• 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

  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

  Stories of migration and hope

  Life, John Clewley, Published on 12/09/2023

  » In 2016, the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto invited musicians, mainly immigrant musicians, to audition for a new global orchestra.

• LIFE

  Travel notes

  Life, John Clewley, Published on 23/05/2023

  » Cambodia, like many Southeast Asian countries, enjoyed a golden era of popular music during the 1950s and 1960s, when Phnom Penh, known as the "Pearl of the Orient" became an important cultural centre, a breading ground for the meeting of Western rock and pop and Cambodian music. Author Dee Peyok in her fascinating new book Away From Beloved Lover: A Musical Journey Through Cambodia (Granta, UK, 2023) notes that "the music of East and West merged across Southeast Asia to the most fascinating mélange of instruments, attitudes and expressionism".

• LIFE

  Holy trinity

  Life, John Clewley, Published on 14/02/2023

  » The banjo is a key instrument in Western folk music -- from US bluegrass to Irish trad -- and over the past 20 years, research into the roots of this three-stringed instrument have revealed its west African lute origins, with two instruments, the ngoni and the ekonting, now understood to be the closest ancestors to the banjo.

• LIFE

  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.

• 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

  Tunes for the chill season

  Life, John Clewley, Published on 09/11/2022

  » The music scene has been given a boost this year with the return of tourists and the reopening of entertainment venues. Festivals are returning to the provinces this month and the local circuits for rock and luk thung are back, too. The summer festival season in Europe, Japan and North America also returned and coincided with lots of summer and now winter music releases. The World Beat desk is groaning under the weight of new music.

• LIFE

  Nostalgia from Somalia

  Life, John Clewley, Published on 25/10/2022

  » Mogadishu in Somalia in the mid-1980s was a crossroads where Africa, Asia and Europe joined, where hotels like the Al-Uruba competed with other luxury venues to host some of the Indian Ocean's most potent popular music. Situated right on Lido beach, the distinctive Al-Uruba building with Arabic and Somali architectural influences had a little-known recording studio.

• LIFE

  Compilation honours legacy of Jamaican giant

  Life, John Clewley, Published on 13/09/2022

  » A year after the death of legendary Jamaican reggae musician and producer Lee "Scratch" Perry, the good folks at Trojan Records have released the very first posthumous anthology of the influential artist's unparalleled career, King Scratch (Musical Masterpieces From The Upsetter Ark-ive).

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