Megan's World Music Blog

As anyone who reads this site regularly knows, I love France and all things French - the language, the food, the fashion, the attitude, etc. One of my life goals involves owning a fabulous penthouse on the Champs-Elysees, as well as a modest chateau somewhere in the country. Please note that my life goals also involve becoming a bazillionaire, preferably without having to work particularly hard at it.

Seriously, though, I'm not hard to win over when it comes to French music. I like pretty much all of it. I even have a soft spot for the borderline goofy house music that is synonymous with the discotheque scene. That said, I really liked the songs on Putumayo Presents Acoustic France, the latest offering from the world music powerhouse label. What I did not like, however, was the fact that the darn thing is only 36 minutes long. Yes, I do understand that a label like Putumayo, who conglomerates rather than produces the songs on each CD, has to pay royalties on each and every one, faces cost-inefficiency to pay for the rights to more than a dozen or so songs per CD. I also understand that longer songs do not necessarily mean better songs. That doesn't make me less convinced, though, that it's worth fifteen bucks for the CD. I'd rather just buy a full-length album from any given one of the artists featured (who include French first lady Carla Bruni) and get closer to an hour's worth of music. Yes, I'm a cheapskate (which will likely help me on my quest to bazillionairehood), but I think that we, as the music-buying public, have a right to a certain amount of bang for our buck.

If you are less stingy than I am, it is overall a great record. It moves nicely from folky ballad to uptempo love song, with a couple of cool Django-style swingy numbers thrown in for good measure. Pair it with the barely-longer Putumayo Presents Paris and a nice Languedoc vin de table and you might just make it through a traditional six-course meal. Maybe.

Album Cover (c) Putumayo Records, 2008

Apparently it's bad form for a writer to tell you how they write. But due to my complete lack of pride and/or shame, I'm going to tell you anyway. I began writing a Top 10 list of artists you might like if you like Edith Piaf sometime last Thursday. I finally finished it this morning. Generally, I'm a fairly quick writer. Not this time. Why did it take me so long? Well, it wasn't because it was hard to write - I love love love vintage French music. It took me so long because I kept getting totally distracted - whether it was by watching old clips of Mistinguett owning the stage on YouTube, listening to Lucienne Boyer sing "Parlez-moi d'Amour" over (and over, and over), getting totally bogged down in the amazing life story of Josephine Baker, and, of course, singing Edith Piaf songs at the top of my lungs in the shower. All of this was, of course, interspersed with me clapping my hands like a little kid and saying "Ahhhhhh - I wish I lived in Paris in the '30s!" It took awhile.

At any rate, the one thing that struck me as amazing was that most of these women led lives that would make Amy Winehouse and Lindsay Lohan look like overachieving Girl Scouts. Murder, drugs and scandalous affairs are just the tip of the iceberg. But the music... oh, la musique! I could ramble on for days about how much I love it, but instead, I think you should just have a listen - it speaks for itself.

Is it a total coincidence that sitar and guitar are similar-sounding words? It's not, in fact. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, guitar comes to English from the Spanish guitarra, which in turn comes from the Arabic qitar, which comes from the Greek kithara, which comes from the Persian sihtar, which is where the Hindi sitar comes from as well. Still with me?

Anyhow, in their modern incarnations, guitar and sitar don't have a whole lot in common. They both have strings and resonating bodies. They're both made of wood. George Harrison knew how to play both of them. That's about it. The sitar has lots of crazy features that are seem totally off-the-wall for people who are only familiar with Western music, and I imagine that Classical Indian musicians might find the guitar sort of limited, as it can only really play Western-style scales.

Okay, okay, I can't fake it anymore. The real reason I wrote a blog about the sitar is not because I wanted to babble about linguistics or comparative ethnomusicology (although I love babbling about both of those things). It's because I wanted an excuse to show you this: Sitar Hero. I know it's just a joke for now, but if they make it, I'm so playing it! Haha! (Ahem - if you don't get the joke, find the nearest eighth-grader - they'll explain it to you!)

Last week was a sad week in the world music community. We said goodbye to two world music legends - Ronnie Drew and Johnny "Dizzy" Moore. Ronnie Drew was the founding member of the highly influential Irish folk band The Dubliners. He was best-known as a guitar virtuoso, and was always open to fun genre-bending experiments - he even recorded with Celtic punk bands like the Pogues and the Dropkick Murphys in recent years. He was 73 years old.

