A live Omar Sosa performance is always a revelation; he is an artist who exemplifies Monk's determination never to play the same thing twice. Case in point: Sosa's weeklong April 2009 run at the Blue Note NYC, timed with the release of Across the Divide: A Tale of Rhythm and Ancestry. Like every dramatic new work, this one has a back story, one that reveals something of Sosa's intuitive creative approach and boundless sense of musical freedom. In April 2008, Sosa did a weeklong artist's residency at Dartmouth College, where he sat in on 2–3 classes each day. One was singer Tim Eriksen's world music course. Eriksen is a major scholar and interpreter of nineteenth-century white Protestant devotional music, whose raw, visceral spirit informs his singular singing style... In an extended June 2008 Blue Note stint, Eriksen was integral to the live recordings that comprise this new CD, whose title encapsulates the work's uncompromising spirit, its rejection of stock categories. Read More | Listen The Warsaw Village Band is a conservatory trained sextet that pulls the eastern European village string band conception in all directions, inspired by and provocatively mixing Chopin, Polish folk dances and rhythms, Indian ragas, the blues, disco funk, and then some. The musical direction comes from Wotjek Krzak (violins, nyckelharpa, drums) and singer-cellist Maja Kleszsc, the latter comprising a terrifyingly resonant vocal trio with Sylwia Swiatkowska (violin, fiddle) and Magdalena Sobczak-Kotnarowska (dulcimer)... Read More | Listen Guinea's Kimintan Cissoko comes from a long line of griots, and while there can be no doubt that his mastery of the 21-stringed kora came about as the result of a musical education that was to some degree traditional, he's got more on his mind. He wields one of two koras in his band Ba Cissoko; the other is electric. Vocally, he goes for an understated approach that both serves the instrumental backing and gets the point across. It's evident from the opening flamenco/salsa title track that Seno is a disc that's going to mix and match with good results... Read More | Listen In recent years, Moreno Veloso has taken some decisive steps out of the long shadow of his dad, Brazilian superstar Caetano Veloso. Hooking up with two friends, electronics wiz Kassin and drummer Domenico, the younger Veloso has gone for some avant-pop, even changing the name of the trio with each album, starting with Moreno+2. The trio and even more friends began playing on Monday nights in Rio in 2002 as Orquestra Imperial, coming up with a nostalgic mix of samba and Latin tunes, a throwback to the era of big-band samba, sometimes known as gafiera. The multi-generational band, though, also adds some modern touches to the vintage-style tunes, such as the occasional searing electric guitar solo. A bridge to the past is singer and drummer Wilson Das Neves, a veteran sambista. Also in the loose collective are actress and singer Thalma De Freitas, Rodrigo Amarante of the band Los Hermanos, and keyboard player and composer Nelson Jacobina... Read More | Listen The opening drumbeats sound like the heart of Africa, but soon an accordion, oud and qanun are adding an Arabic grace. Strings, a chorus of female voices and subtle shifts in rhythm emerge, hovering somewhere between Nubia and the Indian Ocean. Such is the beauty of taarab music, which originated on the spice island of Zanzibar, located just off the coast of Tanzania, and draws from every direction that such a cross-culturally opportune spot would suggest. Culture Musical Club isn't the oldest taarab outfit (they've been around a mere fifty years; the similarly venerated Ikhwani Safaa Musical Club was established a century ago), but they're the best known outside their homeland and, as their new release Shime! ("Keep it Up") shows, they cover the most ground stylistically. Read More We often toss around words like classic and essential with abandon when talking about music, and then regret it when we see them in some archive years later. I have no trepidation about using the words here, for the band or for Dioba, the third and final edition of Stern's Rail Band retrospective. I have lived with many of these tracks for so long that I know them by heart, can hum a few guitar solos and remember where the scratches are in some of the old vinyl. So when I say these are classic tracks (recorded between 1970 and 1983) by an essential band from Mali, I say it with confidence. Just a list of the artists is enough to confirm it: Salif Keita, Mory Kanté, Makan Ganesy, Lanfia Diabaté, Sekou Kouyaté, Sekou Kanté and Djelimady Tounkara to name just some of the great musicians who graced this band... Read More | Listen A release from Norwegian singer Ragnhild Furholt is a rare thing. This is only her third in twelve years. More's the pity. She has a rare talent for unearthing atmospheric old songs from her home district of Agder and arranging them to perfectly suit her flute-like voice. Here she collaborates with percussionist Birger Mistereggen and guitarist Leiv Solberg to create something that is comforting and familiar at one moment, mysterious and arcane the next... Read More | Listen Newest reviews Omar Sosa, US Rione Junno & Mimmo Epifani, Italy Warsaw Village Band, Poland Ba Cissoko, Guinea Culture Music Club, Zanzibar Niwel Tsumbu, Congo/Ireland Rail Band, Mali Ry-co Jazz, Congo/Antilles Esprit Follet, France Asha Bhosle, India Ragnhild Furholt, Norway Brownout, US Joe Zawinul & the Zawinul Syndicate Caribbean Jazz Project Amparanoia, Spain Nigeria 70: Lagos Jump Edmar Castaneda, Colombia/US Oumou Sangare, Mali Malavergne, Vaillant and Théron. France Gyuto Monks Tantric Choir , Tibet Novalima- Coba Coba. Peru Lafayette Afro Rock Band, US/France Margot Leverett & the Klezmer Mountain Boys, US Cobla Sant Jordi Ciutat de Barcelona, Spain Toubab Krewe, US Nicola Conte, Brazil Gabi Luncă / Princes Among Men, Romania/Gypsy Mother of All Morris, UK Angel Parra, Chile Harmonious Wail, US Hamilton De Holanda & Andre Mehmari, Brazil Tango, or something like it, various countries Ivo Papasov, Bulgaria L'Attirail, France Hamilton De Holanda & André Mehmari, Brazil Uxia, Spain Savina Yannatou, Greece Tinariwen, Tuareg/Mali Seckou Keita Quintet, US/Senegal ...plus many, many more.

