A - BPosted 10:11 AM, Nov 19 2008
FREE SONG:'Sofia Rei Koutsovitis 'Alma Del Pueblo''
Last night I saw a great show. Tuesday night in Davis square can be a pretty quiet experience. And it was COLD here in Boston!! I'd just got out of my Tuesday night Samba class (at the Green Street studio in Cambridge) and stopped by Johnny D's just in time to catch Sofia Rei Koutsovitis in one of her most adventuresome music projects: Avantrio.
This was not the crowded bar thing - rather an intimate acoustic showcase among friends of the musicians and this music. Just Sofia's voice, stand up bass, played by Jorge Roeder, and Cajon percussion, played by Jorge Perez Albela. Lot's of space!!
Now I tend to hear a LOT of music so that now it's becoming more challenging to find something I get REALLY EXCITED about -- but here it is. Sofia is the kind of singer who doesn't need to get anywhere near the microphone and yet her clear voice fills up the room. And against Jorge Reder's bass stylings it made for a spare but rich pairing.
Avantrio is Peruvian music for the adventurous listener. They have carefully selected traditional Peruvian music from the coast ("Música Criolla" and "Música Negra") and the works of Peruvian composers such as Chabuca Granda, Felipe Pinglo, and Nicomedes Santa Cruz -- well-kept secrets to international audiences. But Jorge also brings an American jazz influence to his playing and I found myself on a musical journey up and down the coast of Peru, through the streets of Lima, to a place where Jazz mingles with Peruvian Waltz, Landó, Festejo, Zamacueca and Argentinian Zamba. I LOVED it!!
Sofia's FREE SONG:''Alma Del Pueblo'' will give you just a taste of what they sound like live.
Posted 11:11 AM, Nov 4 2008
With the U.S. election we couldn't resist this catchy mbalax tune by Senegalese musician Ousmane Diallo, known as Ouza. Enjoy!! and Vote!!
Posted 01:09 PM, Sep 30 2008
FREE SONG:'Affrissipi 'Ngoppe Kam Mi Yaha''
AFRISSIPPI is a group featuring GUELEL KUMBA who comes from Senegal, West Africa. The nucleus of AFRISSIPPI was born when Eric Deaton, apprentice of the late JUNIOR KIMBROUGH, invited Guelel to explore the hill country sound of North Mississippi.
Eric carried Guelel to the home of bluesman R.L. BURNSIDE where they discovered the eerie similarities between some of Guelels Senegalese folk melodies and those of R.L. & JUNIOR, the patriarchs of the hill country boogie and cottonpatch trance blues. With R.L.s blessing, Guelel & Eric recruited his son and grandson, Garry & Cedric Burnside, as rhythm section.
AFRISSIPPI channels ancient boogie music & todays Mississippi hill country groove through the Delta Recording style - Its like the blues trying to be born!
Posted 01:08 PM, Aug 19 2008
FREE SONG:'Tributo a Dorival Caymmi!'
Brazilian composer and singer Dorival Caymmi, who catapulted to fame when Carmen Miranda performed one of his songs in 1938, died Saturday. He was 94.
He died of kidney cancer and multiple organ failure in his Rio de Janeiro home, his granddaughter Stela Caymmi told the Globo TV network.
Caymmi's lyrics were inspired by the beautiful women and folklore of the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia, where he was born. A deep, velvety voice also helped make him one of the country's most beloved
artists.
The song FREE SONG:'Tributo a Dorival Caymmi!' was composed by Baden Powell and is a beautiful acoustic guitar instrumental. Enjoy!! and celebrate this great musician's life!!
Posted 05:08 AM, Aug 11 2008
Peter Gabriel just launched two new digital music ventures: We7 (an advertising-driven music site) and TheFilter.com ( a music recommendation site).
FREE SONG:'Salala!' - w/Peter Gabriel
We7 lets users choose between buying recordings and downloading a free version with a 10-second ad. Royalties from downloads on We7 are paid to the record companies, which then pay a portion to the artists. The company, based in Britain, already has a licensing agreement with one of the majors, Sony Music Entertainment.
With it's focus on label artists We7, while offering a new model, seems to cater more to the labels than to the artists. Indeed, Gabriel is quoted in the New York Times saying: “I don’t believe in the death of the major record companies, but as an artist, I’d love to see them reinvented as service companies.”
We7's gimmick is simple: you get your songs for free, in MP3, but each one has a short audio advertisement before the music starts. That’s it. I'm not quite sure this is the path to the new revolution though. My response to listening to a free downloaded track (along with the ad) was 'I don't think so...!' The ad is intrusive, despite being short, and did nothing to make me want to download more songs from We7. Imagine a playlist made entirely of We7-sourced songs, with an ad played between each and every one!? Much worse than commercial radio... I just can’t see the MySapce generation rushing out to download ad-infested files like this. And those that do will not find it too hard to delete the ads in an audio editor.
TheFilter.com provides music, film and video recommendations based on user preferences. And the site keeps track and publishes what their audience is listening to with interesting results: TheFilter.com recently said that the number of people listening to downbeat music from the likes of Morrissey and The Smiths has soared in the past months too. (Autor's note: I have to say that my personal reaction has been just the opposite -- lately I've been listening to more and more upbeat music that I can dance to...)
Gabriel's early entreprenuerial ventures include Real World Records and Womad, the World of Music, Arts and Dance festival. Womad, a showcase for world music that currently presents annual concerts and workshops in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. His Real World label has an expanding catalog of 150 albums by artists from around the world. (One of Calabash's success stories was working with Thomas Mapfumo's self-produced album as a digital-only release which caught the ears of Gabriel and was re-released on the Real World label.)
