Listen now: Contemporary World Music contenders for the 2011 Grammies!

Note: Links below will enable you to hear musical samples from the 2010 Grammy nominees.

Today we'll look at this year's five nominees in category #75: Best Contemporary World Music Album, which differs from the Traditional category (see previous posting, via this qualification: "The music may also contain elements of popular music styles and/or production techniques. World/Beat, World/Jazz, World Pop, and cross-cultural music with contemporary production techniques are eligible in this category.")

Whereas in the Best Traditional World Music Album category, three nominees were from Africa, and one each from Asia and Latin America, in the Contemporary category noted below, two nominees are from Latin America, one is from Africa, one an American/African collaboration, and one from Asia.

(Note: The listings below are designed for your ease of access to information about the nominees and their music. Click on each album title (given first, in "quotation" marks) for some Web-based sample of music from the album nominated (you may have to click on "Listen to samples", or follow some similar prompt on the Web page to which you are directed). Click on each artist's name (in boldface, following the album title) for further biographical information, and in some cases, pictures of the artist(s). Click on the name of the record company for a description of the company, and the company's Website. Finally, the artist(s)' own Website(s) and/or MySpace and/or Facebook pages is (are) listed, following the record company's name.)

For Best Contemporary World Music Album, this year's entrants are:

1."Throw Down Your Heart, Africa Sessions Part 2: Unreleased Tracks", by Béla Fleck on Acoustic Planet Records (a new label founded by Béla Fleck himself). Artist's Website. Fleck won three Grammys last year: Best Contemporary World Music Album for "Throw Down Your Heart: Tales from the Acoustic Planet, Vol. 3: Africa Sessions (which is also the soundtrack for a film of the same name made by Fleck, Website here with option to buy DVD, and trailer here); Best Pop Instrumental Performance for the song "Throw Down Your Heart" from that album; and Best Classical Crossover Album for "The Melody of Rhythm." Fleck has probably won more Grammys (11) than any other World Music artist, and has received 27 nominations in more separate categories (in addition to the three above, Country Instrumental Performance, Contemporary Jazz Album, Bluegrass, Spoken Word, and Jazz Instrumental) than any other musician in Grammy history.

2. "All in One" by Bebel Gilberto on Verve Records (company Website). Artist's Website and Facebook page. Bebel Gilberto is the daughter of João Gilberto, the Brazilian guitarist and singer credited with being the "Father of Bossa Nova", a musical style that became popular worldwide in the 1960s, reaching its widest influence with the song "The Girl From Ipanema", which won a Grammy for Record of the year in 1965.

3. "ÕŸÖ" by Angélique Kidjo on Razor and Tie Entertainment Records (company's Website). Artist's Website, MySpace page, Facebook page, and YouTube page. She is from the African country of Benin, and is one of the continent's most popular singers, performing widely all over the world in concert, television, films, and recordings. She sings in a variety of styles, and won a Grammy for Best World Music Album in 2007 for her CD Djin Djin, and nominations in that category in 1993, 2003, and 2005, as well as a nomination for Best Music Video in 1995.

4. "Bom Tempo" by Sérgio Mendes on Concord Records (company's Website). Artist's Website. Méndes has been a leading Brazilian pianist and composer since the 1960s, when he teamed up with popular jazz trumpeter Herb Alpert and a vocalist, bassist, and two percussionists and to form the Bossa Nova-based ensemble Brasil '66, which released a series of successful albums, including the platinum-selling (i.e., more than one million units) record "Herb Alpert Presents Sergio Méndes and Brasil '66". Mendes won a Grammy for "Brasiliero" in the Best World Music Album category in 1966.

5. "Om Namo Narayana: Soul Call" by Chandrika Krishnamurthy Tandon on Soul Chants Music Records (company Website). Artist's Facebook page, with music samples. Ms. Tandon is a very unusual candidate for a Grammy nomination, in that music is not her primary profession. She is currently Chairman of Tandon Capital Associates, Inc., a financial advisory firm she founded in 1992, and since 2006 she has been Executive-in-Residence at New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business. While she studied Carnatic (South Indian) classical music as a child, she only decided to undertake serious training in Hindustani (North Indian) classical music seven years ago, after hearing--and being deeply moved by--a concert by the renowned Pandit Jasraj. The nominated album is her first publicly released CD, but her second self-produced album (her first was issued privately to honor her father on his birthday), and all proceeds from the sale and distribution of the CD go to charity through the Tandon Foundation, whose mission is "to educate, empower and transcend". VOAWorldMusic hopes to present an interview with her in a future entry.

