As the late great Emma Goldman once put it, and read her book Living My Life if you can; dance. So on the 100th International Women’s Day lets dance to some of the great Women in music; continuous playlist on YouTube here.  At the moment it is PJ Harvey who most neatly captures that dance/revolution, but recently albums by Rumer, sumptuously, and Laura Marling, challengingly (you have to sit up straight to listen to it) sit on the dance/revolution boundary. But it is Polly Harvey’s ironically sly chorus, “Gonna take my problem to the United Nations“, that gives me the laughing dance by proxy The Words That Maketh Murder;

But if you’d ask me to name, off the top of my head, who my favourite female musician is then I’d usually say Cassandra Wilson, who grew out of the remarkable M-Base Collective in New York, along with Meshell N’degecello, to become the best jazz singer of the past thirty years. I could just listen to her voice alone, but the way she interplays with her musicians always seems fresh. She has a remarkable way of interpreting songs, I particularly like the way she takes Last Train to Clarksville and returns it to its anti-Vietnam roots and Strange Fruit sinks deep into its raw emotions. She has just released a staggeringly alive album Silver Pony, which is her best since Belly of the Sun for me. But demonstrating her massive intimacy here is Redemption Song;  

Melody Gardot is another jazz singer who is brilliant live, but she has a smoky voice full of tremulous textures, that draws you in through her seeming fragility. Perhaps that isn’t so as she is a really strong live performer, and she learnt to sing recovering from a bad car crash. Also featured with limpid magnificence on Charlie Haden’s wonderful Sophisticated Ladies project, she really does have a marvellously Worrisome Heart; 

Melody Gardot replaced Madeleine Peyroux in my affections recently after her own two brilliant albums, which seemed to surpass Peyroux’s own perfect pair, Careless Love and Half The Perfect World. Peyroux, who seemed a bit nervous on stage (and has done a runner before performing in her early days) however offers marvellous albums full of great interpretations, she really takes ownership of the songs she interprets. She may say I’m Alright but best of all she takes Leonard and Dance’s him to the End of Love;  

Lhasa de Sela proved more even more compelling live than Maddy, I saw Lhasa in Bristol, especially on the songs from The Living Road album like Anywhere on This Road, partly inspired by Marseille. Like many female artists however she is poorly served by the videos on YouTube, but this is both a great song and performance, with a tribute video to this now sadly dead female singer El Desierto;  

For me Lila Downs now occupies Lhasa’s space, being both mixed blood and mixed culture. Lila Downs is Mexican and American and often produces a sound that seems to come from the world as a whole. This is a wonderful song about Mole, the Mexican Chicken in Chocolate recipe, giving you all your courses in one dish. The video captures the ingredients, the spirit and the texture of the dish, as well as allowing Lila Downs to demonstrate the breathy strengths of her vocal technique; Cumbia del Mole; 

A recently resurrected singer is Grace Jones, who released some wonderful albums in the 70s, featuring many danceable 12 inch singles, Nipple To The Bottle being my dance favourite. I was sceptical of her recent Hurricane album, feeling it was produced as a part of Island Records somewhat self-congratulatory 50th anniversary celebrations, but it is almost as strong and danceable as Nightclubbing. Well, Well, Well is the dance track but the standout is the seemingly autobiographical Williams Blood; 

The best live concert by a female artist I have ever seen, narrowly edging out Cassandra Wilson, was Goldfrapp on the Supernature tour. Madonna’s favourite album of the time Goldfrapp had disciplined her band as well as Madge ever did. and she produced iridiscent, sparkling versions of all of that albums’ Cerrone-inspired standout tracks, including Number One; 

But for a few years after Tanto Tempo was released it was Bebel Gilberto who provided the Ambient Chill soundtrack to my walks as I migrated to the iPod, and she soundsculptured my excursions; it was So Nice. She seems to capture that Brasilian musical mood of making you wonder if they will ever make it to the next beat until you are left completely chilled and spellbound. Sounding like a tropical Dido here is Samba de Benção;  

But the first woman who ever made me sit up for her musical artistry alone, and yet had started with the traditional role of being a sensitive singer-songwriter, before breaking, no shattering, that mould, was Joni Mitchell. Fed up of ‘stoking the star-making machinery behind the popular song’, she was first inspired by Lambert, Hendricks and Ross on Court and Spark, then went all the way and outdid even Captain Beefheart for wilful obscurantism. She released an album called Mingus inspired by Charlie Mingus but featuring the inimitable, God Must Be a Boogie Man; 

But first of all, before even Joni in the seventies, I loved Sonja Kristina who drove Curved Air through it’s various incarnations, from early classical prog-rock to a more chart-friendly lyrically driven approach, before becoming an smart live recording band until they finally split up 1977 (!) With Darryl Way she also wrote their biggest hit Back Street Luv;

Almost sui generis Patti Smith and her epic album Horses, finally created a watershed between the sexist sixties and the plastic bag equality of punk, by being a poet offering herself on her own terms ‘Jesus died for somebodies sins, but not mine‘. `One of the great album openings she brought her Brooklyn of the Mind to London so that we could Go! Rimbaud! Gotta lose control, surrounded by her endlessly listenable history of horse attitudes, Land;  

Women finally seemed to be making their own musical statements more clearly during punk and my favourite band at the time was The Slits, especially their debut album Cut. The raucous Ari-Up has gone and Viv Albertine is currently crowd-funding a new album through Pledge Music, but they are best represented by the great rhythms, which seem to follow on from Horses, of the enduringly precise pink-putdown of Typical Girls;  

Kate Bush emerged at the same time as punk and although I couldnt stand Wuthering Heights, Hammer Horror got me and Hounds of Love is one of the all-time great albums by anybody, Aerial too. She has a great live voice (I saw her with Peter Gabriel), but the song that does it for me rhythmically has always been the magically bonkers Sat in Your Lap;

But even with punk and artists like Kate Bush women were still seriously under-represented in music, even after Blondie (another great band live) provided ironic glamour, so Tina Weymouth & her big bass stood out in Talking Heads, and even more so in her funky side project the overstood Tom Tom Club. They released the delirious supercalifragilistic ‘what are words worth‘ song for the rap generation Wordy Rappinghood; 

The eighties gave us big hair and ambition, until yet another Art School Prankster Laurie Anderson offered Oh Superman and then Madonna finally gave us portfolio sex as a career on her terms, sculpting consumption for the next 20 years. I don’t think she got it quite right until Desperately Seeking Susan finally saw her Get Into the Groove;  

Eliza Carthy on Red Rice gave us a Mercury nominated double album where she was making music as a musician on her own popfolk terms, modern folk with elements of drum and bass and remixing. This is a great album but sadly it never propelled her out of the folk audiences, despite its endless originality, and thoughtful musical inteligence. Featuring both her delightful voice and precise fiddle playing here’s 10,000 miles;  

The twentieth century produced many wonderful female singers, here is a list of 328 of them. However the naughties seem to have produced a plethora of great albums by female artists despite the shift from Art School to BRIT School. One of whom, Laura Marling inspired this blog, and gave us her brilliant debut Alas I Cannot Swim. I would pick Ghosts as the track but the video is smeared with an awful Sky ad so here is the live version (with Whalearound) of Alas I Cannot Swim;  

And currently, apart from caustic dance of Let England Shake, I’m taking my pleasures from the warm bath of aural luxury direct from Herne Hill girl Rumer and her enduring Seasons of the Soul. Which track to pick? Aretha, Slow or, something redolent of the slow roll of hills in South London? Here is the cheerful sadness of Am I Forgiven;  

So that is a brief run through some of the female musicians I love as a way of celebrating International Women’s Day on March 8th, and I haven’t even mentioned Anna Calvi, First We Kiss;

Or even the singer/songwriter/trumpeter (now there is sui generis) Sue Richardson, who has a new album Fanfare and here she is trumpeting her own vocals Live; And dont forget to read @MissBarton in the Guardian.

You might like Our Fave Five where Megan and Eleanor Sing the World! A blog post by Megan and Eleanor on their favourite world music videos. They made their website over half-term

These are the most popular posts and my favourite albums in 2010.

1 Rumer Post November 2010; Live on Jools Dec 31st 2010 Aretha; 

2 Abaco (April 2010) April 2010 (my favourite post)

3 World Music of Africa July 2010

5 Run (March 2010) March 2010

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,000 times in 2010. That’s about 7 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 32 new posts, not bad for the first year!

The busiest day of the year was November 14th with 57 views. The most popular post that day was Rumer.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were healthfitnesstherapy.com, networkedblogs.com, cardonation.sex991.com, slashingtongue.com, and digg.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for radio youtube, radioyoutube, marseille, let there be drums, and world music radio congas.

It’s a cold, cold, November and I need something warm and lubricious on my headphones, so what better than new vocal sensation Rumer, with her decidely autumnal Seasons of My Soul. (The YouTube playlist for this post is here) Don’t know much about her, except that she is Anglo-Pakistani, has worked with Bacharach and that intelligent lounge sensibility oozes out of the album. Perfect aural mollycoddlying for when you come in from the cold and want to be warmed through, or early on a lazy Sunday morning. Aretha;  

So what else can we follow her ruminations on Aretha with but than with the first Lady of Soul Aretha Franklin herself? You might like this week’s Motown podcast from the Guardian, even though Aretha was Atlantic Records. Written by Don Covay you have to give big respect to her vocal chords, the short twangesque guitar intro before we are walloped into that echoingly loud and big mid-sixties Southern small studio soul feel. Chain, Chain, Chain of Fools;

And the twang remains the thang with the remarkable Imelda May, kind of like the Stray Cats of the Brian Setzer Orchestra meeting Eddie Cochran in a session run by Duane Eddy explaining how the old Western Swing bands work. Great styling by the sound stylist and the video director; East of Eden Denim meets Lita Roza in Kansas City. Is that a Zoot Suit Riot or just Mayhem; 

Was I ever in Led Zeppelin? Robert Plant Esquire of Stourbridge Art College declines the requests with “I’m in the Band of Joy, me.” With his conceptual follow up to Raising Sand Planty raises dust on the nefarious activities of his younger days and amps up the Valves all the way to 3.14, producing a lovely muddy post-Lanois sound to this album. If Rumer leaves you reclining in a mellow chill-out Plant peaks real interest with his earthy singing sitting on top of beautiful ensemble playing, in fact, that is his real hallmark as an artist. He can make Angel’s Dance; 

More famous for Dancing With The Devil the Rolling Stones released the fabulously remastered Exile on Main Street in 2010, their masterpiece. Scoring an unprecedented 100 on Metacritic this is their ensemble playing at its finest. All the swampy 70s Riviera classics from Chateau Nellcote and several bonus tracks including Good Time Woman an early version of Tumbling Dice which sounds nothing like it. Brian Jones shook up the early Thames Delta sound of the Stones but, as evidenced here, Mick Taylor always polished up those albums he played on. Since he left Mick and Keef have just been downright lazy. Whatever Marty Scorsese says (Shine A Light) the best track on the album for me has always been right here on the sleazily glorious Soul Survivor; 

I really wanted to play Afro-Tropical Soundz next, their remix of Lila Barrientos Cumbia en do Menor is a wicked Latin dance track, but no sign of them on YouTube. The original is available on YouTube however but not in great sound quality. Oops I am wrong! I have finally found a version. Fantastically bonkers with the kind of big-blowing brass sound which tells you they have absolute belief in what they play, however outdated it is; brilliant. Listen and dance to Cumbia en Menor;

Next a track to complement Cumbia en Menor, and picked for Holland on World Cup of Music, the massive global hit of 2010 We Speak No Amerciano by Yolanda Be Cool. Play them back to back and tell me that the hit is better than the original Cumbia, both magnificent dance stuff. This has a madly witty mashup video which plays much better than the radio edit; a mad mash & dance right here right now, We Speak No Americano;

How to follow all this bonkers dancing then? Well from next week you can watch Chico & Rita the Afro-Cuban Jazz cartoon scored by Bebo Valdes. Or listen to the great Lila Downs who, despite the urging of friends, I didn’t get until she released a live album this year with La Misteriosa. Not too far from Calexico in some ways, but way more exuberant and Lila Downs’ singing is multi-layered and more forceful live. I love Arenita Azul but this official video samples three tracks before letting us finally hear the classic Arenita Azul; 

The big World Music release of 2010 has been Afro-Cubism, which Elias Ochoa surprisingly seems to steal. This is how the Buena Vista Music Club was originally supposed to be, a fusion mix of Malian and Cuban musicians, but the West African musicians didn’t get their visas so Ruben Gonzalez had to take the sessions by the rough of his keyboard and make it the best-selling World Music album of all time. This is not a classic like Buena Vista, but still great, and as Afro-Cubism have already racked up some live gigs here they are live with Nima Diyala; 

