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Chris Stratchwitz never saw himself as a record producer, even though his label, Berkley, California-based Arhoolie records, produced hundreds of albums. Likewise, he never saw himself as a photographer either, even though he always brought a camera to recording sessions and festivals where he visually documented the various streams of mid-twentieth century American folk music released on Arhoolie. And because he passed away at the age of 91 earlier this year, it only made sense to collect many of his best photos for Arhoolie Records Down Home Music: The Stories and Photographs of Chris Strachwitz. Read Bruce Miller's review.

It’s been several years since Denmark’s Helen Blum & Harald Haugaard Band released their last album. Life and a global pandemic intervened, but they began performing again, and they’ve finally returned to the studio, with the old crew still together, alongside a few guests. The sound of Den Store Sommer is pared back, with a focus on original material from Blum and husband Haugaard, with a couple of traditional pieces and covers in there, like an aching version of Tim O’Brien’s lilting “The Garden.” Listen to the music and read Chris Nickson's review.

Back in 2019, we were introduced to Bâton Bleu's Weird and Wonderful Tales and their "hybrid of styles from France, Louisiana, Mongolia, and elsewhere” as David Cox wrote in his review. The France based duo of Maria Laurent and Gautier Degandt, and their quirky songs in French and English, were enchanting and sometimes disorienting.

As we approach the end of 2023, Gautier Degandt returns with a new ensemble, with all the quirkiness, and a harder edge. En Gramma ("the trace that memory left”) is a trio of Degandt on lead voice, and kalimba here and there, with Oscar Philéas on guitars and chorus, and Pierre-Yves Dubois on percussion, chorus and occasional violin. Beau Brûlis (Burnt Beauty) is an adventure, a complex mixture of subtly, rawness and humor. It leans heavily on blues guitar structures, but I'll not call it blues, or rock. They call it 'trance rock,' but I am not sure if I am so much mesmerized as simply fascinated. Find out more about this intriquing trio.

In duets of original songs, Brazilian guitarist Fabiano do Nascimento and British saxophonist Sam Gendel pay homage to jazz and tradion from Brazil and beyond. Here's the single from their upcoming album, The Room.

Sound Bites is our collection of short reviews, and well, sound bites.

At the 2023 edition of EXIB Música, a showcase of music from Iberia and Latin America by engaging performers from both sides of the Atlantic, one who particularly charmed, a considerable discovery, was Mexican artist Laura Itandehui. There’s a lovely clarity in the sound of her self-titled debut, with her voice always floating clear and direct over beautiful, varied arrangements. Itandehui presents us with a short but perfectly formed album, with not a note wasted; a luminous, melodious gem that deserves to be a classic. Read Andrew Cronshaw's review and listen.

The fourth album from The Furrow Collective celebrates a decade of them playing together with a glory of material and perfectly judged performances. We Know By The Moon is very much a nighttime collection of traditional songs and a bit more... Quite a grouping it is, too, with Emily Portman, Alasdair Roberts, Rachel Newton and Lucy Farrell all returning. Between them, they boast impressive resumes and instrumental skills, as well as their vocal abilities. Chris Nickson lights a fire and invites you to listen.

Folk icons Eliza Carthy and Jon Boden have thrown down the gauntlet in the Christmas stakes with Glad Christmas Comes. Where some might see the lengthening shadow of the commodified Christmas season to be unseemly, Carthy and Boden respond with more Christmas, by which they mean more wassail and more cheer for these blighted times. It’s the message of Christmas that ultimately matters, and that message encourages us to be our best selves. And to sing. Across a generous sixteen tracks, they lay out a strong holiday repertoire. They and some friends offer a contribution in terms of lyrics, music, and exploration of source materials. Lee Blackstone settles in with some new Christmas revels.

Wherever European expatriates landed in the Americas, the accordion often followed, as in northeastern Argentina, where accordionist-composer Chango Spasiuk’s Ukrainian grandparents immigrated in the late 19th century. Over a career spanning 35 years, Spasiuk has become a distinguished exponent of the unique chamamé style, and a scholar of folk traditions from Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Brazil. Spasiuk and his artistic partners summon an atmospheric music of profound serenity, beauty, and feeling on Eiké: Entrar en el alma. Michael Stone listens in.

There are albums that find their homes burrowed in the dark, deep recesses of our minds. No earworms, no bright, catchy melodies, just a profound sense of disturbance. That’s Cyrm, the first album from Irish quartet Øxn, taking the music about as dark as it can go. No redemption, no light and shade, nothing but shadows and fleeting ghosts. Listen to their take on the traditional song “The Trees They Do Grown High,” and the bleakness is obvious from the first piano chords. It’s Lear’s blasted heath set to music. Chris Nickson reviews.

There’s quite a variety of bagpipes across the countries of the former Yugoslavia. Well-known pipers from Serbia include Bokan Stankovic, the late Darko Macura, and here, Vanja Ilijev from the city of Zrenjanin in the northern plain of Vojvodina recorded solo at his house in Zrenjanin in April 2023. He plays the local form of gajde (the Serbian word for the range of bagpipes). It’s bellows-blown, with a single drone and a large double-bore chanter terminating in a wooden horn. On the album Made in Zrenjanin: Serbian Music from Vojvodina he uses gajdes of this type in three different keys, each with its own tonal character. Andrew Cronshaw reviews.

Four years after this Italian vocal quartet first began, Mesudì are releasing their debut album, Nodi. Three women and one man who create a labyrinth of voices shifting and sliding around each other on arrangements so intricate that each song must take days to rehearse. The results are quite majestic, starting with “Anvaca,” where the females singers and driving percussion provide a base for Simone Pulvano’s raw sprechgesang, something very close to rap on the traditional lyrics. Chris Nickson reviews.

I am very pleased to be sharing some wonderful performances of new Danish music, recorded live at a festival in Denmark in August of 2023. Both were part of a series dedicated to promoting Danish music to a wider audience, both locally and globally. Here are the first two.

Høst is a quartet of women from Denmark and Sweden with an interesting take on tradition and voice. Listen here!
Danish Fiddle Quartet is a string quartet formed by violinist Jørgen Dickmeiss that plays modern Nordic folk music. Listen here!

Nordri is a quartet of superb Québecois musicians bond over a love of Nordic music. What they put together in Échos Des Mers Du Nord is nothing short of sparkling. Virtually all original work, there’s a real joy in their exploration here, a sense of listening and giving each other space, as well as excitement in performing which gives such a driving quality to the opener, the very Swedish-inflected “Le Retour Du Drakkar.” The interplay between the violins, viola, mandolin, Baroque guitar and bass is always delightful, and the very clear separation of instruments in the mix makes listening a sheer pleasure. Hear more of the music while you read Chris Nickson's review.

In a Facebook post about her latest album, Rhiannon Giddens self-deprecatingly joked that it wasn’t until she turned forty-six that she finally made a record composed entirely of her own songs. But maturity has its rewards. With You’re the One, the singer, banjoist, and violinist delivers the most assured and enjoyable work of her career. She weaves together the various strands of her brand of Americana with flair and confidence, and her singing, which at times could be note-perfect to the point of sounding studied, now has a welcome looseness and freedom. The pure tones and deft way with melody (legacies of her opera training at the Oberlin Conservatory) are still there, but she can dirty up a line with bluesy growls and moans. Read George De Stefano's review and listen to some of the music.

Luzmila Carpio’s Inti Watana: El Retorno del Sol provides moments when the earth opens up and a bird-like cry echoes from the interior. We are listening to a conversation with Pachamama or Mother Earth and in this world “god is alive and magic is afoot.” At 74 years old, these may be some of Carpio’s last words on women’s rights and the rights of her indigenous kindred, the fate of the planet and her spiritual values. She is a messenger of social justice, her music an expression of rebellion.

Many of her songs are sung in her native Quechua. She grew up on the high plains in Bolivia, where her mother taught her to carefully listen to bird calls and mimic their pitch in order to penetrate the temporal world and converse with Mother Earth. She was told to refine her sound to a pitch as thin as a strand of hair so the earth will receive it. On this album, a backdrop of electronic and acoustic instruments is provided by producer Leonardo Martinelli, aka Tremor, an artist dedicated to joining Latin American folk rhythms with modern electronics. His sound is added in a respectful way that elevates and enhances Carpio’s music.

Read Lisa Sahulka's full review and hear some of the songs from the album.

The album is our pick for Music of the Month for November, 2023.

