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!

A recent trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico not only gave me a chance to visit Bandelier National Monument and ponder overpriced bad service, it also included a visit to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center.  

While there, I had a disposable video camera to play with.

The CVS (a US pharmacy chain) disposable costs about US$30 and then another US$12-13 to develop, but it did motivate me to film without my usual over-analyzing and artistic angst. Once I show you one or two good clips from it, I’m going to start using the video mode on my regular digital camera, for better quality.

I’ve never had a video camera, so I made all of the usual newbie mistakes: panning/moving the camera too fast so that the resulting video induces vomiting, simply forgetting that I had the thing in my purse, and then not getting around to getting the clips off of the camera and onto my computer.

With great fanfare, I’d like to announce that in addition to filming a little video clip of me on Family Travel with a laptop camera, I actually drove over to my local CVS pharmacy yesterday and got the contents of the camera onto a DVD. I popped the DVD into my laptop and voila – a whole lot of “OMG, I forgot I filmed that!”

But back to the Cultural Center….I’ll write about it in more detail in another post, but this particular clip is of Zuni/Omaha tribal dancer Fabian Fontenelle accompanied by his wife, award-winning singer Shelley Morningsong. 

They are performing in the Center’s courtyard as part of a series of dance, food and music demonstrations during Balloon Fiesta Week (although there are demonstrations year-round, call the Center at 1-866-855-7902 for more details.)

This is “Faithful Feet,” from Ms. Morningsong’s album “Out of the Ashes,” which won the 2007 Native American Music Award for Best Debut Artist.  You can also listen to her and other artists on Native Radio.

It’s not even December yet, and I’m already sick of “Santa Baby” on the radio.

Nothing like a blast of Beninese/New York singer Angelique Kidjo to take care of that — have you heard her remake (with Joss Stone) of the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter?”

Fortunately, the Perceptive Travel gang is really into world music, so if you’re bored by your current collection, take a look at the Nov/Dec 07 issue of the online magazine for the World Music Reviews.

Columnist Graham Reid listens to recent gems by Thione Seck from Senegal, Hossam Ramzy & Samy El Bably working Cairo bellydance tunes, Malouma with some Sub-Saharan blues and various artists on Marabi Africa.  There are click-to-buy links in the sidebar if you want to check out any or all of the albums.

Another place to look for interesting music (tied to iTunes, so you’ll need the Apple software)  is the National Geographic Traveler Web site.  In the July/August 2007 version of the magazine, I noticed an “Italian Rhapsody” playlist next to an article about Tuscany, so I went to investigate further and also found Traveler downloads for Brazil, Hawaii, Miami, Paris, South Africa and Southern California.

Lastly, through some of my Twitter friends I discovered Last.fm, a social music site where you download some software, indicate your current tastes and then share your musical interests with others.

Randomly surfing a “world music” tag brought me Cheb Balowski (Mirant les noticies,) Femi Kuti (Truth Don Die) and Sergent Garcia (Guantanamo City.)

Beats the heck outta “Santa Baby.”

Technorati tags: travel, world music, Last.fm

Thanks to Perceptive Travel editor Tim Leffel for this link to Link TV’s announcement of its top world music videos of 2007.

Link’s chosen music videos swing through Chile, Russia, Spain, France, Iran, and many other countries in between. And they’re not just pulling these winners out of a hat. The Link TV website, which dubs itself “Television Without Borders,” has been featured in Rolling Stone for its top-notch collection of new and cutting edge world music videos. The director of music and cultural programming, Steven Lawrence, used to be a producer at MTV, and is now bringing his music know-how to the Internet’s world music community. The site features weekly specials and collections of new music videos, as well as interviews with and documentaries about traditional and avant-garde musicians around the world.

Check out this link, where Michal Shapiro, Associate Director of Music Programming, discusses the cornucopia of world music documentaries available for viewing during the US’s Thanksgiving holiday week. And while you’re there, head to Link’s main Web page to get the full experience of Link’s worldwide news reports, documentaries, and current discussions. In an online world of cacophonic blogs and shrill pundits on TV, Link is carving out a niche where people who care about world news and world culture can find out what’s really going on.

A couple of months back I got to check out the Gypsy Caravan movie when it rolled through town and scored a copy of the CD. The film kind of pops up here and there on the indie theater circuit, so watch for local listings. Meanwhile, you can get the CD to get a taste of the tunes.

Gypsy punk and gypsy electronica have become kind of hip lately, with Putumayo’s Gypsy Groove being a great party collection (scroll down to the review here) and Gogol Bordello getting all kinds of ga-ga press for their raucous CDs and stage show. Some purists see this as close to blasphemous, but as this documentary shows, there’s no such thing as “pure” gypsy music anyway. The ensembles are from Macedonia, Rajasthan (India), Spain, and Romania.

Gypsy Caravan follows a group of diverse musicians thrown together on a tour of the U.S. It has been compared to the Buena Vista Social Club documentary and does have the same charm of watching musicians on their first trip abroad. The fun is watching them play together and interact on the road (including some time with Johnny Depp even), but the concert footage is excellent.

These notes from the director shed a light on why there’s so much good footage:

“In fact, our main problem with this soundtrack was an embarrassment of riches. We have about 40 or 50 hours of music. I could make a whole album just from late nights in the Rajasthan desert with elders playing and the Maharaja musicians joining in, and learning.

Most of the musicians on tour grow up with music from childhood, “like water, like air, like bread,” as Esma says. The kids start playing as early as they can remember. And the adults play for a living - and to keep on living.”

Like any collection with this much diversity, this is more a CD for listening than for setting a certain mood. For me, the strong, intense vocals of “the queen of the gypsies” Emsa Redzopova get old fast—I’m ready for old guys with violins to pop back out—but in concerts she is often the big draw. Check out the samples on Amazon or at the Gypsy Caravan website and get a taste of the spectrum.

One of these days it will be out on DVD, so add it to your Netflix queue for later. For ongoing reviews of notable world music, see the latest issue and archives of Perceptive Travel.