Showing 1-10 of 16 results
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Mambo madness
Life, John Clewley, Published on 02/08/2022
» Latin music has been circling the globe for more than a century, creating dance crazes and inspiring local forms of music. From tango to reggaeton, with stops for mambo, rumba, son and salsa, bolero, Latin jazz and more, the Latin music juggernaut just keeps rolling on.
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The man who put the funk into Congolese music
Life, John Clewley, Published on 07/07/2015
» Congolese music is one of the cornerstones of African popular music. This irresistible dance music is loved across the African continent, and its biggest stars, like the late great icons Franco and Tabu Ley Rochereau, were mobbed wherever they played. Musically, the genres that have emerged from the Congo region, including Congolese rumba and all the various dance style from soukous to ndambolo, have been hugely influential on the popular styles in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Zimbabwe and many other African countries.
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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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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.
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March of the brass bands
Life, John Clewley, Published on 25/08/2015
» Military marching bands brought Western music to Asia, beginning a process of cultural fusion and interaction that continues to this day. Christian religious music came along at the same time, often in the form of hymns, but I'm not sure that hymns had the same impact as the dramatic, crashing sound of brass instruments played by marching musicians.
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Three is the magic number
Life, John Clewley, Published on 30/01/2018
» This week World Beat considers three stringed instruments from Africa: the valiha from Madagascar, kora from West Africa and oud from North Africa (which may have originated in what was Persia). All these instruments are plucked and 10 years ago, a bright spark in the music business thought it would be a good idea to bring together three master pluckers of these three instruments to see what music they might create. The result was the 3MA project release back in 2008.
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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.
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Nora dance gets Unesco nod
Life, John Clewley, Published on 21/12/2021
» Nora, a traditional folk dance-drama from southern Thailand, was awarded intangible cultural heritage status by Unesco last week. The distinctive dance form joins khon and Thai traditional massage on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
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Blurring the boundaries
Life, John Clewley, Published on 21/07/2020
» The summer festival season has been cancelled as have many major sporting events. Under the current Covid-19 measures, some events like the Notting Hill Carnival in London, which is usually held at the end of August each year, have gone online. Sound systems and steel bands will still perform live but revellers will only be able to enjoy them online.
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Trombone's place in modern music
Life, John Clewley, Published on 17/03/2020
» The funky sound of Fred Wesley's trombone landed on the World Beat desk this week courtesy of an album he released in 1974, with his band, Fred Wesley & the New JB's, called Breakin' Bread (originally released on Polydor, re-released 2015). Wesley was James Brown's musical director at the time, and Brown produced the album and co-wrote most of the songs with Wesley.
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