Showing 1-10 of 34 results
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Paradise meets with molam beats
Life, John Clewley, Published on 08/12/2015
» It's been a busy year for Bangkok-based molam instrumental band Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band. The band released a debut album, 21st Century Molam, in November 2014 to great acclaim. The album garnered a number of awards, including Album of the Week on BBC Radio 6 and a Best Album Award on Gilles Peterson's radio show on the BBC. In Bangkok, the band was recently awarded Best Instrumental Album at the Khom Chat Leuk Awards.
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Time to do the soukous
Life, John Clewley, Published on 12/10/2021
» Congolese rumba, sometimes called rumba Lingala or rumba Congolais, is likely to join khon, a Thai masked dance drama, khaen music of Laos, chapei dang veng of Cambodia, Cuban son and Dominican bachata on Unesco's Intangible Cultural Heritage list. In August this year, the two countries from the Congo Basin, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Republic of the Congo (ROC), announced a joint bid to add Congolese rumba to the list.
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Put some schoolin' on ya
Life, John Clewley, Published on 15/05/2018
» This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of a New Orleans musical legend: Henry Roeland "Roy" Byrd, better known as Professor Longhair or just plain "Fess". He was born on Dec 18, 1918, in Bogalusa, Louisiana, and later moved to New Orleans with his mother.
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The sound of a new era
Life, John Clewley, Published on 16/01/2024
» It's been eight years since Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band released their last studio album Planet Lam, in 2016. This followed their debut album 21st Century Molam, released in 2014. In early December, the band soft-launched a vinyl version of their new album Arayalam on the Zudrangma Records label.
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Revolutionary's road
Life, John Clewley, Published on 02/04/2019
» Poet, novelist, piano player. And that was before Gil Scott-Heron had reached 20. He wrote and recorded his best known song, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, in 1971, and from then on produced a unique and polemical body of prose, poetry and music that led him to be dubbed the "Father of Political Rap", the originator of "nu soul" and many more titles. He preferred being called a "bluesologist".
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How world music fared in 2016
Life, John Clewley, Published on 03/01/2017
» The Merriam Webster dictionary named "surreal" as its word of the year for 2016. It's a relatively new word that was only included for the first time in 1967, which was around the time "psychedelia" emerged as a style of rock music; think of Jimmy Hendrix's guitar pyrotechnics from the time as an example. Psychedelic rock took off and rapidly split into subgenres like psychedelic soul and the whole Funkadelic/Parliament movement that brought psych guitars to the funk groove.
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Anniversary for the godfather of Afrobeat
Life, John Clewley, Published on 04/11/2014
» This year marks the 50th anniversary of Nigerian drummer Tony Allen's debut with pioneering Afrobeat master Fela Kuti. Allen played with Fela's band Africa 70 as drummer and musical director until 1979. Mention Afrobeat and Fela's name immediately pops up but without the fantastic drumming skills and funky mentality of Allen, Fela's music would not have reached the heights it did during this period; something Fela was quick to acknowledge.
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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.
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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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Christmas carols, Isan music end troubled year
Life, John Clewley, Published on 22/12/2020
» This has been a tough year for everyone involved in the music business, here in Thailand and everywhere else.
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