Tombak In The Spotlight On Between Hands
Kaveh Mahmudiyan — Between Hands (Global Sonics, 2025) Kaveh Mahmudiyan’s first solo album, Between Hands presents his own compositions with the tombak (Persian goblet-shaped drum).…
Transfixing Welsh Folk Music
9Bach Anian (Real World, 2016) Anian is the new album by contemporary Welsh folk band 9Bach. This group to be one of the most exciting…
Duke Performances Reveals 2016/2017 World Music Season
Duke Performances revealed the world music programming (under the category International) for the 2016/2017 season. The world music shows include sitar maestra Anoushka Shankar with…
Songhai Revisited at WOMAD 2016
Songhai, the iconic 1988 collaboration between Malian kora master Toumani Diabate, double bass virtuoso Danny Thompson and the young Madrid flamenco group Ketama will…
La Mar de Músicas to Celebrate Sweden in 2016
La Mar de Músicas festival, held in Cartagena (Murcia, Spain), will take place July 15-23 this year. This twenty-second edition is dedicated to Sweden. In…
A Bold, Tense Album by Elza Soares
Elza Soares – The Woman at the End of the World (Mais Um Discos, 2016) The Woman at the End of the World (originally released…
There’s A Light by Liz Vice
Liz Vice is a singer of neo-gospel: music that sounds pretty close to the gospel of Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Tharpe used the blues and invented…
An Afro-Roots Experiment That Worked
Afro-Haitian Experimental Orchestra (Glitterbeat, 2016) Nigerian Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen recorded a set of jams rooted in Afro-rooted rhythms from Africa and Haiti that appear…
Artist Profiles: Rasbawa
Beninese singer-songwriter Rasbawa is the son of a businessman and a traditional music singer. Very early, he became interested in music. While in Abidjan (Ivory…
Artist Profiles: Julien Jacob
Julien Jacob arrived in France during his early childhood. His West-Indian parents settled in the South of France. For him, who was born in Benin,…
Artist Profiles: Orchestre Poly-Rythmo
Orchestre Poly-Rythmo is a national institution in Benin, West Africa. Formed during the late 1960s, they soundtracked the years following Benin’s independence under Kerekou’s Marxist-Leninist…