47Soul’s Shamstep EP ignited their Electro-Arabic Dabke revolution in 2015. Now it returns with remixes from some of the Arab world’s most forward-thinking producers-Molotof, Toumba, and Hello Psychaleppo-bridging past and future.
47Soul single-handedly sowed the seeds of the Shamstep genre. The Palestinian musical collective formed in Jordan in 2013 with Tareq Abu Kwaik, Ramzy Suleiman, Walaa Sbait and Hamza Arnaout taking influence from hip-hop, electronica, and R&B and melding it with the sounds of Dabke, a traditional folk dance, and other Shaa’bi roots music from the Levantine region.
Shamstep, their groundbreaking debut EP released in 2015, not only helped coin the genre’s name but also brought a new audience…
Category: world
…This remastered edition celebrating the 25th anniversary, includes a previously unreleased track.
Some musical genres change violently in sudden lurches. Others sway and shimmy forwards, evolving so gracefully so you hardly notice. When the impeccably laid back Brazilian bossa nova decides to embrace modern technology there’s no surprise it should do so ever so gently.
Bebel Gilberto has a pretty daunting musical heritage to live up to. Her father is João Gilberto, the man who invented bossa nova, and her mother is the singer Miúcha. Bebel’s first public appearance was a concert at Carnegie Hall with her mother and Stan Getz when she was nine years old. So it’s not surprising that shes taken a while to record this debut album.
…2025 edition features fully restored audio by Neil Combstock (Bōucan Road Studios).
Julien Philéas, better known as Granmoun Lélé (1930–2004), was a griot and one of the most outstanding artists from the island of Réunion. Lélé was a percussionist, singer, storyteller and, above all, a healer.
As a teenager, he worked as a fitter in a sugar factory. After a week of work, Lélé would sing at kabars — places where, according to Malagasy custom, men and women gather to dance to the sounds of traditional instruments. He was raised amid Tamil rituals and Malagasy ceremonies, and he also drew inspiration from his dreams, experiences and the surrounding nature.
The album Soléyé was originally released in…
Gambian kora master and singer-songwriter, Suntou Susso hails from a celebrated lineage of griot musicians. Counting amongst his family are some of the world’s most renowned West African artists including Seckou Keita, Solo Cissokho, and Mamudou Susso.
Offering a contemporary edge grounded in ancestral wisdom, Jaliya Silokang (The Path of a Griot) is more than an album; it’s a bridge between generations and continents. The original compositions are rooted in Afro-Manding style with polyrhythms, spark influences from folk, jazz and funk. This contemporary griot song book by Suntou Susso resonates powerful messages of personal responsibility — to each other and to the world. Jaliya Silokang shows Susso’s…
Many important West African musicians built productive careers in 1970s Britain, and the local stars were eager to incorporate their scintillating sounds into their own music. Originally from Ijebu Ode, Nigeria, percussionist Gasper Lawal spent much of the early part of the decade moving through the happening London scene as a session and gig musician for the likes of Joan Armatrading, Graham Bell, Stephen Stills — and even Barbara Streisand. There were stints in various groups too, including the Ginger Baker-led Air Force. But Lawal soon resolved to work on his own music, and his debut album, Ajomasé, first released in 1980 and now newly reissued by Strut, is a fascinating and surprising record with unusual eclectic flourishes throughout. “I wanted to do…
Six-piece La Chooma weave together a heady blend of instrumental sounds on Local Spirits, their full-length debut.
Built on layers of intricate percussion, rumbling basslines and wandering synth lines, they reference Afro-jazz, Latin music and more – but the intoxicating psychedelic vibes that they serve up owe as much to dub production as anything else.
The track ‘High Glow’ sees synth work that could have come from Afro-electro legend William Onyeabor atop a tight percussive groove and squelchy bass-tones. The effect is deeply hypnotic. Their wide-ranging cross-cultural sound is at times reminiscent of the blissed-out dub sonics of Puerto Rican dub aficionado Pachyman. Their sound could get a little samey, but…
Over the past few years Acid Jazz has been the proud custodian of the legendary Albarika Store label, which produced some of the finest, deepest West African cuts of the last century. The mainstay of the Albarika sound was the mighty T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo, who were prolific throughout the label’s activity from the late ‘60s to the early ’80s.
When they reformed for their first-ever European tour in 2009, Benin’s T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo underscored their status as one of the all-time greats of West African music.