Dizzy Moore was one of the founding members of ska legends the Skatalites. As a trumpeter, he pioneered the use of brass instruments in Jamaican music, making a horn section a must-have component of a ska band. Moore was also a virtuoso, and he learned to play his instrument in Alpha, a sort of juvenile detention center in Kingston. Interestingly, he was a very well-behaved child until he met another young musician who told him that he had gained his musical training in Alpha. Wanting to learn how to play, Moore began acting out and misbehaving with the sole intention of being sent to Alpha. It worked! Dizzy Moore passed away at the age of 70.

On a happier note, former No Doubt lead singer Gwen Stefani and her husband, rocker Gavin Rossdale, welcomed their second child, Zuma Nesta Rock Rossdale. I'm not sure where the name "Zuma" comes from (Zuma Beach, maybe?), but I can say with relative certainty that "Nesta" comes from Bob Marley, whose full name was Robert Nesta Marley. Zuma's big brother is named Kingston, which happens to be Bob Marley's birthplace. Do I sense a theme? At any rate, I wish the Stefani-Rossdale family all the happiness in the world.

I heart New York. Especially in the summer. Everywhere you go, there's a free concert, or a farmer's market, or a street fair. You can't take a turn without running into some delightful little enclave of New York's dazzling melting pot of cultures. I'm an upstater by birth, but I was smart enough to pair myself up with a Manhattan native, who has served as my personal tour guide for many years (highly recommended, ladies), and I've gotten to know the city like the back of my hand. Well, that's not totally true - I still have a bit of trouble with the subway system. I also point excitedly at the stunning Chrysler Building every time I see it. It can't be helped.

At any rate, as a culture vulture, I consider New York a little slice of paradise. I'm willing to overlook the weird smells that emanate from just about every sidewalk grate, the totally confusing subway system (I'm not alone in thinking this, am I?), and the incessant honking, because New York has everything you can possibly imagine, in terms of the arts. For me, the highlight of the city's cultural offerings is the bevy of world music clubs. I love seeing world music in fancy sit-down venues as well - Carnegie Hall offers great multi-cultural programming, as do Lincoln Center, the World Music Institute (who usually present their shows at Symphony Space), and most of the colleges. However, I also really like places where I can dance, chat, and kick back a couple of beers, so I often prefer club shows when they're available. Before any trip to the city, I always obsessively research my favorite clubs to see who's playing, and I realized that perhaps it was time I actually shared my favorite venues. Next time you're in the city (or tonight, if you live there!) browse through this list of my favorite NYC world music clubs to get some ideas for how to spend your evenings. Perhaps I'll see you there!

Yes, you read that right. About.com's illustrious guide to hip-hop, Mr. Henry Adaso, tipped me off to the fact that Snoop Dogg has recorded a Bollywood track for the film Singh is Kinng (sic). The title track, which is a collaboration with filmi music star Akshay Kumar, has apparently topped the Bollywood/filmi music charts, and the movie itself is wildly popular.

I'm personally a fan of Snoop Dogg and all of his exploits. He was the first musician who my parents forbid me to listen to (Full Disclosure: I listened to him anyway. Nice try, Ma.), and I still regard his music as one of my guilty pleasures. He also has a knack for keeping me generally amused with his forays into... well... places you wouldn't expect him to be. The Starsky and Hutch remake, for example. Or on Larry King, discussing the Democratic presidential nominees. Or doing an impression of German folk legend Roy Black for a German television commercial. Or teaming up with John Carter Cash (Johnny and June's son) for a Johnny Cash remix album. So I suppose I'm not surprised to see him venturing into Bollywood and filmi music, and I'm glad to see that he's done it with both style and substance. Watch the Singh is Kinng video yourself, and leave a comment to tell us what you think of it!

I was digging on this new CD called Con Otro Aire (as they put it) flamenco-chill band Chambao the other day. It's one of those exciting new finds that just sounds like summer to me - relaxed and simultaneously groovy and spicy. It's got a nice touch of flamenco, but with other Mediterranean influences as well (including Moroccan and Turkish rhythms and instrumentation). How convenient, then, that as I was perusing my friend Tijana Ilich's About.com Latin Music site, I discovered that she had reviewed the very same album which, only days earlier, I had paired with front-porch sangria. Check it out for yourself: Chambao - Con Otro Aire!

