I guess I have learnt the hard way not to bring local booze back from my travels. Those eclectic and often lurid drinks that one so enjoys when sitting at a cafe next to the Mekong in Laos, or in a local village in Turkey just don’t translate to the gloomy London winter. The same is unfortunately true with world music. Quite a few times I have been tempted by local folk music that I have quite enjoyed on my travels, only to bring it back home and find it completely impossible to listen to for more than a few minutes. My local charity shop has been the recipient of these unwise music purchases a number of times. As far as I know they are still there - unless that is a family of homesick Nepalis have happened to wander inside!

This is why Crammed Disc is such a find. As well as CDs from noted world artists, such as the gypsy music of Taraf de Haidouks, they also produce compilation CDs such as Floating Through Walls. With 20 tracks from 20 different world albums (all of them on the Crammed Disc label) this is a veritable world tour through Latin, African, Asian and European rhythms. Obviously I didn’t like them all, but that is the point! I certainly found a number of artists that I would like to explore further.

The Crammed Disc website has music and video sample links for many of their artists, and is a great resource for choosing world music.

If your thirst for World music is still not satiated, then you could do worse than browse through the LinkTv World Music section. There are some fantastic music videos on here, including offerings from India’s Rabbi Shergil and Chilean band La Mano Ajena. This is a great site to dip into and explore!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 11:16 am and is filed under Steve projects, world music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.