Subject: World Music

• Mission Indian That's Not Pakwan For Once

  August 10, 2007

• Bay Area's Annual Didjeridu Fix To Be Satiated Friday

  October 3, 2007

• Local label Six Degrees earns three Grammy nods

  December 7, 2007

• Global Drum Project Snags World Music Grammy

  Global Drum Project Former Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart didn't invent world music. But he was among the first to take it out of the hands of ethnomusicologists and into the clutches of pop culture. Eighteen years ago, Hart and tabla titan Zakir Hussain won the first World Music Grammy for their spellbindingly percussive 1991 collaboration Planet Drum. Well, guess what, cats and kittens? History has repeated itself, sort of, as the Global Drum Project -- which again teams Hart and Husse

  February 10, 2009

• Alice Russell Comes to SF

  Digby OldridgeCrazy just like you: Alice RussellThese days, apparently, British pop-soul sirens are a dime a dozen. Why, all you have to do is go to any smoke-filled pub in Nottingham, peer under the table, and you'll find the next Joss Stone, Lily Allen, or Amy Crackhouse. Seriously, though, Alice Russell had me at "Crazy." Her stripped-down take on Gnarls Barkley's ubiquitous megahit brought new life to a very good, but overplayed song. Russell's version added another context to the original,

  March 13, 2009

• Sierra Nevada World Music Festival Announces Lineup

  EKAphotographyFemi KutiConfirmed artists for the 2009 Sierra Nevada World Music Festival  have been announced, and tickets are now on sale. The Festival takes place June 19-21 in Boonville, Mendocino County (about a four-hour drive from SF). The lineup this year looks particularly strong (though this is not a final list, and the artist list is subject to change): Nigerian Afrobeat heir Femi Kuti; African music legend King Sunny Ade; former Black Uhuru lead singer Michael Rose; roots reviva

  March 19, 2009

• Slap That Ass

  November 26, 2008

• International crate digging gets new life online

  September 10, 2008

• Gettin' brassy with the Hornucopia Festival

  September 3, 2008

• Black Stars:

  Ghana's Hiplife Generation (Out Here)

  June 4, 2008

• Youssou N'Dour

  Rokku Mi Rokka (Nonesuch)

  November 28, 2007

• Balkan Beat Box

  Nu Med (J-Dub)

  September 26, 2007

• Lemonade samples the world on the way to the dance floor

  November 22, 2006

• We Are the World

  Global fusion takes club music to outernational heights

  June 14, 2006

• Fantastic Voyage

  Get off your high horse and listen to some fine world music at "Putumayo: Latinas -- Women of Latin America"

  November 17, 2004

• Hear This

  March 17, 2004

• Feed Your Head

  September 3, 2003

• Moonwatcher: A New Tale of Chelm for Chanukah

  December 18, 2002

• House of Tudor

  September 18, 2002

• Music

  June 19, 2002

• Festivals/Fairs

  June 19, 2002

• The Week's Can't-Miss Performance

  January 9, 2002

• There's a Griot Goin' On

  September 5, 2001

• House Of Tudor

  May 9, 2001

• A Matter of Degrees

  Local label Six Degrees weathers the storm of success

  May 2, 2001

• Hear This

  March 21, 2001

• All the World's a Stage

  February 28, 2001

• Good Golly, It's Mali

  November 15, 2000

• Tool(s) of the Man

  Mickey Hart is still pursuing that perfect beat -- in words, sound, and even government service

  July 5, 2000

• Riff Raff

  It's a Big World After All; When Your Band Breaks; Oops

  May 24, 2000

• Let the Rhythm Hit 'Em

  May 10, 2000

• Hear This

  August 18, 1999

• Night & Day

  August 11, 1999

• Fiddling With Tradition

  March 24, 1999

• Riff Raff

  August 26, 1998

• Reviews

  May 6, 1998

• Reviews

  April 29, 1998

• Zoom Lens

  April 1, 1998

• Hear This

  November 5, 1997

• Experience Afrofunk: Sila Drops New Album

  EKAphotographyElectable: Sila performs with the AFE at Stern Grove San Francisco's favorite Kenyan Afro-groovester, Victor Sila, has just released Black President, his second album with the Afrofunk Experience. I'll admit to being a bit biased--Sila is a friend of mine, and I wrote his bio--but I really like the album. The musicianship on the Black President is quite good; the Afrofunk Experience has become a really tight ensemble, and the horns, guitar, and percussion all shine. Sila has evolv

  May 14, 2009

• Berkeley World Music Festival This Weekend

  Wassup, World: Markus James and the Wassonrai To travel around the world this weekend, all you have to do is hop on BART and come to Berkeley. The annual Berkeley World Music Festival happens Saturday, June 6, with various ethnic music specialists and purveyors of global rhythms in an around the Telegraph Avenue area--as well as a full-on concert showcase in MLK (aka Provo) Park, headlined by Zimbabwean world music legend Thomas Mapfumo. The concert showcase also features Freddy Clarke's Wobbl

  June 5, 2009

• East Meets West This Weekend

  Jah Yzer This weekend is kind of a slow one for music in the Bay Area--next week promises to be better, with many artists hitting town before or after the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival--but if you're looking for something to do Saturday night, how about "Golden Era: East Meets West Edition." Somewhat of a bicoastal soundclash, the event, held at 111 Minna, matches DJs Jah Yzer and Daze (spinning classic East coast hip-hop) with Mr. E  , Franky Fresh, and Vickity Slick (spinning Wes

  June 12, 2009

• Femi Kuti

  June 17, 2009

• King Sunny Adé's legnthy reign

  June 17, 2009

• My Big Fat World Music Weekend

  EKAphotographyRoom with a Vieux: Vieux Farka Toure In this economy, who has the means to travel internationally anymore? Luckily, with all the world music acts coming through the Bay Area of late, you don't have to have a passport, visa, hotel, and plane ticket to catch some of the most scintillating global groovesters around. For example, last week I went to France, and this past weekend, I traveled to Mexico, Mali, and Brazil (twice). And I didn't even have to leave the 7x7 square miles of th

  July 20, 2009

• Zap Mama

  August 29, 2007

• Tanya Tagaq modernizes Inuit vocal traditions

  August 12, 2009

• Ricardo Lemvo brings the Mambo to GAMH Tomorrow

  Ricardo Lemvo​ Along with Habib Koite, Ricardo Lemvo  is one of those guys who always seems to be on every Putumayo world music compilation, playing funky Congolese-inflected Latin music. Though he's currently based in Los Angeles, Lemvo hasn't appeared much on local stages, so world music fans in general and Afro-Cuban aficionados in particular might want to check for his show Saturday at the Great American Music Hall. If you're unfamiliar with Lemvo's sound, here's a video clip of him

  August 21, 2009

• Weekend Pick #1: Fela B-Day Celebration

  Afrobeat's Ancestor: Fela Kuti​ It's hard to think of a more iconic artist than Fela Anikulapo Kuti. The founder of Afrobeat, who famously proclaimed "music is a weapon," was both a voice of progressive social change--and often uncomfortably-honest socioeconomic critique--and a musical visionary. Fela's fusing of traditional Yoruban music with American jazz, R&B and funk was ahead of its time, as evidenced by the flowering of the Afrobeat genre a decade after his death and the influence Fe

  October 9, 2009

• Bigger than Gandhi

  October 21, 2009