Music is the revolution!

Music for this Saturday morning - new to me the Tunisian singer-songwriter, Emel Mathlouthi, whose protest songs, apparently have become anthems for (some of) the Arab Spring revolutions. I found her via this review in the NYT of her New York debut at the French Institute Alliance Française’s World Nomads Tunisia festival, enthralling the audience even with only half of her band. Apparently she became well  known for her protest songs Ya Tounes Ya Meskina and Kelmti Horra which became anthems for the Tunisian revolution and the 2011 Egyptian revolution.

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Bonus video today - an entire album from Marcel Khalife -- again new to me; mentioned in NYT article posted below about Amel Mathlouthi. He is a Lebanese composer, singer and oud player. From 1970 to 1975, he taught at the conservatory in Beirut

 

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Songlines Music Awards

As those following my music blog posts may know, I am a big fan of music from Mali. And it seems two Malian singers - Rokia Traore (see my blog post for some videos) and the blind husband-wife pair Amadou-Mariam (youtube video) have won major awards at the inaugural Songlines World Music Awards.

More details here. Seems ..

The Songlines Music Awards were established to continue the tradition of the now-defunct BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music, recognizing outstanding talent in world music.

Also, note the "newcomer" award winner -- an Indian musician, who I had not heard of before today.

Best Artist - Rokia Traoré   

Best Group - Amadou and Mariam  

Cross-cultural Collaboration - Jah Wobble & The Chinese Dub Orchestra 

Newcomer - Kiran Ahluwalia

To listen to Kiran's songs, go to her website. It starts streaming few of her songs, in full. On Twitter, she mentions recent collaborations for fusion with Italian aria and Hip-Hop. Interesting! Will need to explore further.

The Jai Ho effect

Slumdog Millionaire and the Oscars for AR Rahman seem to have sparked an interest for Indian music in the West again!

This post at Boing-Boing informs us that last week Putumayo has released a compilation of music by various Indian musicians ...

Putumayo Presents India compilation

... And while it does feature two tracks from Bollywood star composer AR Rahman (Slumdog's Oscar-winning musical director), the collection also includes lounge music, folk, classical, and of course high-energy Indian indie pop.

Btw, the video at the link above features Kiran Ahluwalia, who is one of the singers featured in this album. I have not heard of Kiran Ahluwalia before. (In fact, I am kinda surprised she's the face of this India music compilation ad (video at the link below). It just may be that she's the most easily accessible artist for the ad, being based in Canada.)

Anyways, this seems like a collection worth buying! Has an interesting array ofmusics:

Track Listings

1. Zara Zara - Bombay Jayshree
2. Khwaab - Niraj Chag featuring Swati Natekar
3. Naino Sey - Sanjay Divecha featuring Kailash Kher
4. Shiva Panchakshara Stotram/Shiva Shadakshara Stotram - Uma Mohan
5. Homeward Journey - Satish Vyas
6. Tere Bina - A.R. Rahman & Chinmayee
7. Nagumomo - Susheela Raman
8. Ganesha - Deepak Ram
9. Vo Kuch - Kiran Ahluwalia
10. Maavan Te Tiyan - Rajeshwari Sachdev

Btw, I have heard Susheela Raman before ... the first time being on PRI's The World on NPR some years back. I thought she was pretty good....that dusky voice somehow haunting and alluring, despite the Western accented lyrics in some pieces distracting from the music itself. For example, hear this song - Salt Rain 'Maya':



Lots of other videos on youtube, including this one with Cheb Mami... one of my favorite raï singers.



You may recall Cheb Mami from his haunting voice in Sting's Desert Rose... but the stuff from Cheb Mami that I like includes: Neli Neli, Le Rai Cest Chic, etc. [I have a tape somewhere of his music that I used to listen to all the time in the 1998-2002 period.]

btw, just FYI... in case you are not familiar with him or his music - his name is not Cheb! Singers of raï are called cheb (shabb, young) as opposed to sheikh (shaykh, old). In fact, Khaled (who had become quite famous in India in the 90s with his song Didi is also actually called Cheb Khalid.

Thierry 'Titi' Robin

Just read about Thierry 'Titi' Robin, who is a multi-instrumentalist from southwestern France, whose music is influenced by the gypsy and North African communities of Angers. So, of course, I had to look up youtube for some videos and share them with you....





And last but not least, an interesting performance in Jaipur, accompanied by a Rajasthani folk dancer, no less!


The dancer is Gulabi Sapera and more about the collaboration with her here.

Bregović & Gasparyan

Long time since I put a music post. Here are couple artists who I had not heard about until now. (Thanks to Anand for the introduction)

Goran Bregović, who wiki enlightens is "a Bosnian musician, of Serbian and Croatian descent"




and next up is Armenian musician and composer, Djivan Gasparyan



Good stuff!