The Rhythm Foundation announced today that rising Syrian electronic music star Omar Souleyman has had to cancel his upcoming fall 2018 United States performances due to visa complications beyond his control.
Omar has created a synthesized version of the Middle Eastern dance music known as Dabke, adding current electronic dance music. Recent albums include To Syria With Love, Wenu Wenu, Bahdeni Nami and Haflat Gharbia: The Western Concerts.
The Found Sound Nation OneBeat music residency will take place in September and October 2018. The project will bring together 25 international artists from 18 countries for 1 intense month to collaboratively create musical performances, installations, pop-up events and workshops in U.S. communities. The artists will later take their work back to their home countries. Also this September, Found Sound Nation (FSN) will reimagine the children’s game “Telephone” as a new online music collaboration experience called Telephenesis.
In addition, FSN’s collaboration with Symphony for a Broken Orchestra will go digital with the launch of an online tool giving the world access to an intelligent sound-typewriter — Broken Orchestra Remixed. It uses the sampled sounds of over 800 broken instruments to create original pieces by simply typing a message, poem or set of words.
OneBeat, a public-private initiative of Found Sound Nation, the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and Bang on a Can, employs collaborative original music as a new form of cultural diplomacy. Now in its 7th year, the program will illustrate the transformative power of music-making to bring people together to develop more peaceful, prosperous and harmonious societies around the world.
This year’s residency will also explore themes of communication inspired by NASA’s 1977 Voyager Golden Records. It begins by bringing together emerging artists from around the world to the United States to work with American peers and master artists to stage a multi-state tour that supports community engagement, arts entrepreneurship and develops a global network of civically engaged initiatives. FSN OneBeat’s musicians also set out their plans for the future, developing projects in their home countries linked to a global network of music-driven social enterprises and over 175 fellows. The Fellows will create a time capsule of original work to synthesize past, present, and future modes of human creative potential, showcasing music’s potential to build, maintain and repair relationships across borders. This work will be presented during a U.S. tour as a series of live performances, youth workshops and a culminating album.
OneBeat 2018 Tour Dates:
09/14/2018 – Timucua White House | Orlando, FL
09/28/2018 – Atlantic Center for The Arts, FL
10/02/2018 – Circular Church | Charleston, SC
10/03/2018 – Redux | Charleston, SC
10/05/2018 – Creative Alliance | Baltimore, MD
10/06/2018 – Eubie Blake Cultural Center, MD
10/11/2018 – Bronx Museum, NY
10/12/2018 – Queens Museum | Queens, NY
10/13/2018 – Murmrr | Brooklyn, NY
For additional information:
www.foundsoundnation.org
1beat.org
symphonyforabrokenorchestra.org
WOMEX, the World Music Expo, is seeking host city locations for 2021 – 2023. Although WOMEX caters to the worldwide community, it is always held in Europe for organizational reasons. All cities and partners within the European Community (including Switzerland) are invited to consider and suggest a WOMEX host city. The current call is for 2021, 2022 and 2023.
If interested in knowing more about how to make a host city proposal, get in touch with Alex Walter, WOMEX Director, and Sarah Ungan, Head of Production at www.womex.com/about/team. Deadline for submissions is Friday, January 18, 2019.
Since 1994 WOMEX has been travelling all across Europe from Berlin (1994), via Brussels (1995), Marseille (1997), Stockholm (1998), Berlin (1999 + 2000), Rotterdam (2001), Essen (2002 + 2004), Newcastle (2005), Sevilla (2003 + 2006 – 2008), Copenhagen (2009-2011), Thessaloniki (2012) to Cardiff (2013), Budapest (2015), Santiago de Compostela (2014 + 2016), and Katowice (2017).
The 24th edition of WOMEX will take place in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, from Wednesday, October 24 to Sunday, October 29, 2018. The 2019 edition will be held in Tampere, Finland.
Music Finland announced this morning that WOMEX, the World Music Expo 2019 will take place in Tampere, Finland. The 25th edition of the world’s leading conference and showcase festival for global music will be held October 23-27, 2019.
Together with Piranha Arts, Womex 2019 will be managed in Finland by Tampere-based music company Rockadillo Production as the main local partner. “It is absolutely great to have WOMEX 2019 finally in Finland, and especially in my hometown. All local partners from the City of Tampere, Visit Tampere and Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture to the staff at Tampere Hall and other venues as well as Music Finland have shown strong motivation and determination to make it happen, so we aim to create a nice and compact, participant-friendly experience in Tampere“, said Rockadillo Production’s Managing Director Tapio Korjus.
Tampere is the 3rd largest city in Finland and a multipurpose music hub: it is the home for numerous high-quality festivals, events and music companies.
More at www.womex.com
The World Music Expo (WOMEX) Guide Rate deadline is midnight Friday, August 17 (CET). The benefits include a discounted Guide Rate price, a listing in the WOMEX 18 printed Guidebook, and being visible to all the other registered delegates through virtualWOMEX, which is a convenient way to start to schedule your meetings.
WOMEX 2018 takes place at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, October 24-28, 2018.
Register online here: womex-guide-rate-registration
GooglePlay has just released 32 albums from acclaimed award-winning music composer of Baul, Bollywood, folk, Indian Classical and world music Babu Kishan, also known as Krishnendu Das.
The recordings include 50 years’ worth of music composed and now re-released including world music, folk, Bengali, Baul, Indian spiritual kirtan, bhajans to top Bollywood acts, including Kumar Shanu, Udit Narayan, Anuradha Paudwal, Kavita Krishnamurty, Shaan, Sadhna Sargam, Poornima and many more.