So stay tuned in the days following the Grammy Awards on Sunday night, 13 February, when we'll be bringing you more information on the winners not only in the two World Music categories, but on other winners as well, whose music in any of the other 107 (for a total of 109) categories partakes, in one way or another, of the spirit or substance of World Music.

Listen now: Traditional World Music contenders for the 2010 Grammys

Note: Links below will enable you to hear musical samples from the 2010 Grammy nominees.

In December last year, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) announced the nominated CDs (Compact Discs) for the 53rd annual Grammy Awards (see also the official Grammy Website)--an event in the music world comparable to the Academy Awards (or Oscars) in the realm of the cinema, and scheduled for Sunday night, 13 February.

A number of the nominated recordings included performances in the general field of "world music", and two categories were specifically dedicated to that niche: #74 - Best Traditional World Music Album, and #75 - Best Contemporary World Music Album"--among a total of 109 categories of various genres (click here for a complete listing of "Fields" and their "Categories", and here for their full definitions of the individual fields and categories.

Recordings in other fields, such as Alternative, New Age, Latin, Folk, Reggae, and Polka, may in fact have a substantial world music (i.e., international and/or traditional) component, and further general categories (e.g., Record of the Year, Album of the Year, etc.) may occasionally include world music artists. As time permits, I'll be noting nominated world music albums in these areas in future VOAWorldMusic posts. Click here for a complete listing of all this year's (2010) Grammy nominees.

The nominees for #75: Traditional World Music Album (see the complete definition of this category at * at the end of this entry) include three from Africa, and one each from Asia and Latin America. (In the Contemporary category--see my next entry--two nominees are from Latin America, one is from Africa, one an American/African collaboration, and one from Asia.)

The Traditional nominees are:

(Note: The listings below are designed for your ease of access to information about the nominees and their music. Click on each album title (given first, in "quotation" marks) for some Web-based sample of music from the album nominated (you may have to click on "Listen to samples", or follow some similar prompt on the Web page to which you are directed). Click on each artist's name (in boldface, following the album title) for further biographical information, and in some cases, pictures of the artist(s). Click on the name of the record company for a description of the company, and again on the company's Website (in parentheses). Finally, the artist(s)' own Website(s) and/or MySpace and/or Facebook pages is (are) listed, following the record company's name.) For the record (no pun intended), audio samples and/or videos of many of these artists are available on some of their Web pages, or those of their recording company, as well as on YouTube.

1. "Pure Sounds", by the Gyuto Monks of Tibet, on New Earth Records (company's Website). Artist's Website. In this recording, the Monks, practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism, illustrate one variety of the haunting vocal tradition known variously as overtone singing, throat singing, or harmonic singing. A similar album by the Monks of the Sherab Ling Monastery, "Sacred Tibetan Chant", won a Grammy in this same category in 2003.

2. "I Speak Fula", by Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba (the name of his band), on Sub Pop /Next Ambiance records--a new sister label to Sub Pop (company's Website). Artist's MySpace page and Facebook page. Kouyate, from Mali (as have been many Grammy nominees and winners--see #4 below) sings and plays a skin-covered chordophone (stringed instrument) called the ngoni. His album is also released on a 12-inch vinyl 33 1/3 rpm long playing (LP) disc, which as I mentioned in an earlier blog entry, is for those purist audiophiles he feel that the vinyl analog sound is more natural and music.

3. "Grace" by the Soweto Gospel Choir, on Shanachie Entertainment (company's Website). Artist's Website. This South African ensemble of both men and women singers, with its rich harmonies--and, on this album, occasional instrumental (guitar, percussion) accompaniment--has won two previous Grammys in this category, for "Blessed" in 2006 and "African Spirit"in 2007. Their music is similar in style to that of the all-male Ladysmith Black Mambazo, also from South Africa, who won in the Best Traditional Folk Recording category in 1987 for "Shaka Zulu", and for "Raise Your Spirit Higher" in 2004 and for "Ilembe: Honoring Shaka Zulu" in 2008,--both in the in the Traditional World Music category.

