Michal Shapiro

On the day before my own departure for Central Asia, Arif Lohar brought his electrified Sufi music to the Asia Society and pretty much tore the place apart. He and his band transformed the Lila Acheson Wallace Auditorium from a listening venue to a dancehall, with people bobbing happily along,...

About four years ago, when I was rooting around for Chinese music videos, I was sent a charming animation from a band called Shanren. The song "30 Years" was about the trials and tribulations of moving from the country to the big city to look for work. This is a...

This was initially going to be a performance posting about the Korean-Australian ensemble, Daorum, which is a fascinating project involving Korean Pansori traditions and modern jazz improvisation. I knew they were coming to town and performing for Target Free Thursdays, a series of free performances at the David Rubenstein Atrium,...

GlobalFest is a three-ring circus of world music that takes place concurrent with the mighty APAP conference. It's been gaining in popularity, and the dense crowds that descended on Webster Hall for the 2012 edition had me running up from the two lower performance spaces and...

I don't often have the opportunity to write about a film that combines world music and social activism as closely as Sarabah, which will be making its television debut on Link TV, Sunday, January 15 at 11 pm ET/8 pm PT and will repeat on Friday, January 27 at 9...

I often wonder whether the Orthodox Christmas, which begins on the 7th of this month has escaped the harsh commercialization of its earlier celebrated counterpart. At any rate, I thought it was an excellent opportunity to submit for your enjoyment a marvelous piece of modern liturgical music written by Calliope...

With Chanukah, Christmas and Kwanzaa in full swing we might all need a little energy boost, so here's some super-positive fuel from Blitz the Ambassador from his set at WOMEX 2011 in Copenhagen.

The multi-level Koncerthuset was the setting for four nights of world music of every possible shade, from ethnographic to eclectic. Blitz the Ambassador is surely one of the latter, and one of those hard to categorize artists; he's an amalgam of Ghanaian and Western influences, taking what he likes best from each to create his music and his message. If you think you hear Afrobeat, Hip Hop or HighLife coming off the stage, you're right. It's all there, and the music had the audience swinging and swaying.

"Akwaaba" from Blitz's most recent release Native Sun is a fairly straightforward song, that explains itself.

The Embassy Ensemble provided a tight backup (albeit a few a"brown notes" on the horns... but hey, it's hard to play and dance at the same time) and deserve mention: Ezra Brown on sax, Clemens Braun on trombone, the appropriately named Sydney Driver on kit, Raja Cassis on guitar and Ramon de Bruyn on bass.

Blitz will also be performing at Webster Hall on January 7. To find out more about the artist go to:

Some truly wonderful world music fusions have come from the melding of the South Asian vocal tradition with western influence (or vice versa). It's been going on for years, with many fine artists, and pioneers like Najma Akhtar, who with her groundbreaking CD "Qareeb" entranced me as far back as...

I met this lovely duo in Samarkand where they competed for a prize at the Sharq Taronalari festival. They invited me to videotape their rehearsal, which turned out to be lucky for me, as I have not been able to obtain any of the footage from the main stage of the Festival, even though it was promised to me many times over!

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Malagasy music. And as soon as I heard these two musicians, I knew there was something sweet and special about them. I crossed my fingers that they would get some sort of prize. And they did. Despite the extraordinarily political machinations of the prize-giving, they placed third!

"Talilema" is Talika and Kilema, both from Madagascar, now living in Europe. They are both warm and engaging people. And I think you will agree that you can enjoy this informal performance and not miss any amplification or further instrumentation. It works just fine as it is.

The song is about not wallowing in your problems. Is it right for the holidays or what?

I hope this music brightens your spirits.

Have a great holiday season!

To find out more about Talilema:
http://talilema.blogspot.com/2011/08/talilema-english-version.html
and
http://www.myspace.com/talilema
...

This is the first in a series on the Dutch Classical Meeting and WOMEX 2011.

Anyone who reads my blog knows that I fly freely between musical categories. Jazz, world, classical -- they are all great music, and the boundaries between them are getting more and more permeable.

Formal...

The Sharq Taronalari festival/competition takes place every 2 years in Samarkand and draws artists from all over the word with an obvious concentration on Central Asia. Personally I do not approve of musical "competitions" but that reservation can be overlooked given the spectacular setting of the Registan for the main...

This video has been a long time coming. The back story: I've known guitarist/writer Banning Eyre for years and of course, his and Sean Barlow's tireless efforts with their baby, Afropop Worldwide. I've followed their travels and travails, and admired their dedication and perseverance. I always wanted to collaborate in some way, and I got my chance when Banning called me up in the summer of 2010 and told me he was going to visit a great guitarist who was in town, to record him for a radio show, and would I like to come along? As we drove up to the Bronx, Banning filled me in on how he had first met Badian, and I got a feeling for why this interview was going to be special for him.

