Around the World – 8 & 10 January 2023 - Preview
Music from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Cameroon, Cuba, Estonia, Finland, France, Gambia, Germany, Italy, Iran, Israel, Mexico, Morocco, Perú, Portugal, Quebec, Spain, Syria, Turkey, and USA
With 2022 well and truly reviewed, examined, replayed, and redundant we move at a pace with a degree of optimism into a new year surveying music from around the planet. And here we are as usual with the weekly preview.
On the next edition of Around the World, I will be including music from Alfredo Hechavarria, Carmen Souza, Duo Ruut, Duplex, Enkel, Gankino Circus, Gaye Su Akyol, Jake Blount, James BKS & The New Breed Gang, João Selva, Kid Creole & The Coconuts, Kokoroko, Liraz, Los Teen Tops, Mădălina Pavăl, Majid Bekkas & Khalid Kouhen, Mostar Sevdah Reunion, Niño de Elche, Okra Playground, Rachele Andrioli, Sonido Verde de Moyobamba, Taraf Syriana, and Titi and the Tatus.
The featured Album is Badinyaa Kumoo by Sona Jobarteh.
Hear last week’s programme on davysims.com
Part 1 is here on Mixcloud
Part 2 is here on Mixcloud
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 (Radio Garden)
Lisburn’s 98FM (Radio Garden)
FM105 Down Community Radio (Radio Garden)
Around the World can also be heard on Radio Skye broadcasting from Portree, Isle of Skye, Scotland on 106.2 & 102.7 and on Radio Garden.
Featured Album - Sona Jobarteh - Badinyaa Kumoo
Every week there is a featured album on around the world, four tracks, one in each part of the show. This week it is Sona Jobarteh’s Badinyaa Kumoo.
The Griots are travelling poets, musicians, and storytellers who even today keep alive the oral history tradition of in parts of West Africa including Gambia, which is where Sona Jobarteh comes from. She was born into a Griot family, that traces its history back some seven centuries. It’s believed that she is the first woman in the tradition to become a professional virtuoso Kora player. She is a multi-instrumentalist and she has a great voice, too.
It’s unusual for a woman to be a Kora player – the tradition in West Africa is for the father to train a son on the instrument. But while Sona Jobarteh’s family background is Gambia, she was born in London and began learing kora from her brother at the age of 3. She made her first public performance in London’s Jazz Café at the age of 4.
The demand for Sona Jobarteh’s live performances has rocket in recent years, and 2019 saw her perform at some of the world’s most renowned festivals and venues such as the Hollywood Bowl in LA, WOMAD in Australia and New Zealand and Symphony Space in New York City, whilst also performing all over Europe, in China, Africa and Canada.
She has played music with Jools Holland, Damon Albarn, Evelyn Glennie, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Britten Sinfonia, and a bunch of others not only as a kora player. Sha has also studied cello, piano and harpsichord. Badinyaa Kumoo is this week’s featured album.
Sona Jobarteh - GAMBIA
There is a fantastic one hour concert by Sona Jobarteh here on YouTube which I can’t share on the newsletter. It’s the most recent performance and really worth seeing.
First new song on the show this year is an old song revived and renewed by Mădălina Pavăl from Romania. "We recorded it in one breath and also marked a first - we shot the voice on the hill, in the open air.” Her musical style, she says is at the fine intersection between classical and traditional. “Live and acoustic, I dare to call it world music or the music of the world.”
With roots in the Bucovina region of Romania, Mădălina takes her creative cues from the folk music of the region –Ochi de prune (trans: Plum Eyes) is a single released at the beginning of December. “Those who do not see themselves - are plum eyes. The first song from the next Great Story.”
Mădălina Pavăl - Ochi de prune (Making of)
Antonija Batinić has such a powerful voice and stage presence – but often has sung from the shadows of other great Bosnian and Serbian singers. Rightly now she fronts Mostar Sevdah Reunion alone with the album Lady Sings the Balkan Blues. It went into the European World Music Chart (I’m a member of the panel) at Number 3 on 1 January. It has been a featured album recently and I’m playing more from it this week. MSR are celebrating 25 years together in 2023 and I hope to see them again this year. They played Dom omladine in Belgrade, Serbia on 29 December. This is an audience, one camera (unnoficial) video (phone?) of them playing in Belgrade.
Mostar Sevdah Reunion 29.12.2022
Carmen Souza's new album is Interconnectedness. I'll be playing Kuadru Pintadu.
Carmen Souza’s parents were from Cape Verde but moved to Portugal after the Carnation Revolution of April 1974. Carmen was born in Lisbon in May 1981. Although she has only been to Cape Verde herself a few times, she grew up speaking Creole and absorbing Cape Verdean culture and music. Her background and influences also include gospel music and jazz.
From 1999 with bassist Theo Pas'cal, she began working on a style which combined Cape Verde Creole music, including the batuque, coladeira, and morna genres, with contemporary jazz. Carmen Souza usually sings in Creole because its variants allow her a flexibility for the language to meld with different cadences, than more formal languages allow. But she also sings in English, French, and Portuguese. Her voice is "alternately chirpy and grave." Africa Today described her as having a "soul diva voice".Souza's work transforms the traditional Cape Verde morna, adding jazz and personal invention, such as vocal experiments, using her pitch and tone to emulate musical instruments. (Edited from her page in Wikipedia. You can read more here.)
Carmen Souza - Kuadru Pintadu
If you want to contact me and let me know what I should be listening to pr playing - or for any other reason - go to davysims.com.
Have a great week - join me when you can for a pick of some of th best music from around the world every week.