Music

Leave a comment Posted on Current Episode, Halloween, Music

Haunt your House Party

There can be no light without night.  Right?

To celebrate the coming of darkness, this week’s radio broadcast features many sinister sounds to help you awaken the spirits within the walls— including horror rap, drone rock, screamadelic surf, Caribbean shaman-folk, and of course, vampire disco.

Soul DraculaPlus a real oddity:  the world’s first ever electronic piece of music (or anti-music), somehow buried in an unmarked gravestone of historical significance, barely acknowledged as a truly revolutionary artifact.  The piece of music in question: a 1944 field recording made in Cairo of a Zar spirit possession ceremony.  Eerie enough already, but once original sound wizard Halim El-Dabh manipulated the recording using primitive filtration and reverberation techniques (literally moving walls) the piece takes on a truly surreal afterlife of its own.  Here is a sample:

Check out the Wandering Rhythms Halloween Special, but please give yourself a mini-exorcism in between each half-hour segment:

Part 1 ((listen))   Part 2 ((listen))  Part 3 ((listen))  Part 4 ((listen))

And who can resist this timeless slice of horror satire:

Leave a comment Posted on Africa, Music, Southern Africa

A Mandolin and Electronic Heartbeats

Dear friends, I have fallen hopelessly behind on these posts.. but the show has skipped nary a beat!  From this week’s radio broadcast, a performance by our good friend Brandon “Blocktreat” Hoffman:

We preview tracks from his forthcoming album Stuff Gets Bent, and talk about bears, beat-making, and bear attacks on beat-making machines.  {{Listen here}}

Also, a short trip to the highest nation in Africa: the Kingdom of Lesotho!

Hear here!

Africa's Clint Eastwood

Africa’s John Wayne

Leave a comment Posted on Music, South Asia

Malay of Many Flavas

Sabah. Malaysian Borneo. Bajau Sea Gypsies. Ocean Nomads. Breath divers. Malaysia. Pic: Copyright Timothy Allen. IT IS FORBIDDEN TO REPRODUCE THIS IMAGE IN ANY MEDIA WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION. BBC Human Planet /m/loader/final_group_loader/Oceans SabThis week we sample the wildest sounds of the modern Malaysian soundscape…  The many mixings of Chinese, Indian, Indigenous and European peoples have manifested to form a frothy stew of electronic strangeness!  Hear many kinds of rock (space, grindcore, garage, surf, ambient, unidentifiable), throwback hip pop, and ancient drums stomp on our untamed journey…

Hear the first hour’s global mix HERE

Hear the Malaysian feature HERE

Leave a comment Posted on Africa, Music, Southern Africa

The Batswana Groove

Welcome to the new mecca of heavy metal…

Gaborone, Botswana

Gaborone, Botswana

Against the odds, the African nation of Botswana has not only become a successful and peaceful country in the half-century since achieving independence, but has also developed a thriving heavy metal scene.  Coincidence?  Perhaps.  But still, with the care and precision it takes to cultivate the classic metal lifestyle, it seems more like an honorable religion than the devil’s music.. doesn’t it?

Other Batswana sounds are less Norwegian and more South African.  Seeing as Gaborone, the capital and largest city of Botswana, hugs the border of South Africa, many of the styles from down south are now firmly entrenched in the soundscape of Botswana– most notably Kwaito and electro-hip hop.

Hear these and much more on our BOTSWANA SPECIAL!

And hear the weekly Global Mix right ova here.