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Choreographer, dancer, DJ, and musician Faizal Mostrixx’s Mutations comes at a moment when radical electronic and dance music from Eastern Africa is getting crucial global exposure. Experimenters such as Otim Alpha, Ocen James, and Nihiloxica- all from Uganda- have altered centuries-old rhythms and instrumentation from various parts of the country, sculpting them into dance-floor ready shapes as well as abstract make-overs... Mutations follows the sonic trajectory of 2022’s Transitions EP, in as much as it fuses field recordings with sometimes frantic synths and pads, at times coming off as a cousin to Chicago’s long-evolving footwork scene. Mostrixx’ mother was a dancer, and he grew up hearing imported pop sounds from nearby Congo and other neighboring countries. And because of the dominance western sounds still hold over the globe, his music naturally makes use of elements found in house, dub, down-tempo, and hip hop. Listen in, and read Bruce Miller's review.

Moldavia - Peasant Tunes From The Old Land Of Hârlau presents recordings made in 2019, 2022 and 2023 by Neculai Florea, Nicolae Amarandei, Valentin Bălaşanu, in the traditionally Moldovan region of Romania in the counties of Iaşi and Botoşani in the north-east, near the border with Moldova, playing fiddle, cobza (a traditional pear-shaped lute with a very short neck), and wooden whistles. Read Andrew Cronshaw's review and listen to some samples from the recordings.

Stoonia Lood / Stories Of Estonia feels like an album that’s been gestating inside Mari Kalkun’s imagination for years, finally emerging into the light, as the singer and instrumentalist shows her Estonian homeland in its deep, raw nature, an antidote to the plastic shimmer of the 21st century. Her songs are filled with air and space, lightness and the grace of nature, and in British folkie Sam Lee, she’s found the perfect accomplice to bring it all to life... Vocally, she’s never sounded better, with the confidence of experience and the certainty of belief in what she’s doing. Chris Nickson shares this new work from Estonia. Chris Nickson shares this new work from Estonia with you.

The name of this Finnish trio is a perfect description of their sound. Sähköpaimen translates as “electric shepherd,” and their music is a persuasive, heady mix of the contemporary and the rural, as Amanda Kauranne and Kirsi Ojala's wind instruments, mouth harps, and wild, uncontained vocals rub and roil against Eero Grundström's electronics and loops. Hämärä (Twilight) marks that time of day when the transition from the real world into the realm where magic happens, and the band explores the possibilities that lurk in the darkening shadows. Read Chris Nickson's review and listen.

With advanced degrees in musical performance and voice, and captured by the culture, spirituality and music of Candomblé, Bahia-born Irma Ferreira began a profound investigation of her Afro-Brazilian roots. Candomblé is Brazil's New World iteration of African sacred practices, having evolved mostly from the Yoruba traditions of the West African countries of Nigeria and Benin... Ferreira's first solo album release, Ém Cantos de Orisá, bears the fruit of her investigation, borrowing both chants and melodies from Candomblé's trove of devotional works. Read Carolina Amoruso's review and listen.

The lurching, wiggling rhythms of Swedish fiddle polskas, particularly those from the region of Dalarna, can be hard for the listener to grasp, though easier if one learns to dance them. The fiddler’s foot-tap can be a clue, but here, explored by the duo of leading fiddler Ellika Frisell and Mexican-born percussionist Rafael Sida, there’s much more help than that: a window on polska’s subtle internal rhythms and their possibilities. Färg Och Tid is no short-term fusion-type project; over the years that they’ve lived and played together, Sida has found ways to interpret and accompany Frisell that draw on his wide experience of the rhythms of the world, with his battery of hand and stick-hit percussion. Frisell, too, has connected polska with traditions from elsewhere, from her time with the mighty Filarfolket in the 1980s and her partnership with Senegalese griot kora-master and singer, the late Solo Cissokho. Andrew Cronshaw explores the intuitive and deep connections in 'color and time.'

