Megan's World Music Blog

"Reggae" and "U.S. Open" aren't two words that are frequently said in the same sentence, but this weekend, Reggae Carifest will assuredly change that. The day-long concert will take place at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens, home to the aforementioned world-class tennis tournament. The festival is a benefit, supporting Keep a Child Alive, a charity which fights AIDS in Africa.

Appearing on the bill are some of reggae's greatest names: Matisyahu, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Joseph Israel, Midnite, and more. I'm more than jealous of you New Yorkers who are a mere train-ride away, so be sure to come back and tell us all how fabulous it was.

On a side note, I just learned from Jeff Cooper, About.com's Guide to Tennis, that Ashe Stadium is a hard court, which makes a tennis ball bounce differently than, say, a fast grass court (like Wimbledon's) or a slow clay court (like Roland Garros). Does this, however, make any difference to the way reggae sounds when played on, above or near it? I cannot say for sure. I do know, however, that I wish I could be there to find out.

Some people credit Bob Marley with the invention of reggae. In fact, though, most reggae historians (yes, that is a real job, and yes, I am amazingly super-jealous of the people who have it) credit a simple feud between Lee "Scratch" Perry and a producer named Joe Gibbs as the starting point for what would be the first "reggae" recording (though it wasn't called reggae at the time). Perry worked as an assistant producer in Gibbs' studio in Kingston, Jamaica, and after they had a falling-out, Perry recorded a song called "People Funny Boy" (listen/download), which was intended to make fun of Gibbs, calling him a baby. Interestingly enough, for all you rap fans out there, "People Funny Boy" was one of the first songs to ever make use of a sample - a little bit of recorded sound, replayed or used as a musical effect. In this case, it was a crying baby. Also, though, the background beat was faster and more emphatically backbeated than was standard for ska, which was popular at the time... it was what would become reggae.

Lee "Scratch" Perry is still around and performing. I caught him a couple of years ago, and he's pretty wild and over-the-top, especially considering he was nearing 70 years old at the time. His beard was dyed green, his entire outfit was made of red, yellow and green fabrics, and he was just generally a real character. Has anyone else ever caught this legend in concert? Leave a comment and tell us what you thought!

If you're looking around for great summer concerts by world music artists, you may discover yourself looking a bit harder this year. United States visa application processes are notoriously difficult and expensive to navigate, and with the decline of the U.S. dollar, combined with what many music business professionals believe to be disorganization and/or incompetence within the Department of Homeland Security, fewer and fewer international artists are entering the United States to perform. Even household names like Boy George have been denied entry into the United States for what may be unclear reasons. The Boston Phoenix has an excellent article which explains many of these visa and work permit issues, and though the article mostly focuses on pop groups, many of the issues still apply. They talk about, for example, Rodrigo y Gabriela, who were denied entry into the states because singer Rodrigo Sanchez shares the name (but is absolutely not the same person as) a highly-wanted Mexican criminal. This caused them to cancel a number of sold-out shows, at a major cost to both the artists and the venue. And they are but one in a slew of examples.

It seems to me that music is the most powerful form of cultural exchange. Visual art is wonderful, literature is fantastic, but there's something about seeing a group of people perform their own music that adds such a context to the understanding of that culture. In this age of globalization, intercultural understanding is absolutely a must... so are we selling ourselves short by not demanding that the U.S. government make the process for musical and artistic visitation as easy as possible? Or is the policy of "deny applications first, ask questions later" reasonable in the name of national security? What do you think?

The always-eloquent Marcy Dermansky, one of the intrepid guides to world and independent film at About.com, has written a review of the movie The Visitor. I haven't seen it yet, but it just opened at my local indie film house, so I'm on the way within the next few days. In a nutshell, it's a film about a crotchety old white man who returns home to his New York City apartment to discover that there is an immigrant couple from Africa who are living there, not knowing that the apartment already has an owner. Through a series of apparently quite believable and touching events, they make friends, and the African man, who happens to be a musician, teaches him how to play the djembe and even introduces him to the big drum circle in Central Park, and then... some other stuff happens that we're not allowed to know about because it would spoil the ending. I admit that it sounded a bit cheesy to me when I first heard the plotline, but the universal opinion is that it's great, so I'm game.

Check out Marcy's review, and if you've seen the movie, leave a comment and let us know what you thought about it!

SoundRoots brings us an excellent review of Somalian rapper K'Naan's new CD, The Dusty Foot on the Road, which is the kind of hip-hop that adult world music fans and their teenage kids can both agree upon. Instead of heavy, looped beats, K'Naan uses both traditional African percussion and "found object" rhythms.

Over at Spinner.com, Steve Hochman talks with Barthelemy Attiso, lead guitar player for one of my favorite bands in the world, Orchestra Baobab. They're a Senegalese band who've been around since 1972, and have been pushing the musical envelope ever since. The fellas talk about how technology and globalization have changed things for African musicians, and how many things have stayed the same.

Dmitri Vietze over at DubMC is keeping busy with two great interviews: one is a Q&A with Aaron Bisman, the founder of JDub records. JDub is a major driving force behind the musical revitalization of young Jewish culture in the USA, and they've put out phenomenal records by bands like Balkan Beat Box and Golem. He's also got an interview with a new-to-me band from Kenya called Yunasi, who give their perspective on the Kenyan music business... judging by their drive, talent and understanding of the global music scene (not to mention their awesome sound, which you can hear on the official Yunasi MySpace page), we're going to be hearing a lot more from them soon.

