Around the World Preview – 5 & 7 September 2021
The weekend is almost upon us and my thoughts turn to Sunday night and the following Tuesday night.
You can hear last week’s show on Mixcloud.
You can see the running order on my blog.
Around the World is on Slice Audio, Ferry FM, and Radio Larne on Sundays at 10:00 pm to midnight. On Tuesdays at 7:00 pm the show is broadcast on Bangor FM, Lisburn’s 98FM and FM105 Down Community Radio.
This week we will go to Mongolia and to China. We will drop by Chile, Hungary, and Algeria. There’ll be contributions from Belgium, the city of Córdoba, and Cork and Connemara. The show, like an audio only Tardis, will travel through time as well as space visiting New York in 1962 and Paris in 1960.
The Featured Album. It was one of the best albums last year (2020). It was audacious, experimental, simple, and unforgettable. Lina is from Portugal. On this, her debut album, she wanted “to do something different with fado”. She recruited Raül Refree, a guitarist from Barcelona who was a newcomer to fado. The plan was to cover songs associated with Amália Rodrigues. One of her albums was featured a few weeks ago on the show.
I’ll be playing four tracks and recommending you listen to Lina & Raül Refree’s “Lina_Raül Refree” if you haven’t already heard it.
Here’s a video of the two working together.
Audience Participation: You can contact me through my blog to suggest music for the show, but you can find me on Twitter too. I’ve got to know a lot of people from around the world on Twitter and one - Aleksandar Brezar a journalist from the Balkans – posted a video that grabbed my attention.
Lots of us – regardless of where we are from – grew up listening to The Beatles and The Stones, Pink Floyd, Dylan (well, my generation, at least. Other generations have other shared music experiences.) However, in each of our countries and regions there are musicians who didn’t cross geographic boundaries. Yet they had a major impact elsewhere. One such is Bob Azzam.
Bob Azzam was born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1925 (he died in Monaco in 2004). He was a band leader and singer of Lebanese ancestry. With his international hit song "Mustapha", Azzam achieved success in France in the 1960s. The song did enter the UK charts in 1960 and spent 9 weeks in the Top 40. If I had ever heard of him, I've since forgotten. Here's a video of a performance on Swiss TV to bring a smile to your face.
Old Favourite: In March 2019 I played Hrdza’s Stefan from their last album Neskroteny for the first time. It was one of my first shows. I played it at the very beginning of the show. Sometime later – maybe a year, or close to that … the video had had clocked up 3 million views on YouTube and band were cock-a-hoop.
And this week the video has almost 26 million views as the Slovakian band release their next album (and Stefan is on it too).
And this live performance of Stefan has had over 1 million views.
Ever seen an electric oud? Hamdi Benani was a singer and musician from Algeria. He died from COVID a year ago this month. His last project was with Mehdi Haddab and Speed Caravan.
Mehdi Haddab is an Algerian French musician, and a pioneer of the electric oud (lute). He is known to some as “Jimi Hendrix of the electric oud”. And his band is Speed Caravan. And alongside traditional Algerian music they cite influences that include The Cure and The Chemical Brothers.
The album is diverse and fun and challenging – it’s called Nuba Nova. I have already played some tracks in previous weeks, but here’s a live performance which is really worth seeing.
That’s it for this issue. I hope you can join me on Sunday, Tuesday or on Mixcloud.
Have a great weekend,
Davy
Links:
What music should I be listening to? Send me a message about your music suggestions via my blog.
The Around the World archive on Mixcloud: https://www.mixcloud.com/davysims/
Slice Audio:
https://www.slice.audio/
Ferry FM:
https://ferryfm.com/
And on Radio Garden
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