World Tour Show 25

This week (07/27/11), the chart of favorite World Music albums (and the definition is a loose one) from radio producers, presenters and critics across Europe, who vote every month for their favorite albums. The full chart has 100 albums and I'll post it elsewhere on the blog. But July's top ten starts with a new release from one of Cape Verde's many talents. (Cape Verde is an archipelago off the west coast of Africa heavily influenced by Portuguese music because of the many traders and sailors that visited in decades and centuries past.)

Teofilo Chantre was born on the island of São Nicolau. At the age of thirteen, he and his family left Cape Verde and migrated to Paris. But as a teenager he wrote songs inspired by the traditional morna and coladeira of Cape Verde. He was also  deeply influenced by Brazilian music, and wrote several songs for the album Miss Perfumado by the legendary Cesaria Evora.

Chantre has also established himself as a respected performer. His albums include Di Alma and Viaja and most recently , Mestissage (link in French) his soulful, lilting ballads in Portuguese and French sitting on a bed of accordion, double bass, guitar and drums. The track on the show: "Tu Verrais."

On her latest album Afrodiaspora, Peruvian diva Susana Baca looks beyond native influences to New Orleans, Puerto Rico, and Pernambuco in Brazil. The foundation of the album is Spanish guitars and cajon - the rhythms are cumbia, son and the Peruvian lando. The album includes a collaboration with Reggaeton band Calle 13 from Puerto Rico led by stepbrothers René Pérez Joglar and Eduardo José Cabra Martínez. They won album of the year at the Latin Grammys two years ago and are outspoken supporters of independence for Puerto Rico. The song is "Plena y Bomba" - named after the two different styles of music found in the predominantly African regions of Puerto Rico.

At #8 another of a glittering generation of lady Latin stars. Paula Morelenbaum and her husband Jaques  are mainstays in the ever dynamic Brazilian music scene and were in the band that toured with legend Antonio Carlos Jobim from 1984–1994. She has also worked with Japanese composer and keyboard guru Ryuichi Sakamoto. But her new album Agua is a collaboration with Rio-based Joao Donato - and is quintessential Brazilian bossa nova. On the show "Cafe com Pao."



From the beaches of Rio to the deserts of north Africa for #7, a new release from Omara "Bombino" Moctar, a young Tuareg guitarist and songwriter. Raised during an era of armed struggles for independence among the Tuaregs, a nomadic people in Niger and Mali, his music captures the spirit of resistance and  are reminiscent of fellow Africans Tinariwen and Ali Farka Touré - as well as John Lee Hooker and Jimmy Page. His new album is called Agadez - which has quite a story behind it. American filmmaker Ron Wyman encountered Bombino while traveling near Agadez, a Tuareg town in northern Niger. Wyman says he was blown away by the cassettes he heard and asked Bombino to come to Cambridge, Mass., to record at his home studio. They later finished the album in Niger. Try "Tar Hani (My Love)" from Agadez.

Onto the latest in a Nigerian dynasty, with a horn section that could have graced his father's many albums. Seun Anikulapo Kuti heads up Egypt 80, the extraordinary combo first fronted by his renowned father Fela. From Africa With Fury: Rise sees Kuti finding his own idiosyncratic voice as songwriter, singer, and band leader, its songs marked by a provocative edge that's more than a little reminiscent of Fela. As co-producer John Reynolds puts it: "Amazing beats, horns, chants, all beautifully crafted and delivered with the punch of a Jūdan master. A most incredible force, Seun carries a great soul which will touch everyone who meets him.". Here's the title track and an interview with the man by Afropop's Banning Eyre. Last month #6 ; this month #6...

An album that seems destined to remain in the European World Music chart indefinitely is this month at #5. It's Uniko with Finnish accordion players Kimmo Pohjonen, Samuli Kosminen joining the celebrated Kronos Quartet.

As someone from NPR so elegantly put it: “I feel like this music could be soundtrack for a thriller set during a blizzard in Lapland. The soundscapes build to giant avalanches of strings and electronics, aided by the Finns’ tricked out accordions and sampling. Then poof! We’ve just fallen off the cliff, floating downward in silence.” On the show this week, the Third Movement, "Plasma," as played live in Helsinki in 2004.