Afro-Celt Sound System have been one of the great World Music Bands for me, the first time I heard a kora solo over the studio-based rhythm tracks they generate I knew they were for me. I finally saw them live last week at the Barbican, touring to promote their compilation album Capture; fantastic, a real blowing band; they can make you dance, sing, or anything. I love Release and Rise, but they are promoting the album with Persistence of Memory; 

The next two albums came out earlier this year and I didn’t really get how good they are. The Coral are wiggy musos from the Wirral right across from Liverpool who love Captain Beefheart, but seem to love making music even more. This is ageless and sounds a bit more like Mancunians The Hollies, or Moby Grape, or even CSN (with a touch of Y). I love Fleet Foxes but let’s celebrate our own work masters harmonies, The Coral soaring on 1000 Years;

Despite rightly celebrating Field Music I sadly overlooked Foals whose album Total Life Forever is a real grower. Inspired by Ray Kurtzweil’s rubbish Technological Singularity theory (Oxford boys hey?) the album sports a brilliant website and was a Mercury Music Award nominee. The new video for Blue Blood is cute (it’s the intro) but the song isn’t as good as the title track. As you’ve probably guessed I prefer a good live version to the official album video and here are Foals cutting a rug for Lauren Laverne’s home team Radio 6 on Total Life Forever; 

Another artist poorly served by YouTube is Richard Thompson whose new album Dream Attic is quite brilliant, especially The Money Shuffle. You can get a marvellous double CD with both live band versions and acoustic demos of every song, sometimes the acoustic version is better than the electricity of the live band, but they are all good. However the best recent video I can find is a Later… version, featuring the great Danny Thompson on double bass, of the Sweet Warrior track I’ll Never Give it Up; 

One of my all time favourite chill-out albums is In The Heart of The Moon by Toumani Diabete and the late great Ali Farka Toure, which unfailingly puts me to sleep! Ali & Toumani is a kind of follow up put out following Ali’s death so probably a number of out-takes included, but it is a beautifully peaceful album and comes all the way from Bamako to make our lives slightly more tranquil; which it does. Here they are then, Ali & Toumani on Kala Djula;

Keeping it chill is Hindi Zahra whose new album Handmade is another 2010 grower. I keep expecting her to be Natascha Atlas but she is more like Nouvelle Vague’s grown up intelligent sister. (Listen to This is Not A Love Song) Using their mellow acoustic guitar sound but allied to her own reflections on the world. The current video is great, subtle, Latin and Moorish. This is insidious sweet, sweet music Beautiful Tango; 

Another track overlooked by me is Bebel Gilberto’s Segredo (Secret) off her last album All In One, which wasn’t so great and this is tucked away as the last track. It is great moody stuff, in line with her breakthrough Tanto Tempo album which was produced in part, but mostly inspired, by Suba, who’s Sao Paulo Confessions is one of the great lost dance albums. Check his Segredo version from 1999. Here Bebel channels Suba’s dance-cool to come up with a moving chill-out cling-on dance track; just our secret then? Oh deleted. Here she is with Preciso dizer que te amo;

More sublime but slightly less cool dance from the surpise hit of the first Radio YouTube post the Bulgarian Kottarashky. Everything he masters is really good, a great Balkan mix and mash or as Tim Cumming puts it a ‘dislocated dream ride through the pungent soundscape of night-time Sofia’. Here is the latest late-nite cool, cool video I Want You To Sleep;

Now get your skates on! The London Jazz Festival has started and I have already seen Jah Wobble’s awesome Dub tribute to Electric Miles, but my favourite jazz album this year is Radio Silence from the Neil Crowley Trio. I reckon they are as good as e.s.t. but they are English so we dont celebrate them as the great piano trio they are. This is a handmade unofficial video to what my iTunes tell me is my most played jazz track this year, Vice Skating; 

There has been some great folkesque stuff this year  and the tradition has been celebrated (see Electric Eden). Bellowhead are as good a live roots band as there is in the UK at the present, even tho Mumford and Sons know how to work festival crowds. Hedonists too, as their album titles tell us, here they are live for the Grauniad explaining the inspirations behind their Pogueification of the polka on New York Girls and then blowing up a Bellowhead of a dancing storm belying their musicological roots; New York Girls;

I love the writing of Laura Barton (who thoughtfully gives popular music history it’s due in Long Live Rock n Roll) in the Guardian and this week they turned me on to Local Natives, sometimes known as the Grizzly Vampire FireFox, who do modern naughties alt.pop with intelligence and wit. Here they are at live at SXSW with Sun Hands;

So mostly new stuff this month, with a respectful nod to Aretha, discovered mostly by going back over my 2010 downloads and actually listening to them. Vampire Weekend remains my favourite album this year, with Rumer the best new album, but Afro-Cubism is growing on me as are Foals, Hindi Zahra, Lost Natives and all of the above of course. Wonder what Imelda May really is like live?

The YouTube Playlist for this post is available so you can listen to the tracks whilst you read. If you liked this post you might like the most popular post Abaco; Video/Food matching in Marseille

Guilty Pleasure is I Blame Coco, perhaps to atone for Richard Thompson’s Hear Comes Geordie. Could become Human League’s Night People, however I love the Deep End inspired video (South London Victorian Swimming Pool). Deep End has just been named one of 50 Great Lost Movies by this months Uncut. Good to hear her stingingly husky tones on Self Machine; 

Bonus Track; as recommended by Sir Kevin of Scouse-a-lot is Dirty Shame by The Cubical, very Dilbert name lads. Great uplifting tune with a joyful video (is that right Kev) and clearly with ambitions to be less complex than The Coral; but having fun is never a Dirty Shame;

Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music

This month I have mostly been reading Electric Eden, the marvellous book by Rob Young which looks at the Arcadian tradition in British music in the twentieth century, or folk rock to you and me. At the end of the nineteenth century the Victorians had made our world so safe for piano legs that in 1904 a German music critic actually wrote a book describing Britain as Das Land ohne Musik; the land without music. Yet, in the nineteenth century we had developed a marvellous Romantic poetic tradition which had come from a spiritual engagement with nature, even as the industrial revolution developed apace. Electric Eden looks at how this emerging cultural tradition infused and changed various musics in the twentieth century. In some ways Charles Parry’s arrangement of Blake’s Jerusalem is the first example of this spiritual, or even pagan, development in music.

This post will try to summarise the book with a selection of tracks reflecting its concerns and interests. Rob Young starts his book with the metaphor of Vashti Bunyan‘s one year road trip in a Romany caravan to join Donovan’s artistic commune in Scotland. He’s moved on by time she got there; like other putative musical collectives in 1969 commerce got in the way of his vision. So Vashti, along with her dog and husband, kept on her pilgrimage until she reached and settled in the Irish countryside. She was living out of time but engaging directly with nature in the countryside in a series of Just Another Diamond Day.