4."Ali and Toumani" by Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté, on World-Circuit - Nonesuch Records (World-Circuit Website and Nonesuch Website). Ali Farka Touré's Website and Toumani Diabaté's Website (in French). This recording is particularly notable in that it is the second of two between the Malian superstars Diabaté and Touré, who died in 2006; their earlier collaboration, "In the Heart of the Moon", received a Grammy Award in the same (Traditional) category in 2005, and Diabaté's album,"The Mandé Variations", received a Grammy, again in the Traditional category, in 2009. Touré himself received a Grammy in 1994 for the Best World Music Album (there was only one world music category at that time), "Talking Timbuktu", in a collaboration with protean guitarist Ry Cooder.

This year's performance is a lambent and compelling fusion of the voices of both artists, and of Touré's guitar and Diabaté's kora, a versatile harp-like instrument, popular throughout West Africa, with a large gourd as a resonating chamber and a long neck with frets. You can download a track, "Sabu Yerkoy", from this year's nominated CD, at the Nonesuch Website here.

5. "Tango Universal" by Vayo Raimondo on Big Dream Music Records (the Spanish company's Website). Artists' Website. In comparison to at least some the other artists nominated above, Raimondo, both a composer and singer originally from Uruguay, is relatively unknown in the U.S., but he has received two previous nominations in 2007 and 2010 for "Best Tango Album" in the Latin Grammy Awards, which honors Spanish and Portuguese language recordings, and held annually since 2000 in Los Angeles.

As often happens, African music dominates in this category, with three entries, and one entry each from Asia and Latin America.

*Full definition for Category 74, Traditional World Music Album:

"For vocal or instrumental traditional world music albums containing at least 51% playing time of newly recorded material. This category is intended for recordings that may combine musical elements indigenous to a culture or country with additional elements of another culture. Non-Western classical music, International non-American and non-British traditional folk music are eligible in this category."

Only the boldface sentence above separates this category from the definition of the next, #75 Contemporary World Music Album, which specifies separately "The music may also contain elements of popular music styles and/or production techniques. World/Beat, World/Jazz, World Pop, and cross-cultural music with contemporary production techniques are eligible in this category." See the next blog entry for the nominees in this category.

So stay tuned in the days following the Grammy Awards on Sunday night, 13 February, when we'll be bringing you more information on the winners not only in the two World Music categories, but on other winners as well, whose music in any of the other 107 (for a total of 109) categories partakes, in one way or another, of the spirit or substance of World Music.

From mono to stereo to Dolby to . . .

Last Sunday night in my minivan I was listening to a radio show, the magnificent "The Big Broadcast" on WAMU, the local (in Washington, DC) National Public Radio affiliate. The program features recordings of dramatic, comedy, and musical programs from the "Golden Age" of radio, i.e., the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, when radio was the dominant and hugely popular broadcast media throughout the country, prior to the ascent of television, which began in the late 50s. Heard now, these programs, compared to contemporary radio, have a unique sonic and social ambiance, with an eerily different, dated quality to the voices, accents, and music--as well as a haunting innocence in the coverage of topics, even of the nightmare World War II with its domestic victory gardens and hail to the troops. Part of the reason for this difference is that these programs were broadcast over AM radio, on medium wave with its comparatively narrow bandwidth, which in itself limited the range and quality of sound that could be broadcast and heard.

One reason for the difference between the "old" sound and the "new" is that modern broadcasting--in radio (particularly in the FM or Frequency Modulation) stations, as well as television--is predominately in stereo (or stereophonic) and "high fidelity" quality, with a broader frequency rage (in bass and treble) and stronger, multivalent signal, resulting in greater clarity, definition, and accuracy in the voices, music, and sounds themselves . The difference is particularly noticeable in music, where there is a distinct sense of "presence" in the two-channel sound (putting the listener in the middle of the soundstream), with many primary instances from popular music, where there are distinct voices on both left and right channels (the Beatles being masters in this sort of sound manipulation.)