Singer, fiddler, banjoist, percussionist, scholar, and exponent of Black roots music and dance, Jake Blount presents a searing album alive with Old Testament fury, gospel revelation, and topical prophecy, an unsentimental tale of earthly destruction, suffering, and resilience set at the end of days. Drawing upon what W.E.B. DuBois dubbed "The Sorrow Songs," Southern ring shouts, African descendants enslaved in colonial Jamaica, Gullah-Geechee tradition, the blues, and sundry Lomax field recordings, Blount shares inspiration with Black Americana revivalists including Ranky Tanky, Our Native Daughters, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, and many more. The New Faith is best taken in as an operatic whole, from start to finish. Read Michael Stone's review and listen to a number of tracks and 2 videos.

Sekou Keita, with his traditional background, skill and compositions, and Davide Mantovani's great abilities as arranger, bring to orchestral music a beautifully different set of musical ideas. No straightforward orchestration of kora melodies, African Rhapsodies is a series of full concerto integrations of kora and The BBC Concert Orchestra in which melodic lines and excursions come from both sides, so that they are no longer two, but a unified whole. Read Andrew Cronshaw's review and listen to some tracks from the recording.

Aire posts Magos Herrera at the summit of her creativity and her agency. For the first time she holds the reins of vocalist, lyricist, composer, co-arranger, and executive producer, even artistic director, crafting, with an impressive supporting cast, a work all her own. Among the A-list players to join her are: Jacques Morelenbaum; Gonzalo Grau; Diego Schissi; Dori Caymmi; and her frequent collaborators, the Knights. The album is broad brushed with the ever-fluid notion of jazz, embellished with classical sounds, indigenous traditions, Latin, and Bossa Nova. Magos Herrera's deep luxuriant vocals, lending their way equally to all sensibilities, flow frequently into wordless song, allowing Aire to convey both the lightness and heft of air. Carolina Amoruso reviews an album of stories in song.

Aire is our selection for July's Music of the Month. Find out how you can support RootsWorld and receive a copy of the album.

Rwanda has a rich musical heritage but one which is less widely know than those of some other African countries. One notable exception has been the music of Adrien Kazigira and his band The Good Ones who play acoustically but in a contemporary style with guitar, percussion and vocals. Ababeramuco's album Made in Gatagara has a much closer connection with the traditional music of Rwanda, both musically and in the instruments used, the band's name translating as “The Traditionalists.” There are four musicians: Gerard Rusatsi on the umuduri, a one-string bow played with sticks; Silvain Mutabaruks plays the iningiri, a one-string fiddle; Jean Marie Vianey, the inanga, a type of zither and Godefroid Ayirwanda, who plays a lamellophone known in Rwanda as an ikembe. All four contribute vocals and several tracks also feature unspecified percussion. Gatagara, named in the album title, is the village in whose neighborhood the four musicians live and play together. Mike Adcock reviews.

Paul Simon has chronicled his life in words for many decades, telling his stories as narrative fiction, wrapped in poetry and music. Lisa Sahulka has taken on the task of reviewing not only his new recording, but looking back on the biography in song, real or imagined, that he has spent his entire adult life creating.

Seven Psalms is a suite in seven-movements, an acoustic masterpiece and possibly the last conversation we are going to have with him. The album is based on The Book of Psalms, the first book of the third section of the Hebrew Bible called Ketuvim (Writings). These are hymns of doxologies or praise to God. However, his Psalms are skeptical and more realistic, in the sense that if God exists then we have to acknowledge this being as both omnipotent but also evil, inflicting pain and sorrow. “The Lord is my engineer…The path I slip and I slide on. …The Lord is a virgin forest. …The Lord is a meal for the poorest of the poor. A welcome door to the stranger.” Lisa explores his new recording, in the shadow of the old. Read Lisa's review and hear the album.

re-tornar sounds like New York City, with an unexpected lightning fast pace which can slow down and cool off like a Barcelona evening (where they both live). Bass player Fortià's time in New York City influenced his music and perspective. Magalí Sare has acknowledged her passion for Flamenco and tango music... She is a singer, flutist and percussionist both in the classical and jazz genres. The polytimbral quality to her voice adds immensely to their collaboration. re-tornar explores stories of Read Lisa Sahulka's review and listen to some of the tracks.

