Lau

Lau was recommended to me a few weeks ago in connection with an Irish artist. I like their music because it's very jolly as gaelic music often is.

Lau is a Scottish contemporary folk band, who are named after an Orcadian word meaning, "natural light". Kris Drever plays the guitar and sometimes sings and he has also released some solo music. Martin Green plays the accordion and the piano and Aidan O'Roarke plays the fiddle.

If you'd like to listen to more samples of their music, here's the link to their album on Amazon: Lightweights & Gentlemen.

Ottmar Liebert & Luna Negra

I discovered Ottmar Liebert & Luna Negra, when I saw that their album was in the top 200 best selling albums in world music on iTunes. I like their music because it makes me think of people happily dancing away.

Ottmar Liebert was born in Germany but his father is Chinese-German and his mother is Hungarian. As is the case with a lot world music artists I feature, he spent a lot of time outside of his country of birth during his childhood and travelled through Europe and Asia with his family, so I imagine that this is what encouraged his style of Nouveau Flamenco. He set up Luna Negra in 1990 and has recorded with them ever since.

If you'd like to listen to more of their music, here are the links of their mp3 albums on Amazon: The River: Writing in Water, The Scent of Light, Petals on the Path, The Best Of Ottmar Liebert, Borrasca, Solo Para Ti, Viva!, Up Close, Euphoria and La Semana.

Garmarna

Garmana is one of the many Scandinavian artists I've been led to in the past fortnight. I really like the way in which they combine folk music (usually Scandinavian ballads) with rock music, although I tend to prefer their earlier music in which they play just folk music.

Garmana was founded in 1990 by Stefan Brisland-Fermer, Gotte Ringqvist and Rickard Westman after they were inspired by old music they heard in a theatre. A year after the band had been formed, they were joined by Jens Höglin (who plays the drum) and Emma Härdelin joined them in 1992 because they thought that a female voice would be a good contrast to the dark tone of their music. As of 1999 they began to combine their folk music with rock and trip-hop (downtempo electronic music). In 2001 they released an album, in which all the songs were of the Latin language, so they've experimented quite a lot with their music. As far as I can see, they tend to sing about people in vulnerable/disadvantaged positions.


N.B. English translation is provided on the YouTube clips

If you'd like to listen to more samples of their music, here are the links to their mp albums on Amazon: Guds Spelemän, Hildegard Von Bingen, Vedergällningen, Vittrad and Garmarna.

Gevorg Dabaghyan

I decided that today should be another day of revisiting categories of world music, which I've neglected for a while. I decided to feature Armenian music in today's post when my sister suggested some Armenian artists to me. I haven't posted about the artists that she originally suggested because as is often the case, I couldn't find any YouTube clips for them. Nevertheless when I'd gone through enough Armenian music one suggestion led to another and I came across Gevorg Dabaghyan. Although his music has a sad tone it's very powerful, and that's why I like it so much.

Gevorg Dabaghyan is an Armenian duduk (an indigenous Armenian woodwind instrument) player, who founded the Shoghaken Folk Ensemble (a group of Armenian folk singers and musicians focussing on traditional Armenian music) in 1991.

If you'd like to listen to more samples of his music, here are the links to his mp3 albums on Amazon: Miniatures and Lost Songs From Eden (an album he recorded with the Komitas String Quartet).

Liu Fang

I thought I should do a post on Chinese music today as I haven't covered that area of world music for a while, so I decided to do a post on a pipa (a four-stringed Chinese instrument) musician. As is the case with many Chinese artists, I really like the way in which Liu Fang makes something so ordinary seem so exciting in her music.

Liu Fang started playing the pipa, when she was 6 years old. She's so talented at playing the pipa that she played for Queen Elizabeth II at the age of 11 and now that she is much older, she is regarded as one of the best pipa players in the world. She also learnt to play the guzheng, while she studied at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, so she's well known for performing the guzheng aswell. The music that she produces is a mixture of Chinese traditional and classical music. She decided to move to Canada in spite of the fact that she was supported by the Chinese government, because she feels that her foreign fans her music more as art than her fans in China, who see it more as a necessary sort of music.

If you'd like to listen to more samples of her music, here are the links to her mp3 albums on Amazon: Chinese Traditional Pipa Music, Emerging Lotus - Chinese Traditional Guzheng Music, The Soul Of Pipa (1) - Chinese Pipa Music From The Classical Tradition, The Soul Of Pipa (2) - Chinese Classical Pipa Music: From The Ancient To The Recent and The Soul Of Pipa (3) - Pipa Music From Chinese Folk Roots.

Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars

I decided that it was time to post about another Klezmer artist because I neglected klezmer music, while I was discovering more about other sorts of world music. I chose Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars because although I don't like all of their music, I like some of their compositions because the mixture of brass music and klezmer music blends in well.


Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars was founded by Frank London (who's a member of many other klezmer bands and brass bands). The aim of the band is to recreate the music of the Di Shakere Kapelye and embody the spirit of shtetl music (Eastern European Jewish music). They also use ancient traditions to reconstruct the original spirit, which let to the modern day Klezmer.

If you'd like to listen to more samples of their music, here are the links to their mp3 album's on Amazon: Brotherhood of Brass, Carnival Conspiracy and Di Shikere Kapelye.

Rokia Traoré

Rokia Traoré was recommended to me by iTunes, when I was researching the Seckou Keita Quartet. I thought that she should be featured because her soft voice combines well with traditional Malian music.

Rokia Traoré was born into the nobility of the Bambara ethnic group of Mali, and so she was not encouraged to be a musician. She also defies tradition by playing the acoustic guitar and singing and using vocal harmonies, which are unusual for Mali, in her arrangements. Her father was a diplomat, so this led to her travelling to many countries like Saudi Arabia, France, Belgium and Algeria during her childhood. The travelling is said to have had an influence on her, so I imagine that this in turn influences her music.

If you'd like to listen to more samples of her music, here are the links to her mp3 albums on Amazon: Tchamantché, Bowmboi, Wanita and Mouneïssa.