Hazmat Modine has the soulful, scruffy feel of traditional music, but the magic of the band is that it never quite lands in one specific tradition. On Bonfire they continue to call out from a unique musical territory that co-locates with American genres. But they do so with some sleight-of-hand, introducing instruments from other cultures as well as concocting powerful songs with varying mixes of wise man and wiseguy... Though Hazmat Modine's nominal ancestry is based on folk traditions, careful listening shows that the band's music is a thoughtful refinement of that global heritage. Band leader Wade Schuman and company are not folk musicians—no blacksmith cum fiddler here—they are artists channeling the egalitarian heart of roots music for everyday folks; preserving its urgency while making it sophisticated too. Marty Lipp reviews. Come read and listen.

Rather famously, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and many others have all questioned the idea of jazz, believing the term to be too small to encompass a genre better defined as 'black classical music.' Drummer and writer Yuseff Dayes uses the term to define the 19 compositions presented here. It is a dreamy meditation with tiny interludes for connective tissue. His album Black Classical Music is so remarkable that it is humbling to review.

Kassa Overall’s music, like Dayes' work, is a watershed moment for jazz; a true child of bebop, hard bop and cool jazz, not a regurgitated half mix of rap, hip-hop, R&B and jazz. It is definitely not smooth jazz. It is its own genre, specific to Overall’s time and place in this universe.

Lisa Sahulka digs in deep to the how and why of this music.

There's such a solid instrumental dance tradition in Québec, so sometimes it's hard to sort through all the fine artists making music there. Nordri's new album Échos des mers du Nord jumped right out at us, though. We'll have a full review soon, but for now, give one of their more exclamatory tunes a listen. Bet you can't dance to it!
Sound Bites is our collection of short reviews, and well, sound bites.

Eventyrferd (Fairytale journey), the second release from Norwegian saxophonist Camilla Hole and her trio, demonstrates perfectly how music brimming over with new ideas and varied instrumentation can really work when understatement is the guiding principle, where nothing is ever allowed to outstay its welcome. Sometimes there's more than a brush with free jazz, at other times there's electronic wizardry, but pretty much at the heart of all the tracks is music from, or informed, by Norwegian traditional music - dance tunes, wedding marches and different vocal styles. Mike Adcock reviews.

Between 2020’s Vodou Alé and this year's Somanti, Chouk Bwa - the collective of Vodou-steeped musicians from Gonaives, Haiti - and Brussells-based electronics duo The Ångströmers faced pandemic-based separation, but also managed to release a few EPs as well as a European tour in 2022. Somanti certainly feels as if they never stopped, though its power might be a reaction to the fact that a public health emergency forced them to do that very thing. The basic concept- relentless hand drumming and call-and-response vocals filtered through an often subtle haze of electronics hasn’t changed. Yet the new album feels busier, more urgent, louder. At times, it’s unclear just what role The Ångströmers play in any of this; elsewhere squelches and blips sneak in and out of the stew Chouk Bwa create. It’s a bit like trying to spot Brian Eno’s contributions to those first two Roxy Music albums. The fact that this record was done in a single day after their tour last year might have something to do with the energy here. Bruce Miller reviews the latest from this collaborative ensemble.

Trio Grekow-Peev-Tsvyatkov features three musicians who come to this project having each made a name for themselves in numerous other collaborations. Accordionist Jacek Grekow is Polish but has long been interested in Balkan music; Peyo Peev is already a renowned exponent of the gadulka, the bowed instrument from his native country Bulgaria, and guitarist Hristiyan Tsvyatkov, also from Bulgaria, has played internationally with various ensembles. They have now come together to produce the trio album Balkan Grooves, and it certainly makes for an interesting listen. Read Mike Adcock's review and hear the music.

The Aga Khan Master Musicians display a high level of musicianship, presenting coherent collaborative performances which belie the fact that they emanate from a range of musical backgrounds, encompassing the Middle East, Central Asia and China. “Tashkent,” the opening track of their debut album Nowruz showcases this admirably, setting the style of what is to come... Each of the six musicians playing have contributed at least one composition to the album, either played solo, as in the case of Jasser Haj Joussef's "Cadence" performed on the viola d'amore, or anything upwards of that. Read Mike Adcock's review and listen to some of the music.

In 1944 a teenage gospel sextet from the Alabama Institute for the Negro Deaf and Blind appeared on 'Echoes of the South,' a popular Birmingham program hosted at radio WSGN. They had formed in 1939, inspired by their idols the Golden Gate Quartet, they called themselves the Happy Land Jubilee Singers. In 1948, they rechristened themselves The Five Blind Boys of Alabama. Nearly 85 years later, with an ever-shifting lineup, The Blind Boys of Alabama continue to record and tour today. They return this year with Echoes of the South, as well as a documentary about their remarkable history. Read Michael Stone's review, listen to some of the songs, and see the trailer for the film.

