Here's a musical missive that's being sent out to those with outernationalist ears: La Cherga's Fake No More is, hands down, one of the hottest pieces of global party music to be pressed to plastic this past year. Originally a group of Yugoslavian ex-pats that fled the country due to war, it was in Austria that La Cherga expanded into a haven for Balkan musicians. La Cherga are a live sound system: this is where Balkan brass and accordion rub comfortably against dub that's so deep you'll swear that you're on a Nyquil bender. And that's a good thing...
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Iranian-born Kayhan Kalhor, master of the kamancheh (Persian spiked fiddle), teams up on Silent City with the string quartet Brooklyn Rider (Colin Jacobson, Jonathan Gandelsman, Nicholas Cords, Eric Jacobsen), accompanied by Jeff Beecher (bass) and Mark Suter (percussion), for a group of compositions which offer interpretations of stories drawn from popular Persian myth. This effort grew from relationships forged at a gathering of musicians convened several years ago by Yo Yo Ma for the Silk Road Project at the Tanglewood Music Center. It is intended as an exploration of the frequently sparse minimalist phrasing and textures of the stringed quartet with the innovation of a leading master of the Persian kamancheh and their common bond of playing bowed instruments.
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Jazz and folk: this is a particular hybrid that, when it works, creates its own mood. Certainly the ECM label is the most recognized purveyor of this variety of border-crossing; and there are other worthwhile experiments to be found (Ronan Guilfoyle's Lingua Franca are one, and Pat Metheny and Anna Maria Jopek's recent Upojenie project both spring to mind). Bivoac are a new trio from Brittany that kick up a spectacular, jazz-drenched folk sound. The listener catches hints of the Breton tradition. None of the tunes are traditional, but written in accordance with folk forms (bourrees, hanter-dro, double plinn). Bivoac also have an affinity for the kind of improvisation one might expect to hear in French café culture.
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Even if juxtapositions like Indian classical singing, Middle Eastern percussion, and flamenco guitar have become increasingly common ingredients in the commercial "world-music" blender, it's not often that the qualifications "guitarist-composer" and "development economist" appear on the same résumé. Enter Sacha Silva, born in Canada of Sri Lankan and Bulgarian descent, teamed with fellow economics student and UK-Indian singer Munya B. (Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay) and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Morgan (not incidentally, also a composition fellow at the Royal Academy of Music). Anatomy of a Coup reflects upon an extended stint of travel and work in the global South, including the 2006 Fiji military coup to which Silva was witness. Dappled with radio-broadcast snippets from the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983, an extract from Fidel Castro's farewell address to Che Guevara, extended prophetic quotes from W.B. Yeats, and more, Anatomy is audacious precisely in eschewing the customary pretense of dogmatic idealism and multi-kulti "world-beat" mishmash...
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Mandolinist, flautist, and vocalist Wolfgang Meyering has brought together many outstanding musicians in his Malbrook project. 'Malbrook' means a mad, dancing person; the name is also attached to a melody found in northern Europe. This is fitting, as Meyering's main inspiration is amongst the sounds of northern Europe, where the original language of northern Germany - 'Low German' - met southern Scandinavian culture. "Qwade Wulf" itself is a dance tune that gives its name to this latest group offering, and as recorded by Malbrook, it is infused with Nordic spirit. Here, the dance is quietly strummed out by Meyering, before gaining urgency when Ralf Gehler's pipes join the tune: a set-up to a Low German version of a Dutch song, "Jogdelk Volkje," which descends into frantic fiddle and pipe lines, and even what appears to be the scream of an electric guitar...
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Whenever a musical artist (or artists) decide to record a 'classical' record, audience reactions vary. Is the motivation to appear more serious, as if western classical music anoints the artist with a kind of covered 'legitimacy'? As music critic Alex Ross has stated about classical music, the very name 'classical' implies to many that the music is dusty and dry, or that people do not compose 'classical' music anymore. Recording classical music is, then, a bit of a risk for the non-classical artist, who could be perceived as some hubris-filled Dr. Frankenstein seeking to revive the moldering remains of white-wigged composers. And that's where the Taraf de Haidouks shatter these preconceptions to pieces. Maskarada is a concept album, where they their attention to composed classical works by Bartok, de Falla, Khachaturian, Ketelbey, Albeniz, and Kosma and compare them to the tradition...
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Newest reviews

• Desert Blues 3, various Africa
• Unni Lovlid, Norway
• Fanfare Tirana, Balkans
• La Cherga, Austria/Yugoslavia
• Chiwoniso, Zimbabwe/US
• Bivoac, France
• Kalhor and Brooklyn Rider, Iran/US
• Paul Shapiro's Ribs & Brisket Revue, US
• Wolfgang Meyering's Malbrook, Germany
• Sacha Silva, global
• New English roots, UK
• Konono #1, Congo
• Djivan Gasparyan, Armenia
• Muammer Ketençioglu, Turkey
• Huong Thanh & Nguyen Le, Vietnam/US
• Rim Banna, Palestine
• Taraf de Haiduk, Romania
• Marimba Chapinlandia, Guatemala
• Le Trio Joubran
  Arabesque Music Ensemble
• Boban i Marko Markovic, Serbia
• Nidi D'Arac
  Ammaraciccappa, Italy
• Oysterband, UK
• 17 Hippies
  Polkaholix, Germany
• Oisín McAuley, Ireland
• ...plus many, many more.

