world

  • One hasn’t lived until they’ve experienced the force of nature that is Takio Ito’s voice. If you’ve encountered the soul stirring vocal stylings of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Cesária Évora, Jacques Brel, and James Brown, you’ve come close to experiencing the sheer power of Japan’s own “folk” icon. Takio Ito’s TAKIO-ソーラン節 is an undisputed classic…

  • deluge

    Even for me, what I’m going to write next seems something out of a fever dream. Polly Eltes, elite, English model/actress seen in the pages of Italian Vogue, and on the catwalks of Europe, teams up with CAN guitarist Michael Karoli to create a forward-thinking blast of Fourth World dub music. If I didn’t have…

  • Mike and Robin from the Incredible String Band Now this is where we start hearing all those columns come together from the previous artists I’ve highlighted. The fantasy, ancient, modern, experimental, surreal, and spiritual all get combined into a solid vision of a neo-folk movement. The Incredible String Band’s “A Very Cellular Song” from 1968’s…

  • I’m heading into the island of Milo, Sicily for a tiny bit. Back to catch what Franco Battiato was doing around this time. What a surprise it is to see him wrap up all his first stabs at mixing the electronic with the serene into one way too far ahead for its time musical statement.…

  •   Nino Ferrer To tell the story of the artist involved in creating the masterful track of the day, “South”, I have to start backwards from his death. On August 13th, 1998, two months after his mother’s death, Nino Ferrer took the hunting gun from his Creole Cottage-style farm in Quercy in the southwest of…

  • Bernard Lavilliers Now here’s a man that walked the walk and talked the talk. Today’s track of the day, the unique groove of “San Salvador” by Bernard Lavilliers introduces us to the sound of the Southern hemisphere via the offbeat French pop we all might not know nor love. There’s something about Bernard that informed…

  • The Juju Kings: Ebenezer Obey and Sunny Ade I have a brief review for the day. Sometimes, when you’re feeling more than a bit under the weather, like I feel today, you need a track that carries your burden for a bit. Today’s track of the day “Fimi Lokan Bale” simply does it for me.…

  • Fausto Bordalo Dias Now that I’ve shared the brilliance of Carlos Paredes and Zeca Afonso with y’all I have to tie the influence those two artists together had right? If ever there was a musical masterpiece that just screams with the unique sound and influence of Portugal its Vila Franca das Naves-native Fausto’s Por Este…

  • Zeca – 1971 Today’s track of the day, “Coro da Primavera” (Springtime Chorus), comes from the supremely important Portuguese artist Jose “Zeca” Afonso. Born in 1929 in the port city of Aveiro, Portugal this fairly inconspicuous man would be the last person you’d think who would grown up and write such songs like “Grandola, Vila…

  • Carlos Paredes – 1971 Imagine launching a revolution without even saying one word. That’s the revolution in sound and in history that Carlos Paredes from Coimbra, Portugal was able to achieve. Fado, the blues music of Portugal, has melodies and sentiment informed from hundreds of years of colonial rule. The further the naval empire stretched,…

ambient art pop art rock balearic brazilian electro-acoustic england environmental music experimental folk-rock fourth world Funk fusion japan jazz minimalist neo-folk neoclassical new age walearic