There can be a sober, noble sensibility about a solo instrument, and the cello, with its expressiveness so close to the human voice, is able to tug fiercely at the heart. In the right hands it possesses beauty and power, and Liz Hanks owns the right hands and imagination. She’s worked with people in folk music and beyond, but for Land, she has made her world shrink. Not simply to a lone instrument, or even to the Steel City, Sheffield, where she lives, but quite specifically her local area of Meersbrook. The tracks become a walk through its geography and history, as tactile as any mix of playing and field recordings can be. Chris Nickson takes you on this serene walk.

Listening to these 3 albums by Sheila Chandra again, it’s hard to believe they’re around 30 years old. At the time they were released, they stood like beacons, unlike anything else out there, whether it was the slippery, abrupt turns of the konnokol mouth percussion that marked the “Speaking In Tongues,” to the reworking of the traditional English folk song “A Sailor’s Life,” where her vocal phrasing connected the piece to India, to the starkness of ABroneCroneDrone. Chris Nickson looks back on these newly reissued, essential albums.

Riccardo Tesi is a leading virtuoso of the diatonic accordion (the push-pull button squeezebox known in English as a melodeon, in Italian as organetto), as well as a composer, soloist, and leader of many ensembles and theatrical projects. During the pandemic, he composed most of the twelve pieces on his latest work, La Giusta Distanza, where he is joined by a core unit of guitarist Viera Sturlini and percussionist Francesco Savoretti, forming the Elastic Trio, augmented by a cast of other instrumentalists and, on three tracks, singers. Andrew Cronshaw shares his impressions of some of the music, and you can listen along as you read

The lost lithophones of Vietnam

In February of 2023 I made my second visit to Vietnam and my reason for going was again a musical one, summed up in one word: stone. For more than twenty years now I've had a thing about the way in which certain cultures of the world have chosen to produce music from this most unpromising of materials. Certain types of rock will ring when struck and, depending on length and thickness, can produce notes of identifiable pitch. Instruments which employ this principle are called lithophones.

It was Vietnam which really put lithophones on the map internationally. In 1949 some villagers in the Central Highland region unearthed a set of stone slabs and brought them to the attention of a French ethnologist living there at the time who reckoned they were a form of ancient musical instrument, promptly had them sent to Paris for further investigation and that's where they have remained to this day.

Mike Adcock decided to go to the source to find the stones and their players. Join Mike's journey into the fascinating world of a musical instrument little known to modern listeners.

Fiddler Laura Risk and the two other members of this trio - Nicholas Williams on piano-accordion and flute, and pianist Rachel Aucoin - live in Québec, though none is originally from there. Risk is from California, the other two from other parts of Canada, but all are very experienced in Qúebécois music, indeed have received awards in relation to it and there are fine pieces from that tradition here. What particularly strikes me, though, is Risk's command of, and influence from, Scottish material and styles of melody and playing on Traverse. Andrew Cronshaw reviews.

Traverse is one of our selections for Music of the Month for June. Find out how can subscribe and get this fine album and many more throughout the year.

There is a wild boldness to Hiram Salsano's singing, plus a deep knowledge and understanding of her Italian tradition, and an originality to the arrangements, on her debut album Bucolica. Salsano's focus is the traditional music of southern Italy, in particular that of her home region, the mountain areas of Cilento in Campania, to the south and east of Naples in western Italy.

Internationally, the best-known southern Italian traditional musics are probably pizzica and taranta, whose heartland is the Apulia region on the other side of Italy from Campania, but this isn't a taranta/pizzica album. Salsano's sources and music are much more varied. Andrew Cronshaw reviews 'a splendid album from a very significant musician.'

Bucolica is our selection for Music of the Month for June. Find out how can subscribe and get this fine album and many more throughout the year.