In 1896 William Morris, in News From Nowhere, described a healthier future based on everyone expressing their craft-based understanding of the world, an Arts and Crafts world that was close to nature. Blake had expressed similar sentiments in a visionary way in his paintings and poems and Parry’s setting of his poem Jerusalem captures this pre-lapsarian mood that Young writes about. But before an identified ‘folk’ music emerged it was a quartet of classical composers, Delius, Holst, Elgar and Vaughan Williams who, inspired variously by English countrysides at the start of the twentieth century, created a land-made music and emerged as the first in a series of visionaries who sought to breathe life into music by reflecting the inspiration that nature gave them. With a sample of that new classical music here is Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius;

But this emerging concern with the muse of nature in  Edwardian times was rudely interrupted by the First World War. After 1919 the UK was committed to building a post-Dickensian land fit for “heroes” and Arts and Crafts became Art Deco and moved to the suburbia of Metroland. But the endless horrors of a genocidal World War traumatised many. Peter Warlock, the Jimmy Page of the  1920′s, used Yeats Curlew to express the now dark vision of his spiritual views in those chastened, bleak, post-war times. Like Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending this uses a song-bird metaphor, but rather to lament a dark and brooding tragedy, The Curlew;

However despite the growing adoption of the broader inspirations of nature in this new classical music it was the work of the song collector Cecil Sharp that laid the foundations of both folk music and folk-rock in the UK and whose work was partly responsible for the English Folk Dance and Song Society. The seminal event in all this was Sharp’s collecting of the song Seeds of Love from John Harrison, whilst staying with Charles Marson at his vicarage in Somerset. No recordings of this are available but song-collectors were not unlike ‘plant-hunters‘ in the nineteenth-century and they scoured the countryside finding and collecting songs (by writing them down in musical notation), especially in rural counties like Suffolk and Somerset such as the 1611 song The Three Ravens

Sharp was concerned to produce a music curriculum for schools hence his collected songs were bowdlerized and made safe for school children to learn in the inter-war years. Post World War 2, in an interesting parallel with the Harlem Renaissance 25 years earlier, new forms of folk culture developed due to the negative freedoms of what Jeff Nuttall called “Bomb Culture,” the permanent possibility of immediate annihilation in the Cold War. We had more engaged and political song-collectors and, in the case of Ewan MacColl who was a Communist, song writers. Showing sensitive awareness of the situation of the proletariat is his classic Dirty Old Town; 

Shirley Collins, who could appear four times in this post so enduring and profound has her role been, was significant for simultaneously being an ordinary person who sang handed down songs, a song collector (with Alan Lomax – read her America Over The Water), and an innovator. Whilst she personally felt that a singer should honour the truth that history had given to a song she also worked with some of the best innovators. From Folk Routes New Routes with Davey Graham here is Bad Girl;

Davey Graham represents the first of the dishonourable innovators who synthesised what had gone before and brought in a wider range of influences, say from visiting Morocco, and introduced new approaches, say the DADGAD guitar tuning, and so pointed out paths to new futures. Years before Dylan suffered electric derision Graham was looked down upon by the keepers of the new traditional flame, but he radicalised the approach to acoustic guitar playing, directly influencing Bert Jansch, Jimmy Page and Paul Simon (who played Graham’s classic Angi with Simon & Garfunkel). But he announced himself to the world partnered by influential London bluesman Alexis Korner with 3/4 AD; 

Graham, a law unto himself, was spotted by Ken Russell in 1959 & filmed for a BBC documentary on this strange new thing the guitar, but folk music was really developing in folk clubs like MacColl’s Ballads and Blues, supported by the magazine Sing. It was Hamish Imlach‘s club in Scotland which saw the emergence of the intimidating but accessible Bert Jansch, who picked up the flame that Graham had lit producing a classic debut album in 1965 and later recorded the Ann Briggs tune which Jimmy Page later nicked for the first Led Zeppelin album (really!) Black Waterside;

Folk Clubs and pubs were slowly being displaced by beat groups and pop bands playing to a new breed of fan, Sylvain Choumet shows how this also affected Music Hall in the film Illusionist, but the young folk musicians were listening to the new stuff as well. Bert Jansch was matched for virtuosity by the antiquarian John Renbourn and after playing separately and together in a range of folk clubs they surprisingly formed a folk-rock band, the quite stunning Pentangle who blended folk, jazz and blues in a memorably light and breezy way, because they were amplified acoustic musicians with a listening drummer, Terry Cox. They even bagged a big pop hit with the theme tune for a BBC sitcom Light Flight.

Coming the other way, from rock and pop, were Fairport Convention who were influenced by the Byrds, and Dylan. After two successful albums they suffered a car crash in March 1969 and with the more folk-oriented Sandy Denny already singing them songs collected by Cecil Sharp they turned to this emerging tradition. They had surprisingly improvised A Sailor’s Life on Unhalfbricking with folk fiddler Dave Swarbrick and he moved in with the band as they recuperated at the cottage at Farley Chamberlayne.  Jamming together in the front room each morning they produced Liege and Lief the first Folk-Rock classic recently voted Best Folk Album Ever by Radio 2. This is the malleable, devious Reynardine;

Arguably British folk started its move to mainstream acceptance with the song-collecting of Cecil Sharp but it was the producer-manager Joe Boyd who set up Witchseason Productions and uncovered a stream of these artists, often signed by Island records who had the greatest effect in the 1960s and 1970s. Rob Young wrote Electric Eden as the death of Ian MacDonald (who wrote the brilliant penetrating analysis of The Beatles Revolution in the Head) meant that he would never write his book on the electric Folk-Rock boom of 1966-74. To Young the summative band of this process, because they were light and musical like Pentangle, but varied, experimental and integrative like the Fairports, were the Incredible String Band. I remember buying Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter at the time and thinking, every time I played it between Cream and Jimi Hendrix, that this was a very different world; magical timeless, mysterious, other. A Very Cellular Song is all of this, and if you look at the cover and lose yourself in thought you can also see what it means;

To be completed with; The Best Folk Song Ever Dec 21st 2010…

I wasn’t planning to write this but I thought, after the World Cup had tried to celebrate the African dimension in football, I would comment on and play some African music, that I liked and influenced me, as a chronology (non-stop playlist on YouTube here). It is also Nelson Mandela Day today so as well as singing Nkosi Sikeleli Africa, here is a chance to say God Bless Nelson Mandela and enjoy some of the music from Africa. As Mendela said “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