A list of great woman blues guitarists is a short but glorious one: Memphis Minnie, Rosetta Tharpe, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Etta Baker, Ruthie Foster, Rory Block, Bonnie Raitt, and now, perhaps, Joan Armatrading. That's right, with the release of her self-produced, Grammy-nominated album and her current performance tour, the great British pop-rock-reggae singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading unquestionably enters that exclusive and distinguished sorority of female fretboard blues masters. Her newest recording, Into the Blues is such a fresh, original work ­ one on which Armatrading wrote all the songs, delivers all the vocals and plays all the instruments except the drums, herself ­ that it would draw much-deserved critical praise even if it had been released by an obscure new artist. Read more.

If she didn't exist, Mexican popular music would have to invent Chavela Vargas (born Isabel Vargas Lizano in 1919). Her signature interpretations of bolero and canción ranchera represent the incarnation of what writer Samuel Ramos christened México Profundo-deep Mexico, a spirit recognized by friends and admirers including Pablo Neruda, Gabriel García Márquez, and Carlos Monsiváis. Citing influences as diverse as Maria Callas, Edith Piaf, Carlos Gardel, Chabuca Grande, and Violeta Parra, Vargas ranks with the Mexican legends-Lola Beltrán, Lucha Reyes, José Alfredo Jiménez, Augustín Lara, Álvaro Carrillo, and Vicente Fernández among them. Throughout her life, she has stood the received conception of machismo on its head, embracing its ideals even as she defies them with a fighting spirit terrifyingly manifest in this remarkable cultural document, a CD-DVD package rounded out with an affectionate tribute by Monsiváis. Nearing 90, a hard-partying contemporary of Frida Kahlo and the Mexican muralists (she says she went to sing for Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and returned home only a year later), Vargas asserts, "I drank all of Mexico's tequila. This is why they do not have any more good tequila there." Read more.

With "Amuñegü" ("In Times to Come"), the closing track on the Garifuna Collective's Wátina, Andy Palacio beseeches, "Parents, please listen to me. Teach the children our language and our songs, our beliefs and our dances." Palacio said, in early 2007, "The song came from some soul searching, looking into the future and asking fundamental questions about the preservation and survival of Garifuna culture. It asks, 'Who will speak with me in Garifuna in times to come? Who will perform the dances? Who will lead us in the sacred dügü?' The time has come for these things to be taught and preserved.' It is a very simple statement that ends with children's voices singing, 'Lest we lose it altogether,' and a haunting cello figure. It still gives me chills when I hear it." Michael Stone remembers the music, words and legacy of the Belizean cultural icon in interviews with Andy and his friends. Read more.

With an enormous organ as a backdrop, it's a surprisingly formal setting for four chirpy young women from the north of England, who walk on stage carrying clogs and modest smiles. However, the polished wooden floors and excellent acoustics prove to be perfect for Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, a quartet set for a cult following in the UK following the excellent reviews of their latest album, The Bairns. The concert hall allows the delicious harmonies to soar, for the percussion in the form of high heels and the aforementioned clogs to resonate fully, for the audience to hang on every jazz-inspired chord on the grand piano under Belinda O'Hooley's fingers.
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"What I really believe about Cajun music is that it is the most American music there is. We play music that people feel like they've heard before, like it brings up memories they didn't know they had.... We got moved around a lot. Because of that we Cajuns have a Gypsy consciousness. The family stays together no matter what. And we also kept our music despite all our being shoved about and uprooted...." - RootsWorld's Bill Nevins talks with Michael Doucet
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The autoharp is an odd little thing. It's even considered odd by folk music enthusiasts. It's a string instrument with chord bars and dampers; that is to say, it looks like the homely child of a concertina and a zither. While it has been established that the instrument was designed in Germany, not in the states as earlier promoted by the Oscar Schmidt Company, a German immigrant named Charles F. Zimmermann brought it to America, where this novel invention really took off. Easy to play and extremely portable, the autoharp was often offered at the doorstep on an installment plan, another great 20th Century innovation. Musicologist and musician Mike Seeger talks about how he initially approached musicians like Kilby Snow and recorded he and other masters of the autoharp. Read more

When faced with an organist whose toupee had a life of its own and a "cantor who can't," Josh Dolgin created a new Jewish music for himself, and a new name, Socalled. He is probably best known for singing with and creating beats and samples for David Krakauer's Klezmer Madness. But the idiosyncratic and uncompromising fusion of hip-hop with Jewish and world music that he produces under his own name is beginning to attract a great deal of attention. In 2004, his Solomon and Socalled Hiphopkhasene even won a music critics' award in Germany for Best World Music Album. His group, the Socalled Orchestra, played in the Tempel Synagogue in the heart of the Jewish quarter of Kazimierz in Krakow, and Philip Palmer heard him in concert and in workshops.
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