World music
Ravi Shankar, George Harrison: Ravi Shankar: 'My Music Not For Addicts'
Interview by uncredited writer, KRLA Beat, July 1967
"THE MESSAGE I'm trying to get through is that our music is very sacred to us and is not meant for people who are alcoholic, ...
Osibisa: Beat The (African) Drums For Osibisa
Profile by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, August 1970
IT MAY BE that, having endured the painfully stilted and emotionally lukewarm playing of most rock drummers for the last decade, audiences are waking up ...
Interview by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, April 1971
PEACE AND brotherhood, truth and happiness. These are words which crop up constantly in conversations with Osibisa, the creeds by which they attempt to live ...
Interview by David Hughes, Disc and Music Echo, May 1971
OSIBISA – the name is now on the lips of everyone just as we prophesied. The criss-cross rhythms are exploding with happiness right across the ...
Report and Interview by Tony Stewart, NME, January 1972
WITH AIRFORCE, Ginger Baker succeeded in providing the rudiments of the Afro-beat. Consciously he wanted to go back to the roots of highly percussive music, ...
Interview by Chris Welch, Melody Maker, February 1974
HAPPY CHILDREN – maybe. Realistic and dedicated musicians – certainly. For beneath the jolly image of Osibisa, there beat sensitive hearts. ...
Review by Chas de Whalley, NME, January 1976
Too many holiday brochures getting you down – let some real sun into your home... ...
Hugh Masekela: Africa's Ambassador To The USA
Interview by David Nathan, Blues & Soul, March 1976
Our diplomatic correspondent in Los Angeles talks to Hugh Masekela, one of Africa's favourite sons. ...
Review by Max Bell, NME, September 1976
AFTER MY initial listening to this album I was going to take the easy way out, fob off with a few jokes about the Raga ...
Review by Chris Welch, Melody Maker, November 1976
WHEN I sat upon my mother's knee during the years of austerity, being spoon-fed National Health bubble and squeak, and listening to the Light Programme, ...
Fela Kuti: Fela Anikulapo Kuti & Africa 70: Hippodrome, Paris
Live Review by Ian Penman, NME, March 1981
FELA ANIKULAPO KUTI is probably the unlikeliest of candidates to win the dubious honour of being the Great African Dance's Bob Marley – popularizer to ...
Interview by Garry Bushell, Sounds, March 1982
WHAT'S SIX to eight yards long, gets tucked and tied, gathered up, taken round and pleated not less than seven times? Clue: it often takes ...
Review by Edwin Pouncey, Sounds, July 1982
IT HAS ALREADY been wisely stated elsewhere that any thoughts of tribal ceremony soundtracks brought direct from the bush by intrepid white David Fanshawe types ...
Report by Vivien Goldman, NME, July 1982
VIVIEN GOLDMAN takes a trip around the WORLD OF MUSIC AND DANCE and discovers that even the beauty of ethnic cultures can be a victim ...
King Sunny Ade: Sunny Side Of The Beat
Interview by Edwin Pouncey, Sounds, August 1982
Edwin Pouncey meets the 'Minister Of Enjoyment' and monarch of juju music KING SUNNY ADE ...
Report by Richard Cook, NME, September 1982
The New African Music, part one: "More difficult to cage than reggae. It leaps and sprawls... It can go on and on because nobody wants ...
Report by Richard Cook, NME, September 1982
The New African Music: part two. Continuing our musical trek... to Mombassa, where we meet Mazembe — the voice of Kenya, and discover the talk ...
King Sunny Ade: King Sunny Adé (1983)
Interview by Simon Witter, Rock's Backpages, January 1983
Nigerian giant Adé talks about juju music, tribalism and politics, the talking drum and much more.
File format: mp3; file size: 61.1mb, interview length: 1h 06' 43" sound quality: ***
King Sunny Ade and his African Beats: Synchro System (Island)
Review by Richard Cook, NME, June 1983
IN A THREADBARE year for outstanding pop records, Synchro System is something to set excitement aflame – a torch song for the powers of rhythm. ...
King Sunny Ade and his African Beats: Synchro System (Mango)
Review by Don Snowden, Los Angeles Times, July 1983
APPROACHING SUNNY ADE'S juju music from a Western pop perspective is difficult, because his creative objective is a smooth flow with nothing much happening in ...
