cdRoots: down but not out!
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Cliff Furnald
cdRoots.com
The Afro-Semitic Experience offer "Further Definitions of the Days of Awe"
"Never before have I heard this lyrically powerful a fusion of Jewish and jazz souls on fire.” So says Nat Hentoff and I can’t agree more.
For most of the past decade the Afro-Semitic Experience has played the midnight Selichot service with Cantor Jack Mendelson at his synagogue in White Plains, NY. Theey have, in the process, created a new way to accompany cantorial music and they document it in this rousing recording of three concerts in August, 2010 just before the High Holy Days, one in New York City, one in New Haven, Connecticut, and one in Greenfield, Massachusetts. It features the band with special guests Cantor Jack Mendelson, Cantor Lisa Arbisser, Cantor Erik Contzius, cantorial soloist Danny Mendelson, and trumpeter Frank London.
Find the CD at
cdRoots
Travel back to the Golden Age of Senegalese music with N'Dour and 'The Starsof Dakar'
Etoile de Dakar featuring Youssou N'Dour
Once Upon A Time In Senegal: The Birth Of Mbalax 1979-1981 (
Stern's Music)
2 CDs
There are not many African artists whose names are as well-known as Youssou N’Dour’s. And it’s not just his ‘7 Seconds’ duet with Neneh Cherry, or his frequent collaborations with Peter Gabriel and others. No, you don’t reach his status just by who you hang out with, you get there by who you are and what you do. On one level these 2 CDs form a chapter in the story of who Youssou N’Dour is. But on another they show him simply as an equal member of a band … a band in the right place at the right time and doing the right things. That brief but vital moment in time is captured in these 23 tracks selected from the cassettes that Etoile de Dakar recorded between 1979 and 1981. Several have never been released outside of Senegal, and all have been sensitively re-mastered from the earliest available audio source. These are the best sounding recordings of this material available.
Listen to
some audio samples
Buy the CD at cdRootsLabels: youssou n'dour worldmusic senegal
Valravn Tests the Extremes of Nordic Roots Music
The Danish folktronica band
Valravn grew out of the acoustic medieval music ensemble Virelai, which had specialized in performing traditional music at medieval festivals. Valravn, updating old Faroese ballads sung in the original language, accompanied on hurdy-gurdy, flutes, hand drums, viola, mandola and electronic samples, have no equals on the Danish music scene. Ask Valravn percussionist, Juan Pino, and he will tell of an explosive development from the band's first album of mainly traditional material to their second,
Koder på snor, which relies more on their own compositions.
Morten Alfred Høirup investigates the new sound of Danish roots in his interview in
RootsWorld
The History of French Traditional Music (really!)
Une Anthologie des Musiques Traditionnelles (Frémeaux Associés)
This specially-priced set is a comprehensive anthology of the rich cultural heritage of French traditional music, featuring nearly 300 tracks, provides the listener a complete ethnomusicological panorama of the musical culture of France. The individual titles (recorded between 1900 and 2006) reveal the timeless and lasting nature of a collective memory reaching across whole generations, a memory which, in these times of globalization and uniformity, asserts the diversity of the heritage left to us by popular art-forms.
10 CDS - CD1 : Bretagne • CD2 : France de l’Ouest • CD3 : Auvergne et Limousin • CD4 : Centre France • CD5 : Sud-Ouest • CD6 : Méditerranée • CD7 : Alpes, Nord et Est • CD8 : Corse • CD9 : France d’Outre-Mer • CD10 : Français d’Amérique (more track info below)
Find out more
A Cuban pianist and a German Bigband hold a Ceremony
Think what you may of the Grammys, but the Academy got one thing (partially) right this past year:
Omar Sosa's 2009 recording
Across the Divide: A Tale of Rhythm & Ancestry was nominated for Best Contemporary World Music Album. While Béla Fleck took home the statue, the nomination introduced many people to the music of Omar Sosa. For these new listeners, this is good timing. The most recent release by Omar Sosa,
Ceremony, shows off his deep "world" credentials. Sosa, originally from Cuba, teamed up with Germany's
NDR Bigband and Brazilian arranger Jaques Morelenbaum, and the result is a powerful recording of celebration and joy.
Read More and Hear a SongBuy the CDSee more reviews of
World Music on
RootsWorld
Mariem Hassan sings of 'the thorn' of the Saharaui
Mariem Hassan sings with entrancing intimacy and poetry, in a a clear message calling for all to fight injustice, discrimination and persecution. All of these new songs have been developed in a close complicity with the poet Lamin Allal and the guitarist, Lamgaifri Brahim. Although very young, he has masered all the subtleties of
haul music. And Mariem, with the lack of a appropriate Saharaui guitarist over the last years, was inspired to finally realize all the songs she has been carrying in her heart for so many years.
The CD also contains innovative new ideas: the title song “Shouka” is a cantata developed by using all scales and rhythms of the Haul. The essence of the traditional
haul is impressively kept by Vadiya Mint el Hanevi, percussionist, chorus and dance, Lamgaifri Brahim, guitar, Mariem Hassan herself , with the important cooperation of poet Lamin Allal.
Listen! More audio and Biography of the artist at cdRoots
