For some 15 years now, listeners looking to sample sounds from around the world have turned to the ubiquitous Putumayo label's quirky compilations. Sharing Carla Bruni's folksy guitar sound with you last week put me in the mood to dig a little deeper into the world of French chanson. Quelle coincidence! Before I could say voilà, Putumayo's fun new release, Acoustic France, landed on my desk.
The album doesn't feature household names like Brassens, Gainsbourg, or Gréco; rather, it pays tribute to them by showing a new generation that's stretching the country's great postwar poetic pop and chanson genres. A few of my picks after the jump:
Never mind that I have yet to visit the Cape Verde archipelago, I'm hooked on its culture and especially its booming music scene. Some weeks ago, I extolled the young guitarist Tcheka and promised to share some more of his talented compatriots with you.
Meet the young and talented Mayra Andrade. This spring she was selected "Best Newcomer" at the BBC Music Awards, an honor for which she performed at Royal Albert Hall. Andrade's got a lot going on in the States, too. In May she took the stage at New York's Carnegie Hall, earlier this summer she put on a lovely show at Joe's Pub (I'm still raving about it), and in September her splendid album Navega makes its U.S. debut.
You've read that French Première Dame Carla Bruni is a recording artist. And you likely know the ex-supermodel takes a lot of heat for her haughtiness and gets mocked for her narcissism. But guess what? Her new album Comme si de rien n'était is solid. This is no vanity project; you won't hear any cheesy celebrity faux-rapping or William Shatner-esque cover tunes here. Bruni is a strong guitar player and her smoky voice makes for an album of moody, classic sixties chansons.
For the composition to "Déranger les pierres" she turned, in fact, to the great chansonnier Julien Clerc. The rest of the album jumps styles very effectively, largely using American vernacular. "Le temps perdu" moves with a sort of tango-meets-swing rhythm. A mandolin appears on the bluegrass inflected "L'Antilope." When she compared the ecstasy of a lover to a line of cocaine in "Tu es ma came," she scandalized Anglo sensibilities. Never mind that; it's a cool jazzy blues tune.
For years, I'd hoped to catch the Zimbabwean guitar great Oliver Mtukudzi. Last Sunday I got my chance when he came to New York on a U.S. tour that ends this weekend--if you hurry, you can catch him tomorrow evening at the Santa Monica Pier in L.A., or on Saturday or Sunday at Yoshi's Jazz Club in San Francisco.
"Tuku" is known as a fine lyricist who tackles social issues with a positive message. I can't speak to that, as he sings mostly in Shona, but with all the troubling news of late out of his Southern African nation, he has no lack of material.
The 56-year-old Harare native began his career working with Zimbabwe's musical elder statesman Thomas Mapfumo. His prodigious output, which includes a collaboration with Bonnie Raitt, is now approaching 50 albums.
Conde Nast Traveler's Ombudsman editor Sanjay Surana, our graphic designer extraordinaire Haisam Hussein, and I grooved to the rolling anthems of Tuku and his Black Spirits Band at the bandshell in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. The program we saw was part of the Celebrate Brooklyn series of (mostly) free concerts.
With the Beijing Olympics about to tumble upon us, it's time to share a trendy new Chinese singer with you. Betcha didn't see that coming.
Last spring Sa Dingding won a prestigious BBC World Music award for her album Alive. The CD, released in the States this week, presents an elegant and alluring persona; 24 pages of album notes are straight out of a lush candy-coated fashion spread, her silky outfit with the Bodhisattva print is right off the runway.
But I'm not sure yet what to make of her sound. Lush zithers, horsehead fiddles, and other traditional instruments are matched with electronica beats and the occasional hint of a rap. Pounding and crashing percussion conjures epic-movie music, a la Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I'm still swishing around the flavors, if you will.
For her eclecticism, she's been dubbed an Asian Bjork. Rubbish. She's channeling Kate Bush if anyone, especially on the album's final cut, the faint "Qin Shang." (Yeah, I had Kate's "Wuthering Heights" record tucked right behind my Van Halen back in the day.) If Sa Dingding's voice is cutesy at times, its fragile and ethereal qualities can be stunning.
