Damn, Paul Ackroyd went all out on this one. Originally posting these while the London Olympics were on, the man sometimes known as Kamikaze pushed his record collection to the extreme, pulling out one track from every country competing. Pretty impressive to say the least, this is some dedicated digging with hefty results. I’m not sure a collection like this has ever be done before. 12 hours, 9 minutes and 36 seconds of radio done over a two week period. All collected on the Awkward Movements blog with download links right down the bottom.

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I’m a huge fan of the singer/songwriter, Maraveyas Ilegal. His songs, his movement, the dancing and interactivity with the audience put him on top of my world music performers list.

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‘Most bands that play traditional music, do it in a traditional way. What’s interesting for us it to keep it fresh and make it a living tradition,’ said Gergely Barcza of Hungarian gypsy-fusion band Besh o droM. Formed in Budapest in 1999, the name translates as ‘ride the road’, which they’ve done with performances at festivals all over Europe, Asia and soon for the first time, in Australia. ‘When we started, I never thought the music would travel so far, and take us all to so many different places.’

Barcza plays saxophone, flute and other instruments, and in the years before the band, he played in a trio with brother in law Ádám Pettik, a percussionist. When Barcza moved from Israel back to Hungary, together they formed Besh o droM. While the line-up has changed over time, the core group has remained the same. Currently the band includes nine members who play a mix of folk and contemporary instruments including guitar, dulcimer, clarinet, darbuka, bass and accordion.

Besh o droM draw inspiration from Transylvanian, Jewish, Afghan, Egyptian, Lebanese, Armenian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Macedonian and Greek musical traditions. According to Barcza, ‘One of us brings in a melody and it might come from a traditional song, and the other band members ask not to hear the original recording, so as to not contaminate the creative process.’

Forming a song then involves bringing together all the different influences and elements. ‘We might mix a Jewish melody with a Hungarian song. Or a Macedonian song with a Hungarian rhythm. It’s like playing with blocks of Lego.’

The energy of their live shows is world-renowned, helped along by some YouTube footage that features instruments faultlessly played at frenetic, frenzied speeds. ‘Through the music we give energy to the audience, who through their appreciation and dancing give it back, which further energises us and we play it even better and faster.’ He laughs. ‘Always faster!’

Besh o droM are headlining Karavan, the inaugural Melbourne International Gypsy Music Festival on Saturday, February 27. The line-up is completed by gypsy and folk bands from around Melbourne: Unified Gecko, Woohoo Revue, VulgarGrad, Barons of Tang, Vardos, Rapskallion and Systa bb. Following that show, Besh o droM play the Palais Theatre in St Kilda on Sunday, February 28. The band will also be appearing at Australia’s biggest world music festival WOMADelaide, with 55 other bands from 27 countries, from March 5 to 8 in Adelaide.
[audio:http://www.salvadorleal.com/test/besh.mp3]

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Gogol Bordello’s frontman, Eugene Hutz, was born in Kiev to a Romany family which fled their home following the Chernobyl disaster when he was a teenager. He spent years travelling through Eastern European refugee camps before arriving in Vermont, in the north-east American region of New England, as a political refugee. He eventually established himself in New York as a musician and artist, and became the resident DJ at the Bulgarian Bar, Mehanata, which, thanks to Eugene’s ‘kidnapping’ of touring Romany and Gypsy bands and artists to perform there after their official seated concert hall shows, helped turn it into the ‘CBGBs of Gypsy Punk. Gogol Bordello formed after its original members met at a Russian wedding in Vermont, and soon snow-balled into a fully-fledged immigrant orchestra. Debut shows at famous New York venues, including the Mercury Lounge and the Bowery Ballroom, saw them banned for performances that were ‘too over the top’.

It was around the release of the band’s second album, Gypsy Punks – Underdog World Strike, in 2005, and ‘starting fires in all the backyards from Moscow to Vancouver with tours’, that the mainstream press really started to embrace Gogol Bordello and their hyperactive, charismatic, chaotic frontman. It was around this time also that Madonna started turning up to Gogol Bordello’s gigs.

While working on Gogol Bordello’s third album, Super Taranta, that Hutz woke one morning to find a message from Madonna on his answering machine: ‘I’m calling from London. Let’s get in touch, I’ve got some projects in mind’.

