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With a name like that, it seems that those brave, straw-hatted, wine-sipping fellows at Putumayo Headquarters are reaching down further into their barrel, sifting for those final sips of fine, ethnical symbolism — ie they seem to be scraping the barrel. Are they?

Second track ‘Bo’ee’ by The Idan Raichel Project is something that will be first choice for coffee shops, or other middle class, soulless retail shops that say that they have found the beauty in down to earth, natural ethics or they have a friendly atmosphere and their coffee comes straight from the homelands, carefully picked and nurtured, when in fact it’s an American company trying to imitate some small village shop on a national scale, shipping tonnes of coffee from cheap importers and not at all Fair Trade.

You think this is endless prattling that isn’t getting to the point of the song? You couldn’t be more wrong. Because blending ethnic minority culture with a trace of commercial reality and then twisting it, bastardising it, rebranding it and selling it is exactly what these releases are doing as well. With this release, a tiny fragment of ‘culture’ is plucked and then coated in an attractive package, with the ideals that are recognised in Western Culture (in the case of the songs, it is the high tech mastery, the drum loops and supplementary instruments that are literally a world away from the vocal rip they originally took to represent a different culture). It is changed, made friendly, then said to be a taste of a faraway land…

Balls, is it!

No wonder these compilations go hand in hand with false atmospheres in coffee shops, ‘authentic’ restaurants and so on. They are both as false as each other and are only any good to those that have yet to experience the original places.

This is not a condemnation of Putumayo, as such. They have released some fine little packages that has been true, but generally these prior releases have been more specific and understandable, and not just some broad, general, swooping statement that means they can collect whatever they think might be ethnic or a little colourful. Fair enough, celebrating the world and its fusion is a beautiful thing and is always great to see the great wide globe close in and bring cultures together as One and become at peace with each other. Okay! This is pretty much what this CD is celebrating, but somehow, we just don’t need this said, and if we do, it shouldn’t be so damn accessible! It should be different, new, exciting, fresh, raw! We don’t need those brave chaps at Putumayo to look through its publishing catalogue and release artists collaborations and say, ‘Aww, isn’t that lovely!’ When previous collections have celebrated songs that comes from specific world genres, like winelands, African, tribal, Celtic etc (or whatever), hitting us with the big money and releasing one about the World Cultures just seems silly and an attempt to drain a little bit more money from those short sighted folk that fell in love with its ‘owfentik saaands’ while they sipped on a coffee in Café Plonkére.

Keep ordering your XL coffee espresso chocolattas, pal. You don’t know how far away from the truth you really are.