Lowrider Kumbias

Waking up at the crack of dawn to a chirpy chorus of bird song these past weeks has been a welcome though slightly discordant event, yet one we ought to be grateful for, especially us city dwellers. As nature continues to make itself heard amidst the perils of climate change and general human sprawl, one might wonder, if sometime in the near future, this will no longer be case. Reminding us of the precarious situation of modern-day fowl and one bird in [...]

Talk about the Swinging Sixties...Olindo Records sister label Música Infinita is currently working our speaker system with its second release, more than a year after dropping its inaugural reissue of Venezuelan jazz staple Gerry Weil's "The Message". This time, the label has dug up another masterpiece, presenting "the raw and uncompromising Afro-Latin sound" of late '60s Venezuelan salsa group Los Kenya and bandleader/pianist Ray Perez. "¡Siempre [...]

Like sun reflecting off water the reactions to this new compilation of Brazilian music – as undifferentiated a term as that may be – have been resplendent, prompting us to chime in and add our two cents to the enthusiastic chorus. Musica Macondo, "a community of like-minded people aiming to create a space for musical discovery," recently released an eight track collection of essential sounds from Brazil, "featuring elements of samba, candomblé, batuques, [...]

Aural enclaves have been a thing these days, as we try to regain our sanity amidst all this madness. We realised that we've had quite a few so-called ambient releases on the blog lately and the current onslaught of bad news might just be a reason. Either way, while looking for new musical grounds to cover, we stumbled on this multi-dimensional gem by Siberian multi-instrumentalist and producer Misha Sultan that recently surfaced on Brighton's Hive Mind Records [...]

Meanwhile, as Russia continues to wreak havoc in Ukraine, our dear Berlin-based and Kharkiv-born friend Yuriy Gurzhy has been very busy organising the cultural resistance: Besides touring with his new book "Richard Wagner und die Klezmerband. Der neue jüdische Sound in Deutschland" on contemporary Jewish music in Germany, he has been sharing regular and personal insights into the war on Ukraine via his 'Kriegstagebuch' ('war diary') for German daily newspaper [...]

Cinematic, symphonic, surreal? The words to describe the Rhabdomantic Orchestra's sophomore longplayer on Agogo Records are manifold, as are the ideas and influences intricately woven into the tell-tale arrangements. Six years after the group's acclaimed album "Albore", Turin-based composer and multi-instrumentalist Manuel Volpe leads the orchestral charge to the project's follow-up album "Almagre". Only this time, he is joined by Colombian singer Maria Mallol [...]

"Ethereal, sensual, subtle," are the opening words of producer, journalist and"living jazz encyclopedia" Arnaldo DeSouteiro, who authored the extensive liner notes to this essential and first vinyl reissue of Brazilian singer Maria de Fátima's only solo album "Bahia com H". Originally recorded in Uruguay in 1981, "where she had settled with her then husband, the synthesizer wizard and producer Hugo Fattoruso, the album combines Maria's own compositions with [...]

At the start of a new week, we would like to point you in the direction of Melbourne-based artist and broadcaster Ajak Kwai, who released her powerful EP "Red Sands" on Music in Exile late last year. Well known to the Australian music community, she is a strong voice for "inclusion and the celebration of cultural diversity found throughout Australian society." Kwai herself hails from the historic city of Bor in South Sudan.

In her shows for both PBS and 3CR, [...]

Julien Lebrun and Djamel Hammadi's Paris-based afro-soul and tropical funk imprint Hot Casa Records is literally a hotbed of quality releases and reissues and always worth a visit. The label has apparently also managed to license many a rare hi-life and afro-funk album from the family of late Ghanaian singer and composer Alhaji Kwabena Frimpong, or simply K. Frimpong.

Born in 1939 in Ofoase in Ghana's Ashanti Akim district, K. Frimpong launched his musical [...]

Islands themselves are a wonderful natural concept, come to think about it. Simply describing a piece of land surrounded entirely by water, the word itself evokes a world of imagery and sentiments, a metaphor, deeply ingrained in the human experience. Islands are vastly symbolic and often excite mixed feelings. They are ambiguous at best, representing both isolation and refuge, a welcome escape or even a place of no return. Though not all islands are [...]

Born in New Jersey in 1990, Palestinian-American violinist, composer and producer Akram Abdulfattah moved back to his parents' rural hometown Kaukab Abu al-Hija in Northern Galilee in 1995. Having relocated at an early age and having to adapt to a new, yet fascinating environment with a rich cultural heritage, will surely have made a lasting impression on the young boy. But it also resulted in a newfound sense of belonging and the discovery of local musical [...]

Raït here, raït now, we are sipping on some mint tea and rejoicing in the wavy, lo-fi, synth-tastic tape sounds of iconic Algerian singer Cheb Hasni. Born Hasni Chakroun in 1968, he is widely considered one of the greatest vocalists of the raï genre, although his burgeoning career was brought to a sudden end at the age of 26, when he was tragically murdered outside his parents' home in Oran.

Hasni's career was nonetheless prolific: After releasing his first [...]