The projects were the main role in Madonna’s directorial debut, the short film, Filth and Wisdom, and that Live Earth performance. Hutz says he took on the projects not because of Madonna’s fame or furtune — ‘I don’t come from a family or social type that worships any kind of celebrity culture. So to me, it was irrelevant if she’s famous or not famous’ — but for her artistic determination and respect for his band: ‘The essence of is it the person’s creative power, whether they really have a love for what they do. That’s what I look for and it’s easy for me to connect with people who are determined and willing. It was unchartered territory, but there was a lot of independent spirit. It didn’t reek with a huge campaign and promotional thing. Stuff clicked and it felt right. I knew that I would have quite a liberty with Filth and Wisdom. And I did’.

Much of the music on the soundtrack is written and performed by Gogol Bordello.

‘Madonna was very supportive of our band. She’d known about us for some years. It was very flattering and inspiring. She really was great with our band’.

Next will come the release of Gogol Bordello’s fourth, as yet untitled, album.

‘The material is all basically written. I wrote it in Brazil, where I’ve been living for about a year. It was always a romantic place for me and it’s also a music heaven. But that doesn’t mean the new album is going to be samba. It’s a lot more textured. It doesn’t stink of a flavour that’s cheap. It’s more a spirit. And for that you have to spend time there and get to know it’.

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The first album released by the Malian duo Amadou & Mariam, Dimanche a Bamako, bordered on exceptional, if not for its songwriting then for its sheer diversity. You’d be forgiven for approaching cautiously an album that draws its influences from Syria, Cuba, Egypt, India, and Colombia, as well as its own country – much like a restaurant that offers every cuisine on the planet: choose one and do it well, you’d argue. But the album is fantastic: so full of life, so catchy and so accessible. The simple riff on Beau Dimanche is irresistible, as is the rhythm of the vocals on Senegal Fast Food. They’ve just released a new one, and teamed up with Damon Albarn on opening track, Sabali. Whether it can pip the first album is an ambitious goal, but so far the reception has been good.

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The Tinariwen album, Aman Iman, was a star among the many great releases of 2007, surprisingly so given the underexposure of world music in your average annual list of must-haves (even emo-warriors Pitchfork gave it a big thumbs-up). Their story is as intriguing as the music: hailing from the Tuareg tribe in Mali, they formed in 1982 in the rebel camps of Colonel Gaddafi. The lyrics, sung in French and Tamashek, are intensely political, focused largely on the struggle by Malians for independence from their government. The music is very spatial and, like Ali Farke-Toure or Amadou & Mariam, really evokes the size and ambiance of the African Savannah. Don’t be put off by the genre: it’s a very accessible sound, and the loosely-delivered vocals are simply mesmerising.
[audio:http://www.thickspecs.com/my_weblog/files/01.%20Cler%20Achel.mp3]

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Featuring the diverse talents of former Gogol Bordello member Ori Kaplan and Firewater member Tamir Muskat — amongst an ever-expanding cast of collaborators — Balkan Beat Box create dynamic and buoyant music which resonates with all the tradition of its Middle Eastern roots. We interviewed the guys recently. World music is so big right now. Why has it taken this long for so many people to really appreciate the diverse sounds and beats out there? [Ori] ‘The real question might be — why if someone takes Irish traditional music and mixes it with old black American music its called country music and if one takes Middle Eastern and mixes it with hip hop its world? It’s all a funny commercial perception dictated by the industry. People are much smarter than media though and maybe they are getting sick of tags. After all, with the immigration around the world, how can new breeds be prevented? You’d have to arrest people soon if you want to stop it. It’s urban evolution’. There’s lots of collaborations going down with the BBB sound. Is there anyone you haven’t worked with yet that you’d love to? [Ori] ‘We always look to unknown artists. Tomorrow we may go to a village in Morocco or Serbia and discover the most amazing singer. This is part of the excitement, not just using the well-established artists. We like to mold new voices into the BBB aesthetics, even if it’s just for one magic day in the studio, or on stage. From the people out there in the limelight, we would love to have M.I.A as our guest soon’.

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