Music, World

Curro Fuentes & The Big Band - Cartagena! Cumbia and Descarga Sound of Colombia 1962–72

(Soundway) This fabulous record beams you right into the 1960s Colombian coastal scene courtesy of Curro Fuentes, son of the family owners of the pioneering Discos Fuentes recording company. One summer Curro formed a supergroup-styled orchestra…

Samba Sene & Diwan - Remind Me (Fatalima)

Debut album from Edinburgh-based Senegalese musician

With this long awaited debut original songs, Edinburgh based Senegalese musician Samba Sene shows just why he’s an asset to the Scottish scene. With Senegalese musicican Baaba Maal as his mentor, a stellar list of international musicians in his band and…

Mama Rosin - Black Robert

Quirky, rootsy music from Swiss, Cajun punk trio

Quirky, rootsy music from a Swiss, Cajun punk trio reassures us that wild creativity 2011 style is flourishing. This fresh take on North American French traditions gets these three young guys compared to Parisian gypsy-punkers Les Negresses Vertes for…

Eduardo Niebla - My Gypsy Waltz

(LMR Records) While Eduardo Niebla wittily illustrates his debt to diverse cultures with a photo of himself brandishing his guitar alongside a rustic, horse-led gypsy caravan, it’s his debt to rich family community that makes his music resonate…

Cesaria Evora - Cesaria Evora &

(Sony) When she burst onto the scene twenty-two years ago ‘the barefoot diva’ put Cape Verde on the map, blowing everyone away, even though live on stage she could be stiff and diffident. True, after her first irresistible albums her output became…

Fruko & Joe Arroyo - The Very Best of Fruko & Joe Arroyo: Rebelión Tropical

(Nascente) A long shelf-life is the hallmark of great music and Rebelión Tropical maps how in the 1970s Julio Ernesto ‘Fruko’ Estrada and Alvaro José Arroyo González aka Mr Joe Arroyo pioneered the best Colombian tropical music ever. There’s nothing…

Various Artists - The Sound of Siam

Experimental fusion reinvents world music genre

Chris Menist’s intrepid Sound of Siam: The Leftfield Luk Thung, Jazz and Molam 1964-75 challenges the African, Latin and European dominated world music market while neatly shifting Deborah Kerr and Yul Bryner King and I images for the sounds of Bangkok…

Tabu Ley Rochereau - The Voice of Lightness Vol 2

(Sterns) World music is as much about back catalogue as innovation and London-based Sterns has a formidable reputation as the pioneer shop and label. In this panoramic collection, bridging 1977-81 and 1983-93, Zaire’s singer-songwriter Taby Ley…

AfroCubism latest project from makers of Buena Vista Social Club

Musicians from Mali and Cuba record album and play live dates

AfroCubism was for several years one of world music’s great what-ifs? In 1996, Nick Gold of World Circuit Records invited the Malian musicians Djelimady Tounkara and Bassekou Kouyate to Havana to record with the cowboy-hatted Cuban singer and guitarist…

Original Broadway Cast Recording - Fela!

(Cast Records) If you can’t get to London’s National Theatre to see the phenomenal show telling the extraordinary life of Afrobeat’s Fela Kuti, look no further than this tremendous recording of the original Broadway show. It evokes Lagos in…

Femi Kuti - Africa For Africa

(Wrasse Records) With songs like ‘Bad Government’ and ‘Nobody Beg’ Femi Kuti not only takes up the cause of ordinary Nigerians and Africans but consciously takes on the mantel of his father, the late Fela Kuti, as scourge of corrupt politics. With…

Robert Plant - Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Mon 18 Oct 2010

Singer's 'other band' create intimate experience mixing Americana with Led Zep

It’s impossible to ignore Robert Plant’s illustrious past with his ‘other band’ but tonight belongs to The Band of Joy. He may have reprised the name of his 1966 folk rock group but the current incarnation is very much an Americana outfit.

