 1996 and organised into a stellar ensemble of Cuban musicians, many of whom performed Cuban music of the 1940s and 1950s -- bolero, son and danzon. An album was released to great acclaim and a film documentary of the group garnered an Academy Award for director Wim Wenders.

• LIFE

  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).

• LIFE

  Jungle music

  Life, John Clewley, Published on 08/10/2019

  » In 2017, I wrote about the wonderfully infectious dance music of Amazonian Peru, known as "chicha" (also Peruvian cumbia). Chicha is a funky version of cumbia, a style of music that mixes African roots and folkloric traditions found in Colombia and Panama. The collection I reviewed at the time, Roots Of Chicha, is an essential addition to any music collection.

• LIFE

  A whole different sonic vibe

  Life, John Clewley, Published on 09/06/2020

  » Sega is the traditional and popular music of the island of Mauritius, which sits in the vast Indian Ocean; some call sega the blues of the Indian Ocean but I think of it as the soundtrack to the sea.

• LIFE

  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.

• LIFE

  It's a transglobal affair

  Life, John Clewley, Published on 10/09/2019

  » The summer festival season in Europe, North America and Japan draws to a close this month as bands rest up from touring and take a break before the end-of-year festive season. Those bands that have put out summer releases hope that their albums reach the various charts and get decent airplay; others, meanwhile, have waited for the end of the season to release their new music, so we have a mixture of hot releases from the summer and new ones just released.

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