After a rather steep climb up to a rambling house on a hill, we were greeted by the elegantly clad Badian, and his regal wife. Banning set up his gear in the sunny backyard, and recording commenced. As I shot the performance I realized that the technique Badian used was unlike any I had seen before. One hears rippling melodic lines coming out of koras and ngonis, but transferring that sound to the guitar requires a great delicacy and precision utilizing both the up stroke and the down stroke of the "picking" fingers. Badian's technique is utterly fluid in this way. Thank goodness for a good zoom on my camera; I was able to get nice close-ups of his hands.

Badian was in town for a month playing for the various celebrations within the West African community in the Bronx, which at this point is considerable. I can only imagine how wonderful the music must be at these events. but you will never see this kind of thing covered in Time Out or any publications of that ilk. You just have to be connected to the scene. Banning and Badian had much to say to each other (mostly in French so I got only the gist of many names, and being brought up to date on everyone's doings), so I concentrated on shooting. When I got back to my house I reviewed the footage and considered how to use it.... here, on my Huffington Post vlog? As an exclusive on my own site? To post on guitar sites? I was in a quandary. In the midst of this indecision Banning called to say he had footage of Badian from 1996 that he had been saving for all these years and maybe there was a bigger story to be told. Could I hold off on posting until we could put something like that together?

So I held off for over a year. Banning was globetrotting with countless Afropop Worldwide projects and trips, and working with his own band, Timbila. But after he returned from a music collecting trip to Egypt, he was back with a vengeance, wanting to get the project up and out. So here it is at last, after hours of footage in many formats sifted through, and condensed into 15.5 minutes....

I met Maria Pomianowska in Samarkand, where she attended the Sharq Taronalari festival as a guest speaker. But as you can see, this woman could well have been not only one of the musicians performing, but one of its finest. I heard her jamming out on the terrace of the Afrasiyob hotel, and immediately knew that I wanted to get her and that unusual instrument of hers alone for a solo videotaping. We found a room between the basement floor lobby and the kitchen that had decent acoustics and was reasonably quiet (considering its proximity to the kitchen). I just said "play" and off she went. The room was not that well lit, so please forgive the somewhat grainy image.

Maria's credentials are impressive. She graduated in cello at the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw. There she was granted a scholarship to learn the sarangi under the guidance of maestro Pandit Ram Narayan in India. From 1997-2002 she lived in Japan, and in 1999 she started composing cross cultural works which were commissioned by cellist Yo Yo Ma. In her continuing efforts to find connections between Asian music with her own cultural heritage, together with Dr. Ewa Dahlig and violin maker A. Kuczkowski she managed to successfully reconstruct a Suka from Bilgoraj which is what you see and hear in this video.

There are many kinds of "fusions" happening in music these days. Maria seems to be her own personal reactor, following her love of western classical music to an equal devotion to Indian classical music, and then adding a dash of Polish gestalt to the mix.

Ms. Pomianawska teaches music and runs a festival of world music in Warsaw. For more information on this amazing woman and musician, visit: pomianowska.art.pl/​
or visit her Facebook page....

The Black Earth Boys are Justin Adams, Juldeh Camara and Ben Mandelson. The band is an aggregate of two others -- with Adams as the link between. Justin and Juldeh, now touring internationally under the name "JuJu," have recorded two CDs, Soul Science and Tell No Lies. Camara, who is...

CD release parties abound here in New York, and my favorites are those for the self-released artist's efforts. Pistolera's latest CD, "El Desierto y la Ciudad" has been garnering praise from the press, and they are a busy and industrious band. I first encountered Pistolera years ago, through their righteous...

The Summer Solstice brought a plethora of free performances in and around NYC, and the one I opted for was the Griot Summit at the Wave Hill Gardens overlooking the Hudson, in the Bronx. Who could resist getting away from the burning pavements of the city to saunter through bucolic...

It's official: Bobby Sanabria will be suing the Grammys in response to their recent category restructuring. At a press conference at the law offices of Balber Pickard Maldonado and Van Der Truin, Mr. Sanabria, a four-time Grammy nominee read his own explanation of the reasons, as he sees it, for...

Last year I attended the Dutch Jazz and World Meeting (DJWM) in Amsterdam. The event was beautifully organized, with a trade fair during the day, and performances at the clubs Melkweg, Sugar Factory and the imposing Bimhuis at night. Business interaction was lively throughout; at the fair, at the shows,...

Once again, I am bringing you a performance from one of New York's many small venues which are outlets for all the talent that is attracted to the city. The Caffe Vivaldi is a tiny, informal place in the West Village of New York. It has live music regularly; mostly...

On Earth Day the Atrium at Lincoln Center presented Susie Ibarra and Roberto Rodriguez's Electric Kulintang. Both of these well-known Downtown musicians have been involved in researching the indigenous culture of the Philippines, and have been working on a film about their efforts called "Song of the Bird King." I...