Megan's World Music Blog

I heart New York. Especially in the summer. Everywhere you go, there's a free concert, or a farmer's market, or a street fair. You can't take a turn without running into some delightful little enclave of New York's dazzling melting pot of cultures. I'm an upstater by birth, but I was smart enough to pair myself up with a Manhattan native, who has served as my personal tour guide for many years (highly recommended, ladies), and I've gotten to know the city like the back of my hand. Well, that's not totally true - I still have a bit of trouble with the subway system. I also point excitedly at the stunning Chrysler Building every time I see it. It can't be helped.

At any rate, as a culture vulture, I consider New York a little slice of paradise. I'm willing to overlook the weird smells that emanate from just about every sidewalk grate, the totally confusing subway system (I'm not alone in thinking this, am I?), and the incessant honking, because New York has everything you can possibly imagine, in terms of the arts. For me, the highlight of the city's cultural offerings is the bevy of world music clubs. I love seeing world music in fancy sit-down venues as well - Carnegie Hall offers great multi-cultural programming, as do Lincoln Center, the World Music Institute (who usually present their shows at Symphony Space), and most of the colleges. However, I also really like places where I can dance, chat, and kick back a couple of beers, so I often prefer club shows when they're available. Before any trip to the city, I always obsessively research my favorite clubs to see who's playing, and I realized that perhaps it was time I actually shared my favorite venues. Next time you're in the city (or tonight, if you live there!) browse through this list of my favorite NYC world music clubs to get some ideas for how to spend your evenings. Perhaps I'll see you there!

Yes, you read that right. About.com's illustrious guide to hip-hop, Mr. Henry Adaso, tipped me off to the fact that Snoop Dogg has recorded a Bollywood track for the film Singh is Kinng (sic). The title track, which is a collaboration with filmi music star Akshay Kumar, has apparently topped the Bollywood/filmi music charts, and the movie itself is wildly popular.

I'm personally a fan of Snoop Dogg and all of his exploits. He was the first musician who my parents forbid me to listen to (Full Disclosure: I listened to him anyway. Nice try, Ma.), and I still regard his music as one of my guilty pleasures. He also has a knack for keeping me generally amused with his forays into... well... places you wouldn't expect him to be. The Starsky and Hutch remake, for example. Or on Larry King, discussing the Democratic presidential nominees. Or doing an impression of German folk legend Roy Black for a German television commercial. Or teaming up with John Carter Cash (Johnny and June's son) for a Johnny Cash remix album. So I suppose I'm not surprised to see him venturing into Bollywood and filmi music, and I'm glad to see that he's done it with both style and substance. Watch the Singh is Kinng video yourself, and leave a comment to tell us what you think of it!

I was digging on this new CD called Con Otro Aire (as they put it) flamenco-chill band Chambao the other day. It's one of those exciting new finds that just sounds like summer to me - relaxed and simultaneously groovy and spicy. It's got a nice touch of flamenco, but with other Mediterranean influences as well (including Moroccan and Turkish rhythms and instrumentation). How convenient, then, that as I was perusing my friend Tijana Ilich's About.com Latin Music site, I discovered that she had reviewed the very same album which, only days earlier, I had paired with front-porch sangria. Check it out for yourself: Chambao - Con Otro Aire!

I'm pretty much an all-around music fan. I'm of the school that there are only two kinds of music - good and bad. I am not, however, of the school that lumps entire genres into one category or the other. Sure, I have my tastes, and some genres just tend to not hit me in the gut the way others do, but I'm getting more than a little tired of world and folk music fans trying to tell me that "that rap stuff just isn't music". The people who usually run their mouths about the invalidity of hip-hop will be happy to spend hours detailing the history of jeli kora music or the similarities of desert blues and Delta blues. When it comes to hip-hop, though, the fact that chanting over rhythms is a tradition that goes back thousands of years is a moot point, apparently. Also, the social contexts that actually define hip-hop as a genre of folk music are null and void, as it turns out. Hip-hop is (from what I am led to understand) loud, violent and requires no talent to participate in. It is not music. Evidently.

But I disagree. I think that hip-hop is only the latest link in a chain that ties us back to our earliest musical beginnings, before strings and woodwinds were even invented, before my ancestors left Africa for the chilly caves of Eurasia, and our human musical expression was as simple and as beautiful as a single person chanting over the beat of a single drum. It gives me shivers to think about it, actually, and makes me want to blast a CD of either a Ghanaian drum master or The Roots, or any of the other chanting-based music that came in between. The direct predecessor to hip-hop is, of course, dancehall music, something that's been on my mind a lot lately. It was a dancehall deejay named DJ Kool Herc who brought the style of toasting (chanting over riddims) to Queens in the early 1970s, subsequently setting off the entire history of hip-hop. And the music is not finished with its evolution - who knows what will come next? So, my dear world music listening friend, what are your personal feelings about hip-hop, and its relation to world music? Leave us a comment and let us know!

When you get to talking about genres of world music, you often come across the distinction between rural folk music and urban folk music. Neither one is more or less authentic, but they do tend to have different sources, motivations, and obviously, sounds. Rural folk genres include Jamaican mento, Hawaiian slack key guitar, and old-time music. Urban genres tend to be slightly more contemporary (as is, naturally, the very concept of urbanity) - they include Algerian rai, Portuguese fado, and hip-hop.

