Central & South America
CUBA/WORLD
Various Artists
World Circuit : The 20th Anniversary Collection
Some labels guarantee quality and World Circuit is one such. It’s hard to believe that it has been around for 20 years bringing such delights as the marvellous Buena Vista recordings, Ali Farka Toure, Toumani Diabate and the recent Hotel Mande Sessions, Radio Tarifa, Oumou Sangare, Cheikh Lo and others...
BELIZE
Aurelio Martinez
Garifuna Soul
There's not been a great deal around so far on disc, apart from some rather stilted field recordings, cataloguing the music of the Garifuna people of the Honduras. Descended from a strange situation in which shipwrecked African slaves brought their gene pool and musical heritage to this coastal region on the northern tip of South America, the flavours and rhythms of their music display a potent African root. Aurelio Martinez is a young singing star who's brought a very contemporary, though still palpably roots-acoustic, feel to the Garifuna sound. African music may be the dominating influence here but the music is given a far broader appeal and wider blend by the input of influences from the region's other principle incomers, the Spanish. Martinez' tumbling melodies spring from his acoustic guitar in fascinating cadences of sound whilst the hard-edged garaon patters rhythmically, giving a strong counterpoint to the melody of guitar & vocal...
CUBA
Orlando Cachaito Lopez
Cachaito
This album has won 'Americas artist of the year' category at the BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards. Bass player Orlando Lopez’s lush Afro-Cuban sounds captured in sensuous low-fi studio-session style by Afro-Cuban All-Stars producer and World Circuit Records supremo Nick Gold. No sparkling sound or over-the-top overdubs, just honest down the line tune’n’ percussion perfection...
CUBA
Ska Cubano
¡Ay caramba!
This is the one where Ska Cubano really seal their reputation and emerge as a band who may like to have fun but with a serious and very professional edge to their music and performance. Ska Cubano take every musical nuance from the last 50 years or so of Cuban popular music, from the raucous big-band timba of the moment to more classic mambos and even a hint of the oriente. But then this band offer so much more than the broad confines of Cuban music...
CUBA
Sierra Maestra
Son: soul of a nation
Son has long been the backbone of contemporary music in Cuba. Since its 1920s heyday the rhythm, incorporating older folk styles such as changui, guajira and guaracha, has always been there at the root of most modern musical genres throughout Cuba and neighbouring islands. Son has also played a powerful part in the Cuban diaspora, with New York salsa and other contemporary fusions bearing the mark of this well-established sound, connecting people back to their Caribbean & African culture. Sierra Maestra are widely agreed to be the band which brought son back into the mainstream of modern Cuban music, their attention to detail and culturally-conscious approach to reviving a classic sound has won them many plaudits and an army of fans across the globe...
BRAZIL
Various Artists
Tropicalia: A Brasilian Revolution in Sound
In the late 1960s there was a counter culture revolution taking place in the west. Civil rights activists, anti-vietnam protesters, student riots, hippies and beatniks all took to the streets to a psychedelic soundtrack fuelled by LSD. The revolution was televised, photographed and recorded, printed onto posters and T-shirts and then endlessly rehashed for future decades by talking heads and tie-dyed vox pops telling you 'if you can remember it, you weren't there'...
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