Posts Tagged ‘World Music’
Brand new Official UK World Music Album Chart
Posted on August 27th, 2009 in World Music.
The last issue of Songlines [#62], saw the first listing of the brand new Official UK World Music Album Chart, a chart compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC) from sales information gathered across all key distribution (or entertainment) channels including all major high street retail chains, independent stores, supermarkets, mail order internet retailers and digital music service providers, representing 98 per cent of the total UK albums market.
It’s already causing controversy! Murmurs of disapproval (and approval) and even the old issue that has dogged world music since the term was coined – is English folk music world music? – have been appearing on internet forums and blogs.
Robin Denselow’s Guardian blog Why I welcome the new world music chart praises the attempt to raise the profile of world music artists, but questions the criteria for inclusion. Where, he asks, is all the folk music? Martin Simpson, whose new album was the biggest seller at Cambridge Folk Festival this summer, is strangely absent. The OCC’s Phil Matcham has said that while there are no set rules, the Official UK World Music Album Chart is ‘mostly non-British’. But that hasn’t excluded London klezmer band Oi Va Voi from the opening chart, begging the valid point made by a contributor to the fRoots online forum that to discriminate against folk music for being of Anglo-British origin is surely as wrong as to discriminate against folk music that is not.
All charts evolve, and at the same time all charts must decide on what they will cover. The beauty if music is that it will endlessly elude our categorisations but it will all continue to delight – whatever it’s called.
Let us know what you think by emailing letters@songlines.co.uk
Catch up with the new Official UK World Music Album Chart in the latest issue of Songlines
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.
