Category: Folk
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…
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…
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: Once The story of Once (2007) is well documented at…
Agnes Obel: Smoke and Mirrors
Danish-born and Berlin-based singer Agnes Obel is one of these quiet artists that were “discovered” on the internet. Only composing for herself, one of the songs she had uploaded on MySpace in 2009 was picked up by a German telecom company for a 40 seconds…
This is How we Fly
Part contemporary dance project, part innovative folk band venturing into the realms of jazz, world, ambient and improvised music, This is How we Fly is simply a fascinating proposition in today’s musical landscape. Formed in 2010 by Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh (fiddle & hardanger fiddle), Seán…
Dino Saluzzi & Anja Lechner: Gabriel Kondor
A cousin of the concertina, the bandoneon is an instrument that immediately triggers associations with Argentine Tango music and of course with nuevo tango maestro Astor Piazzolla. But whereas Piazzolla was born on the coast and spent his early years between Buenos Aires, New York…
Boubacar Traoré & Vincent Bucher: Mondeou
Self-taught on the guitar, Malian singer songwriter Boubacar Traoré’s unique style is mainly based on the playing of the kora, the 21-string west-African harp. Having also integrated in his technique phrases and inflections from the Mississipi Delta bluesmen, Boubacar Traoré is, along with the late Ali…
Boubacar Traoré: Tunga Magni
The career of Malian musician Boubacar Traoré is rather unconventional and mirrors a life full of twists and turns. For most of the 1960s, Boubacar Traoré was a celebrity on the national airwaves as a whole generation in Mali grew up listening to his music.…