Alive features works in several languages, including both a Mandarin and a Sanskrit version of the title track. The latter has become Sa Dingding's signature song and is the first download on her MySpace page. The video at the top of this page was shot in Tibet with brilliant production values and a seeming cast of thousands.
The half-Mongolian, half-Han Chinese singer has an absorbing bio. She discusses growing up on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia in an interview with AOL's music site Spinner.com.
I have no idea what Sa Dingding is singing about in any of her languages, not least the one which she made up herself for the song "Lagu Lagu." And it doesn't really matter. One can't help but wonder, though, what her private take on Tibet is.
A few years ago I had a Latin pop duet about love and heartbreak rattling around my head for weeks--couldn't shake it. Spanish singer Ana Torroja's helium-balloon vocals on the chart-topping "Duele el Amor" were dangerously saccharine. And I loved it. I found out that "Duele" was off Aleks Syntek's 2004 album Mundo Liteand I rushed out and bought it; the video shows off his catchy guitar work.
The Mexican pop-rock phenomenon puts on a thrilling live show I discovered the other night at the Highline Ballroom, downtown Manhattan's newest music space. Syntek wears nerdy-cool glasses as an homage to his idol Elvis Costello, while his cerebral and ironic stage persona suggests David Byrne. One minute the musical chameleon was wearing a cowboy hat and strumming a banjo, the next he was tweaking out electronica beats on a keyboard. He even made like a lounge singer under a twirling disco ball.
Cuba has 30 times the population of Cape Verde, but in a musical matchup, the tiny Atlantic archipelago nation packs a punch as hard as the Caribbean island powerhouse. Even the most casual of music fans has heard of the superstar singer Cesaria Evora. Of late, though, a new generation of CVs are touring the world, eclipsing Cubans as the darlings of the worldwide music scene. (I'll share a few of the hottest ones with you over time.)
Last weekend, the up-and-coming artist Tcheka performed for the first time at the intimate Joe's Pub, which just celebrated its tenth year as the New York City venue for international stars. In a soft voice, he sang his own Portuguese Kriolu ballads, which reflect the rural roots of his homeland--call it island country. The handsome performer also invents rhythms that depart from the melancholic morna style of music that made the Cape Verde sound famous. His mean acoustic guitar work gives some tunes a folk rock attitude.
On his new album Lonji, Tcheka adds jazzy brass elements that lift up the gorgeous song "Sabu," and the accordion on "Tuti Santiagu" lends a cabaret touch. His 2006 album Nu Monda comes with a concert DVD filmed in Lisbon. Tcheka has some lovely videos uploaded on his MySpace page, and a brief text explains the African percussive influences in his music.
Lastly, a quick shout out to Tcheka's label Times Square Records, which has impressed me for years. Each of the dozen or so international performers on its roster is a major artist in his/her respective genre.
One hot Coney Island afternoon in the early nineties, I heard some high-pitched, plaintive guitar tunes coming out of a boombox (remember those?). The wonderful sound would have knocked my socks off had I been wearing any. It was called bachata, a group of teenagers explained to me. Shortly after that I bought Bachata Rosa by Juan Luis Guerra, an album that opened up the vast world of Dominican music to me.
A graduate of Boston's famed Berklee College of Music, the Santo Domingo native and his band 440 (Cuatro Cuarenta) have built an audience over several decades throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Lately, Guerra has been winning Grammys like fellow Dominican Manny Ramirez has been smacking home runs.
Karl Taro Greenfeld's December 2006 Conde Nast Traveler story, "Merengue Moment," is a good place to start for some background on the rural environment out of which sprang bachata and other Dominican music strains.
Juan Luis Guerra doesn't produce pure bachata, but he often borrows its basic elements. The prolific musician is best known for his romantic boleros and merengue rhythms. Bachata has, however, developed a huge audience in recent years, and new stars have taken it in many directions. More on this soon--stay tuned!
I spent three sleepless nights in Jamaica a few years ago. Yeah, I was high, but it wasn't what you think. I was in Montego Bay for Reggae Sumfest, the world's premier reggae and dancehall showcase, and I was running on pure adrenaline (okay, and more than a few Red Stripe beers). Because it was, as the kids say, totally insane.