Gasper Lawal Band: Cricketers, London
Live Review by Len Brown, NME, August 1983
IN THE TROPICAL heatwave of Afro-beat addiction it is unjust that Gasper Lawal should remain in the shade. ...
Fela Kuti: Resurrection Shuffle
Report by Vivien Goldman, NME, January 1984
ABOUT 200 PEOPLE turned out last weekend at the Country Club in North London, for a benefit to prevent its closure. Entertainment was provided by ...
Hugh Masekela: Blazing In The Bush
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, March 1984
AT A TIME when Western attention is once more turned on the evil and cunning of the South African government, it couldn't be more appropriate ...
Youssou N'Dour: Youssou N’dour Et Le Super Etoile De Dakar: London Venue
Live Review by Simon Witter, NME, May 1984
SINCE I BOUGHT Etoile de Dakar’s Thiapathioly LP two years ago, the band have become ‘Super’ and the lead singer has achieved star status, making ...
Report and Interview by Don Snowden, Los Angeles Times, August 1984
SUNDAY'S "WORLD Cultural Music Festival" was postponed Friday after two key performers coincidentally ran into customs difficulties, festival publicist Jeff Gans said. He expects the ...
Interview by Hank Bordowitz, unpublished, 1985
HB: You are doing something most American bands wouldn't think off, touring the country with a 20 odd person entourage. ...
Review and Interview by Don Snowden, Boston Phoenix, February 1985
"THE GOVERNMENT is trying to lure me into participation in the politics of Nigeria now but that doesn't really mean my situation is very cool ...
Fela Kuti: Music is the Weapon: Fela
Report by Don Snowden, Los Angeles Times, February 1985
THE CONCEPT OF combining music with a strong political message is a romantic, enticing notion to many young musicians but it's a harsh, often painful ...
Fela Kuti: Music Is the Weapon
Film/DVD Review by Don Snowden, Los Angeles Times, February 1985
THE IDEA of combining music with a strong political message is a romantic notion to many young musicians, but the concept is a harsh reality ...
Fela Kuti: Army Arrangement (Celluloid)
Review by Simon Witter, NME, March 1985
WITH MORE more pep in his step, and Bill Laswell by his side, Fela is back, up for the downstroke. Yes, that’s Fela Anikulapo Kuti, ...
Youssou N'Dour: Voix d'Afrique
Interview by Mark Sinker, NME, May 1986
2005 note: My very first full-length music piece for NME? I so much wish Youssou had not let himself be kidnapped by P.Gabriel. Marcello Carlin ...
Paul Simon: Graceland (Warner Brothers)***
Review by Jack Barron, Sounds, September 1986
GRACE UNDER PRESSURE ...
Fela Kuti: The Great Pretender: Fela Kuti
Interview by Len Brown, NME, October 1986
So, who is this FELA KUTI? An African musician just out of jail and now threatening to run for President of Nigeria? A polygamist in ...
Youssou N'Dour: Super Star of Dakar: Youssou N'Dour
Interview by Don Snowden, Los Angeles Times, December 1986
PETER GABRIEL HAS often acknowledged the influence of Third World styles on his recent songs and the veteran British rocker is paying back that debt ...
Paul Simon: The Boy in the Boycott
Report by Terry Staunton, Mark Sinker, NME, April 1987
Is PAUL SIMON "a genius and a loathsome coward"? Does the lack of anti-apartheid statements on Graceland amount to condonation of Botha's regime? Or has ...
Paul Simon: Royal Albert Hall, London
Live Review by Len Brown, NME, April 1987
LET'S NOT beat about the bush. This is a celebration of black South African music with an anti-apartheid spirit mixed into its magic. And it ...
Youssou N'Dour, Peter Gabriel: Peter Gabriel, Youssou N'Dour: Earls Court, London
Live Review by Len Brown, NME, July 1987
THE '70S DINOSAURS are dying out; either through lack of brain, excess of dosh or both. ...
Never Mind The Balkans: The New Bulgaria
Report by Len Brown, NME, March 1988
Not exactly Bananarama, perhaps, but 4AD's LE MYSTÈRE DES VOIX BULGARES and TRIO BULGARKA and other Bulgarian artists are shifting a surprising number of units ...
Review by Don Snowden, Boston Phoenix, March 1988
THE RECENT GLUT of African pop releases has now revealed a mesmerizing vocalist, one capable of reviving the hoary show-biz adage that he could excel ...
