Sound Travels Radio: Sunday Jan. 5, 2020
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Every Sunday night, Sound Travels Radio is your trip to a different world of global music — a world where the past merges into the present and presents visions of the future of world music.
Here’s where this week’s episode took us.
Elite Beat “Sports Radio”
Elite Beat is a musical collective from Portland, Ore. whose all-instrumental sound is a genre-less though leans on Ethio-jazz, Black Ark dubbiness, Exotica, Malian blues and even Haight-Ashbury in the summer of love vibey-ness. Packed full of DIY dub mixing, cosmic orchestration and raw, percussion driven polyrhythms, Elite Beat are an easy listen without being “easy listening.”
Hassle “Make Ya Mouth Run”
U.K. dub outfitters Hassle have supported such reggae greats as Jah Shaka, Toots and The Maytals, Alton Ellis, Bob Andy and Macka B as well as forging their own originals. Their sound is pretty fresh, leaning ’70s dub sounds complete with old-school techniques like recording to tape and dubbed proper with tape delays from the King Tubby school of dub.
islandman “Dimitro”
islandman is a project born from the musical dreams of Istanbul based musician/producer Tolga Boyuk, Islandman represents a fiction character, a music persona, a dreamer composing the stories of a non-existing place…
islandman performs on stage as an electro-acoustic live trio format. Their music can be described as a unique mix of mellow electronic structures and dance beats with spacey live guitars, backed up by shamanic rhythms. “Dimitro,” with its Balkan style horns and dubbed out vibes is a fantasy I’m willing indulge in.
Perota Chingo and Chancha Via Circuito “Reverdecer (Remix)”
Apparently, Perota Chingo are pretty big in their native Argentina and have been dubbed “the next big thing.” Perota Chingo’s music is a compendium of styles, not just of Latin American music, but of the entire planet. Due to the varied origin of the instrumentalists and the willingness of the group to encompass all types of sounds, in a concert of Perota Chingo it can be heard from samba rhythms to reggae tones, through all the traditional music accents from the Southern Cone. Electro cumbia pioneer Chancha Via Circuito dresses this cut up with his unique vibes.
Savila “Fantasia”
MITU “Tandem”
Mitú is the electronic music duo of Julian Salazar, ex-guitarist of Bogota’s psychedelic cumbia band Bomba Estereo, and Franklin Tejedor, a master percussionist of Palenque’s great rhythmic traditions. Salazar builds dynamic and dance-inducing layers of sound on synthesizers and drum machines which Tejedor matches with the alegre drum and occasional vocal improvisations in Palenquero, to create pulsing slabs of shimmering electronica driven by insistent roots rhythms. The analogue electro sounds are generated live, without the use of pre-programmed sequences from a computer, giving the musicians space for spontaneous interaction with each other and the audience.
Novalima “Paso a Huella (Captain Planet Remix)”
Weste “Ficcionar”
Weste’s music poses an idiosyncratic journey between Buenos Aires and Montevideo, but with a contemporary and global imprint. Exploring the dialogue between different kinds of folklore, electronics and acoustic experimentation their sound seems to elude genre classification all together.
SAN CHA “Levanta Dolores”
Tropa Magica “Misirlou”
A band to watch out of East-L.A.’s vibrant cumbia scene. A side note: Surf-cumbia needs to become a thing in 2020.
Raymix & Juanes “Oye Mujer”
MULA “Y Ahora”
MULA is the union of three girls from the Dominican Republic who fuse electronic music with Caribbean rhythms. Since its formation in 2015, they have released two albums and traveled through 12 countries taking their futuristic Caribbean to some of the most renowned festivals in Latin America and Europe. “Y Ahora,” is about post-breakup creeping, finding that your former lover is doing just fine without you.
Burna Boy “Money Play”
Though he’s been making music for most of this decade, the Nigerian pop star Burna Boy truly caught fire in 2019 with his fourth album, “African Giant.” And in fit form he’s already back it it with a new single called “Money Play.”
“I’m highlighting the importance of moving with the ‘cheese’ at all times,” he said in a press release. “‘No dey carry money play’ is a word of advice/stern warning to never lose the hustle mentality.”
Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba “Ben Kadi (Jose Marquez Remix)”
