The Putumayo collections of music are a wonderful way of discovering new music from parts of the world you have never thought of. I was introduced to them, interestingly, by my son back when he was 3 and 4 years old. When we visited California we would always visit the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. And we would always stop at the gift shop and my son would consider whether he would spend his souvenir option there or somewhere else. More recently he has moved on to other sources of souvenirs (always interesting) but initially he was always interested in listening to the various samples of Putumayo CD collections and he would pick one for his souvenir.

During his excursions into the Putumauyo CD collection, the African selection, the Women of Africa selection and the Mali selection each caught his attention, and I tip my hat to his choices because they all are amazing collections. One artist from the Women of Africa collection I have highlighted before is Afia Mala, a Royal Princess of Togo and Benin. All three are fantastic...but today I want to highlight music from Mali.  read more »

So came across Cesare Bonizzi on BBC's website. Fra Bonizzi is a monk of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, an offshoot of the Franciscan order dating back to the 16th century. Fra Bonizzi is also lead singer of a Heavy Metal band that regularly shows up at the Gods of Metal festival in Italy:

UPDATE: Found a better video (still in Italian, though) to add in:

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One of the illest songs to come out of this campaign.

Not only is NAS remixing Barack Obama's victory speech, he's thrown the immortal Tupac.
Download it here.

By the by, what do you think about the cover of NAS' album?

H/T To dnA over at Too Sense.

Is music important to you? I went to two full days of music and dancing at Clearwater’s Great Hudson River Revival in Croton Point Park last weekend about which I will write later. The chatter, the buzz, at Clearwater was about another festival, Make Music New York this Thursday June 21, 2007 and you can go for free. All day, all over NY on almost every street corner, park, band shell and café, musicians will welcome the solstice, the first day of summer with countless concerts.

You can get the idea of the program by looking at the website of
Make Music New York but to understand the enormity of the project, click on the schedule which is hosted by Time Out New York . There is, it seems to me, no limit to Thursday’s music. You don’t like folk? How about hip-hop? Opera? Reggae?

Tuvan Throat Singing will be at the Rubin Museum 150 West 17th Street from 12-1; Have you never heard it? Go! Never heard of Tuva (I hadn't)? Try wiki. Alash, the throat singers, will be around NY other times for the next week or so. Their schedule is here They’ll be at a “donations accepted” concert at Judson Memorial Church next Thursday, June 28th.  read more »

Okay, here I am plugging the efforts of a relative. Okay, a distant relative. Really distant. My great-grandfather was the brother of the great-grandfather of a man named Henry Garfinkel, better known to the world as Henry Rollins, one time lead singer of Black Flag. Yes, THAT Henry Rollins. But even if Henry Rollins wasn't a distant cousin of mine, I'd eagerly plug his show. My wife and I caught about a half dozen episodes of the Henry Rollins Show on IFC last year and we loved it. RABIDLY biting satire combined with some pretty interesting interviews and some musical guests who ranged from a bit too avant guarde for my tastes to damned good rock. Of course my favorite musical guest was his last episode of the season where his own Henry Rollins Band was the musical "guest."

Henry Rollins isn't just a punker. He is a very angry, pretty smart man. He sometimes seems a little out of his league when he is interviewing people, but this is scarcely noticeable most of the time. His monologues can be mesmerizing, like with his shaggy dog story of his trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway with intestinal disorders and axe-wielding train attendents. His bitter hatred of Bush would be dear to the hearts of many here, though those who want to see all of us get along happily and merrily petting eachother's puppies despite the disgusting and disturbing Republican attempts to demolish our democracy in a frenzy of pseudo-patriotic war-profiteering over the bodies of our dead soldiers may be disappointed by the harsh, ass-kicking sarcasm of Henry Rollins' wit. But for those who are horrified and even a bit terrified by the direct assault the Halliburton Republicans are making on our democracy will LOVE Henry Rollins' commentary.  read more »