Live Review by Richard Gehr, Village Voice, March 1988
Ofra Haza: S.O.B.’s, New York ...
Ruben Blades: Panamanian Pandemonium: Ruben Blades: Musician, Actor, Activist
Report and Interview by Gerrie Lim, LA Style, July 1988
RUBEN BLADES, Panamanian musician and aspiring politician lately turned Hollywood actor, pulls from a pack the latest in a series of Merit Ultra Lights and ...
Global Music With a Single Heart
Report by Don Snowden, Los Angeles Times, August 1988
QUICK, WHAT do English rock star Peter Gabriel, L.A. club favorites the Bonedaddys, West African vocalist Salif Keita, Israeli pop star Ofra Haza and the ...
3Mustapha3: 3Mustaphas3: Fez Fair!
Report and Interview by Mark Sinker, NME, September 1988
2005 note: Collapse of post-comm Balkans into internecine war hinted at, kinda. Well, only if you read WAY between the lines I think. Another submerged ...
Interview by Martin Aston, Auckland Star, 1989
NOT FOR nothing has New York been labelled "the first Third World city in a First World country." ...
Mickey Hart: Ethnomusicologist Mickey Hart Gives Us The World
Interview by Christine Natanael, Reflex, February 1989
THIS IS THE story of a recordist – a man that has made it his business to preserve moments in time and memories of his ...
Papa Wemba: Papa's Got a Brand New Wardrobe: Papa Wemba
Profile and Interview by Len Brown, NME, March 1989
Film-star, superhero, total poseur, Zairean PAPA WEMBA brings his brand of designer World Beat to town, with a swish of posh cloth and a creak ...
The Gyuto Monks: Freedom Chants From the Roof of the World (Rykodisc)
Review by Tom Graves, Rock and Roll Disc, July 1989
FOR CONNOISSEURS of the weird, the Gyuto Monks' Freedom Chants From the Roof of the World demands a place of honor among your trophies. ...
Interview by Martin Aston, Music Week, 1990
IF BRIAN ENO, Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads, David Sylvian and Tears For Fears have anything in common, you wouldn't instantly think of American avant-garde composer/trumpeter ...
Gipsy Kings, The: Gipsy Kings: Let's Do The Shoe Right Here!
Report and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, January 1990
IN THE PLAIN of the Camargue, where the Rhone feeds into the Mediterranean, lies the small but distinguished town of Arles Settled by the Ancient ...
Interview by Don Snowden, Los Angeles Times, August 1990
YOUSSOU N'DOUR has supplanted King Sunny Ade as the most visible African artist to Western pop audiences since the current surge of international interest in ...
Peter Gabriel, Van Morrison: Peter Gabriel: World Party
Report by Johnny Black, Q, November 1991
One week this summer, Peter Gabriel's dream came true. Musicians of the world, from Sinead O'Connor and Van Morrison to stars of Lapland and Tanzania, ...
Ali Farka Toure: Ali Farka Touré
Interview by Don Snowden, Escape, April 1994
THE 18-WEEK run atop the Billboard World Music charts enjoyed by Ali Farka Touré's album The Source added the sweet touch of popular success in ...
Fela Kuti: Fela Anikulapo-Kuti 1938-1997
Obituary by Vivien Goldman, Rolling Stone, September 1997
KING OF AFRO BEAT DEAD AT 58 ...
Harry Belafonte Follows New Rhythm
Profile and Interview by j. poet, San Francisco Chronicle, September 1997
Singer makes his first CD in nine years ...
Overview by Charlie Gillett, Developments, March 1998
IN 1987, THE owners of several British independent record labels convened a series of meetings in an Islington pub to discuss ways to get their ...
Nitin Sawhney : The Outsider: Nitin Sawhney
Profile and Interview by Andrew Smith, Guardian, The, September 1999
Nitin Sawhney says he feels like a stranger in England, where he was born, and in India, the land of his parents. The tension has ...
Baaba Maal: Dropping in on Baaba Mal
Interview by Amy Linden, Code, 2000
FOR YEARS THE music press has insisted that African pop is poised to become the next big thing. That American audiences will embrace the various ...
Unlikely Fruits of Apartheid: South African Sounds in the Post-War Era
Report by Andy Farquarson, Independent, The, March 2000
THE SEGREGATION OF music played a significant role in supporting South Africa's post-war National Party policy of "separate development". This little-known facet of apartheid has ...