Global Rhythm Magazine has a full-length feature article about Israeli musician Idan Raichel available for your reading pleasure. He's a really interesting guy who makes totally fantastic records. Though Raichel has broken into the world music scene fairly heavily at this point, I think that his next album has a real shot of becoming a crossover hit.

Read any great blogs or articles about world music lately? Leave us a comment and let us know... sharing is caring, y'know.

If you're in Amsterdam right now, than you are super-duper lucky. First of all, the place is practically knee-deep in oudekaas, which, despite my Francophilia, I find to be the most delicious cheese in the world. And I am pretty serious about my cheese, y'all.

Secondly, though, the amazing Amsterdam Roots Festival begins today. It's a pretty serious festival for world music fans - the headliners include Latin rockers Ozomatli, African music pioneers Oumou Sangare and Baaba Maal, and fado superstar Ana Moura. The festival lasts for well over a week, so if you just so happen to be checking in on this blog from your favorite Amsterdam coffeeshop, make sure you check out the performance schedule - many of the events are even outdoors and free!

Summertime is officially upon us here in Upstate New York. I know this for a fact because earlier today, so many people in my tiny hometown were running their air conditioners at once that we burned out the power grid and we all had to spend the majority of the afternoon suffering with neither air conditioning nor computers. Oops.

Anyhow, to me, summertime means lounging outdoors. Whether I'm stretched out on a blanket at a music festival or sprawled on a beach towel on the slatey shores of Cayuga Lake, I like to have two things with me: a beer and a book. As for beer, I prefer chilly hefeweizen. As for books, I like to read about music. Actually, I really like to read trashy chick lit, but music biographies definitely come in a close second. Last summer, I rocked through biographies of Edith Piaf, Django Reinhardt and Lee "Scratch" Perry. This summer, I've got a French-language Bob Marley biography to keep me busy - my French is pretty rusty, so it'll undoubtedly take me a little longer than usual.

Anyhow, there are lots of great reasons to read books about music while lounging on the beach. First off, music books tend to be simultaneously entertaining and enlightening. There's not a novel in the world that is crazier than Edith Piaf's life story, for example. Also, perhaps more importantly, reading music books makes you look cool. Well, way cooler than reading The Secret, at any rate. So why not pick up one of my ten favorite books about reggae and give it a go? The list spans from biographies to coffee table books, collections of essays to anthropological studies. There's something for every reggae fan, and all of them will absolutely entertain you, and perhaps teach you a little something, too. While we're talking about books on music, why not leave a comment and let us know what your favorite music-related book is?

I'm a big fan of internet radio. It's partially because my MacBook is basically fused to my lap at this point. Computer addiction, anyone? It's also because, as a world music listener, it's not always easy to find what I'm looking for on terrestrial radio, right at the moment I want to hear it. Satellite radio is great, but since I don't have a car, I know that I probably wouldn't get my subscription's worth. I do often listen to streaming radio, but all-internet stations can be really fun as well. A new favorite of mine is WorldRootsRadio.com. All world music, all the time. Just like with terrestrial radio stations, not every song is always to my taste, but I think they play a really nice variety of traditional and popular music from around the globe - including old-time, Cajun and Zydeco, and other North American ethnic genres that are often snubbed by world music snobs.

So the big question is, how do you like to listen to world music radio? Vote in our poll, and leave a comment telling us what your favorite stations are!

Well, I'm very sorry to say that I'm really not the world's biggest fan of Karan Casey's latest release, Ships in the Forest, much as I'd like to be. I like the concept of the album, but the end result just doesn't quite work for me. An attempt was made to create an album that was sparse and ethereal, and really highlighted Casey's extraordinary voice. Instead, though, the album was stripped of any grit and gravel whatsoever, and ended up sounding precious and borderline sappy. From an objective standpoint, there really isn't anything wrong with the album, but it just doesn't pierce me the way that great Irish Music usually does, or the way that Casey herself has in the past. For the same reason that I'm not a fan of Judy Collins, I'm not a fan of Ships in the Forest... it's that hard-to-define quality - the "za-za-zu", as my imaginary friend Carrie Bradshaw would say - that's missing for me. I'm not saying that it's bad, but you really have to be into highly refined balladry for it to get you in the gut. I'm not, so it doesn't.

Have you heard Ships in the Forest? Leave a message and tell us what you think!

Let's take a quick musical trip around the world... of blogs, that is:

World Music Central has a touching obituary of Nigerian musical legend Sonny Okosuns, who passed away on May 24. Okosuns gained fame as an Afro-Reggae singer and anti-Apartheid activist, and later became well-known for his African take on Christian praise music and gospel.

Calcopyrite Communications brings us an interview with Irish music songstress Heidi Talbot, who you may recognize as the former lead singer of the fantastic female Irish group Cherish the Ladies. Talbot has a new CD out, called In Love and Light, and she talks about the recording process and her inspiration for the album.

Dmitri Vietze over at DubMC gets a few world music biz folks talking about where they discover new world music... a very interesting topic, to be sure. Most of the world music that regular people find out about is because of these higher-ups in the world music industry, so it's definitely interesting to know that they discover world music from the same sorts of places that the rest of us do - blogs, iTunes, and (obviously) friends! It does make you realize that the process is very cyclical, and the world music community is so interactive.

RootsWorld has a great review of a couple of re-releases that have recently hit the market: Authenticite: The Syliphone Years, Guinea's Orchestres Nationaux and Federaux, 1965-1980 and Bokoor Beats: Vintage Afrobeat, Afro-Rock and Highlife from Ghana. I love obscure vintage African music - there's something about it that just gets me - so I can't wait to hear these albums.

Read any interesting world music news in the blogosphere lately? Leave a comment and a link, so we can check it out!