How this Estonian punk-metal band made it into this year’s Eurovision contest is anyone’s guess, but we are delighted (and slightly afraid) to see it…
Music
The Slept-on Beauty of the Balkans
Her roommates get all the attention: Serbia is known for its brass bands, Turkey, for its psych guitar-rockers, Romania, its gypsy folk music.. But Bulgaria (yes, she’s a lady– her middle name is Sofia) plays all of these styles with dignified grace.
Bulgarian history is amongst the richest and most ancient in all of Europe
Oddly enough, the only internationally-known group from Bulgaria is a women’s choir (daringly named the Bulgarian State Radio & Television Female Vocal Choir) whose album The Mystery of Bulgarian Voices was discovered by indie UK record label 4AD in 1986 (11 years after its original release) and unleashed into the global ear. More albums and heroine addictions followed. An unlikely story, but once you hear the sublime juxtaposition of angelic voices and dissonant harmonies, you’ll understand why Bulgarians are considered some of the best vocal-chordists of the human band:
Our sampling of Bulgarian sounds also features some blazing punk, classic rock ‘n roll, old school hip hop, new wave rumba, and the world’s most frenetic wedding band… they’ll have you puking on the dance floor in no time.
The Ivo Papasov Wedding Band. DO NOT touch his clarinet.
HEAR PART 1- THE GLOBAL MIX HERE
HEAR PART 2- THE BULGARIAN MIX HERE
The Big World Band, and Kiribati: Aqualand
Presenting ancient music of the future! This week we are joined in the studio by musical mastermind John Oliver, composer and guitarist in Vancouver’s magically sublime Big World Band. We discuss the inception of this renegade project, the balance between tradition and innovation, and the spectral journey into cultural cross-pollination. John also presents live recordings from recent performances, describing how the songs were carved into existence.
Hear the interview here.
CATCH BIG WORLD BAND LIVE AT THE MASSEY THEATRE THIS SATURDAY!
Next, we take a trip to the Micronesian nation of Kiribati, a lovely scatter-shot of islands (atolls, to be precise) in the west central Pacific Ocean. Kiribati’s days are numbered, as it will be one of the first countries to be swallowed up by rising sea levels. I suppose Kevin Costner may be a prophet after all..
But the music and people of Kiribati will live on (possibly in Fiji). Unexplored by Europeans until 1892, Kiribati’s music is uniquely unaffected by external influence. As far as we can tell, the i-Kiribati (strangest demonym ever – seemingly sponsored by Apple) have no traditional musical instruments. But they discovered long ago that the bare body makes a thumpin’ percussion sound when combined with high-octane group chanting! Hear this and some (slightly) more modern sounds in our musical ode to a Commonwealth brother. On behalf of all Canadians, we would like to invite the displaced people of Kiribati to our polar opposite paradise.
Hear our feature on Kiribati here.
Chadians United!
Chad: the country not the man. A nation apart from the modern world, with struggles far more profound than the state of their music industry. Yet with roughly 200 different ethnic groups and over 100 languages (French is widely spoken in the south, Arabic in the north), the diversity of music-making in Chad is ever present. Perhaps in reaction to the neglect the country has received from the world community, Chadians have largely shunned modern music. Other African rhythms, such as Congolese soukous, have seeped into the soundscape, but traditional instruments still hold sway.
The Chadian balafon has phallic calabashes hanging underneath which act as resonators to give a gritty, distorted sound:
And then there are Chadians living abroad, making fearless musical hybridity…
Listen to La Seconde Méthode’s sublime first album here. Hovering somewhere between desert blues and post-rock. Superbe.
Stream part 1: the Global Mix
Stream part 2: Chad
Pandemonium Panameño
Presenting the sonic spectrum of Panama.. a gorgeous pan-African palette that perplexes the pigeon-hole efficiency of predefined taste. A country borne out of the complex cultural mixing between Indigenous peoples, Europeans, and Africans, over two thirds of modern-day Panamanians are of mixed-ancestry (called mestizos).
The monumental construction project of the Panama Canal in the early 20th century brought about further diversity, as many black Caribbean workers settled in the country and brought along their own shifting rhythms (calypso, rumba, etc.). Panama’s music has over time developed a stronger Afro-Caribbean vibe than its other Spanish-speaking neighbors, and there is a real eagerness to combine these with the Latin styles (cumbia, salsa, merengue..) of other Central and South American countries.
Later on, Panama was the first country to create a Spanish offshoot of reggae, known simply as Reggae en Español. One of the first acts to legitimize this sound was Nando Boom:
We will also explore other modern sounds of Panama, including the unclassifiable Combos Nacionales of the 70s, and some intriguing new psych rock bands.
Stream part 1: Global Mix
Stream part 2: Panama
WANDERING RHYTHMS RADIO 