Asian Dub Foundation: Community Music
Review by David Stubbs, Uncut, April 2000
Storming new set of eclectic agit-pop from best live band in Britain ...
Jesús Alemañy, ¡Cubanismo!: ¡Cubanismo!: Jesús Alemañy goes beyond Buena Vista
Report and Interview by j. poet, Boston Phoenix, April 2000
IT'S BEEN EASY to get the impression over the past couple of years that Cuban music starts and ends with the Buena Vista Social Club. ...
David Byrne: The King of Afropea: David Byrne
Interview by Andy Farquarson, Independent, The, June 2000
"Isn't this where the Profumo thing started?" someone asks. We're soaking up the seedy mock-opulence of The Eve Club on Regent Street and, for the ...
Ali Farka Toure: Connections: Ali Farka Touré's Cross-Cultural Blues
Profile by Ted Drozdowski, Boston Phoenix, July 2000
THE BLUES CAME to America in chains, contained within the hearts of the enslaved people of Africa. Two hundred odd years later it went back, ...
Baaba Maal: Going Home: Baaba Maal Returns To The Roots Of His Music
Profile and Interview by j. poet, SF Gate, August 2001
WHEN BAABA MAAL comes to the Fillmore on Saturday, August 11, Bay Area audiences will get to hear a voice that is one of the ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Hudson, Daily Telegraph, March 2002
BEFORE MIRIAM Makeba's first venture outside South Africa in 1959, her mother, a sangoma or traditional medium, was warned by one of her familiar spirits ...
Caetano Veloso: Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil (Knopf)
Book Review by Will Hermes, Village Voice, September 2002
IT'S TOUGH TO imagine an American pop star penning a memoir like Tropical Truth. That's not just because our musical celebs are rarely imprisoned for ...
World of Mouth: Mariza and more
Essay by Charlie Gillett, The WOMEX Guide, October 2002
WHEN MARIZA SINGS, time stands still. Every word is sung with intense concentration, every note hit flawlessly. When she pauses for dramatic effect, ...
Asha Bhosle: Royal Albert Hall, London
Live Review by Pete Paphides, Times, The, October 2002
POP STARS who complain about their workload might care to ponder the achievements of Asha Bhosle. Since she first stepped into a studio, aged ten, ...
Youssou N'Dour: A Song and a Prayer
Profile and Interview by Mark Hudson, Observer, The, May 2004
As the first superstar of world music, Youssou N'Dour has consistently sought to reconcile Africa and the West, but his most personal record yet is ...
Putumayo: The Little Label That Could
Report by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, July 2004
WHILE THE REST of the music industry downsizes like mad, an 11-year-old independent label the majors used to snicker at has scored a 15 percent ...
Youssou N'Dour: Egypt (Nonesuch)
Review by Charlie Gillett, Observer, The, July 2004
THIS BEAUTIFUL record is a new album by Youssou N'Dour, but it is not 'the new Youssou N'Dour album'. We have had one of those ...
Seun Kuti, Femi Kuti, Fela Kuti: Fela Kuti: A Difficult Fela To Follow
Report and Interview by Mark Hudson, Daily Telegraph, October 2004
As the Barbican celebrates the life and music of Fela Kuti, Mark Hudson travels to Lagos to meet his sons Femi and Seun, bitter rivals ...
Review by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, 2005
A potted history of one of Africa's biggest pop stars ...
Salif Keita, Youssou N'Dour: Various Artists: Golden Afrique, Vol 1
Review by Charlie Gillett, Observer Music Monthly, February 2005
MOST OF THESE wonderfully atmospheric, seminal recordings were made in West Africa during the 1970s, a decade when a regime change was happening in recording ...
Various Artists: Balkan Beats (EastBlock)
Review by Charlie Gillett, Observer Music Monthly, July 2005
THIS IS THE ALBUM I needed when I played records at the Big Chill for the first time, two years ago. ...
Salif Keita: Rockin' With Soul Of Africa
Profile and Interview by j. poet, San Francisco Chronicle, August 2006
SALIF KEITA grins when he says: "I love rock'n'roll." It may seem like an unlikely sentiment since Keita's last two albums, this year's M'Bemba (Ancestor) ...