I remember clearly the transition from mono (monaural) to stereo (stereophonic) recordings, when the older single groove on the rotating disc could contain only a single audio signal. With the development of stereo, two channels, simultaneously etched into the single groove, carried signals from multiple microphone placement, to bring the listener the sense of being in the very center of the performance. I'll save for another blog entry my recollection of the mono to stereo transition in recordings, but what struck me the next day, while listening to music, was that there were distinctly different sounds coming out of the left and right channels of my modest car radio speaker--not exactly state-of-the-art in vehicular radio--but advanced enough to trigger an odd memory, as we say, of the bygone past:

As I've mentioned previously on VOAWorldMusic.com, much of my youthful energy and interest in junior high school, high school and college, was directed toward the discoveries of new musical experiences, and the attempt to perform in some of the idioms that most moved me. This interest of course led me to many record shops (see my first entry on the topic on VOAWorldMusic), and to listen to the music on both the leading classical radio station in Denver, my hometown, as well as the pop music stations. Through radio I discovered a progression of new musical worlds in many genres, and having been seduced (or perhaps more innocently for my age, bitten) by the excitement of STEREOPHONIC SOUND--I remember clearly my euphoria at purchasing my first stereo recording.

But even prior to that, the aforementioned local classical station undertook to present Denver's first stereophonic radio broadcast, in an ingenious experiment using the FM channel of the station (I've forgotten the call letters) for one channel and the AM channel (albeit with admittedly inferior sound capabilities) for the other. I set up two radios in the living room (one portable, the other in the massive console of our Magnavox record player/radio) and amidst the crackling, stifled audio of the AM channel and the superior voice of the FM channel, I experienced my first moment of stereo--or binaural, as it was also called briefly--music in the comfort and intimacy of my own living room.

Clunky as that experiment may now seem, this was a watershed experience in the broadcasting of the era--though admittedly quaint given current advances in sound recording and presentation.

I've forgotten the year when new broadcast technology enabled a single FM station (though never to my knowledge, an AM station) to introduce its listeners to, in effect, three-dimensional stereo sound--parallel in the auditory realm to the wonders (at the time) of 3-D movies (House of Wax remaining my defining recollection of the new media) in the cinema.

Warp speed ahead to last year, when we replaced our ancient but reliable 1987 Sony 15-inch analog TV with a Sony Bravia 22-inch flat screen unit, as well as a Sony "Home Theatre" system, which brought us not only the familiar sonic spread of stereo, but an initiation into the experience of the presumably five-channel "Dolby Sound" or "surround sound" of movie theatres in television programs (if they are presented in Dolby) and DVDs (most often with the Dolby theatrical experience.

Now where from here . . . in the years to come. . . ?

I'm told I should keep blog entries relatively brief. So I will reserve until later my recollections of the wonders of the progression from mono to stereo discs, with a brief but fascinating digression into the pioneering effort to improve the quality of early vinyl disc recordings by the venerable Westminster recording company in its superior Laboratory Series, which while initially monaural, eventually evolved to stereo recordings as well.

So enough for today. The beat goes on (as per the Sonny and Cher song) with much more to come as the year warms up.

Stay tuned.

The new decade in music: alarums and excursions?

The musical end of the first decade of the twenty-first century has passed without much hoopla*, compared to the amount of media publicity and public attention given, obsessively, to the decade's beginning--which itself marked not only the end of the previous decade, not only the conclusion of a century, but the conclusion of a millennium: for "The new decade in music", 21 Google hits; "Music of The new decade", 33 hits; "Music in The new decade", 46 results; etc.

To my eye (and ear), the greatest musical changes in the last ten years in the world of music have occurred in the electronic media, with 1) the growth of on-line downloads, either paid or free, from such major sources as iTunes, as well as downloading options from Websites of individual artists or companies; 2) options for portable personal archiving, primarily through the iPod in its various versions; on-line radio (either free or with modest subscription fees), with Pandora being the current leader among thousands of others (hear an interview with Pandora's founder here; and the use of such social media as YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook as sources of music. In other words, the availability of all types of music has increased exponentially through the Internet, to a degree unimaginable ten years ago.

