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Putumayo's stuff is okay, but it's kind of ethno-boutique--all the rough edges are sanded off, you know? Very crossover-oriented.
Dealing with so-called "world music" can be dicey: very often traditional musics will be taken and "sweetened" with electronics or hip-hop beats by producers eager to find a lowest common denominators and thus sell shedloads of records. Sometimes the fusion of pop and traditional music is inspired, and succeeds in creating an entirely new thing. More often, though, it flops.
Now, my picks to click:
I love Scandinavian stuff--there's something raucous and primal about it that I dig. The Finnish women's chorus Vaartina is pretty well-known: they've dabbled in electronica and crossover, but Seleniko is probably their straightest, most "folky" album.
Gjallarhorn, from Sweden, blend the drone of the Hardanger fiddle with the Australian dijiridu and African-influenced percussion into one of those vigorous, one-of-a-kind hybrids. Best album: Sjofn.
Bukkene Bruse is far more traditional, and pretty mellow: in a perfect world, they, not Enya, would have done songs for the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. Norwegian. Best album: The Stone Chair.
In a Finnish vein, but English-language: Ruth McKenzie's Kalevala: Dream of the Salmon Maiden. Soundtrack to a performance piece based on the epic poem.
These and tons of other Scandinavian music at Northside Digital: plenty of MP3s downloadable, so you can try it to see if you like it.
Compilations: Henry Kaiser and David Lindley's A World Out Of Time, with musicians from Madagascar, and The Sweet Sunny North, with bands from Norway: both on Shanachie Records.
Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Jajouka, of course.
Oh, and Indonesian music--not just gamelan (trancy ping-ponging metallophone orchestras), but ritual music as well. There's a piece called "Sita's Abduction," dramatizing a section of the Hindu epic poem the Mahabharata, that's fucking mesmerizing--a hundred guys sitting in concentric circles around a fire, roaring and chattering in weird, complex layers of polyrhythms like Philip Glass conducting an orchestra of crack-addled orangutans. Just astonishing. If I could get that energy and madness out of a rock band, I'd rule the world. Albums to look for: Music from the Morning of the World or Islands In Between.
Got more if you want it...
[ 13-01-2002: Message edited by: Jack Fear ] |
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