At # 4 this month, a new entry and a new album from the renaissance man of Argentina, Juan Carlos Cáceres. Growing up in Buenos Aires, he was a student of Fine Arts during daytime, trombonist at night, agitator (and opponent of the then military regime), and became established at the famous Cueva de Passaroto, a jazz club and epicenter of revolutionary trends. His new album is Noche de Carnaval and he talks about it here. A master of experimentation, Cáceres has left the bandoleon or Argentine accordion in the closet and instead used the bass clarinet, sax and cello on which to base the songs. Jazz with an occasional hint of tango.

The son of the late, great Ali Farka Toure, Vieux Farka Toure, has a new album, called Secret. The Malian musician combines traditional melodies with western riffs and influnces - and voices, like Dave Matthews, who sings on "All The Same." Also helping out are Eric Krasnow, Derek Trucks and John Schofield.


There's tremendous variety on the album - as one reviewer put it: "Vieux Farka Touré is very much his own man as a musician and recording artist, which is an astonishing thing to say about someone whose career has been so short and whose father was so dominant in the field. It is exciting to wonder where his creativity and talent will take him next. Judging from this release, it could be anywhere."

An established favorite among the European chart-makers is New York's Wade Schuman and his nine-piece band - called Hazmat Modine - clocking in at #2 this week. They venture in many different directions on their latest releast - Cicada. Two harmonicas, a three-piece brass section, guitar, steel guitar and percussion - it's all in there. The songs here are often blues-based, but always different....On a couple of tracks they get help from Natalie Merchant and the Gangbe Brass Band from Benin in west Africa....One of them is " Child of a Blind Man" - though Natalie is absent on this live performance.

Which brings us to a thoroughly unexpected chart-topper and a new entry to boot. This month a European act gets to look down at the rest of the field, and it's clear the taste for Balkan horns is growing. The album is Balkan Brass Battle - an efferverscent and almost delirious collaboration (or should that be competition) between the Boban & Marko Markovic Orchestra from Serbia and Fanfare Ciocarlia from Romania -  a twelve-piece Romani brass band from the northeastern Romanian village of Zece Prăjini.

Think of it as music by drinking contest.  There's an hilarious video to prove it. On the show, Fanfare's signature track "Asfalt Tango."

World Tour is on air every Wednesday at 7pm ET, on Atlanta's Voice of the Arts - WMLB 1690AM - and online at 1690wmlb.com.

World Tour Show 23

The 23rd edition of World Tour (on air 7/13/2011) was a Lusophonic extravaganza, starting in Brazil and wafting eastwards across the Atlantic to Angola and Cape Verde. The music of each of these countries has echoed to the influences of the others.

Starting off with Lucas Santtana, born in Bahia (the most African of Brazilian states) in 1970, a musician who is both daringly innovative and respectful of Brazilian traditional genres. He has worked with all the Brazilian greats, it seems. In 1993, he was invited to join Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil on tour for the album Tropicália 2. His solo career started in 2000, with the album Eletro Ben Dodô, followed in 2003 by Parada de Lucas. He also played a part in albums by Chico Science and Nação Zumbi, Marisa Monte, Fernanda Abreu, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, as well as having songs recorded by Marisa Monte, Fernanda Abreu and Arto Lindsay.

In 2009 Lucas Santtana produced his forth album, Sem Nostalgia on the label Mais Um Discos. All the sounds in Sem Nostalgia were produced using only acoustic guitars and voices. Check out the track played on the show and the turbo-charged energy of the video: "Super Violao Mashup." And just to illustrate that Lucas has a soft side, listen to his lilting ballad "Mensagem de Amor" - from the album Eletro Ben Dodo - with the lyrics: 

"The books on the shelf are not really that important, that much of what I read the little that I know, nothing remains to me except the desire to meet you....."

Santanna worked with Marisa Monte on her 2000 album Memories, Chronicles and Declarations of Love, her most successful to date and a wistful compilation of Brazilian ballads. Working with her New Yorker compatriot, Arto Lindsay, Monte produced an album that's polished and languid - featuring Carlinhos Brown (a frequent collaborator) and Arnaldo Antunes; and Caetano Veloso also contributes.The album shows off her pop sensibilities but also her ability to breathe new life into a traditional ballad, like the song "Abololo."  To some critics the album is a little too finessed, but the arrangements and Marisa Monte's seductive voice are hard to beat.   

