GLOBAL A GO-GO: 2012

December 19, 2012

Program December 21, 2012: The Best of the Rest of 2012

This week it's the third and final installment of Global A Go-Go's review of the best releases of 2012, and my last program of the year -- the Rev. Noah will be rocking you a week from today in this time slot.

The focus this time will be on individual songs -- my favorite singles of the year, plus top songs from recordings that didn't quite make my best-of lists. You'll also hear a few standout tracks from albums that otherwise had few redeeming features, because you never know where you're going to find that hidden gem.

Charts December 16, 2012

December 13, 2012

Best Of Buena Vista

ARTIST: various artists
TITLE: Best Of Buena Vista
LABEL: ARC
Son cubano from Cuba’s easternmost region is one of the Western hemisphere’s most crucial and influential musical styles – much of what we describe today as “Latin music” is built on a foundation of son.

It's my second of three programs recapping the best releases of 2012 -- this time my favorite compilations, reissues and historic recordings that came to the marketplace in the last 12 months.

Click Read More to see my top ten plus ten more honorable mentions, and tune in to hear songs from the 1950s to the day before yesterday, from 17 different countries, this week on Global A Go-Go.

Charts December 9, 2012

Program December 7, 2012: Top Ten New Releases of 2012

It's time for me to reveal my top ten new releases of 2012 -- the Mayan edition, if you will. I'll play a track from each of them on this week's program, plus as many of the runners-up as time permits. Click Read More to see the winners.

Charts December 2, 2012

Program November 30, 2012

I'm featuring two tracks from Analog Africa's brand-new Colombian compilation Diablos Del Ritmo (pictured above) -- it may very well be my favorite compilation of the year. I'll spin some old tropical recordings and some newer champeta to go along with the tasty Analog Africa selections. By the way, here's my review of it:

http://www.globalagogo.com/2012/11/diablos-del-ritmo-colombian-melting-pot.html

Diablos Del Ritmo: The Colombian Melting Pot 1960-1985

ARTIST: various artists
TITLE: Diablos Del Ritmo: The Colombian Melting Pot 1960-1985
LABEL: Analog Africa
Analog Africa’s Samy Ben Redjeb has been collecting historic Colombian recordings for six years now. This is his second Colombian release, and it’s a great addition to the growing catalog of reissues from that musically diverse and vibrant country.

Charts November 25, 2012

The Lijadu Sisters | Horizon Unlimited

ARTIST: The Lijadu Sisters
TITLE: Horizon Unlimited
LABEL: Knitting Factory
Knitting Factory finishes up one of my favorite reissue projects of 2012 with the fourth and last of the records The Lijadu Sisters made for Nigeria’s Afrodisia Records between 1976 and 1979.

ARTIST: Rita
TITLE: My Joys
LABEL: NMC Music
In Israel, Rita Yahan-Farouz is like Madonna or Beyonce: an only-one-name-needed superstar singer with a dozen gold or platinum albums and some 40 hit singles.

International pop superstars and Global A Go-Go are usually oil and water. But Israeli diva Rita (pictured above -- yes, she's so popular there she only needs to use one name) is the exception to that rule -- her new album of Persian material, sung in Farsi, is an unexpected tour-de-force. Now if she could only get Netanyahu and Ahmedinejad to sit down together and listen to it ....

Charts November 18, 2012

Program November 16, 2012

Global A Go-Go's peripatetic correspondent Noah Scalin is recently back from a trip to France, where he picked up some music that they're listening to in Paris and we're more or less unaware of here in the USA.

That's a great excuse for Noah to crack the spines of his new purchases, and for both of us to add in some of our current and long-time French favorites. So tune in this week for a special all-French-music edition of Global A Go-Go.

Charts November 11, 2012

Son De Barrio De Puerto Rico | Que Nadie Te Quite Lo Bailao

ARTIST: Son De Barrio De Puerto Rico
TITLE: Que Nadie Te Quite Lo Bailao
LABEL: self-released
I’m always on the lookout for bands that play salsa dura, the hard stuff, the way they played it in NYC (and San Juan, Cali, Caracas and plenty of other places) back in the 1970’s. Son De Barrio do it, they do it their own way, and they do it well.

ARTIST: Leni Stern
TITLE: Smoke, No Fire
LABEL: self-released
Leni Stern is back with a dispatch from Mali’s front line. I reviewed Leni’s last record, Sabani, in February; by March she had returned to Bamako and was in the midst of these sessions when the military coup erupted.

Program November 9, 2012

You'll get to hear a different take on Balkan, Roma and Eastern European music this week. Vlad Cuiujuclu, a young man from Moldova who lives in the Richmond area (he's a student at King William High School) will spin a set of his favorites for you.

Zdob Si Zdub (pictured above) from Vlad's hometown of Chisinau (Moldova's capital) will be in the mix along with a bunch of bands you probably haven't heard before -- I know I hadn't. It's great stuff, and I'll follow Vlad's act with my own, very different choice of Balkan brass & beats.