The FREE SONG:'Salala!' is from Angelique Kidjo's album 'Djin Djin' and features Peter Gabriel's vocals -- and comes to you Ad-Free!! ;-)
Get more music by Angelique Kidjo
Posted 09:07 AM, Jul 30 2008
When it comes to Ska Cubano, rarely has the expression a match made in heaven been so apropos. Take classic rhythms from two of the worlds most musically influential islands, Jamaica and Cuba, mash them together like mint and sugar, add ample of amounts of intoxicating melodies and a dash of jest; the result is a magical musical cocktail that has been setting dance floors ablaze from London to Tokyo. Check out today's FREE Song:
The idea of creating a Cuban ska band originated with Peter A. Scott, a British entrepreneur and music lover whose business ventures brought him regularly to Jamaica and Cuba. Scott invited Natty Bo, a renowned London ska singer and devotee of all things retro, to travel with him to the city of Santiago de Cuba, often called the cradle of Cuban music because of its influential role in the development of popular Cuban music, to record with some of the best local musicians. Natty Bo, also a popular London DJ, was an avid collector of old Cuban 78s, and suggested bringing other flavors into the mix such as Colombian cumbia, Jamaican mento and Trinidadian calypso.
While in Santiago, Natty Bo heard Cuban crooner Beny Billy, the living reincarnation of the legendary Beny Moré, belting it out in a bar, and knew then and there he had found his vocal counterpart on the project. Back in London, Natty Bo formed a band featuring the leading maestros of Cuban and Jamaican music, and the group set about bringing the irresistible Ska Cubano sound to the concert stage. The rest, as they say, is history, or at least, historical revisionism, as Ska Cubano posits a world where the music of Caribbean cousins Jamaica, Cuba and beyond developed a closer kinship back in the day before reggae and salsa shook the globe.
Get more music from Ska Cubano here!!
Posted 04:07 PM, Jul 18 2008
Former member of Star Band de Dakar and Orchestra Baobab, Thione Seck has been an important figure on Senegal’s music scene since the 1960s. In the late 70s and early 80s Seck was one of the originators of mbalax, which has been Senegal’s most popular sound since then. Check out today's FREE Song:
Seck was always a fan of Egyptian superstars such as Abdel Halim Hafez and Oum Kalsoum as well as Bollywood playback singers Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle. These singers have influenced his singing style, sometimes subtly, sometimes in a more obvious way. - An interesting mixture of Africa and Asia, - Senegal and India, among others...
Even though Seck grew up in Senegal, he says that a childhood fascination with Hindu films led him to favor Eastern modes. He told Afropop, "It's like the scales of the Spanish, Hindu, Greek, Arab musicians. Each time I compose a song, I put a few notes from this eastern scale, because that's what I love the most." The contrast between the band's edgy alertness and Seck's air of spiritual intoxication is likely to raise the hair on your spine. Do you agree?
Get more music from Thione Seck here!!
Posted 09:06 AM, Jun 10 2008
FREE SONG:'Mouso Teke Soma Ye'
Boubacar Traore (Kar-Kar) has been dodging musical stardom for most of his life. In his youth, Boubacar Traore was known as the Malian Chuck Berry or Elvis Presley. People woke up every day to hear him singing on the radio. His most popular song at that time was "Mali Twist" which he has likened to a national anthem for the newly independent nation of Mali.
Traore is an artist who has affected an entire generation. His is the voice of a nation, its hopes and its fears. He is a storyteller, and his songs deal with daily living, the many facets of love, political conditions and solidarity. Sometimes they are small parables, resonant with meanings we'll never be able to understand, but clear to his friends. Perhaps the final words are best said by one of his peers, Ali Farka Toure: "If the maximum is five, I give ten to Kar Kar".
He insists he's no blues man. "Blues is blues," he says. "It's American. But there is also blues in Europe and blues in Africa. The languages are different, but you can see that all these kinds of blues have the same parents--same father, same mother." Get More Music by Boubacar Traore
Posted 09:05 AM, May 27 2008
Today's FREE Song is by André Bourgeois and Mano Bap!
André Bourgeois and Mano Bap are influenced by the 1960's and 70's jazz, and the experiments of Kruder and Dorfmeister and Erik Truffaz.
They have distanced themselves from the all powerfull Drum'n' Bass and have developed a sound that draws on the best of the technology and the acoustic. Bourgeois and Bap use a computer to record musicians -- not because they are strivng for the artificial, but because they are striving for emotion.
Today' s Free song will delight you with its editing, post production and sound texture. It's a breath of fresh air, for sure! Bap and Bourgeois lead us far beyond all musical and nationality allegiances, so watch out!
Get more music from André Bourgeois and Mano Bap here!!
Posted 09:05 AM, May 26 2008
Today's FREE Song is by Radio Mundial:
Radio Mundial (World Radio) is a musical collective originally formed by Puerto Rican/Peruvian vocalist and guitarist Jean Shepard and Chilean Swedish DJ and producer Andy Delano. Together with band members Gianni Mano (congas), Geraldo Flores (timbales), Andy Sanesi (drums) Gustavo Amarante (bass), they unleashed the dynamic sounds of their lush harmonies. Jean's cuatro (Puerto Rico's national instrument) also brings exciting percussion and a unique song-writing style.
The full Radio Mundial experience was born as the band soon began playing its modern fusion of Afro-Latin-inspired funk to packed stages in and around New York. Quickly they built a loyal following of devoted fans, and caught the ears and eyes of legendary music men and women. Check it out!!
Get more music from Radio Mundial here!!
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