Currently I am a huge fan of West African music from Sub-Saharan Mali, Senegal and Nigeria, as well as North African Rai and Arabic music. However during the World Cup I discovered that Ghana has a vibrant and developing music scene around blingy hiplife and both Cameroon and the Cote d’Ivoire have great dance music, you can follow new developments at AfroPop online. I live in London and apart from Ginger Johnson’s African Drummers, who played on Sympathy For The Devil at the Rolling Stones Concert in the Park in 1969, the first out and out African band I saw were Osibisa; criss-cross rhythms that explode with happiness. In our typical student house in London we used to play The Dawn off the first album to get us out of bed, but here is one of their minor UK hits from the YouTube Osibisa playlist by voycha; this is what they were like live. Music for Gong-Gong;  

In the late sixties African music was seen as being revolutionary as blacks in America adopted Afros and studied African history as they reworked their identities in the post-Civil Rights post-Martin Luther King Black Panther period. Many American jazz musicians adopted African, or Islamic names, and this was exemplified by the explosive The Last Poets (listen to When The Revolution Comes) but in London Africa became a source of rhythms as African musicians played congas and percussion, which us white boys had picked up from Santana in the movie Woodstock. We weren’t quite capable of distinguishing between Latin and African percussion, just between drumming and percussion, a bit. Here is a sample of what Ginger Johnson was playing in London in the early 1970s with his African Messengers. This is terrific Highlife, which was all that was available to us. The video has great notes, the track is called Majo;

So some white boys started adding congas to tracks after watching Sympathy for The Devil by the Stones with Ginger Johnson in Hyde Park, but that was as far as our percussive revolution went. My own breakthrough came from two Ethiopian lads who I was working with in a factory in East London. They came over for a meal at my council flat in Hackney and brought with them two Fela Ransome-Kuti albums from back home, Expensive Shit and Why Blackmen They Suffer Today. Fela had the interesting trick of starting his 15-minute tracks (the 2 albums contained just 4 tracks in total) with a long percussive intro, which went on for around half the track. I suspect that, playing live, Fela Anikulapo Kuti (as he became) was down in the audience dancing booty fully. It is difficult to describe what impact those tracks made on me when Rod Stewart’s Italian Girls was the epitome of our musical sophistication, and even John Peel was progged out; earthy, long, passionate, funky music which existed by and for itself; staggeringly in the moment. Expensive Shit;

Still Africa remained very much other in London in the mid-1970s, Osibisa continued playing but seemed almost sui generis, drawing strength from their Ghanaian identity, whereas London bands like Noir fell away, especially as Reggae took hold in London after Bob Marley’s Catch-A-Fire was released in 1974 and Island records promoted a certain kind of cultural difference and diversity. South African musicians in exile added some African dimension to the musical offerings in London; John Kongos had two hits in 1972, He’s Gonna Step On You (video) and Tokoloshe Man. South African Jazz musicians like Dudu Pukwana and Louis Moholo played constantly at the 100 Club and Ronnie Scotts in London especially as part of Chris McGregors Brotherhood of Breath; Here they are demonstrating their driving sound on MRA;

Promoted for a brief time by a progressive rock label Brotherhood of Breath were an eye-opening act because they were playing a new kind of jazz-funk. Unlike the Jazz-Rock that followed on from Miles Davis Bitches Blue and Weather Report, which seems to investigate the potential of electric rock instruments on jazz, the Brotherhood seems to take the rebellious spirit and energy of rock and infuse it into a traditional big band format, with terrific drive, rhythm and musicianship. But neither the percussion or the passion made a huge difference to music in London and was completely left behind when punk came along leaving reggae to aspire to African consciousness through albums like Marley’s Survival with tracks such as Africa Unite and Zimbabwe. Thomas Mapfumo a musician from Zimbabwe, originally inspired by The Beatles and Wilson Pickett in the 1960s, had been inspired by the Afrobeat of Osibisa and developed the local musical style of Chimurenga; African music coming home? Here he is with Shumba;

When Bob Marley died in 1980 Chris Blackwell at Island Records wanted a new global superstar to promote. He picked King Sunny Adé, who was from Nigeria like Fela, but not as confrontational, difficult or as exciting, but with a distinctive style of music featuring the sinous, floating guitar lines that we now associate with Africa, thanks to Ray Phiri. This is JuJu Music released in 1982, danceable, rhythmic fun, and now described by allmusic as a “great intro to Afro-Pop”. Like Fela these are long tracks which seem to reach their natural length not constrained by the limitations of recording formats. This is great live music accidentally captured in a recording studio. 365 is my Number;

Perhaps the biggest moment in African music, or Afro-Beat or Afro-Pop, going global, was the coining of the term World Music in 1986. The French had started promoting World Music Day (Fête de la Musique) on June 21st since 1982 as they had, and still have, a fabulous group of African recording artists based in Paris. Like Black jazz musicians in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, African musicians were made welcome in that city, despite the best efforts of Parisian waiters. Controversially Paul Simon used South African Musicians, like Ladysmith Black Mambazo, on his recording of the album Graceland in 1986. Featuring the great Ray Phiri on guitar (in the white shirt), as well as the Ladysmith boys on vocals and dancing soles, here is the live in Harare version, featuring a full band of African musicians, of Diamonds on The Soles of Her Shoes;

As well as the term World Music being created as a marketing concept referring to a kind of pure, rootsy pop, the African musicians in Paris were going to the disco and revisioning their music in exile as new fusions. Soul Makossa had been around as almost the only token African dance track for a dozen years when Mory Kante released a massively danceable version of Yé Ké Yé Ké, which still gets me up offa my feet. Unlike 1984 and 1985 when Band Aid and Live Aid, in entirely praiseworthy fundraising activities, presented Africa in a context of hopelessly deadly incompetence, no special African case pleading was needed for the new music appearing in the mid-eighties. So enjoy the infectiously great, eighties, African dance sound of  Yé Ké Yé Ké;

Post the rootsy Paul Simon work and the Parisian sophistication of new African dance, along with having the World Music label to hang it on, it finally sounded in the late eighties as though African music had a sense of itself and a distinct musical direction. I even bought a 12″ inch single by Hugh Masekela, another South African jazz export, who lived in New York and had toured with Paul Simon on his original Graceland tour. This had the political Stimela (Coal Train) (starts this great YouTube playlist) on one side and a dance track Don’t Go Lose It Baby on the other, fusing these twin musical developments, and updating the freshness of Brotherhood of Breath to the Disco era. The seriously political Hugh Masakela who, appropriately enough on Nelson Mandela Day, recorded Mandela (Bring Him Home) as well, is having fun here, with a great townships footballing video, on Don’t Go Lose It Baby;

