Released in 2010 on the Nonesuch record label, Natalie Merchant’s Leave Your Sleep is an impressive collection of children’s poetry, nursery rhymes and lullabies from British and American authors adapted and set to original music by the singer songwriter. The birth of her own daughter in 2003 was the initial catalyst for the project: Natalie […]
Folk
Jordi Savall & Hespèrion XX: Llibre Vermell de Montserrat
The Llibre Vermell de Montserrat (the Red Book of Montserrat) is a 14th century codex compiled by monks and still preserved in the library of the monastery of Santa Maria de Montserrat located outside Barcelona in North-Eastern Spain. The monastery was at the time an important pilgrimage site and cultural centre in Catalonia. The 137 […]
Hurray for the Riff Raff: St. Roch Blues
Originally from the Bronx in New York, singer-songwriter Alynda Lee Segarra left home at the age of 17 to travel westwards across America before settling in New Orleans. Perfecting her craft busking and singing with various bands while immersed in a city rebuilding itself in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Alynda Lee Segarra formed Hurray […]
Radio Tarifa: Temporal
20 years before Jon Balke’s project Siwan, a group of passionate musicians going by the name of Radio Tarifa set out to explore what the music of mediaeval Spain might have sounded like. Over the course of four albums released on the World Circuit/Nonesuch record labels between 1993 (with the groundbreaking Rumba Argelina) and 2006, […]
Le Rêve du Diable: Crac!
Crac! is an enchanting 15mn animated short by Frédéric Back originally released in 1981 and featuring a great collection of songs and tunes from the traditional French Canadian repertoire performed by folk group Le Rêve du Diable. Borrowing its name from a traditional reel of English/Irish origin (the devil’s dream), the band was formed in […]
The Swell Season
In a scene towards the end of the musical film Once, after the recording studio session, the two fictional characters “falling slowly” in love with each other and aspiring to work together have this conversation: Guy: Come on away to London with me! We’ll write loads of songs and live in a nice flat […] […]