At Hatikvah Music, the Whole World is Jewish
Report and Interview by Kirk Silsbee, Jewish Journal, December 2006
BOXES ARE SCATTERED around the floor of Hatikvah Music International at 436 N. Fairfax Avenue. Stacks of CDs, reams of packing plastic, mounds of ...
Tinariwen: Aman: Water Is Life
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, February 2007
WHEN THEY FIRST formed in the Libyan guerilla camps of the late ‘70s, Tinariwen referred to their music simply as "guitar". And no wonder. Electric ...
Ozomatli: Don't Mess With the Dragon
Review by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, April 2007
IF YOU'RE A giddy optimist like me, you hope to one day hear Ozomatli's cheerfully rebellious politi-pop wafting from every car radio in New York ...
Bewitching And Captivating: A Calypsonian history of Trinidad
Review by Tony Russell, Catalyst, May 2007
"The report of the Commission of Inquiry/Has arrived in this colony/It touches health and sanitation/Housing, wages and education . . ." The subject matter of ...
Interview by Jeff Tamarkin, Harp, September 2007
"THERE IS only one thing I still don’t understand," Manu Chao says the day after his triumphant Bonnaroo set and not long after an equally ...
Interview by Jude Rogers, Lipster, The, March 2008
BACK IN OCTOBER last year, in the misty early days of The Lipster, I e-mailed Björk's publicist, telling him about the plans for our website, ...
Various Artists: Nigeria Special: Modern Highlife, Afro-Sounds & Nigerian Blues, 1970-76 (Soundway)
Review by Charlie Gillett, Observer Music Monthly, June 2008
IT WOULD have been difficult to find a way to hear this music in the UK back in the early 1970s – nobody was playing ...
Report and Interview by Ben Thompson, Observer, The, June 2008
Suddenly indie rockers are embracing African sounds. Could the long years of a cultural apartheid be coming to a close, asks Ben Thompson ...
Interview by Christine Natanael, crushermagazine.com, July 2008
SOMETIMES going backwards can actually be going forwards. Is that not, after all the basic premise of most disciplines learned, from religion and mathematics to ...
El Mamouni, Sissoko, Rajery: Sissoko, El Mamouni, Rajery: 3MA (Contre Jour)
Review by Charlie Gillett, Observer Music Monthly, August 2008
GIVEN THE CHOICE of listening for the first time to new albums by two unknown artists, one instrumental, the other vocal, I instinctively opt for ...
Femi Kuti: Born Into The Struggle
Interview by Nick Hasted, Independent, The, October 2008
Femi Kuti has both Nigeria's music and its deadly political conflicts in his blood, he explains to Nick Hasted ...
Profile by Jon Stewart, Guitarist, December 2008
Jon Stewart finds a new source of inspiration from a guitar-heavy world music band. ...
Review by Charlie Gillett, Observer Music Monthly, February 2009
SO WHY, with more than 50 African countries to choose from, do we keep returning to the music of Mali? Surely there must be other ...
Baaba Maal: 'Say What You Believe is True'
Profile and Interview by Nick Hasted, Independent, The, February 2009
BAABA MAAL IS BACK in Britain next week. If he isn't yet as familiar a name here as his fellow Senegalese Youssou N'Dour, this is ...
Robert Plant, Justin Adams & Juldeh Camara
Interview by Stephen Dalton, National, The, April 2009
A LIGHT BREEZE of mellifluous music wafts from behind the half-open door of a long, low, bunker-like building nestled deep in the English countryside. Inside ...
Damon Albarn And The Honest Jon's Revue: Uptown Rankin'
Report and Interview by Ken Scrudato, Filter, June 2009
OH DEAR. Damon Albarn is at it again. ...
John Storm Roberts: An Appreciation
Memoir by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, April 2011
I'VE ALWAYS BEEN more than a bit ambivalent about the whole concept of mentoring, at least when it applies to the music world we run ...
Retrospective by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, July 2011
STEVE VAN ZANDT, May 2011, Lillehammer, Norway: "The anti-apartheid Sun City project (single, album, video, documentary, book, teaching guide) was a high point and a ...
Ravi Shankar: Within And Without Him: Gavin Martin pays Tribute to Ravi Shankar
Obituary by Gavin Martin, unpublished, December 2012
An edited version of this piece appeared in the Daily Mirror on 13 December 2012 ...
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