Reviews
The Rough Guide to Blues & Beyond
‘If the purists don’t like it, then that’s tough’. So run the liner notes to The Rough Guide to Blues...
Reviewed by Lucy Wilson in issue: March/2010
The Rough Guide To Music Without Frontiers
The compilation market is over-crowded; genuinely valid albums offering anything new are so rare that it is hard to suppress...
Reviewed by Nigel Williamson in issue: Jan/Feb/2015
Umoyo Wa Muthempire (Live in the Temple)
Tonga Boys feat Doctor Kanuska Group
For those in the Malawian countryside, the Tonga Boys from Mzuzu are a band from the big city and the...
Reviewed by Jim Hickson in issue: January/February/2022
¡Así Kotama! The Flutes of Otavalo, Ecuador
The town of Otavalo, high up in the Ecuadorian Andes, is renowned for its crafts and its indigenous folk music....
Reviewed by Tim Woodall in issue: Nov/Dec/2013
Joropo Music from the Plains of Colombia
Música Llanera is the music of the vast open expanses of the Colombian plains around the Orinoco River, up in...
Reviewed by Robin Denselow in issue: Nov/Dec/2011
Last Pagan Rites/From the Yotvingian Stone
Born in 1932, Bronius Kutavičius is one of the most prominent figures in Lithuanian musical culture. Concerned with the deep...
Reviewed by Tom Newell in issue: October/2020
The Unknown Spanish Levant Vol 2: Egypt
An academic in ethnomusicology as well as a musician and composer who has been performing since he was a teenager...
Reviewed by Tim Cumming in issue: April/2023
Foggy Mountain Breakdown: The Essential Bluegrass Album
Before the sound– track to O Brother, Where Art Thou? roared up the charts, it's fair to say that few...
Reviewed by Garth Cartwright in issue: Nov/Dec/2011
Radio Beirut: Sounds from the 21st Century
There’s an inevitable overlap between Radio Beirut, compiled by the German journalist Dagmar Golle, and last year’s Golden Beirut CD...
Reviewed by Nigel Williamson in issue: Aug/Sep/2012
A Guide to the Birdsong of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean
From Radio 4's Tweet of the Day to Sam Lee's nocturna nightingale sessions, ornithology has gone mainstream. Sadly, the renewed...
Reviewed by Chris Moss in issue: July/2020