Charts November 4, 2012

Jukebox Mambo: Rumba And Afro Latin Accented Rhythm & Blues 1949-1960

ARTIST: various artists
TITLE: Jukebox Mambo: Rumba And Afro Latin Accented Rhythm & Blues 1949-1960
LABEL: Jazzman
The world music boom that started in Europe and the USA in the 1980s really isn’t anything new; here’s a collection that reminds us a similar phenomenon happened after World War II.

Something different this week on Global A Go-Go: the mambo kings of hep harmony. I'm talking about the intersection of two major 1950s musical trends, doo-wop and the craze for Latin rhythms like mambo and cha-cha-cha, from vocal groups like Cuba's Los Zafiros (pictured above) and the USA's The Sultans.

Charts October 28, 2012

Roberto Lopez Afro-Colombian Jazz Orchestra | Azul

ARTIST: Roberto Lopez Afro-Colombian Jazz Orchestra
TITLE: Azul
LABEL: Curura Musique
Crate-diggers like Will (Quantic) Holland (The Original Sound Of Cumbia) have introduced today’s listeners to porro, the glorious Colombian big-band cumbia sound of the 1940s and beyond. Here’s a band that’s both inspired by that era and yet utterly contemporary.

ARTIST: Robert Soko
TITLE: BalkanBeats Soundlab
LABEL: Piranha
Bosnian-born, Berlin-based Robert Soko is one of the lynchpins of the Balkan-beats movement, using gypsy and brass band music as the raw material for dance floor-oriented remixes.

Program October 26, 2012

Halloween is next week (don't forget WRIR's 5th annual Monster Mashquerade party at The Camel tonight) and Election Day is right behind that. How perfectly appropriate, therefore, that we Virginians are asked to vote once again either for or against a man who, like the proverbial zombie, has crawled out of the grave he dug for himself.

I'm talking of course about George "Macaca" Allen -- as long as he keeps running for the same Senate seat, I'll keep remixing his unforgettable words into the song "Macaco Mata El Toro" ("Monkey Kills The Bull"). It sounded great in '06 and I'll do it again this week on Global A Go-Go. Will it be back in 2018? That's for George to decide.

Charts October 21, 2012

Program October 19, 2012

I'm a big fan of Chicha Libre, the Brooklyn-based band that's turning folks all over the world on to the glories of Peruvian psychedelic cumbia. (Apparently The Simpsons creator Matt Groening is also a big fan -- see above.) Their album Canibalismo is one of my favorites releases of 2012.

Chicha Libre is playing on Friday night at Balliceaux and, schedule permitting, they'll stop by Global A Go-Go for some conversation and to spin a few discs for listeners. Both the on-air appearance and the gig should be a lot of fun -- I highly recommend both to you.

Cumbia Beat, Volume 2

ARTIST: various artists
TITLE: Cumbia Beat, Volume 2
LABEL: Vampisoul
Spain’s Vampisoul Records is back with a second edition (of two discs, to boot) of Peruvian cumbia-psych chicha music from the 1970’s (with a handful of tracks from the late 60’s and two from the 80’s).

ARTIST: Martin Lopez Y Sus Estrellas
TITLE: Cocinando
LABEL: Masstropicas
Mighty-mite indie vinyl label Masstropicas has until now specialized in chicha, Peru’s unique brew of cumbia and psychedelia. With this release they’re expanding out into a wider variety of the superb tropical music produced in that country in the 1960’s and 70’s.

ARTIST: Soothsayers
TITLE: Human Nature
LABEL: Red Earth
Here’s the full-length follow-up to Soothsayers’ We’re Not Leaving EP, which got my strong recommendation back in May 2012: http://www.globalagogo.com/2012/05/soothsayers-were-not-leaving.html.

It's Richmond Folk Festival time once again (that's me and DJ Graybeard above, at the Festival a few years ago). And that means it's time for another edition of Global A Go-Go's guide to the folk festival.

This year, I'm focusing in on four artists: Moroccan gnawa master Hassan Hakmoun and his band; Forro Pe De Ferra All Stars, playing accordion-driven forro music from northeast Brazil; Septeto Nacional De Ignacio Pineiro, who pioneered the Cuban son habanero style 80 years ago; and Fred Wesley & The New JB's, led by a man who can say he was literally present at the birth of funk.

Charts October 7, 2012

Program October 5, 2012

Tim Maia, Brazil's Cosmic Soul Brother #1, led a life that sounds like fiction. Among his most outrageous exploits: turning the executives at his record label on to LSD, and joining a cult that believed humans came to Earth on flying saucers.

Tim's fabulously soulful, psychedelic, oh-so-70s music is the subject of a new retrospective by Luaka Bop Records; you'll hear two tracks from it this week on Global A Go-Go.