L'oiseau magnifique is a clever new album by a Geneva based trio named Alice that uses harmonic vocals and an electronic keyboard to create spare, folk-inspired, contemporary feminist song-poems. The group play on traditions from French and Occitan music to invent tunes about love, magic birds, trees and, amusingly, a really bad party. The trio is enchantingly described as employing 'a thrift-store synth, bizarre wit and arresting vocals... an intergenerational, all-female micro-choir.' L'oiseau magnifique is fresh and fun, with enough grit and weirdness to be reflective of the challenging now. Come hear and watch them sing, and read Martha Willette Lewis' review.

Lebeha Drummers formed in 2003 in Hopkins Village in Belize as an after-school program dedicated to nurturing and transmitting the music’s unique percussion, vocals, and dance styles to young Garifuna. Rooted in Garifuna spiritual practices, its energetic percussive character, dance movements, and vocals resonate with other West African and Amerindian genres brought together in a cultural efflorescence inadvertently sparked by the European colonial adventure in the erstwhile New World.

Biama is unique, however, in hewing to the traditional Garifuna roots of voice and percussion, versus the experimental acoustic and electric guitars, bass, sampling, etc. characteristic of the work of more contemporary Garifuna music luminaries. Read Michael Stone's review and hear some of the music.

Til Kirsten is the second album by the Danish string and vocal trio Vesselil. It is very much a female album, not just the musicians themselves, but the subject: Liden Kirsten, who lived in the 12th century, and is the subject of quite a few ballads and stories that have been passed down through countless generations. A few of those old songs appear here, alongside traditional dance tunes and original pieces... the entire album is filled with gorgeous melodies, sublime voices and expert playing. Chris Nickson reviews.

The renaissance of Shirley Collins continues on Archangel Hill, her third release since her 2016 return. This time around the production if fuller, a sound that does full justice to her voice. That voice is not the instrument of her young days, of course; she's 87 now, and she had decades away from performing. But now her singing carries the weight of experience - magnificent, full of a knowledgeable beauty. Her voice always had an unstudied, untrained simplicity and honesty; an innocence, if you will. That sense remains, but these days it’s a wonderfully weathered instrument, natural and affecting in its artlessness. Read Chris Nickson's review and hear the music.

Collaborations by musicians from what we often consider “developed” nations and those still developing are popping up like mushrooms after a good soaking... we’re awash in electronic updates on traditional folk forms and strange, tough-to-pin-down experimentation that exists outside previously known sonic space. Yalla Miku, on the other hand, manages to pull from its members’ various heritages- Morocco, Eritrea, Algeria, and Switzerland to concoct a stew that reveals North and East African instruments and styles before wrapping them up in motoric hypnosis and post-punk jitters. The band, who call Geneva home, came into being when the European musicians connected with three North and East African immigrants, all three of whom have harrowing tales of hard travels and rough beginnings in their new home. Unlike the collaborators mentioned above, Yallu Miku neither dresses up the traditional in new clothes, nor largely eschews the musicians’ solo impulses. Instead, they reimagine what might be considered African or traditional in blankets of their own making, thanks to the musicians being physically connected with one another on a full time basis. Read Bruce Miller's review.

Les Abranis were made up of Kabyle Berber French Algerians, featuring two members, Shamy El Baz and Karim Abdenour, who met in Paris in the 1960s and bonded over a mutual love of rock and roll. So when they left France to play in a 1973 Algiers-based festival, they shocked the conservative country’s television and live audience by cranking out some seriously primitive garage-based rock antics and, more crucially, by singing in their native Kabyle, identifying themselves as belonging to a group that the Algerian government had discriminated heavily against since the country’s 1962 independence from France. So that TV appearance mentioned above shows a group that pushed at the boundaries of what Algerian music was at the time, and used their love of everything from Fela to James Brown to Hendrix, as well as their membership of a cosmopolitan North African diaspora in Paris to record music that still seems radical. Hear the music while you read Bruce Miller's review of Amazigh Freedom Rock 1973-1983. (

New England pianist Neil Pearlman's Refractions takes Scottish and Gaelic song airs as the basis for his solo piano improvisational development. The airs are varied, non-obvious and well-chosen, from a large variety of sources that show his extensive familiarity with the repertoires and compositions of present-day musicians and with the most interesting of the printed collections.