Formed in 1968 by bandleader Clément Mélomé, their rare alchemy of scorched funk and driving Afrobeat didn’t just defy a repressive political system; across fifty studio albums, it revealed a group infinitely worthy of the world stage.
Across a 40-minute drum-based suite, drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar reveals the transcendental nature of repetition as a thing of awe and beauty. Combining tablas, Southern Indian clay pot ghatams, drum kit, bells, xylophones, vocal drones and a Buchla Music Easel, Korwar unveils a morphing and organic investigation into rhythm itself. With previous work exploring identity, migration and futurism, Korwar is going back to basics on his latest release, There Is Beauty, There Already, showcasing the depths to which the drums can reach as instruments for ascension.
Korwar’s rhythmic layering is of particular note. With a clear debt to minimalist composers Steve Reich and Terry Riley, Korwar’s use of dense counterpoint is masterful, undulating…
…deluxe digital version of the album featuring three new tracks.
When New Zealand’s The Circling Sun released Spirits, their 2023 debut on Soundway, jazz fans weren’t prepared. A celebratory, spiritual intersection of Afro-Latin and spiritual jazz, 21st electronic grooves, atmospheres, a choir, and souled out charts, resonated across the South Pacific; the album was greeted with praise across the global jazz community.
Orbits, their followup, draws on the experience of touring over two years, expanding their confidence and creativity. Further, their primary influences here – Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra and Yusef Lateef – inspire the band to explore the subtleties in their own dynamic sound.
Le Collectif Tango Negro Ensemble honors the legacy of Juan Carlos Cáceres (1936–2015) with a double album, Tribute to Juan Carlos Cáceres, that reinterprets his most iconic works alongside previously unreleased compositions. A pioneer of what he called “tango negro” (black tango), Cáceres traced the African roots of Río de la Plata music, fusing jazz, candombe, milonga, and murga into a singular Afro-Argentine aesthetic.
The ensemble features a wide network of international artists from tango, jazz, and world music spheres. Guests include Horacio Burgos, Sedef Arçetin, Daniel Melingo, Chino Laborde, Olivier Manoury, Minino Garay, Natalio Mangalavite, Flaco Biondini, Paolo Fresu, Peppe Servillo, Fausto Beccalossi, and Javier Girotto.
Sometimes, when you mix several disparate flavors together, you get something that tastes like mud. Occasionally, though, you’ll stumble across something delightful that you never previously knew existed. Regarding music, it’s admittedly easier to lean toward the latter outcome. When you start mixing genres, it’s usually a safe bet that you’ll get something that’s at least listenable. When bands like Khruangbin started getting wider airplay, many labelled them “global party music” because they blended various sounds from different parts of the planet into a good time. This is also what German jazz act Muito Kaballa is doing on their fifth album, Tomorrow a Flower. It’s a sharply more pop-oriented affair than what they’ve previously done. However, by stepping in that…
These new ethnographic-oriented albums document recent Pacific projects initiated by Australian-based label Wantok Musik in the two formerly war-torn island nations of Bougainville and Timor-Leste (East Timor). Encouraging connections in both countries between younger up-and-coming musicians and their local community elders, the aim is to ensure the regions’ unique songs, languages and history are properly passed on, while the elders are still able to do so.
Lek Mak celebrates the distinctive Pacific culture of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, which includes Buka and several smaller islands that lie between Papua New Guinea and the northern tip of the Solomon Islands archipelago. Previously considered part of PNG, there have…
Commissioned by the Skopje Jazz Festival and premiered at its 42nd edition in 2023, After the Wildfire was performed live in an evening marked by the dim glow of the stage, an orchestra breathing with the electronics, the wealth of sounds conjured by sampler Jan Bang, and Arve Henriksen’s trumpet cutting through the hall like a quiet flame. The premiere offered an immersion into a unique sonic world. Now released as a physical album, the recording feels both familiar and freshly transformed — like the same landscape viewed at a different hour.
The album is built around an eight-movement suite, a careful weaving of live performance and studio work, though it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
A frequent collaborator of a diverse array of artists – including Laurie Anderson, Jessika Kenney, Bill Frisell and Sunn O))) – New York composer/violist Eyvind Kang presents his first solo recording on viola d’amore, an instrument he came to explore during the pandemic. An Italian bowed instrument used primarily in the Baroque period, the viola d’amore has a set of sympathetic strings that create a resonance not unlike that of Indian classical instruments.