Tim Maia | World Psychedelic Classics 4

ARTIST: Tim Maia
TITLE: World Psychedelic Classics 4 – Nobody Can Live Forever: The Existential Soul Of Tim Maia
LABEL: Luaka Bop
Here is Luaka Bop’s long-awaited compilation of the music of one of Brazil’s most remarkable stars.

Charts September 30, 2012

Royal Band De Thies | Kadior Demb

ARTIST: Royal Band De Thies
TITLE: Kadior Demb
LABEL: Teranga Beat
Here’s a great never-before-released 1979 Senegalese session. Royal Band was led by singers Mapathe (James) Gadiaga (who would go on to found Super Cayor, and was also a member of Star Band, Xalam and Super Diamono) and Adama (Secka) Seck (who still leads Royal Band to this day).

Program September 28, 2012

First of all, here's a big Global A Go-Go thank you to the 531 folks who have donated over $39,000 so far in WRIR's Fall 2012 Fund Drive. The number of donors is a new record, and the dollar total is among our top three of all time, so it has been an extremely successful drive. And it's not over yet -- we still have premiums to share with you if you donate soon via our secure on-line server:

https://wrir.wufoo.com/forms/fund-drive-donation-wrirlp-973-fm

Charts September 23, 2012

Program September 21, 2012

WRIR's 16th fund drive is getting close to its end; we're scheduled to wrap it up on Sunday September 23. Thank you to everyone who has donated so far -- your contributions will keep us on the air for another six months, and they'll help us build the capabilities we'll need so we can thrive long into the future.

The Souljazz Orchestra | Solidarity

ARTIST: The Souljazz Orchestra

TITLE: Solidarity

LABEL: Strut

Now in their tenth year together, Ottawa's Souljazz Orchestra's fifth full-length cements them as one of the finest Afro-Latin-Caribbean ensembles anywhere in the world.

Charts September 16, 2012

Program September 14, 2012

As everyone who lives in Virginia is painfully aware, there's an election coming up soon. Coincidentally, it's also public and community radio fund drive season -- WRIR's drive starts on Friday September 14 at 5:00 PM. Why do I mention these two not-necessarily-eagerly-anticipated events in one breath? Click "Read More" to find out.

Charts September 9, 2012

Zani Diabate & Les Heritiers | Tientalaw

ARTIST: Zani Diabate & Les Heritiers
TITLE: Tientalaw
LABEL: Sterns

These are the last recordings by composer and guitarist Zani Diabate (pronounced Jah-bah-tay’). Zani Diabate, with his Super Djata Band, made his debut in the West in the early 1980s with an outstanding album reissued on the Mango label.

Charts September 2, 2012

Program August 31, 2012

The year is 1986. After an international campaign on his behalf by Amnesty International, Fela Kuti is released from a Nigerian prison where he had been held for almost two years on fabricated currency-smuggling charges. He embarks on a worldwide tour, including a long-planned visit to the USA with his Egypt 80 band.

I was fortunate enough to see Fela and Egypt 80 perform on this tour, on November 13 in Chicago. And now there's a legal, licensed recording from the tour, made a week earlier at Detroit's Fox Theatre. This week on Global A Go-Go, you and I get to relive a little bit of that experience.

ARTIST: Diabel Cissokho
TITLE: Kanabory Siyama
LABEL: World Village
Senegalese kora player Diabel Cissokho, now based in London, has worked as a sideman for important West African artists such as Baaba Maal and Kandia Kouyate; here he steps forward on his debut album as a bandleader.

Charts August 26, 2012

Program August 24, 2012

Staff Benda Bilili have come a long way -- from homeless in the Kinshasa zoo to Rotary Club spokesmen. (Yes, this is the first ever reference to the Rotary Club on Global A Go-Go, and quite possibly the last.)

This amazing Congolese band releases their second album in September and makes their first tour of the USA in October, including a performance at the Howard Theatre in Washington DC. You'll hear a song from their new album Bouger Le Monde! this week on Global A Go-Go.

Charts August 19, 2012

December 19, 2012

December 17, 2012

December 13, 2012

December 9, 2012

December 5, 2012

December 2, 2012

November 29, 2012

November 28, 2012

November 25, 2012

November 21, 2012

November 18, 2012

November 15, 2012

November 11, 2012

November 9, 2012

November 8, 2012

November 4, 2012

November 1, 2012

October 28, 2012

October 26, 2012

October 25, 2012

October 22, 2012

October 18, 2012

October 11, 2012

October 7, 2012

October 4, 2012

October 3, 2012

September 30, 2012

September 28, 2012

September 27, 2012

September 23, 2012

September 21, 2012

September 19, 2012

September 17, 2012

September 13, 2012

September 9, 2012

September 4, 2012

September 2, 2012

August 30, 2012

August 26, 2012

August 23, 2012

August 19, 2012

GLOBAL A GO-GO'S HOST