The Creole Choir Of Cuba - Tande-La

(Real World) What an inspiring story: only weeks after the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti, The Creole Choir of Cuba were working with the Cuban medical mission singing the same exuberant songs to survivors living in makeshift tents that they…

Los De Abajo - Actitud De Calle

(Wrasse Records) Mexico’s crazy Los de Abajo – with their irresistible fusion of Latinised ska, rock, reggae and more – are here joined by a stellar list of guest musicians. Kicking off with the party ‘Fiesta’, powered by flashes of brass, this tight…

2010 Le Weekend bows out with Faust, Murcof and Tarwater

Pioneering Stirling experimental music festival also hosts Ben Frost, Bill Wells and John Butcher

Since its inception in 1997, Le Weekend has brought a remarkable range of beautiful and challenging music to Scotland. ‘The idea of an experimental music festival, and also the idea of a festival in Stirling, was quite unique,’ says Alastair Campbell…

Grupo Lokito - Esengo Ya Ko Bina

(Cavendish Music) Esengo Ya Ko Bina, which in Lingala means ‘the Joy of Dancing’, is a nine track heady, feel-good mix of Congolese and Cuban music. A band of UK based African and Latin musicians led by singer José Hendrix Ndelo and salsa pianist…

Wounded Knee - House Music

(Krapp Tapes) With cassettes and CDRs being churned out by below-radar experimentalists and available online and at gigs, Edinburgh’s premier progenitor of looped vocal rounds Drew Wright is joining in. Here, he serves up a bumper-sized C-60ish…

Afro Celt Sound System - Capture 1995-2010

(Real World Records) Cherry picked from the collective’s five acclaimed studio albums, these twenty-five songs divide into instrumentals (on a disc titled Chorus) and songs (Verse). Emerging from cross-cultural collaborations at WOMAD involving…

Various Artists - El Boom Boom

(Tumi) Cuban music fêted off the island is old style ‘son’, light years away from what Cubans themselves dance to. Tumi, the label mapping the Cuban scene since the 1980s, has recently released this compilation, which won the 2010 Cuban music…

Cheikh Lo - Jamm

(World Circuit) Cheik Lô’s label as a ‘Senegalese Sufi troubadour’ is good yet it by no means gets over just how sublime the music this funky genius creates. True, he seems to hold a spliff a lot of the time and maybe it’s the way that laidback edge…

D.O Misiani and Shirati Jazz - The King of History

Classic 1970s Benga Beats from Kenya

This is the kind of mesmerising music that has you moving before you know it: undulating guitar rhythms flow like a brook over pebbles while sweet vocals chant stories over rubbery bass and the steady tickety-click of percussion. Daniel Owini Misiani…

Brazil! Brazil!

Capeoira kicks, samba hips and footie tricks

Brazil! Brazil! is like the fantasy beach party everyone wants invited to. Chilled-out Brazilian beats to rival Astrud Gilberto, buff bare-chested guys wheeling out jaw-dropping capoeira kicks and backflips, voluptuous feather-topped girls in bling…

Rhythms With Soul

Foot-stomping romp through flamenco history

On posters Venezuelan-born flamenco dancer Miguel Vargas appears smouldering and bare-chested. But unlike paparazzi-friendly contemporaries such as Joaquin Cortes he is no peacock, all baby-oil and no substance. There is strut aplenty. There is simmer…

Afro-Beat Airways: West African Shock Waves, Ghana & Togo 1972–1978

Analog Africa's latest compilation is a testament to 1970s Africa

Drawing from the archives of Ghanian label Essiebons and PolyGram West Africa, Analog Africa’s latest compilation is testament to the cosmopolitan culture of 1970s Africa. Tracks by Ebo Taylor and Orchestre Abass offer intricate polyrhythmic grooves and…

Edinburgh Mela 2010

An international and ceremonial start to the Festivals

These days the Mela is just as much of a ceremonial start to Edinburgh’s Festivals as the (often far less exciting) Fringe Cavalcade. This year, alongside Bollywood dance shows, multi-artform companies from China, traditional Sufi music from Rizwan…