In 1987 Salif Keita (YouTube Playlist here), a classic Griot from Mali, brought out his great Soro, also recorded in Paris, and effectively established a new form of African music which still has influence today. It had the self-confidence and length of Nigerian music, it had the sound and dance inflections of rhythms of the new urban African music emerging from Paris, but he added both the pure voice of a great griot, and the confidence to play with form that an assured musician brings to his work. The title track is essentially a three part suite, but completely lacking the pretension that would mean in the progressive rock form, being infused with a lively musicianship designed to make the musical both listenable and danceable to all the way through. I think the album version is better, but here is a newer live version Soro;

Nelson Madela Day; So that brings us up to 1987 and the establishment of a musical identity for Africa which enabled African musicians to be heard across the world, because they were both great players and had their own techniques and forms of music that could be heard and enjoyed in a range of contexts. As it is Nelson Mandela Day today on July 18th Nelson Mandela’s 92 birthday, here is Hugh Masakela with the afore-mentioned Mandela (Bring Him Back Home); 

Next on RadioYouTube; I will be returning to the monthly format of Radio YouTube on August 1st with the usual monthly update of new music that I have been listening too. I will do Part 2 of World Music of Africa 1987-2010 in September to tie in with the upcoming African Music Festival. Songlines have a full list of upcoming World Music Festivals throughout the year.

YouTube Playlists; You can hear all these tracks, as well as the bonus tracks linked to in the text, on my YouTube Channel or by choosing the World Music of Africa Playlist.

Well I picked a final between Brasil and Spain, with Uruguay as dark horses and Domenech to crash out at the group stage, so I feel fairly satisfied in the tipster department. England did exactly as predicted in “Why England Lose” and the ELO World Football rankings rated Spain and Holland Numbers 1& 2 before the tournament, so no surprises for them. However in todays Spain Holland Final we have At Last The Johann Cruyff Show, with Cruyffesque Spain reflecting the influence of his style on Barcelona, and the post-Cruyff Dutch team reflecting his arrogance. Well done to Bert van Marwijk for managing the team’s egos, and really well done to Rafael van der Vaart for helpfully getting injured at the right time. In terms of the final we have a team that dominate around 80% of their games, then score one goal, playing a team who only fire for 40% of their games but score 2 goals. Spain are also the team most fouled against, whilst Holland commit the most fouls (hello Marc van Bommel!), so it could be ugly between goals. Having tipped them as finalists and loving their pass and move style (unlike the UK journalist on the BBC last week who wonder why they never hoof the ball upfield to add some excitement) I expect Spain to win, just like Paul the Octopus. However I have a funny feeling that Casillas is going to make a howler and gift the Dutch a goal, which Sneijder will claim as he “forced it.” Whatever, at the end of the match we will be able to go all hiplife, celebrate and Kiss The Bride;

Holland; Apparently star man Sneijder loves the celebrity Ashley life style, dating the Dutch Cheryl Cole, but is regarded as a bit bling by the post-Calvinist Dutch. Even so he has generated a massive tribute song in Holland aimed at Her Majesty who, going on the video, seems to fancy Ruud Gullit more. There is a full list of crazy Dutch football songs, but here is Youp & Guus (watch the film at the back of the video!), the Dutch answer to The Beatles, who give and go at just the right time, with Majesteit;

Spain; Having reached the final Spain have been honoured with a song and video celebrating the inevitability of their win, it’ll be Number 1 or Number 1001 tomorrow, but in the meantime let’s enjoy it and its cheerful Vamos Muchachas mood In The Spirit of a Dream;

Review of Third Place Game; Terrific match with both Uruguay and Germany showing their capabilities and intentions for the World Cup in Brasil in 2014. My man of the tournament is Diego Forlan, because he added the creative difference to Uruguay, and he scored another great goal actually putting Uruguay ahead in the second half. Then the professional approach to fitness that Klinsmann brought from America in 2006 told and Germany, with help from poor keeping from Maslera, ran out winners.

Germany; Fit, powerful with Music non-stop. Lots of German fan videos on YouTube, but here is a quite witty cartoon asking Joachim Low to “Give Me Hope.” Interesting how this, and other videos, feature Ballack, who went missing as usefully as van der Vaart. A German friend (hi Nobert) said he thought Germany would be better without Ballack as it would let their good young players come through. Didnt it just? Appropriately based on Eddie Grant’s Give Me Hope Joanna (Johannesburg) this is Jetzt Basta with Gimme Hope Joachim;

Uruguay; Did you know that Google lays on 57 filters on you when you search? It assumes you are only interested in hyper-local info and products; targetted advertising. So tracking down interesting stuff from other continents in other languages is tough. I cant find much from Uruguay different to what I have already discussed (Hugo Fattoruso and candombe) but musically Uruguay have been the discovery of the tournament fro me. I have found this, the lovely loping candombe jazz music of Ruben Rada, now preparing new music for 2011. Here is his slightly regretful Cha Cha Muchacha;

LEGO; The UK Guardian has been collecting all the LEGO World Cup videos on its LEGO Fussball page. But here is the video that shows why Holland, thanks to Sneijder, are in the final rather than Brasil. LEGO Holland Brasil;

Thank You South Africa; Thanks to all in South Africa, including Cape Town’s Bush Radio on the web and @fredhatman on Twitter, for making this a wonderfully memorable World Cup (despite FIFA’s efforts with the projectile also know as the Jabulani). Here is my favourite South African video from the past month by BLK JKS with Molalatladi;

NEXT POST; World of Music Africa July 17 2010.