What will the next ten years bring? If the accelerated pace of progress in the development of electronic musical resources continues, the possibilities may be even more astounding than those of the past decade, leading to a musical world that is entirely, or at least overwhelmingly digital; it is true that supporters of music from analog sources (primarily audiophile long-playing records) reproduced through analog equipment (using vacuum tubes, as opposed to transistors), claim a superiority in the naturalness of the sound in those media, as evidenced by the continued presence of over-the-top analog equipment in the opulent glossy pages of Stereophile and The Absolute Sound, the leading audiophile monthly publications.)

For me, and I assume for many others, the dilemma stands: from what sources should we obtain our music?--concrete or virtual?--CDs or downloads?--and where should we keep it, store it, and what means should we use to listen to it? On the one hand, as long as I am online, I can find on YouTube almost all of the popular songs I would like to hear, often in an official sanctioned version from the artist(s) or the recording company. Or I can download my one or two favorite songs at a fraction of the cost of buying the entire album on CD. And in any case, now that I have iTunes on my computer, and my iPod, do I really need the hard-copy of the recording?

For example: from among my favorite songs--Phil Collins' haunting "One More Night", the vinyl copy (33 1/3 rpm Long Playing Stereo 12 inch record from the 80's) of which is buried in somewhere in my basement archive, there is immediately available on YouTube the performance video first aired on MTV, now in the "Official Video", with links to iTunes and Amazon to purchase a download of the song.

Or again, I have the option of watching the "official"(?) Fleetwood Mac video of the bedrock rendition (from the film The Dance) of "Silver Springs", compleat with the silken, throaty voice of Stevie Nicks, the birdlike antics of drummer Mick Fleetwood fading visually in and out, and the keyboard interlude by Christine McVie, haunting in its simplicity and melodic lyricism.

And if I so choose, I can hear and watch these videos on my iPod, and my iPhone . . . .

Well, so begins a new year, and a new decade, in which we will continue to share musical discoveries.

*(Celebrating the richness of the language, I can't resist here noting several colorful synonyms to "hoopla" given in Merriam-Webster's on-line thesaurus: in addition to the alarums and excursions in today's title, we have balllyhoo, corroboree (Aust.), foofaraw, helter-skelter (of course with musical echos in the 1968 Beatles' song, as well as the subsequent horrific use of the term by Charles Manson), hoo-hah, hullabaloo, kerfuffle (chiefly British), pother, shindy, splore (Scottish), welter, and williwaw--a collection of words almost musical in their powers of evocation.)

World Music on the Web: National Public Radio

From time to time, VOAWorldMusic will survey a number of online resources for world music.

One of the most accessible is National Public Radio's Website, which on its "music" page has five categories: Rock/Pop/Folk, Classical, Jazz and Blues, Hip-Hop/Rhythm and Blues, and World. Of course, given the increasing contemporary tendency for music to exhibit aspects of two or more conventional musical genres--with examples often identified as "crossover music"--examples of world music may be found in any of the four other NPR categories.

In addition, there are two other relevant regular features on the NPR site--alt.latino and The Thistle and Shamrock, a weekly program of Celtic music (Irish and Scottish), often with strong world music influences, hosted by Fiona Ritchie--as well as World Cafe, a program of music recorded live that periodically features traditional artists from around the world.

A recent sampling from among the almost daily musical offerings from NPRs many regular programs:

Mali's Bassekou Kouyate playing the lute-like ngoni.

Beijing-based Guo Yong playing naturally occurring garden leaves!

Joan Soriano, from the Dominican Republic, playing bachata, a genre of guitar music popular among poor people.

And from Nairobi, Kenya: Kenge Kenge, an eight-person ensemble presenting benga, "a traditional folk rhythm that dates to the 1940s."

These, and many other features, are from NPRs regular programming, including such news magazines as Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition, all three of which have specific music search options on the attached links.

World music can sometimes be heard on the 24/7 streaming podcast of All Songs Considered, with an accompanying blog by ASC's founder, Bob Boilen, who was Director of All Things Considered from 1989 to 2007, as well as in NPR's Song of the Day, the link to which can be e-mailed daily to those who sign up to receive it.

In addition, the NPR site has extensive search functions, and current programs contain links to previous features on a given artist or group in NPR's exhaustive archive.

Coming up: World music on the BBC.

And stay tuned next month for an exclusive VOAWorldMusic audio interview with Laurie Anderson, following her two performances last week of her latest project, "Delusion", at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland.