Teleportation
This playlist took quite some time to conceive. And the credit is not mine. Today we will listen to different, colourful, unpopular music. Music that moves on a weird, but continuous axis - Africa, Japan, Brazil, through Lebanon to Turkey, and somewhere in the midst of things some Berlin vibes also get added.
As a person that has collected and searched for music for many years, today together with you we enjoy a different point of view. This can be seen as teleportation from place to place and today we open the long autumn and winter evenings with colourful music, that is also full of life and meaning. Enjoy listening and enjoy the ride.
And so, this is what we are listening to:
We start things off with a song Cape Town Jam by Auntie Flo - one of the interesting new names in the British electronic music scene. Then we continue to Africa with the ‘blind couple from Mali’ Amadu and Miriam and their song Wily Kataso. The duet from Bamako had been on the scene for over 30 years, and we discovered them about 15 years ago and since then they have been a staple in our musical library.
We keep the rhythm, but we teleport to one of the most musically unknown to us countries - Japan, with Kushimoto Bushi by Minyo Crusaders - a band that experiments by twisting the Japanese genre min yo through the prism of different musical cultures. The result is fun and as you will see a little later, it confirms the conclusion that modern day Japanese music is actually very interesting and is worth diving into a little deeper.
What follows is a song by the Dutch Yin Yin, where today in the middle of Europe they are strongly leaning towards East Asian music styles, mixing them with disco and bringing us joy. After that we listen to the Lebanese psychedelic soul sound of Dance of Maria by Elias Rahbani from the 70’s. Next in the offline version comes the eternal Yoko Ono with Walking on Thin Ice, and then we close of this Japanese chapter with one of our personal findings with a song by Japanese rapper EVISBEATS.
And then we teleport once again - this time to Turkey with some other favourites of ours - the band Ayyuka and Yukadans. A song that encapsulates in itself a piece of the summer that has passed. A song that is a picture of the Mediterranean: sunny, colourful, warm, and alive…
Then comes the classical piece, which needs no explanation – Dave Brubeck's Unsquare Dance.
We continue with a slightly inappropriate and highly contrasting transition to something nice from the modern Berlin electronic and jazz scene - Luftkraft by percussionist Niklas Wandt. Look up that name is you are drawn towards good electronic music.
To wrap things up, we connect the end of this selection to its beginning through Brazil with two songs - our favourite Nonsensical by Foro in the Dark, whose text deserves special attention, and then the diva of Brazilian music Elza Soares in an amazing duet with the rapper Emicida.
We finish this off with traditional advice - listen to music loud and with good sound. This time you can go without headphones, because they will keep you from dancing. And of course, support artists and buy music on their official channels.
The world is both small and big at the same time. The world is colourful!
November 2020
Image ©MA