The pizzica (also known as pizzica pizzica and pizzica taranta) originally was the music of tarantismo, a cultural phenomenon that emerged in the southern Salento peninsula of the Puglia region. Music and dance were employed in a symbolic ritual to cure peasants, mainly women, from illnesses purportedly caused by the poisonous bite of the tarantula... The spider's bite, however, was a metaphor for other conditions, such as grief, depression, and sexual frustration. Dancing the pizzica was a culturally-sanctioned and collective way for poor, politically disenfranchised peasants to act out and exorcise individual psychological conflicts. George De Stefano looks at two new recordings that explore the ancient roots of this music and then shatter the preconceptions: Rione Junno's Taranta Beat Project and Mimmo Epifani's Zucchini Flowers. Read More | Listen Take a look at the Danish folk music scene and you will find a wide variety of subspecies. Folk musicians throughout the country specialize in many different types of folk music, so, though it's a small country, an unusually broad selection of musical styles is represented. Some musicians travel around with bands designed specifically to play concert series in Danish schools, others are so knowledgeable about the many musical traditions in Denmark that they can offer precisely the right drinking song or dance tune to weddings or harvest parties in any given region . And of course there are a good many bands that specialize in playing the clubs and little venues round the country and abroad, actively spreading the word about Danish music and culture. The Danish-Swedish group Trio Mio falls into this latter category. The musicians in Trio Mio are the Danish violinist Kristine Heebøll, pianist and accordionist Nikolaj Busk, also from Denmark, and the Swedish guitarist, bouzouki player and singer, Jens Ulvsand. The three have such widely differing backgrounds that it was a stroke of good fortune that they found each other at all. Morten Alfred Høirup talks with the musicians of Trio Mio. Read More | Listen Video Feature Staff Benda Bilili Street musicians from Kinsasha in a recording studio getting their proper sound More recently featured videos   I have been following mandolinist Patrick Vaillant's career for pretty much its entirety (well, its recorded entirety, anyway). From his amazing folk and avant garde work in various ensembles with Riccardo Tesi through his remarkable ensembles like the mando-centric Melonious Quartet. Of late he has been exploring songs instead of strictly instrumental work and Chin Na Na Poun offers one of his most unique works to date in a trio with Daniel Malavergne and Manu Théron... Read More | It's been a long time since new music by Mali's Oumou Sangare has been heard outside her home country. The 1997 album Worotan (Sangare's last full-length international release) was refined, tart, with sharply defined rhythms and soaring vocals of wassoulu. Sangare spent much of the next decade engaged in business and humanitarian pursuits as fans worldwide eagerly awaited her return to making music on more of a full time basis. And now that time has come with Sangare's new disc Seya (Joy), recorded mainly in her hometown of Bamako. ... Read More "A Malian proverb says that a woman in labor has one foot on earth, and one foot in the grave. The proverb is all too true: a woman in Mali has a 1 in 15 lifetime chance of dying from childbearing complications... For most Malian women, auxiliary midwives, or matrones, are first and only health care provider they will ever see. Mali Midwives facilitates continuing education opportunities for rural matrones in Mali." Former RW reporter Craig Tower has a new mission in Mali. Read more "We started out to find bridges built long ago with Mexico instead of the walls which, unfortunately, are now going up. We found the vigas of a musical bridge and we are re-constructing it." Based in Albuquerque's South Valley, Los Jaraneros are founder Victor Padilla, Felipe Lucero, Antonio Aragon, Teresa Slack, Rafaelita Gonzales, Lorenzo Candelaria and Ricardo Maes. Los Jaraneros' bridge is son jarocho, a folk music style until recently little heard in New Mexico, where the ranchera, norteno and mariachi styles of Texas and Chihuahua are more evident. Son jarocho originated centuries ago far from El Norte, in the balmy Gulf coastal region of southern Veracruz, where the annual late January Fiesta de la Candelaria showcases regional poetry and son jarocho. This music is the complex heritage of a transcontinental cultural journey, linking African influences with European and Native American styles, instrumentation and outlook. Read more   Genticorum is a band of trickster conjurers, performing rhythmic sleight-of-hand on the dance music of their native Quebec. They have the wry, slightly skewed attitude of a cabaret emcee, dropping the occasional naughty joke into their songs just to watch the audience titter in guilty delight. Even the band's name is nonsensical, evoking what? A quorum of gentle folk? A gentleman's forum? Who knows? The trio has three albums under its belt, the second of which, Malins Plaisirs, garnered a Best Ensemble award at the 2005 Canadian Folk Music Awards. The band is currently globe-hopping in support of its latest release, La Bibournoise. Peggy Latkovich talks with flute/fiddle/bass player Alexandre de Grosbois-Garand about Quebec, touring and the playing of crooked tunes. Read more | Listen