World music matters
World Music Matters is RFI's weekly rendez vous with musicians making global beats.
World Music Matters - Electric Vocuhila: the French quartet with taste, and talent, for African rhythms
Electric Vocuhila combine the spirit of free-jazz legend Ornette Coleman with driving urban guitar rhythms like tsapiky from Madagascar or Congolese sebene. They masterfully sew them together on their pulse-raising third album, Palaces. "I had a long time love for African music and the repetitive motifs used in bebop and free…
World Music Matters - Cult 1984 album 'Sons of Ethiopia' enchants new audiences in 2020
Admas, a quartet of young Ethiopian musicians living in exile in Washington DC, had a ball recording an album of synth-heavy, funked up versions of Ethiopian classics. 'Sons of Ethiopia ' was soon forgotten but became cult among fans of ethiojazz. Now reissued by Frederiksberg Records, it reflects happier times from…
World Music Matters - Ennio Morricone: a tribute to the late maestro
Italian composer Ennio Morricone was famed for his film scores but his work straddled jazz, pop, psychedelia as well as the avant-garde, influencing bands as diverse as Air and Metallica. Ennio Morricone left behind some 500 scores for both film and television. The theme tune to Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western The…
World Music Matters - Hacaaluu Hundessaa: the Oromo singer who helped transform politics in Ethiopia
"Everyday I walk in this city, I know I walk alongside death," singer Hacaaluu Hundessaa said just days before he was shot dead in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on 28 June. We hear how the 34-year old protest singer became the voice of the minority Oromo ethnic group. "He was…
World Music Matters - 'Black Lives Matter', and songs are showing it's a fact
Inspiring speeches are great, but a song can travel and connect people like nothing else. After the tragic death of George Floyd, musicians are helping to bring issues of police violence and social justice to the fore. Beyoncé, queen of R 'n' B, and the young gospel singer Keedron Bryant…
World Music Matters - Ariana Vafadari breathes life into Anahita, Persian goddess of water
After exploring Zoroastrian chants on her 2016 album “Gathas, songs my father taught me”, mezzo soprano Ariana Vafadari puts femininity to the fore with the heart-wrenching “Anahita”, inspired by the Persian prophet Zarathustra and the goddess of water. Ten deeply spiritual songs set to Oriental maqam scales, tracing a path from despair to resolution. French-Iranian Vafadari…
World Music Matters - The Eddy: a love letter to jazz in modern, multicultural Paris
There are big names in The Eddy, a Netflix series about a struggling jazz club in Paris. But the real star is jazz. And since coronavirus is depriving us of the thrill of live music, the jazz sessions recorded with its own six-piece band provide music lovers a much needed fix…
World Music Matters - Mugogo!: electronic music from the coast of Kenya
When Swiss beatmaker Flexfab was doing a set in the coastal town of Kisili, Kenya, a young Kenyan rapper Ziller Bas grabbed the mike and delivered his "Swengflow". The chemistry was immediate and six months later the two artists are set to release their debut EP Mugogo! A dancefloor must…
World Music Matters - Touki: how West Africa's kora found kindred spirit in the banjo
When musicians Amadou Diagne and Cory Seznec had a chance encounter in a bar in Bath in 2007, they knew one day they would record together. Thirteen years later, after many "touki" (journeys), they've embarked on a new musical adventure with a debut album Right of Passage. They talk to RFI…
World Music Matters - Chadian band Pulo NDJ creates sounds out of its Lomé lockdown
When N'Djamena-based electro band Pulo NDJ found themselves stranded in Abuja with no chance of returning to Chad because of the coronavirus, they made their way to Lomé, set up a home studio and recorded a song about living in lockdown. Their story is one of friendship and remaining creative through…
World Music Matters - Djibouti's Groupe RTD make international "Dancing Devils" album debut
Djibouti is better known as a strategic outpost than a hotbed of music but Groupe RTD, the country's national radio band, are one of its best kept secrets. By day they play at official ceremonies, off duty they let rip their love of American jazz, Indian Bollywood, Jamaican reggae and Somali funk. For the first…
World Music Matters - Sarah McCoy sings, and lives, the blues
Sarah McCoy is undoubtedly one of the most exuberant and talented singer-songwriters around, unafraid to bear her heart and soul in her music. "Honesty is important," says the 35-year old American. "If I were just singing about how it's sunshiny all the time, well some people can do that, but it's my job…
World Music Matters - Olgha Nk: a strong voice expresses the pain of Cameroon's Anglophone conflict
Olga "Olgha" Nkweti is a singer-songwriter from the English-speaking part of Cameroon. She began singing professionally aged just 17 and has made a name crafting covers of popular songs into Pigdin English, but also writes her own soulful afro-pop compositions. She talks to RFI about composing the song Cold to draw…
World Music Matters - Seb el Zin: hardcore with a soft centre
Seb el Zin founded the surrealist rock band Ithak in 2005 and it somehow manages to straddle hardcore, metal, psychedelia and traditional Turkish music with equal ease. He talks to us about why metal is ethno music, his love of dystopia and science fiction, and finding lyrical inspiration in the odd…
World Music Matters - Piers Faccini: the organic farmer of the music world
Singer-songwriter Piers Faccini's latest opus is a four-track EP Hear My Voice. And what an original voice it is. He chats to us about his artisan approach to making nourishing music, doing it his way on his record label Beating Drum and how unpleasant years at Eton public school probably helped…
World Music Matters - The many voices, and opinions, of ALA.NI
"Some tracks have 300 different layers of vocals and most of them are me," says Ala.ni about her new album Acca. The London-born, Paris-based singer with a rare four-octave range beguiles us with her voice. The record is mainly her, a capella. With a bit of Iggy Pop. She…
World Music Matters - Asa unpicks many faces of love on new album Lucid
On her latest album Lucid, Nigerian singer-songwriter Asa explores the many colours of love: warm, dark, brilliant, somber, the joy, the longing, the wanting. But also the violence that can seep into a relationship and destroy lives. As the world wakes up to the reality of sexual violence against women,…
World Music Matters - La Mòssa: five women, one voice
La Mòssa are a five-piece band of female vocalists who excel at polyphonic chant. They've just released their debut album A Mòssa and talk to us about reinterpreting folksongs they love in a free and playful way in the spirit of Nina Tirabouchon, a 1920s Italian cabaret artist with hip swing…
World Music Matters - La Mòssa: five women, one voice
La Mòssa are a five-piece band of female vocalists who excel at polyphonic chant. They've just released their debut album A Mòssa and talk to us about reinterpreting folksongs they love in a free and playful way in the spirit of Nina Tirabouchon, a 1920s Italian cabaret artist with hip swing…
World music matters - Sona Jobarteh changes the tradition of kora playing to make sure it survives
Sona Jobarteh comes from a long West African tradition of Griots and kora players from Mali and The Gambia. She's become one of the rare women in the world to master the 24-string instrument which is traditionally reserved to men. She talks to RFI about working within the tradition to…