Archive for December, 2008
World music on YouTube – a Songlines guide
Posted on December 13th, 2008 in Songlines News.
As featured in the January/February 2009 (#57) issue of Songlines, Nigel Williamson unearths the endlessly rich source of archival world music footage available online at YouTube.
You don’t have to look very hard and you will find that just about the entire history of what we have come to call ‘world music’ is there on YouTube.
You never got the chance to see Fela Kuti, Celia Cruz or Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan live in concert before they died? Never mind, there are dozens of YouTube clips waiting to enlighten you.
If you want to remember what a stunning figure the youthful Miriam Makeba cut when she first left South Africa 50 years ago, the memories are all readily available.
And all those old guys from Buena Vista Social Club who are no longer with us? Well, they’re up there at different stages of their long careers, and you can also check out footage of Beny Moré from half a century ago and see why most Cuban musicians to this day still rate him as the greatest of them all.
At the link below, Songlines presents their favourite YouTube world music moments. But they are the tip of the global iceberg. Write or email with your own favourites…
http://songlines.co.uk/youtube
Amnesty International release star-studded song to mark 60th anniversary of Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Posted on December 12th, 2008 in World Music.
From December 9, the music video ‘The Price of Silence’ – featuring such stars as Hugh Masekela, Angelique Kidjo, Rachid Taha, Emmanuel Jal and Natacha Atlas – will be available for download through iTunes in 22 countries worldwide.
To mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948, Amnesty International have teamed up with Link TV and a host of musicians from Tibet’s Yungchen Lhamo to Indian-Canadian Kiran Ahluwalia, Mexico’s Julieta Venegas to Zimbabwe’s Chiwoniso, to produce the track ‘The Price of Silence’ – a plea for the values of the declaration to be applied to the billions who still live without them.
The video for the track is a work of visual effects wizardry in which the artists were filmed separately in studios around the world and then transplanted to the UN building in New York, where they play to a full house of UN delegates (played by actors). The results, as the uplifting rhythms bring an initially sceptical auditorium to their feet and dancing, are a pleasure to watch.