Flamenco is one of the best-known folk music forms in the world. The sheer visual image of dancers, draped in sweeping red or polka dot floor length dresses that they harness like bull fighter capes as they spin to castanets and flamboyantly strummed guitars, certainly has had much to do with its fame. One of its most famous singers, the silver-voiced Camarón de la Isla, with his guitarist Paco de Lucia, is also crucial to its international acclaim. So, it might seem odd for Dust to Digital, a label known mostly for housing boxed sets of obscure 78 RPM artifacts to focus its attention on it at all. But then, there must be some part of flamenco’s story missing. And it’s the desire to cut through the cheap, tourist-based flamenco performances and get to the music’s mysterious soul that is the reason Bolinus Brandaris- Flamenco from the Bay of Cadiz exists. This is a book first, though the accompanying 42-minutes of music on the CD explains in sound the story that the book tells. Bruce Miller delves into the stripped down rawness of the real flamenco presented in this box set of book and music.

Singer, accordionist and pianist Ondrej Druga's ensemble, Ondro A Kamaráti present traditional and new works with deep roots on Pod Oblockom. After a tepid start, Andrew Cronshaw writes that the transformation into the album he wanted to review comes with the third track, “Hora Mi Je Hora.” A brief tinkle of piano, then in soars the strong, traditional voice of Sabína Ladecká in a song from the Horehronie village of Vernár. Druga joins her with a much more powerful voice than he used in the first two tracks, then the track really opens up gloriously as violins, viola and double bass join the piano in an arrangement that’s anthemic, rich - indeed lush, but really comprehends the modal nature of the melody, and both singers let rip, individually and in duet. Read the full review and listen.

We get a tour of 20 tracks of new music on World Music From Slovakia - Best of 2019-2023. These songs, not a weak one among them, exemplify what a head of steam the current Slovak roots scene has developed. Most here have won or been finalists in Slovakia’s Radio Head Awards, and quite a few have appeared in the higher reaches of the world music charts. Thirteen have credits that include the word ‘traditional,’ with arranger or co-writer credits to band leaders or members; the remainder are new compositions, and all have pretty highly-developed arrangements. In a nice touch - unusual in compilation albums, the enclosed notes list each track with descriptions, the names of the band or lead musician, all band members, and their instruments. Andrew Cronshaw explores these tracks and you can listen as you read.

Tajikistan, bordering on Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and China, is a mountainous country with a population of about ten million, the great majority of whom are Tajik. It became independent in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. Lost in Tajikistan is what producer Lu Edmonds describes as “just a tiny slice of the mountain music... whose rich traditions have soaked up the traffic of the Silk Roads and beyond for thousands of years.” These recordings aren’t from archives. They’re from 2008 when Edmonds and musician Iqbal Zavkibekov put together a 16-track recording setup in Dushanbe’s Gurminj Museum of Musical Instruments. We’re not talking Abbey Road here. It was -20°C outside, and although the museum was heated, much of the warmth came from the musicians who packed in to grasp an opportunity to record. It’s only now that those recordings have been cherry-picked and mixed to finally make this album by an interesting collection of musicians and singers. Andrew Cronshow delves into the tracks. Andrew Cronshow delves into the tracks.

This album is our selection for Music of the Month for October. Monthly subscribers will get the full digital album and notes as my thank you for supporting RootsWorld. Subscribe now and get this and a previous CD selection.

Omar Sosa and Paolo Fresu have a three album trilogy, Eros and Alma, and now their latest, Food, takes on another layer of their cross cultural musical exploration. What elevates Omar Sosa’s playing is that his improvisational muse is grounded by the clave and montuno of Afro-Cuban music. Sosa may go farther afield but he always comes back to the invisible scaffolding of Cuban music. These parameters are joyous constraints that make him so interesting to listen to.

Paolo Fresu is an Italian trumpeter from Sardinia Italy, who is often compared to the moody atmospheres Miles Davis and Chet Baker conjured. On Food, Sosa and Fresu have created a beautiful album that channels the joy of food, the communal table life, and also the implications of climate change, in an emotional and intimate album. Read Lisa Sahulka's review and listen.