I'm pretty much an all-around music fan. I'm of the school that there are only two kinds of music - good and bad. I am not, however, of the school that lumps entire genres into one category or the other. Sure, I have my tastes, and some genres just tend to not hit me in the gut the way others do, but I'm getting more than a little tired of world and folk music fans trying to tell me that "that rap stuff just isn't music". The people who usually run their mouths about the invalidity of hip-hop will be happy to spend hours detailing the history of jeli kora music or the similarities of desert blues and Delta blues. When it comes to hip-hop, though, the fact that chanting over rhythms is a tradition that goes back thousands of years is a moot point, apparently. Also, the social contexts that actually define hip-hop as a genre of folk music are null and void, as it turns out. Hip-hop is (from what I am led to understand) loud, violent and requires no talent to participate in. It is not music. Evidently.

But I disagree. I think that hip-hop is only the latest link in a chain that ties us back to our earliest musical beginnings, before strings and woodwinds were even invented, before my ancestors left Africa for the chilly caves of Eurasia, and our human musical expression was as simple and as beautiful as a single person chanting over the beat of a single drum. It gives me shivers to think about it, actually, and makes me want to blast a CD of either a Ghanaian drum master or The Roots, or any of the other chanting-based music that came in between. The direct predecessor to hip-hop is, of course, dancehall music, something that's been on my mind a lot lately. It was a dancehall deejay named DJ Kool Herc who brought the style of toasting (chanting over riddims) to Queens in the early 1970s, subsequently setting off the entire history of hip-hop. And the music is not finished with its evolution - who knows what will come next? So, my dear world music listening friend, what are your personal feelings about hip-hop, and its relation to world music? Leave us a comment and let us know!

When you get to talking about genres of world music, you often come across the distinction between rural folk music and urban folk music. Neither one is more or less authentic, but they do tend to have different sources, motivations, and obviously, sounds. Rural folk genres include Jamaican mento, Hawaiian slack key guitar, and old-time music. Urban genres tend to be slightly more contemporary (as is, naturally, the very concept of urbanity) - they include Algerian rai, Portuguese fado, and hip-hop.

Jamaican dancehall falls into the latter category. It's a folk genre, that, like hip-hop, encompasses not only a sound, but an entire culture. The dancehall culture is, of course, controversial (particularly for lyrical content which is often heavily misogynistic and homophobic), but still worth studying and noticing. Lyrical content tends to be a window into the hardships and sorrows (as well as joys and opportunities) of a culture, and though I tend to find the "slack" (dirty) lyrics of many dancehall songs personally offensive, I can't see how ignoring the artistic output of a huge community actually solves any problems. And the many dancehall songs which are not offensive are totally addictive - the sound of the music is really compelling. What are your feelings about listening to dancehall? Is it worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater in order to avoid the negativity of so many dancehall artists, or do you simply take the bad with the good and go for it? Leave a comment and tell us what you think!

It's time to once again check around the world music blog world, and see what everyone's up to:

World Music Central has a review of a CD called Introducing Hanggai. Hanggai is a group from the grasslands of Mongolia, and they combine throat singing, folk instruments, and other eerily beautiful Asian sounds with some modern influences.

Calcopyrite Communications shares their impressions - and their favorite new finds - from the Harrison Festival of the Arts. They super-loved this group called Delhi 2 Dublin, who I now have to obsessively stalk to learn more about, because the folks over at CC always seem to have rather exquisite taste.

Spinner's Around the World Column takes a look at (and has a chat with) Northern African musician Rachid Taha, who is sitting right at the brink of world domination. Well, in a musical sense, at least. He's got a pop star mentality, and the chops to back it up, and it's likely that you'll continue hearing more and more from him.

And finally (for today, anyway) World Music Newswire digs deeply into the history of the balafon (African xylophone), via the music of Famoro Diabate. The Diabate clan is one of the great legendary griot families, and the family includes Toumani and Mamadou Diabate, among many others. It's always nice to learn about a new (to me) musical legend in the making!

Read anything great on a world music blog recently? Feel free to leave a comment and share!