Around the World – 31 October & 1 November 2022 - Preview
Previewing the next edition of Around the World
On this week’s show
Aliaksandr Yasinski, Alicia Edelweiss, Al-Qasar, Amalgama Folk, Disstantes, GANGAR, Julivert, Kolinga, Lata Mangeshkar, Lindisfarne, Liraz, Maha, Minyeshu, Nomfusi, Scritti Politti, Souad Massi, The Movers, Vieux Farka Touré & Khruangbin, VRï, Wesli and Дeva. Plus the songs below.
Hear the show on the web on Sundays at 10:00 pm to midnight:
Slice Audio,
Ferry FM,
Radio Larne, and
Armagh City Radio .
And on Tuesdays at 7:00 pm on the radio and web
Bangor FM 107.9: http://radio.garden/listen/bangor-fm-107-9/IycUhUbT
Lisburn’s 98FM: http://radio.garden/listen/facebook/ASeqAEl8
FM105 Down Community Radio: http://radio.garden/listen/fm-105-down-community-radio/K8lBDGFf
Listen to last week’s show here on my blog and on Mixcloud:
Here’s the Mixtape Stand Alone
Souad Massi - Une seule étoile
The 10th album from Souad Massi, Sequana, is featured this week on Around the World. The Algerian French singer was exiled from her home country for singing about politics in the late 1990s and has lived in France since. Her music draws, not only from north Africa, but Portuguese Fado, French Chanson and – in this album – western rock. Listen out for her version in Arabic of Hurt (Nine Inch Nails and Johnny Cash).
It is produced by Justin Adams who is noted for working with Tinariwen, Rachid Taha, Robert Plant and more recently Mauro Durante of Puglian band CGS (Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino) on Still Moving.
As usual four tracks of the featured album are on the show this week.
Jorge Drexler, C. Tangana - Tocarte
The end of the year is like elephants on the horizon – it’s there – you can’t quite see it – but you need to remember that it is charging towards us. And rather than look at it coming this way, it’s tempting and useful to look back at what has been missed, what has been overlooked completely and what’s not had enough attention paid to it. Which is what I’ll be doing until January. And here we have another album I missed completely from the Uraguyan musician Jorge Drexler. Tinta y Tiempo was released in April. Rolling Stone wrote about it, NPR wrote about it, Billboard wrote about it – I missed it.
Drexler recorded songs with Panamanian musician Rubin Blades, Noga Erez (from Israel) and on this track Spanish rapper C. Tangana.
Gangar - Fjellets Melodi
You might have hear of Hoven Droven the Swedish folk rock band founded in 1989. Gangar is a Norwegian folk rock band based in Oslo, who cite Hoven Droven as one of their inspirations. They take traditional Norwegian instrumental tunes and songs re-arrange them into other styles – as they say “everything from rockabilly to djentrock”. I had to look that up and apparently “Djent is a subgenre of progressive metal characterized by its use of off-beat and complex rhythm patterns inspired by free jazz.”
They recorded Fjellets Melodi at Athletic Studios in Halden, Norway and through the first playthrough recorded this 360-video and aligned it with the final master recording.
KHIYO - Riniki Jhiniki
(From their website)
The band is named Khiyo after a letter of the Bengali alphabet. It is a unique letter that, whilst being a combination of two letters, has an identity of its own. Similarly, though the band members have backgrounds that include Western classical, rock, jazz, blues, Nazrul Sangeet, Bengali folk and Indian classical, the amalgamation of the whole has a singularly identifiable sound.
Oliver Weeks read music at Clare College, Cambridge, studying composition with Robin Holloway, and subsequently obtained a Ph.D in composition from the Royal Academy of Music. His works have been performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the BBC Singers and the Mercury Quartet, amongst others. His interest in South Asian music has led to the forming of Khiyo, British Council-funded tours of India and Bangladesh with Parapar (a collaboration with Moushumi Bhowmik) and music for the Mumbai and Kolkata theatres.
Sohini Alam is a British vocalist of Bangladeshi descent whose musical repertoire includes folk, patriotic, modern and traditional Bengali songs with a specialisation in Nazrul Sangeet. She has branched out into multi-lingual music in bands, for dance, and for theatre. A third generation vocalist, Sohini trained in music with her mother, Hiron Alam and her aunts, Jannat Ara and Ferdous Ara. Sohini is the lead vocalist for Khiyo and for Kishon Khan's Afro-Cuban-Bengali jazz band, Lokkhi Terra. She is a founding member of Komola Collective.
Ben Heartland is an upright and electric bassist whose musical repertoire spans western classical, jazz, rock, blues, folk and funk. This has seen him perform across the UK, Europe and Australia with acts including The James Taylor Quartet and the Dennis Greaves Band; and in India and Bangladesh with Moushumi Bhowmik's Parapar, the project which gave him his first taste of Bengali music. Ben has been active in music education, teaching in schools as well as arranging and recording bass parts for Trinity College London's Rock & Pop exam series. He also writes music for theatre, video and radio.
Zène't Panon @ Îlet Coco
And finally - field recordings from Reunion released by Juju Sounds.
Tamil rhythms recorded by the river in the lush greenery of eastern Réunion. B side reworks by Jako Maron, EMB, Boogzbrown, Aleksand Saya and Loya.
Hear the show on the web on Sundays at 10:00 pm to midnight:
Slice Audio,
Ferry FM,
Radio Larne, and
Armagh City Radio .
And on Tuesdays at 7:00 pm on the radio and web
Bangor FM 107.9: http://radio.garden/listen/bangor-fm-107-9/IycUhUbT
Lisburn’s 98FM: http://radio.garden/listen/facebook/ASeqAEl8
FM105 Down Community Radio: http://radio.garden/listen/fm-105-down-community-radio/K8lBDGFf