U.S. fans of Sharon Shannon’s lively and lovely music will have just one more chance to see her perform stateside - she recently announced that her current tour of the US will be her last, though she will continue to release albums and tour elsewhere... The tour also coincides with the release of Now and Then, a boxed set of Shannon’s catalogue, which began in 1991 with the release of her eponymous debut, one of the biggest selling album of Irish traditional music in history. Since then, Shannon has stayed rooted in the tradition while collaborating with an international array of musicians—from Jackson Browne to Sinead O’Connor to British dub-poet Linton Kwesi Johnson to Galician piper Carlos Nunez—and incorporated other cultures into her repertoire. Sharon Shannon talks about how she found her way to the accordion and tells us old old stories and upcoming plans in her interview with Marty Lipp.

Magos Herrera’s meticulously crafted musical gift is like an undulating mosaic, the colors of its myriad tesserae growing in hue and intensity as she adds new facets to her musicianship. The mosaic grows brighter still as her spirit, intelligence and body in motion reveal her personal interpretation of the music that has captivated her: jazz. “Freedom,” she says, “that’s jazz to me. It’s harmonic sophistication with freedom.”

An artist of composition, voice, collaboration, even the finery of album design, Herrera did not come to jazz as if raised in its bosom. Having been born in Mexico where there was no true jazz culture, she’d had little exposure to the idiom as a child, although she recalls itinerant foreign musicians who passed through her hometown of Mexico City, and others who’d stayed, especially exiled Brazilians bringing with them their many rhythms, weighty lyrics, and winsome vocalists. Magos Herrera talks with Carolina Amoruso.

After more than two decades together, the three members of Genticorum form one of the tightest units on the planet. In music from their native Québec (both traditional and original) they have found a rich seam that clearly has plenty of treasures to mine.

They open with "La Batelière," which crackles with gleeful energy. The interplay between the instruments and harmonies is sharp and adept, yet still a completely natural, high-octane conversation that constantly shifts from one player to another.
Hear the music and read Chris Nicksons review.

Au Coeur De L'Aube is our pick for Music of the Month for September, 2023.
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"It is not always easy to love what we have, because sometimes it weighs on us like tons and tons of cement."

Conflict and ambivalence are at the heart of this delightful, surprising offering from musician Mar Grimalt. Espurnes I Coralls (Sparks and Corals) is fresh, personal, and hard to pin down. When I think of Mallorca, I imagine a place of bright daylight, holidays and warm sun-baked spaces of leisure. For singer and composer Mar Grimalt it conjures up images of industrial sand dunes, gravel and giant machines. She grew up on the island, and her family runs a cement factory... She played in the gravel and sand mountains as a child but began to develop a more critical stance as she grew older. She says she is looking to honor the family's life's work, and to reconcile "the little doll that played in the mountains of gravel" with her need to break free of its hard-shell confines. That may be, but the family business plays large in the album, with soundscapes and on-site samples from the family business. Recorded in July 2022, it layers and mixes spoken word, ambient noise and music into lush and unusual offerings. Mallorcan poetry wafts through the album, which means that words as much as music matters here. Explore this unique recording with Martha Wilette Lewis.

In his lovely, soulful second album as the collaborative Too Sad for the Public, composer Dick Connette reverently and sometimes irreverently takes the roughhewn spirit of American folk music and refines it like a hunk of whale bone etched into an elaborate, beautiful scrimshaw. On his latest, Vol. 2: Yet and Still, Connette mostly turns to Canadian-born and Brooklyn-based Ana Egge as the vocal focus of the songs with lyrics. Her bluesy drawl, reminiscent of a laidback, late-night, jazz-hipster, gives the songs a sardonic, wry sensibility. Though known as a composer, he also shines as a lyricist. His sung stories have the resonance of folk wisdom, but he seasons his wisdom with wry touches of absurdist wit. Read Marty Lipp's review and listen to some of the music.

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About RootsWorld: RootsWorld is a world music magazine started in 1993, pretty much at the dawn of the term "world music" as well as the pre-dawn of internet publishing (I suspect this was the first music magazine of any sort published on the www). Our focus is the music of the world: Africa, Asia, Europe, Pacifica and The Americas, the roots of the global musical milieu that has come to be known as world music, be it traditional folk music, jazz, rock or some hybrid. How is that defined? I don't know and don't particularly care at this point: it's music from someplace you aren't, music with roots, music of the world and for the world. OK?

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