Our friends at CPL Music and Nordic Notes had another banner years for releases in the genre of World Music. The sampler includes tracks from the Balkans, Scandinavia and Asia among other locales, and it’s a great way to taste what the label has to offer.
Ethnic Music
Yggdrasil & Vera Kondratieva — Timint Areh
Yggdrasil are a Faroese project led by multi-instrumentalist Kristian Blak (whom I had the pleasure, many years ago, of meeting in Varna, Bulgaria) and a host of local musicians along with singer Vera Kondratieva from Siberia. You would expect to hear a melding of Scandinavian and traditional Siberian music on Continue Reading
Vartra – Basma
Our beloved friends at CPL-Music have submitted a bizarre and completely engrossing album of ethereal tribal music from Serbia in the form of Vartra. The band was founded in 2017 by Siniša Gavrić and sisters Ivana and Aleksandra Stošić. What makes the music so interesting is that it not only Continue Reading
Various Artists – Let’s Stamp: 1950s Folk Dance Recordings from Bulgarian and Yugoslavian 78rpm Discs
The ever-reliable Canary Records out of Baltimore, Maryland, have released a compilation of Balkan 78 rpm shellacs with a lot of the artists being unidentified, but whose music is most assuredly from my home away from home.
Ialoni – 50 Georgian Song (50 ქართული სიმღერა)
Ialoni are a female traditional music ensemble hailing from Georgia, and they offer on this album, as the title implies, 50 tracks of absolutely stunning renditions of folk material. A keeper.
Sak Sok Ensemble of Fershampenuaz Village – Nagaybak Songs From Chelyabinsk Region, Russia
A fascinating release from our friends at Antonovka Records. From their Bandcamp website: “Nagaybaks are an ethnic group that descends from the Christian Tatars and shares the same self-name with them — “Kreshenner”, which means “Baptized Ones”. There are about 10 thousand Nagaybaks in total, they live primarily in the Continue Reading
Pelkkä Poutanen – Pyhä Veri Vuotaa
Finland’s Pelkkä Poutanen provide one of 2022’s best World Music albums, combining a wild combination of Scandinavian folk, drone, throat-singing and, if you can believe it, a very light touch of tango.
Divanhana – Zavrzlama
In January, we had the pleasure of reviewing a track called Ćilim from Bosnian ethno-folk band Divanhana, and now, it’s our pleasure to bring you the rest of the album! Zavrzlama is a collection of sevdah tracks which have a darker, more minor-key quality than what I’m used to from Continue Reading
Jan 疆 Hasker – Pastoral Song – 牧歌
Jan 疆 Hasker is a folk musician out of Xinjiang, China, but this is a bit of a twist, as he uses Altaic and other folk melodies for his musical base rather than Uyghur. From his Bandcamp website: “Jan made this album collecting, sorting and adapting musical elements from China Continue Reading
The Bayan Mongol Variety Group – The Bayan Mongol Variety Group
From Discogs.com and Light In The Attic Records: The Bayan Mongol Variety Group existed from the early ’70s to the late ’80s. After the collapse of the USSR, the ensemble began to experience serious difficulties with funding and booking concerts, and finally disintegrated, after which the participants lost contact with each Continue Reading