P/Review of Matches July 3/6/7; So it does look like a Holland Germany final after all; now there is a local derby to savour. Next Sunday I suggest you get over to Holland, wear some Oranje, neck down some Oranjeboom and hope the third-time lucky rule kicks in for the Soldiers of Orange. Given how unpredictable this World Cup has been however it might be won by street-fighter Suarez in the Final slipping it passed Casillas, who is due a monumental mistake with someone sharper that Roque Santa Cruz following up. Villa already deserves a winner’s medal as he is carrying European Champions Spain. Paraguay were immense until Nelson Valdez went off , suggesting that a great counter-attacking side can defeat Spain. Sadly Ghana, like Paraguay, missed a penalty that would have put them through; penalty heart-ache ruled Accra. Despite tipping them as dark horses I just can’t see Uruguay beating Holland but, whilst Germany are stronger, Spain are capable of unlocking any defence when Iniesta puts Villa through. So todays Theme Tune is some joyous Ghanaian Hiplife to thank them for their great performances. Trosky Blackman (featuring Osofo Mafia) with their Italianate BlackStar Football Anthem;  

Nederland; Warning! I will wear my oranje Cruyff #14 shirt today. Every time I’ve worn a shirt so far that team has been knocked out. Musically I’d take Uruguay over Holland who seemed to have had a good proggy 70s and been mostly dance and trance in the nineties and noughties. Looking at the Dutch charts it isnt surprising to see World Cup songs dominating, Shakira at #2 and Knaan at #3 with their fabulously out-of-date videos. Number one in Holland is “We don’t speak any Americano” by Aussies Yolanda no Cool channelling Italian jazz.  Of course in the World Cup on July 6th it is true that “We don’t speak any Americano”

Uruguay. Dont forget to check out the amazing Hugo Fattoruso, musically more chameleon even than the Brasilian Caetano Veloso and arguably an example of what would have happened if John Lennon had turned into Philip Glass; but with more rhythm. From what I can tell Jaime Roos is more popular in Uruguay than Fattoruso, and his sound is more Brazilian to me. He has that big band sound you get across Latin America, but with great rhythm. Hmm, his vamo arriba la celeste is used when the Uruguayan team walk out for home games at Montevideo. He promised a vuvuzela version for South Africa but luckily this is a fans video based on Uruguay’s 2010 success in South Africa. So here is the Uruguyuan musical fan Jaime Roos with Vamo Arriba La Celeste ;

Germany; obviously the Bushido theme tune works for Germany if not for me or their opponents. Rammstein are one of their biggest groups capable of selling out large stadiums like, er, may people. This is a witty use of Rammstein video material with a more Bavarian theme, Bayern des samma mia. A full translation of the lyrics can help understand the beauty of the Purity law and their love for Wheat Beer. Rammstein with Bayern Des Samma Mia;

Spain; I went to a Spanish BLAZE! concert at the Barbican in London last night featuring the Flamenco Piano of Chano Dominguez. Following the Ketama-style Jazz-Flamenco Spanish Key fusion of Dave Holland and Pepe Habichuela, Chano’s quartet with hand claps and Flamenco dance steps was a percussively melodic trampling of the classical stage; rousing fun. What is that funny tea-chest box drum Spanish drummers sit on? Oh, the Cajon! This is the nearest performance I can find on YouTube to last nights terrific performance, a video from 2 years ago which starts to hit the heights in the second half, but with a fuller band. Chano Dominguez with Oye Cómo Viene

LEGOFUSSBALL; no doubt that Germany is leading the world in creativity at this World Cup. Fabian Moritz is the star of LEGO action replays so here is his, and the national team’s, finest moment rubbishing the Premier League. Goals and red faces then it is England 1/2 Germany 4. And just to prove it wasn’t a fluke the multiculti Germans did it to Argentina, in Arabic; The Rest 0 Germany 4 ; 

Next Post Saturday July 10

Preview of Matches July 3rd; Well as predicted Uruguay won on penalties but Brasil threw away a winning position against a relentless Holland. Will this lead to a repeat of  the 1974 Final between Holland and Germany? I thought the final would be between Brasil & Argentina so I will stay with Argentina, which might mean that we get a repeat of the 1978 Final between Holland and Argentina if Argentina win in normal time; Germany could nick it on penalties. So the predictions that Latin America might rule the world might prove a little premature. Paraguay and Spain doesnt seem too hard to predict, but I think Spain need to get ahead early and not let Paraguay either shut them down or start to believe they can nick it; Spain to win in normal time else Paraguay on penalties. Musically we’ve just lost two wonderful musical nations in Brasil and Ghana, and today I much prefer the music from Argentina and Spain, which doesn’t bode well. So with Brasil going out to a high Sneijder cross todays Theme Tune is by CSS, from Sao Paulo, and Listen to Death from Above;  

Argentina Wherever you look at charts around the world they are usually dominated by the same artists, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, the Black-Eyed Peas and so on. Currently Number 12 in the Argentinian album charts (with the Beatles Revolver having just gone in at Number 5) are the wonderful Bajofondo Music Club. Here is a marvellous track from the album with a decent video, with a title suggesting who they might meet in the next round, Borges and Paraguay;

Germany; Well the multi-culti German team, infused with the youth of Ozil and Muller from last years’ Under 21 team, have picked themselves a multi-culti theme tune, selected by the German-Tunisian box-to-box player Sami Khedira, who has brought the German-Tunisian artist Bushido into the dressing room to provide them with their theme tune. Want to know what it is like to be a German footballer before a game? Then listen to Bushido featuring Kay One  and Fackeln im Wind - Torches in the Wind ;

Paraguay; I’ve been to the Paraguay, well the border town of , and it seem to be a multi-coloured hallucinatory but damp blend of Andean Indian and Almodovar’s Spain. Iguacu. The team is hard-working and quite dour despite their bright shirts, but Asuncion is alive with the thrill of being in the last 6 of the World Cup. So here is some rousing Paraguayan acoustic guitar music from Los Jaraneros with their Musica Paraguaya and Pajaro Campana;  

Spain; Like Argentina the Spanish charts are dominated at the moment by music sung in English, probably due to the ubiquity of mass media. However the boys Fito Y Fitipaldis have a big Spanish hit with their bones of kisses. Not sure if this is a dressing room favourite, I’m sure the Spanish team have divers taste but, with a good video, here is the slightly sad Los huesos de los besos;

LEGO; If you want a fun graphic letting you now who is the most popular player each day try the NY Times Top World Cup Player. However just to cheer up the Ghanaians, and especially the magnificent Asamoah Gyan who was entirely immense for Ghana, except for his first penalty (someone said on Twitter that he compressed 6 years of Stuart Pearce’s experience into 6 minutes), here they are disposing of the entirely plastic USA;

NEXT World Cup of Music July 6th 2010

]]> http://radioyoutube.wordpress.com/2010/07/03/world-cup-of-music-july-3rd/feed/ 0 fred6368 http://radioyoutube.wordpress.com/2010/07/02/world-cup-of-music-july-2nd/ http://radioyoutube.wordpress.com/2010/07/02/world-cup-of-music-july-2nd/#comments Fri, 02 Jul 2010 07:43:52 +0000 fred6368 http://radioyoutube.wordpress.com/?p=796 ]]> Quarter Finals

