If you want to be one of those impossibly smug folk who have tired of new discoveries before the rest of the world has even heard of them, this is the album for you. Vanessa da Mata is going to hit in a big way: think Bebel Gilberto with bass and attitude
Posts tagged Portugal
Wow! The Wah Wah 45s’ hit machine continues at a pace as Volume 2 is packed with the usual high standard tunes and some tasty special bits
Continue reading Wah Wah 45s – Underground Hits and Exclusive Bits 2
The ngoni, the small plucked lute said to be a forerunner of the banjo is most often found taking a support rôle to the guitar or kora. But it wasn’t always thus, and the world’s leading exponent has just released a new album that aims to bring the instrument — and the Bamana tradition from which it hails — firmly back centre stage
Continue reading Bassekou Kouyate – Blue Like a River to a Desert
When an Arabian sound is the backdrop to a Portuguese-spoken album, the genre is no longer instantly recognisable; dividing the listener between the Portuguese lyrics and the rich Arabic melodic tones
Town And Country have been quiet of late but their latest CD has caught the spirit of the experimental, folk modern classic.
“I’m writin’ a letter to the old skool, shockin’ and rockin’ the house” sums up this album in many ways, but there’s more to it than just a homage to eighties b-boys.
Displaced, abandoned and yet somehow triumphant, the Sara Tavares story is as extraordinary as her music. Join her on the journey from saudade to balancê
Before her sassy performance at this year’s WOMAD in Reading, the glamorous singer Lura shared stories of her unique Cape Verdean ancestry with a slice of cake to celebrate her thirtieth birthday. Beautiful, intelligent and absurdly talented, there is a huge buzz about this young singer who has been likened to the great Cesaria Evora
Also going under the name Lighting Head, you may have come across Glyn ‘BiggaBush’ Bush previously as he was a member of Rockers Hi Fi — whose tracks regularly appeared on compilations such as the influential Kruder & Dorfmeister Sessions…
Bonga Kwenda, usually known simply as Bonga, is a veteran of the “world music” scene, and the semba music he sings is a wonderful example of a fusion spanning three continents which is all the more vibrant for its ancient roots.
Each sound that Tobin gets his hands on (which has in the past included spitting and motorbikes) is warped and sampled, eventually weaving a bit of a spell around the unsuspecting listener. His latest victim: none other than Fly’s Zoe Street…
Continue reading Beatsmith v Wordsmith as Fly Meets Amon Tobin
This duo’s haunting music, inspired by the melancholia of the Portuguese soul, is refracted through the prism of the spaghetti western. They create open musical spaces in which to contemplate where fatalism meets fatality.
‘I sing the nostalgia, the saudade, the sound of the islands, the hope of the rain, the love, the life, the happiness…’