The latest incarnation of Sumfest takes place next week, July 13-19, and tickets are still available. Be warned: The last seventy-two hours are high-octane fun, with fans setting off enough aerosol fire torches to turn the night air into a Dante-esque spectacle. You'll be lucky to get to bed before 8 a.m.
When I was there, Sean Paul, who had just hit stardom with "Gimme the Light," shared the stage with Beyoncé and Destiny's Child for a ninety-minute bootylicious extravaganza. Here are this year's top draws:
The Thursday, July 17th lineup features hardcore dancehall reggae. As always, my favorite performer Beenie Man will appear, as will the notorious Elephant Man (who climbed the stage scaffolding during his set a few years ago). Traveler contributing writer Henry Shuckman opened his February, 2005 Caribbean music story "Rebel Rhythms" with a cell phone interview he conducted with Jah Cure. The up-and-coming artist happened to be in jail at the time. He's out now and on the schedule.
Last week in Times Square, I had a riveting meeting with an important Brazilian cabinet official. Well, me and hundreds of other people jumping up and down to the guitar licks of a legendary singer/songwriter who just happens to moonlight as the Minister of Culture.
With a couple of capoeira-like swings of the leg, lean and dread-locked Gilberto Gil flew around the Nokia Theater stage like no sixty-six year old you've ever seen. A few samba hip shimmies were enough to bring the Brazilian-packed crowd to a frenzy. From falsetto scatting to a bit of Pink Floyd-era rock and a reggae version of the "Girl from Ipanema," he ranged freely throughout the music map. The bilingual bureaucrat bracketed his songs with messages on the need for global change and new perspectives.
Gil's legacy is framed in a fine BBC documentary on Tropicalia, the late-sixties multifarious cultural movement he led with fellow-Bahian Caetano Veloso and others. Street demonstrators and musicians, Tropicalistas mixed rock, folk and bossa nova. Too avant-garde for the military government of the day, though, they were arrested as subversives and sent into exile.
Starting today, the Daily Traveler will be hosting Boom Box, a weekly
breakdown of the international music scene--from the latest artists to the
most out-of-the-way music festivals--written by John Oseid, the author of
Conde Nast Traveler's monthly Where Are You? puzzler.
I have an obsession and her name is Julieta Venegas.
These days the hottest rock music comes out of the Latin world and a waifish Mexican rockera you've probably never heard of leads the pack. Julieta Venegas was born in California, but the Tijuana-raised singer is no crossover queen--her eclectic Grammy-winning pop and rock compositions are all-Spanish-all-the-time. She's a rich and poetic lyricist, with a voice at times sweet and bouncy, at times haunting. Oh dear, stop me before I hit "Repeat" yet again.
Now you can get an easy Julieta fix yourself. Filmed onstage in Mexico City, the newly released concert DVD Julieta Venegas MTV Unplugged not only showcases her virtuosity--she plays accordion, acoustic guitar, and piano--but it's a lesson on the high-caliber contemporary Mexican music. Venegas rearranged her best-known songs with backing by everything from traditional Mexican brass to cellos. She's joined onstage by double-Oscar-winning Argentine composer Gustavo Santaolalla (Brokeback Mountain, Babel), who accompanies her on banjo, while Spanish hip-hop artist La Mala Rodriquez and Brazilian star Marisa Monte chime in as well. Some concert clips are posted on the Web site of the Spanish music channel MTV Tr3s, and the full concert DVD is available here.
For all things Julieta, pick up her hits album Realmente-Lo-Mejor. It includes her biggest international success, "Me Voy" (in which she matter-of-factly dumps a lover), the boppy, romantic tune "Limon y Sal," and the light-rap "Eres Para Mi."
Her playful and inventive videos are posted on both YouTube and MTV Tr3s. Don't speak Spanish? No hay problema! Here's one fan's fun blog on how to get the most out of Spanish videos.
Visitors to New York can catch Venegas headlining Central Park's Summerstage on July 12. She will also be at the Nokia Theatre in Times Square on September 11. A full international tour schedule is on her Myspace page.
Look for me; I'll be the gringo with stars in his eyes.
About this blog
The editors at Conde Nast Traveler answer questions and share travel secrets, tips, and dispatches from the road
Published in August 2008. Prices and other information were accurate at press time, but are subject to change. Please confirm details with individual establishments before planning your trip.
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