Preview of Matches July 2nd; From now on there are matches that could have been the Final and Brasil Holland is one of those. Could go either way with both teams very solid in defence. Sneijder has probably been the playmaker of the tournament and Robben can shred any defence, but Brasil offer invention all over the pitch and should prevail; yellow-orange dayglo heaven. Uruguay and Ghana have been the revelations of the tournament musically, see yesterday’s post for more. Very even match with Forlan and Suarez able to score from anywhere whilst Gyan and Prince-Boateng offering a similar threat. If it goes to extra time then Ghana to win, but on penalties then Uruguay. So in tribute to South Africa’s wonderfully noisy staging of the World Cup and African’s continuing footballing presence in Ghana, todays Theme Tune is the wonderful Salif Keita and Africa;

Holland; Much as I love Dutch keyboard players it turns out that their DJ’s are more successful these days. I’ve long been a fan of Junkie XL remixes, thanks to his ability to turn Coldplay into a driving dance band and, guess what, turns out that Junkie XL, like Armin van Buuren (video) is Dutch, so here is his video remix of Zerotonine ;

Brasil; Brasil’s wide-ranging music scene runs from favela-based music like Afro-Reggae to high-class Classical like Villa Lobos to intelligent degree students and Ministers like the “Brasilian John Lennon” Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. Whilst Europe and America took to the streets in 1968 Brasilian musicians tried to bring down the government with the pop-cultural carnival of the Troplicalistas and their Tropical Truths. The top rock band of that time were The Mutants, who completely took the piss out of North American culture in the lovingly ironic Baby. Aqui eles são, então, Os Mutantes e Baby;

Uruguay;  The Uruguyan equivalent of Veloso might be Hugo Fattoruso. My man Hugo started in rough and ready rock bands in the sixties and slowly became a Uruguayan ethno-musicologist. Now he has the ability to integrate high art and low culture in the studio and in the streets thanks to his use of candombe. Here is a track from his most recent 2009 album, with a recording made in 2008.    Hugo Fattoruso y Rey Tambor Emotivo with Tambores;

Ghana; Ghana seems to be full of irresistable dance music and hiplife seems to have an endless supply of it. Let’s hope Ghana continue in the competition so they allow me offer much more of this music. From the fifth best Hiplife album of all time we have Obour with a live version of Konkontiba;  

LEGO; It is getting hard to include comedy videos as the DRM rights holders are providing an onslaught of taking down embedded YouTube videos or ones with samples. I blame rubbish billionaire Guy Hands at EMI, what did the Sex Pistols say about EMI in Holland? So here is a claymation movie instead featuring a win by, yes our musical favourites, Ghana;

If you enjoy World Cup of Music and live in London then the Horniman Museum has a free World City Music Village Festival on Saturday July 3rd from 1pm to 6pm, outside in the Gardens.

I have long enjoyed Latin music, having managed a Venezualan salsa band Spiteri, because of its percussion, so the gentle, and intense rhythms of Brasilian music have always worked for me. And I also enjoyed the nuevo tango of Argentina ever since I first heard Gotan Project’s Tripitico (video) on the Robert Elms show on Radio London (thanks Robert). So having read a year ago that Carlos Gaudel, the Frank Sinatra of Tango, was really from Uruguay and, in Alex Bellos marvellous Futebol, on Brasilian football as a way of life, that the beautiful yellow, green and blue kit of Brasil was designed by a Uruguayan, I have learnt to expect surprises from Uruguay. So my major discovery on World Cup of Music has been Hugo Fattoruso and the Afro-Uruguayan rhythms of candombe that underpin tango.

Uruguay; The Uruguayan capital of Montevideo is known as “la Capital Mundial del Candombe” and like Olodum in Salvador Brasil, Candombe underpins various local cultural activities, as this video suggests. There is also an interview with Hugo Fattoruso in the text below. A longer Candombe video is here but this is the video of Lonjas de Cuareim;

Uruguay; Montevideo also has a developing modern club scene in which female musicians play a key part. This is one of the younger trendier set of musicians called La Dulce with Jardin Japones; 

Argentina The boys Gotan have also released the best World Cup song since World in Motion, La Gloria; inspired by the famous Hand of God goal by Maradona this is the Gotan Project being very silly and acting out every schoolboys fantasy, describing themselves scoring a goal in the World Cup Final. Will probably be disabled by their daft record company in which case click twice on the video. La Gloria

Paraguay; a mainstream Big Band jazz community developed in Paraguay after Stroessner. Not as distinctive as Honduran punta though. A star of this music was PALITO MIRANDA and his Musica Comercial do Conservatorio de Tatuí. Palilto Miranda played alto-sax and wrote and arranged much of his music. Here is the TV version of his Barreto Blues;

Brasil; I am assuming that there will be more Bat Mucamba from Brasil so I can play more Brasilian music. As Suba’s record company disable his video’s I am going to select the Ceu video from her brilliantly distinctive new Vagarosa album, with a real grower, Cangote;

Brasil; Seu Jorge is from the favelas and deliberately fuses rock and samba styles on his most recent album America do Brasil. This, updating the music of Carnaval, is what else but Samba Rock;

Spain; The two young brothers José and David Muñoz from Cornella called Estopa, have a mixed sound style called sonido callejero and this is a current hit in Spain. Run Run (con Rosario);  

Spain; One of my favourite songs last year is by Concha Buika from the New Flamenco movement, but with traces of ambient and cool jazz. She has a Flamenco-inspired texture to her voice, where you can hear rough and smooth; and then it just touches you. Buika with La Falsa Moneda

Ghana; Ghanaian Hiplife is a joyful modern dance music that has been around for some years, since 1980 in fact. Hiplife, as you can hear is a fusion of Highlife and hip-hop. Most dancers take their hoplife to the floor where they show off their hiplife moves. Hiplife is light and danceable, the music is uplifting and the videos are amusing. Here is Reggie Zippy featuring Nightmare singing Virgin

Ghana; this might be my favourite discovery of the World Cup the Big Tings from Ghana West Africa; the terrific hip-hop of Bollie. Hello to my many readers in Ghana! Bollie have a great drum sound and sing on the brilliant You May Kiss the Bride (official Bollie video here)  This is great stuff and it makes you want to MMMwah! Kiss The Bride;  

Germany trounce Ingerland 4-1; Finally the action replay with Goal Line technology (join the Facebook group here) now approved by Sepp Blatter and a goalie who doesn’t know when he is beaten. That’s the spirit. LEGO recreate England’s World Cup, enjoy;