As a producer, Marisa Monte has promoted the work of the Velha Guarda da Portela, a group of veterans from one of Rio's most famous Samba schools, the Portela (of which her father was once director.)  She wanted to capture the essence of an oral tradition on disc before it literally died out. The best collective display of their work is in an album called Tudo Azul - recorded in 1999 but not released until  2008. Two of the leading protagonists of the school were Argemiro do Patrocinio and Jair do Cavaquinho - and Monte's label Phonomotor released albums by both. On the show we feature Patrocino's "Meu Sofrimento" - but get an idea of his old-time take on Samba with "Solidao."

Jair do Cavaquinho took the name of the instrument that made him famous - a four-string guitar well-known in the Samba tradition of Brazil and the Semba traditional of Lusophonic Africa. A member of Portelo since he was 7, Jair do Cavaquinho wrote "Meu Barracão de Zinco," the samba which made him famous outside his community when it was chosen to represent the samba school in 1962. On the show, we have "Doce Na Feira" - and here's "Pecadora." from the double album Roda da Samba by the collective known as A Voz do Morro.

Marisa Monte has worked with many other artists - from Brazil and further afield. Along with Carlinhos Brown, she collaborated with Angolan singer Bonga on the track "Mulemba Xangola"" for the AIDS benefit compilation Onda Sonora: Red Hot + Lisbon released in 1999. 

Before he was Angola's best-known singer, Bonga was a star athlete. But his opposition to Portuguese colonial rule meant a life of itinerant exile. It was in the unlikely setting of Rotterdam that he recorded the seminal Angola 72 and adopted the name Bonga Kwenda. While in Europe, Bonga met other Portuguese-speaking musicians and adopted the sounds of Samba.

Bonga 's 2003 album Kaxexe finds him extolling the virtues of semba (Angola's version of samba) - his gruff  voice complimenting the percolating rhythms and melodic guitar of the genre. 'Kaxexe" means 'En Cachette' in French, which means 'secretly' in English.

Semba’s roots run deep in the traditions of the Angolan people. It was originally used to celebrate harvests, weddings, and births. When Angola came under the colonial control of Portugal in the sixteenth century, many Angolans were enslaved and sent overseas to other Portuguese colonies. This exodus brought Angolan culture and music to the New World, and semba had a major impact on Brazilian samba.

A typical example of Bonga's style is "Olhos Molhados", while the show features his ballad "Moname" - which has faint traces of the morna style better known as the template of Cape Verdean music.

An archipelago north of Angola, Cape Verde has produced a plethora of great artists, the best-known among them Cesaria Evora, who delivers the bluesy morna with a plaintive acoustic sound that has won fans worldwide. The title track from her album Voz d'Amor is a quintessential example of her style, which she also passed on to the next generation of Cape Verdean singers - among them Fantcha, whose album Criolina, recorded in Portugal and released in 1998, is probably still her best.

Fantcha, whose two brothers played guitar and cavaquinhos (that transatlantic instrument again), was introduced to Cesaria Evora as a young child. And her debut performance came when Evora encouraged her to sing at a local piano bar. After they toured the US together in 1988, Fantcha decided to stay, joining a vibrant Cape Verdean community in Rhode Island. From Criolina, here's "Cinderela."

On her most recent album Viva Mundelo, Fantcha works with several Cape Verdean song-writers and performers, among them Tito Paris. Paris has nurtured that Lusophonic link with Angola, performing with
Paulo Flores, who was born in the Angolan capital Luanda and spent some of his childhood in Lisbon. His music is mostly written in Portuguese though some is in the Kimbundu language. Flores and Paris performed together on the song "Clarice"

Finally the new release on the show takes us back to Brazil and the rebirth of  Banda Black Rio, one of the great Brazilian bands of the 1970s and 80s. Formed by saxophonist Oberdan Magalhães, they were pioneers of the country's soul, samba and funk movement. The band has now been revived by his son William, who wrote or co-wrote every track on the album Super Nova Samba Funk.  The cast includes  new samba hero Marcio Local,  Seu Jorge, Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso. And the track we've squeezed in is "Lindos Olhos" featuring Seu Jorge and Don Pixote.