RSS feedArchive for August, 2010
Kershaw is back on BBC Radio 3 for new world music show
Posted on August 24th, 2010 in World Music by Songlines.
Much loved DJ, Songlines contributor and world music explorer Andy Kershaw returns to BBC Radio 3 in the near future and with him come exciting new plans.
He is set to present Music Planet – a programme being created in conjunction with BBC One’s Human Planet. Alongside co-presenter Lucy Durán, he will visit more remote outposts of world music in the footsteps of his legendary North Korean and Iraqi sojourns.
Music Planet is being touted by the station as the “most significant and ambitious world music project ever” and will include throat singing in Greenland, shamanic music from Mongolia and the sounds of the remote Bat People of Papa New Guinea.
Of a trip to Thailand, Kershaw had this to say: “I cheerily risked incineration at a rocket festival in Thailand to take our Radio 3 audience into the fiery thick of the action.” Watch this space.
First ever UK festival devoted to the West African kora
Posted on August 17th, 2010 in World Music by Songlines.
The Brighton Kora Festival – which comes to the Sallis Benney Theatre & Gardens at the University of Brighton on August 21 – will be the first ever festival in the UK devoted to the West African 21-stringed lute.
The one-day event will feature performances by kora players Seckou Keita, Kadialy Kouyaté, Jali Burama Mbye, Diabel Cissoko, Sura Susso, Modou Cissoko and Jali Keba Susso as well as African percussion-based highlife dance band Yiraba, among others.
As well as performing, the kora musicians will also lead workshops on kora playing, drumming, dance, storytelling and song.
Get the latest news on the Brighton Kora Festival facebook website.
Haitian hip-hop star Wyclef Jean runs for president
Posted on August 6th, 2010 in World Music by Songlines.
US-Haitian hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean is to run for the presidency of the troubled Caribbean island.
The island nation’s most famous son left the country when he was nine and moved to the US, but his ties to his homeland have remained strong. He founded the Yele Haiti Foundation, which has done much to ease the suffering of Haitians in the aftermath of the January earthquake.
In 2004, the ex-Fugees star released the album Sak Pasé Presents: Welcome to Haïti (Creole 101), in which most of the songs are in his native Haitian Creole language.
On January 4, 1804, Haiti threw off French colonial rule to become the first free black republic in the world, and the second independent state in the western hemisphere. Its subsequent history has been tragic, and whoever the next president is will have an onerous job on their hands. Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas, a situation compounded by the devastating earthquake that hit the country. If Jean does make his international stardom translate into ballot box turnout in a nation where only 10% of those eligible to vote did so last time round, he will have one of the toughest political posts on the planet.
http://wyclefjean.wordpress.com/
Songlines collaborates with CNN in search for top five global music icons
Posted on August 5th, 2010 in Songlines Blog by Songlines.
Songlines is delighted to have collaborated with US broadcaster CNN on their official hunt for your top five music icons.
CNN’s new arts programme, icon, worked in conjunction with Songlines to select 20 of the greatest artists in the last 50 years from all corners of the earth.
CNN came to Songlines keen to get expert help in including non-Anglo Saxon representation in the list of artists, creating a truly global list of music icons.
World music icons on the list include Algerian rai legend Khaled and the late queen of Arab song, Oum Kalthoum, the late Mama Africa Miriam Makeba and Senegalese star Youssou N’Dour, Indian playback singer Asha Bhosle and the late Pakistani qawwali innovator Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the late Taiwanese-Chinese pop icon Teresa Teng and the late Hong Kong founder of Cantopop Leslie Cheung, Brazilian tropicalia linchpin Gilberto Gil, Colombian rocker Juanes and the late salsa queen Celia Cruz. And of course, the biggest star to ever hit the mainstream from the ranks of world music, reggae legend Bob Marley.
They rub shoulders with US giants Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Madonna, James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Bob Dylan, and UK 60s supergroups the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.
icon will use your votes to build up an interactive gallery of cultural icons online in various fields, as they initiate monthly votes in different artistic fields.
The first gallery – of the top five musical icons – will be unveiled on August 25.
Get voting at http://edition.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Music/07/28/icon.music.vote