Drawing upon his prior study in spiritual jazz and Indian raga, Riparian is Kang’s self-created means of improvising within modes of his own devising – one that alternates between arco and pizzicato (bowing and plucking), giving the impression of an organic dialogue between the two.
Friends for two decades, their creative partnership began when Philip Glass invited Tenzin Choegyal to perform at Carnegie Hall, igniting a dialogue between their two distinct yet deeply connected musical worlds. Choegyal is an acclaimed Tibetan artist whose music bridges ancestral tradition and contemporary expression. Raised in exile and now based in Australia, he channels his lineage through his art — shaping powerful compositions and serving as an ambassador for Tibetan culture and stories.
Be the Sky features original works from Choegyal and Glass’s two-decade collaboration, with Glass performing on the title track. The 7-track recording also spotlights performances by Scorchio Quartet, actress Saori Tsukada…
On their first album in five years, Antibalas return to the sound that launched their career back at the turn of the millennium. Hourglass is a straight-up slab of rich, punchy Afrobeat with a funk heartbeat, jazz lucidity, and no vocals. The Brooklyn band’s core foundation was built around their instrumental prowess, though surprisingly, this is their first all-instrumental set.
Over the years, they have paired elegant grooves with thoughtful lyrics about everything from late-stage capitalism and climate change to Native American genocide. Following 2020’s conceptual Fu Chronicles, Antibalas parted ways with singer Duke Amayo, who had been with them since their debut. Rather than seek a new vocalist, they decided to emphasize what has been their…
Bourj Hammoud Groove celebrates the music of Armenian-Lebanese artist Ara Kekedjian, a key figure in shaping Beirut’s distinctive Estradayin pop sound. Blending disco rhythms, synth-pop textures and Armenian melodic traditions, Kekedjian crafted a sound both rooted in community and universal in appeal.
…Born in 1946 in Bourj Hammoud, Lebanon, Ara became a central figure in the Armenian pop scene of the 1960s and 70s. With his mix of Armenian rhythms, hard-hitting drums, funky guitars, and charismatic stage presence, he carved out a bold sound in Estradayin (Armenian) pop rock.
In the 1970s, the Beirut suburb Bourj Hammoud became a hub of creativity and it was home to countless labels, record shops, and venues.
The fusion of jazz, baroque piano, vocals and traditional Central African and Middle Eastern rhythms might sound like an ambitious overreach, with too many influences competing for space. Yet Afro Baroque proves that what could have been a chaotic collision of styles instead shows how rhythm, melody and cultural expression can complement each other to produce an album of dynamic interplay that entertains throughout.
The driving force behind this cross-genre synthesis is the combination of Israeli-Italian pianist Yakir Arbib and Cameroonian drummer and vocalist Conti Bilong. Arbib has been blind since birth and suffers from synesthesia, which blends senses so that musical tones are seen as different colors. A Berklee graduate, he is equally…
This trio unites the Lebanese pianist Rami Khalifé, Albanian cellist Redi Hasa and Iranian-French percussionist, saz and zarb goblet drum player Bijan Chemirani to explore a domain of sensitive acoustic composition.
L’Antidote invest folk forms with a neo-classical air, playing with their surrounding space and savouring the creation of delightfully calming atmospheres. They make collective music that has room for individual expression.
Opener ‘Pomegranate’ matches nimble piano, softly droned cello (with what sounds like very light electronics) and flexible frame drum (daf) fluidly, while the standout ‘Dates, Figs And Nuts’ features Khalifé’s prepared piano percussiveness. There have been a few albums lately…
Réunion singer, percussionist and composer Luc Moindranzé Karioudja releases his debut album, Mon Balo, in homage to his island’s traditional maloya musical heritage. Situated around 800km east of Madagascar – an island whose cultural history is itself as proudly independent as it is African – Réunion offers a unique blend of African, Malagasy, Indian and French influences.
Tropical birdsong, wind chime-style percussion and rich a cappella vocals set the vibe from the opening moments, with Karioudja leading an overdubbed male choir in a mix of French and traditional languages. What sounds like ‘amour’ is whispered and echoed out. Barely audible hand drums and an accommodating trumpet backing hint towards Karioidja’s Afro-Cuban…