Degung Sabilulungan

I discovered Degung Sabilulungan today, while I was looking for a good Gamelan artist to feature in today's post. I really like their music because the way, in which they combine the degung  and the bamboo/flute is very beautiful.

I've not been able to find anything out about the band but I hope you enjoy their music.

If you want to listen to more music on their album, it's called: Music From Bali: Degung Sabilulungan Sundaisme.

Athena Tergis

I found Athena Tergis a week ago on one of my many investigative visits to iTunes music store and I really wanted to share her music with you because she plays the fiddle in such a delightful manner.

Athena Tergis grew up in San Francisco and began to learn the classical violin in the Suzuki method at the age of 4 but she soon needed another challenge in order to stay interested in music. She began to exhibit an interest in fiddle music, when the fiddler Cait Reid hired her to be a baby sitter at the Alasdair Fraser's Valley of the Moon fiddle camp, because it led to her being fascinated by fiddle music. She was particularly delighted by Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh of Altan's music so she followed her and learnt a lot of tunes. After that summer she spent many more summers going to these fiddle music camps, and so she studied with Ni Mhaonaigh, Alasdair Fraser and Buddy Macmaster. She developed such a talent for playing the fiddle that she won the Junior National Scottish Fiddling Championship three years in a row and managed to record an album with her fellow fiddler, Laura Risk, called Journey Begun. Tergis originally intended to study at the Berklee School of Music in Boston but she eventually decided to go to Ireland instead. She spent the first year there sitting in on sessions on most nights, and then after a year she  started to work as a backing musician with Irish language television and was invited to tour with the accordion player, Sharon Shannon. She opened the production for the Lord of the Dance in Las Vegas and after that she was the principal fiddler for Broadway's Riverdance. She has now set up a studio in Tuscany called Terra Linda studios.

Gipsy Kings

I discovered the Gipsy Kings a few years ago, when my sister told me about them. I really like their music because I love the rhythms they use.

The Gipsy Kings come from Arles & Montpellier, France but they sing with a Spanish (more specifically Andalusian) accent. In spite of the fact that they were born in France, most of their parents were gitanos (Spanish Romanis, who fled Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, all except Chico Bouschikhi, who has Moroccan and Algerian roots. They play in the Rumba Catalana style (a fusion of pop and flamenco music and they are well-known for creating more international awareness of this style.

Élodie Frégé

I was originally intending to write a post about another French pop singer but while I was researching him, I began to realise that there were many other good French pop artists I hadn't discovered, when I saw the other artists recommended by iTunes and that's how I discovered Élodie Frégé. I really like the way in which she describes the problems that can arise in relationships because she's very expressive and poetic.


Élodie Frégé released her first debut album after winning the third season of the competition, Star Academy France. She began to learn to play the guitar, when she was 6, and carried on with it for 8 years and she also took dancing classes for 12 years, and this helped her to develop her musical career later on. There are many musicians in her family since her siblings also sing and perform and her grandfather was a professional accordionist.


This song means, "the afternoon girl", you might be able to guess that it's about a girl who has an affair with a married man, who doesn't care about her:

This song means, "the belt", it's about having purely sexual relationships:

The Athenians

I decided that it was time to feature some Greek music because that's another section of world music I've neglected so far in this blog. I thought I should feature The Athenians because I like the way that their music is so fast-paced and upbeat.

The Athenians formed in the 1960s. The band was made up of George Petsilas (guitar), Bernard (drums), Costakis (base guitar) and Youssi (bouzouki & lead guitar).

The Burning Bush

The Burning Bush is another band I discovered, while I was researching good Klezmer music for this blog. I decided to share them with you because I like the way in which they preserve a range of music from the old Jewish world.

The Burning Bush was founded by Lucie Skeaping, after she was asked to make a documentary, which focused on the 500th anniversary of the Jews being exiled from Spain and her Eastern European roots. Because they focus on both the Askenazi and Sephardic cultures, their music draws on numerous inspirations from the old Jewish world: Yiddish folk songs from Poland, Russia and Ukraine, East European bands' instrumental dances, the very orthodox Hasidim's mystical dances and traditional Sephardic songs of the exiled Spanish communities in Turkey, Bulgaria, Morocco and Greece. They also sing Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic songs from Yemen and Iraq's Jewish communities. They take a lot of care over preserving the oral tradition of the music, so that it represents the musical language of the countries where the Jewish communities resided over the centuries.

Charbel Rouhana

Charbel Rouhana is another artist I discovered, while I was researching oud music. I wanted to share his music with you because he plays the oud in an original way.

Charbel Rouhana is a well respected player in Lebanon. He graduated from the Holy-Spirit University, Kaslik with a diploma in oud instrumentation and an M.A. in Musicology. He has established a new methodology for the way, in which the oud is played. This new methodology has been published and adopted by the National Conservatory of Music and Faculty of Music of the Holy Spirit University, where he teaches. His compositions are helping to transform the oud into an international, modern instrument, which relates more to different cultures and music, whilst still embodying the Arabic-Oriental  style.

Basma from the album Doux Zen:

Before tuning from the album Doux Zen:

Tableaux de Sourat (Zourouni) from the album Sourat Trait d'Union: