Listomania – The Decade’s Best World Music Part 1
‘Tis the time to start making lists!
The Best Rock Albums, The Best Non-Stories, The Best Douchebags..of the year, of the decade, of this crummy recession!
Join indiejourno over the next couple of days, as we frantically, copy-paste lists from across the internet and pass them off as ours..(hahah, NOT!)
Giving credit where it is due..here is a wonderful list from the jolly folks over at Soundcheck, the music-talk show at WNYC (New York Public Radio)
This list, The Decade’s Best in World Music, comes courtesy culture reporter and all-round world music aficionado Siddhartha Mitter.
I added the videos, because some folks like to watch (Tee hee)
Siddhartha Mitter’s Top Ten World Music Albums:
Three from 2009:
Buraka Som Sistema, Black Diamond
Buraka Som Sistema play kuduro, an Angolan take on dance music that’s an example of what British critic Matt Ingram calls “Shanty House”: urbanized, globalized street and club music splicing hip-hop and rave DNA with local mutations to create dynamic pidgin sounds. Read more here
Kailash Kher, Yatra
Anyone who has lived in India can attest to Kailash Kher’s wonderful caterwauling – no, we jest! But if Yatra doesn’t impress..surely this song will..Allah Ke Bande
Otto, Certa manhã acordei de sonhos intranquilos
There’s a most delicious sadness to the new record from Brazil’s Otto, a veteran singer from Recife’s ultra-fertile mangue-beat scene whose style could be called energetically moody. The title paraphrases the opening lines of Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,’’ and the album delivers on the implied promise of an emotional journey: It arcs from an almost grandiose lamentation of cruelty and loss (“Crua’’) to an end-state of quiet resolution (“Agora Sim’’). Read more here
Youssou N’Dour, Egypt
Cafe Tacuba, Cuatro caminos
I always wished I had written Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, but after submerging myself in the floating history of the Buendias, I couldn’t pick up another book for weeks. I couldn’t write. The rainforest heat of his simple prose and the novel’s mystical subversion of time left me lamenting my own useless efforts. I imagine, if I were a musician, I would feel this same impotence after listening to Café Tacuba’s Cuatro Caminos. Read more here.
Look out for part 2 tomorrow.
In the meantime, what were your favorite world music albums of the year/ decade? Drop me a line below.