Jamaican dancehall falls into the latter category. It's a folk genre, that, like hip-hop, encompasses not only a sound, but an entire culture. The dancehall culture is, of course, controversial (particularly for lyrical content which is often heavily misogynistic and homophobic), but still worth studying and noticing. Lyrical content tends to be a window into the hardships and sorrows (as well as joys and opportunities) of a culture, and though I tend to find the "slack" (dirty) lyrics of many dancehall songs personally offensive, I can't see how ignoring the artistic output of a huge community actually solves any problems. And the many dancehall songs which are not offensive are totally addictive - the sound of the music is really compelling. What are your feelings about listening to dancehall? Is it worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater in order to avoid the negativity of so many dancehall artists, or do you simply take the bad with the good and go for it? Leave a comment and tell us what you think!

It's time to once again check around the world music blog world, and see what everyone's up to:

World Music Central has a review of a CD called Introducing Hanggai. Hanggai is a group from the grasslands of Mongolia, and they combine throat singing, folk instruments, and other eerily beautiful Asian sounds with some modern influences.

Calcopyrite Communications shares their impressions - and their favorite new finds - from the Harrison Festival of the Arts. They super-loved this group called Delhi 2 Dublin, who I now have to obsessively stalk to learn more about, because the folks over at CC always seem to have rather exquisite taste.

Spinner's Around the World Column takes a look at (and has a chat with) Northern African musician Rachid Taha, who is sitting right at the brink of world domination. Well, in a musical sense, at least. He's got a pop star mentality, and the chops to back it up, and it's likely that you'll continue hearing more and more from him.

And finally (for today, anyway) World Music Newswire digs deeply into the history of the balafon (African xylophone), via the music of Famoro Diabate. The Diabate clan is one of the great legendary griot families, and the family includes Toumani and Mamadou Diabate, among many others. It's always nice to learn about a new (to me) musical legend in the making!

Read anything great on a world music blog recently? Feel free to leave a comment and share!

World music lovers around North America have some great options for amazing live music this weekend. Up Canada way, the Vancouver Folk Music Festival has all sorts of great stuff, from desert blues band Etran Finatawa to Abigail Washburn's Sparrow Quartet, featuring Bela Fleck.

Over in Northern California, the California WorldFest has a seriously impressive lineup, including amazing Haitian songstress Emeline Michel, Ivorian diva Dobet Gnahore, and Latin Rock superstars Ozomatli.

And lastly, Upstate New York offers up the Finger Lakes GrassRoots Festival. This is actually the festival that I work for (my "day job", if you will), so I'm entirely biased. However, it is worth taking note of, if you're a world music lover - the aforementioned Etran Finatawa will be performing, as will Nigerian highlife group Toby Foyeh and Orchestra Africa, mbira player Samite of Uganda, and country-rocker Lucinda Williams.

There are also dozens of wonderful smaller concerts and festivals around the country, and I wish I could be at all of them at once! Don't you just love the summer?

World music fans are among the most prolific CD and record collectors I know. I think it has something to do with the difficulty and rarity of finding a music store that actually stocks a reasonable variety of world music. I know that I tend to get slightly feverish when I find a nicely-stocked reggae section in a used record store, or a fat stack of calypso CDs at a flea market, and my wallet tends to get considerably lighter.

Because of that, combined with the fact that I also review CDs as part of my job, the collection is (ahem) a bit out of control. I keep vowing to install some nice shelves and organize these things, because right now, I'm using a combination of the "floor" method and the "ugly shelves made out of cinderblocks and boards" method, with no real organization or categorization or anything. My living room looks like a dorm, and it's officially not awesome.

However, I've done a bit of research - asked around, peeked at various organizational websites (which give me a severe inadequacy complex, by the way), and had a look at some of my hoarder friends' collections - and I've come up with a fun list of organizational methods for world music CDs. But out of insatiable curiosity, I have to know - what methods do you use for organizing yours?

My morning started out in a pretty awesome way when Randall Roberts, the About.com Guide to model trains, shared a link to an amazing YouTube video called Where in the Hell is Matt?. Somehow, I missed the first few viral videos of this wacky guy, who dances his way around the world. Badly. But also beautifully. And in this video, he dances on seven continents, and gets like-minded locals to join in the gyrations. It's pretty amazing, really.

The song in the video is pretty cool, too. It's called Praan, and it was composed by a fellow named Garry Schyman, and the lyrics are in Bengali. It's a really nice piece, with a cool, worldly vibe that is paired really nicely with the video itself. It also adds a level of seriousness that keeps the video from getting too goofy. Gotta love people who actually think the music through before just slapping any old song onto their video, eh? Anyhow, if you'd like to download a copy so you can listen to it in your iPod while doing your own version of the Matt Dance, you can get it at Amazon.com.

I confess that I'm a big fan of musical theater, even the big cheesy productions. I like the wild costumes, the insane stage set-ups, and the over-the-top musical numbers. I do sometimes wish that my favorite genres of music were featured more frequently, though, and it looks like Jim Lewis and Bill T. Jones have come through for me. Their new Off-Broadway production of FELA!, based on the life and music of legend Fela Kuti, is slated to open on July 29. Thus far, I only know what I've read on their official website, but I couldn't wait to tell you all about it, because I'm really excited.

So here's the fun think-about-it question of the day: if you could make a Broadway musical about the life of any musical legend (with the stipulation, of course, that the musical would be respectful and high-quality - we get to make the rules in our own fantasies, after all), who would it be? I think La Vie en Rose, the Oscar-winning movie about Edith Piaf would translate really well to the stage, so that might be my vote. Leave a comment and let us know who you would pick!