Much of Scottish fiddler Iain Fraser’s Kōterana is of his own composition, but like Pearlman, he draws on a discriminating choice of traditional Gaelic vocal and instrumental material from the past and present. Its title is the Māori word for Scotland, and it commemorates and evokes the globe-spanning journey by the Reverend Norman McLeod and his congregation, that began with him leaving Assynt in the West Highlands and culminated, via Cape Breton and Australia, with a Gaelic-speaking settlement in New Zealand. But even without any knowledge of the story it’s an album full of life and strong tunes.
Explore these new visions of Scottish music in Andrew Cronshaw's review.

Here are two releases that are vitally important documents concerning peoples' desire to preserve their languages and culture. Both recordings are resolutely modern, but they could not sound more different.

Tarai's Empty Drum has a starkness to it that might remind the listener of post-punk; the band refers to itself as an indie, post-folk band. Their roots lie with the Chuvash people, a group that lives in the Volga River region in central Russia. Tarai are now based in Tallinn, Estonia, which provides them with an opportunity to reflect on their homeland. As one of the trio says, “Should I abandon my mother tongue in the name of economic benefits?”

Merema take the listener on a journey amongst Mordavian villages on Eryamon' Koytneva (Spiral of Life). They began as an “ethnographic folklore studio” with the intention of preserving the languages and traditions of their region. They are deeply involved in field research in their homeland, and when they perform, Merema do so in traditional costumes out of respect for their ancestors. But, it's sound is likely to stop many listeners in their tracks. The band produces a massive wall of sound that will easily appeal to lovers of the Swedish band Hedningarna. Read Lee Blackstone's review and hear some of the music.

Composer and Hardanger fiddle-player Anne Hytta's Brigde is a collaboration with the Telemark Chamber Orchestra, the instrumentation being limited to strings, apart from the addition of percussionist Amund Sjølie Sveen playing wine glasses, of which Sveen turns out to be a specialist, and that's the sound which begins and ends the opening track. The sound is sparse and ethereal and an indication of what is to come, but not the whole picture. Whilst most of the repertoire of the Hardanger fiddle consists of dance music, even in this there can be a dark, introspective quality, particularly in older manifestations of the tradition. It feels as if that is what Hytta is drawing attention to here, seeking a way to bring an equivalent into the orchestral writing and it works extremely well. Read Mike Adcock's review and hear some samples and full tracks from the album.

Erol Josué’s second album seduces listeners into a magnetic web of the spiritualism of Haitian vodou. Pèlerinaj (Pilgrimage) also opens a window onto the integration of vodou and its pantheon of spirits, or lwas, into the daily life, aspirations, and politics of Haiti. In fact it was on the night of August 22, 1791, when two slaves, Dutty Boukman, a maroon of Sénégambian/Jamaican parentage, and Cécile Fattiman, of Haitian/Corsican birth, presided over the vodou ceremony that would consecrate the Haitian revolution launched on the very next day.

To achieve his musical and personal mission, Erol Josué has gathered together an august team of creative companions from various musical and geo-cultural realms, well-suited to express the authenticity and heart of Pèlerinaj’s rhythm and ritual. Read Carolina Amoruso's review and listen to the music.

At the age of 33, Cecilé McLorin Salvant has already begun to define her legacy. She has an innate understanding of jazz that allows her to improvise, scat, interpret and mix genres effortlessly. This makes listening to her sing a time loop experience, where you are both in the past and present with the future looming ahead. Salvant’s ability to sing in multiple languages is, in part, due to her being the child of a French mother and Haitian father.

The story told in Mélusine has a common theme of imagining women as witches, mermaids and various other transformations in Greek mythology. It conjures a European folklore legend sung in French, Occitan and Haitian Creole, with her own compositions, and selections dating from the 12th Century. She uses these songs and stories in part to convey a character she plays in many of her songs - an intelligent coquette who is more interested in playing with men’s affection than seeking it out. Read Lisa Sahulka's full review, listen to some tracks from the album and see a video of a live performance.

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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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