Malian desert blues, Nigerian Afro-Beat, South African mbqanga and kwaito, Senegal's mbalax, Congolese rumba and soukous - these and a few other African styles have established niches in the global music marketplace. Two recently issued compilations bring welcome exposure to the somewhat lesser known sounds of Guinea and Ghana. The two-CD set Authenticité: The Syliphone Years, Guinea's Orchestres Nationaux and Federaux, 1965-1980, presents 28 selections by the government-supported national and federal bands that emerged after Guinea achieved independence from France in 1958... The twelve tracks that comprise Bokoor Beats document a sea change in Ghanaian popular music, the early 1970s movement away from large dance orchestras to smaller bands that specialized in Hendrix- and Santana-inspired rock, funk a la James Brown, and the Afro-beat of Fela Kuti. Bokoor - which means "coolness" -- was the name of a band and a recording studio. The band was formed in 1971 by Ghanaian guitarist Robert Beckley and John Collins, an expatriate Englishman; the studio, located outside the capital city of Accra, was founded by Collins in 1982. George De Stefano looks back on some classics of the "Golden Age."
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I Tarantolati di Tricarico has been a driving force in Southern Italian culture, interpreting and performing their music with an incredible dynamism. There is no shortage of groups resuscitating the ancient music of tarantism in the South of Italy these days, but this dynamic band has been involved in this endeavor since the 1960's (the band's biography indicates that they were officially 'born' in 1975). This was the time of the first wave of the Southern Italian folk revival, a time when the music of the pizzica was, in the words of the historian Luigi Chiriatii, a "broken memory": painful to listen to, as many people emigrated from Southern Italy to escape the poverty and hardship of the land. Performing the ritual music and old folk songs was a political act, a way of giving voice to expressions experienced and felt but oppressed in the modern age. Read More | Listen

Living in a big city, everything is strange, impersonal and anonymous. You are longing for family, home and all the things you used to have. All you want to have is a little piece of home, like the smell of mother's kitchen, the tales father used to tell, the feeling of places you know like the back of your hand. Maybe just a letter will bring it all back, some news from those you love, sharing some old memories. ErsatzMusika send such Voice Letters. All the members of the ensemble were born and grew up in the former Soviet Union. They moved to Berlin in the early 1990s, where Irina Dobrovskaja founded the band in 2006. In the name of the band and the album title, Dobrovskaja tells of a music scene in Russia that was very different. They grew up with Russian pop, but also central Asian music and Gregorian chant. There was also a kind of underground music scene; anonymous songwriters, who recorded their songs at home and passed them around on tape...
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The Soviet Union's demise had a bracing effect on musical creativity in Hungary, where talent abounds and the hits keep coming-as anyone who's turned an ear eastward already knows. Singer Ági Szalóki straddles genres like no one else in her realm, leader of her own ensemble after woodshedding with the Ökrös Ensemble and Besh o droM. Following up on Hallgató (Lament), the wraithlike soprano's 2006 Golden Fonogram-Hungarian Music Award winner for best jazz album, Cipity Lörinc is ostensibly pitched to children, although this is anything but the bubblegum treacle you'll extrude by querying Amazon.... Michael Stone listens in more music from Hungary.
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Over the past century, traveling recordists have collected an astonishing variety of the world's music. Some of it found commercial release, but the vast majority - recordings collected by ethnomusicologists compiling material for dissertations, by folklorists seeking the antecedents of important ballads, by anthropologists documenting rituals, and so forth - rests on archival shelves, essentially as undiscovered and unheard as it was when it was first put on tape. Every so often, a collection of crucial recordings finds its way to release in today's market, as witness the repackaging and release of the Alan Lomax field recordings. Voices for Humans, Ancestors and Gods is another example of this phenomenon. On the shelves of the British Library Sound Archive are thousands of pieces of music collected over more than a century, the first items going back to a British anthropological expedition to the Torres Straits in 1898. This is one of the largest sound archives in the world, and any opportunity to sample its contents should not be missed.
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Newest reviews