Babu Kishan is a multi-instrumentalist, who plays 15 instruments, has produced 60 albums, composed 150 musical scores for Indian Cinema, and has released more than a thousand albums working for India’s top music companies including manager A&R/ Consultant at India’s popular music & film companies like CBS, Tips music, Gramophone Company, Time, ABCL.
He is the eldest son of the legendary Purna Das Baul who introduced Baul to India and the world more than 70 years ago. Babu been preserving his mystical tradition of Baul from Bengal for 45 years. Others follow him and his lineage, they do not follow anybody. He recorded and composed the music for most of his father’s Baul music and has performed since the early 1970s traveling around the world with his father.
Raised by his grandfather, the legendary Nabani Das Khyapa Baul, who was Rabindranath Tagore’s Baul Guru, what the Bauls are singing today is the music of his renowned family.
Born an oral Sanskritist and musician, he speaks many languages and has composed music in 12 languages, traveling to more than 100 countries and collaborating with Bob Dylan and The Band whom he toured the United States of America 40 concerts in the mid 1980’s. He has jammed with The Rolling Stones, Third World, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, George Harrison of the Beatles and many more. He has toured with Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, Sultan Khan, and Zakir Hussain.
Babu Kishan is a prolific poet and has written thousands of songs and composed music for most of India’s top legends. The 32 albums released on GooglePlay are focus on some of his compositions.
Babu Kishan’s new book on his world of music be released later this year, Baul to Bollywood to the World, historical Baul, who made a Greatest platform and preserved so can be much easier for new Bauls and the world.
He has a master in Indian Music from Calcutta University and has been a Indian Cultural Ambassador and world music pioneer since the 1970s. Babu Kishan was awarded the youngest Music Composer in Bengal in the 1970s at just 11 years of age. Bollywood lifetime Achievement Award in 2007.
More at www.BabuKishan.org
This year’s offWOMEX stage will include a ‘Dutch World Stage’, presented by World Music Forum NL and Dutch Performing Arts plus there will be showcases from Finland, Canada, Spain, and Ireland presented and funded by Music Finland, Mundial Montréal, Folquébec, Musicaction, Canada Council for the Arts, SODEC, Basque Institute and Culture Ireland. World music conference WOMEX will take place October 24 – 28, 2018 in Las Palmas de gran Canaria, Spain.
The offWOMEX showcases provide an additional platform for bands and artists to present themselves and their music to the WOMEX audience attending from around the world. With the offWOMEX stage, WOMEX provides addiitonal performances structured within a regional, national or organizational framework.
The confirmed artists for offWOMEX 18 are:
Son Swagga (The Netherlands)
Lingua Franca Ensemble (The Netherlands)
Tabanka (Cabo Verde/The Netherlands)
Kalakan (France/Spain)
Navá (Iran/Ireland)
Helsinki-Cotonou Ensemble (Benin/Tanzania/Finland)
Jeremy Dutcher (Canada)
Elisapie (Canada)
Mélisande [électrotrad] (Canada)
headline photo: Tabanka – Photo by Bas van der Wel
The Indigenous Sounds series will be back with a showcase of Canada’s emerging talent at the 8th edition of Mundial Montreal, the North American world music showcase. Mundial Montreal will take place November 13-16 in Montreal, Canada.
This year, the Indigenous Sounds series will feature international artists. The selection includes Elle Márjá Eira of the Sami people (Norway), Emily Wurramara of the Wannindilyakwa people (Australia). The programming also includes the following Canadian artists: Polaris shortlist nominee, operatic pop singer Jeremy Dutcher (Wolastoq); Inuit synth pop throat singer Riit (Pangnirtung); as well as OktoEcho, a group that fuses music from the West and the Middle East with throat singing.
The Indigenous Sounds series was begun to encourage the professional development of the artists and to propel them onto touring circuits, bringing them to new audiences in Canada and beyond.
https://mundialmontreal.com
American band Dirtwire, the genre bending outfit from California is currently in Kazakhstan in the heart of Central Asia to play in the national world music festival “The Spirit of Astana,” July 6-8, 2018.
Located in the heart of the futuristic city of Astana, the festival features acts from around the world, with over twenty countries including Iran, Japan, Mali, Turkey, Ireland, Mongolia, Senegal, Peru, Georgia, Lithuania, and many more.
Dirtwire will be the sole group featured from the United States, and will be representing their unique blend of country, blues, and musical influences from six of the world’s continents.
Dirtwire have booked a studio for the length of their time in Kazakhstan and will be recording with many of the artists also playing at the festival. They will then be releasing an album of these collaborations, as they explore cross-cultural musical fusions grounded in the spirit of the wide open expanses of Central Asia.
The band’s discography includes Dirtwire, Riptide and Showdown.
More information on the festival at thespiritoftengri.com.
The World Music Expo (WOMEX) revealed this week the rest of the artists selected to perform in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain) in October 2018.
Additional Showcase Artists Announced:
Ariwo (Cuba/Iran/UK)
Bakolo Music International (DR Congo)
Edina Szirtes Mókus Looper Project (Hungary)
Etenesh Wassie Trio (Ethiopia/France)
Evritiki Zygia (Greece)
The Garifuna Collective (Belize)
Gulaza (Israel)
Gulmira Abliz (China)
Invisible World (Czech Republic/Turkey/Serbia)
Kel Assouf (Niger/Tunisia/Belgium)
Liniker e os Caramelows (Brazil)
Lucibela (Cape Verde/Portugal)
Manolito Simonet y su Trabuco (Cuba)
Norayr Kartashyan & Menua (Armenia)
Odpoczno (Poland)
San Salvador (France)
Ta Dhom Project – Viveick Rajagopalan (India)
More at www.womex.com
headline photo: Bakolo Music International (DR Congo)