• Bevinda, Portugal/France
• Andy Palacio
  The Garifuna Women's Project, Belize/Garifuna
• Marc Egea, Spain
• Diego Amador, Spain
• Oliver Mtukudzi, Zimbabwe
• Abyssinians , Jamaica
• Piccola Bottega Baltazar, Italy
• Ambrozijn, Belgium
• I Tarantolati di Tricarico, Italy
• ErsatzMusika, Germany (former USSR)
• Rachel Unthank, UK
• Haydamaky, Ukraine
• Goran Mansson, Sweden
• Ale Mollor Band, Sweden
• Unnaddare, Italy
• Bi Kidude, Zanzibar
• Fernhill, Wales-UK
• Avion Travel, Italy
• Transsylvanians, Hungary
• Fanfare Ciocarlia, Romania
• La Bergere, France
• Mad Sensi, Spain
• Oskorri, Spain
• Rachid Taha, Algeria
• Extra Golden
  Kiran Ahluwalia
• Burhan Ocal and Trakya, Turkey, France, Balkans
• ...plus many, many more.

With "Amuñegü" ("In Times to Come"), the closing track on the Garifuna Collective's Wátina, Andy Palacio beseeches, "Parents, please listen to me. Teach the children our language and our songs, our beliefs and our dances." Palacio said, in early 2007, "The song came from some soul searching, looking into the future and asking fundamental questions about the preservation and survival of Garifuna culture. It asks, 'Who will speak with me in Garifuna in times to come? Who will perform the dances? Who will lead us in the sacred dügü?' The time has come for these things to be taught and preserved.' It is a very simple statement that ends with children's voices singing, 'Lest we lose it altogether,' and a haunting cello figure. It still gives me chills when I hear it." Michael Stone remembers the music, words and legacy of the Belizean cultural icon in interviews with Andy and his friends. Read more.

With an enormous organ as a backdrop, it's a surprisingly formal setting for four chirpy young women from the north of England, who walk on stage carrying clogs and modest smiles. However, the polished wooden floors and excellent acoustics prove to be perfect for Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, a quartet set for a cult following in the UK following the excellent reviews of their latest album, The Bairns. The concert hall allows the delicious harmonies to soar, for the percussion in the form of high heels and the aforementioned clogs to resonate fully, for the audience to hang on every jazz-inspired chord on the grand piano under Belinda O'Hooley's fingers.
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"What I really believe about Cajun music is that it is the most American music there is. We play music that people feel like they've heard before, like it brings up memories they didn't know they had.... We got moved around a lot. Because of that we Cajuns have a Gypsy consciousness. The family stays together no matter what. And we also kept our music despite all our being shoved about and uprooted...." - RootsWorld's Bill Nevins talks with Michael Doucet
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The autoharp is an odd little thing. It's even considered odd by folk music enthusiasts. It's a string instrument with chord bars and dampers; that is to say, it looks like the homely child of a concertina and a zither. While it has been established that the instrument was designed in Germany, not in the states as earlier promoted by the Oscar Schmidt Company, a German immigrant named Charles F. Zimmermann brought it to America, where this novel invention really took off. Easy to play and extremely portable, the autoharp was often offered at the doorstep on an installment plan, another great 20th Century innovation. Musicologist and musician Mike Seeger talks about how he initially approached musicians like Kilby Snow and recorded he and other masters of the autoharp. Read more

When faced with an organist whose toupee had a life of its own and a "cantor who can't," Josh Dolgin created a new Jewish music for himself, and a new name, Socalled. He is probably best known for singing with and creating beats and samples for David Krakauer's Klezmer Madness. But the idiosyncratic and uncompromising fusion of hip-hop with Jewish and world music that he produces under his own name is beginning to attract a great deal of attention. In 2004, his Solomon and Socalled Hiphopkhasene even won a music critics' award in Germany for Best World Music Album. His group, the Socalled Orchestra, played in the Tempel Synagogue in the heart of the Jewish quarter of Kazimierz in Krakow, and Philip Palmer heard him in concert and in workshops.
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