Flamenco Dervishes: Tahir Aydoğdu and Eric Vaarzon Morel with "Hermanos (Sema Ve Dans)"

Today's random tune is an interesting hybrid - Sufi flamenco! The artists are Tahir Aydoğdu and Eric Vaarzon Morel. Known for fusing Western classical music and jazz with Turkish classical music, Tahir Aydoğdu is a Turkish virtuoso of the qanun, a type of dulcimer that is plucked. Eric Vaarzon Morel is a Dutch flamenco guitarist and the great grandson of the Dutch painter Willem Vaarzon Morel. He was taught by Paco Peña and at nineteen he moved to Spain and lived for two years. He has worked with a variety of musicians. This song, Hermanos (Sema Ve Dans), can be found on their album Sufi Müzik'ten Flamenko'ya (From Sufi to Flamenco), issued in 2000.

Listen to songs like this and more on the KUNM Global Music Show every Monday night from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time. Live streaming, program information and the two-week digital archive can be found at http://www.kunm.org.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahir_Aydo%C4%9Fdu">Tahir Aydoğdu; https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Vaarzon_Morel

Dark and Mysterious: Gitanosoy and "Gipsy Dance"

Our random tune for today is by Gitanosoy and is called Gipsy Dance. I can't find much about Gitanosoy, but I believe that the band is related in some way to the Gipsy Kings in terms of at least one of its personnel, and they are apparently based in Spain and France. Gipsy Dance can be found on Gitanosoy's 1996 album of the same name.

Listen to songs like this and more on the KUNM Global Music Show every Monday night from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time. Live streaming, program information and the two-week digital archive can be found at http://www.kunm.org.

Heart-Flower: Manitas de Plata and "Toringa"

Flamenco is on tap today as our random tune from Manitas de Plata, a French flamenco guitarist who flouted flamenco rhythmic conventions and achieved worldwide fame. He was born Ricardo Baliardo in 1921 in a gypsy caravan in southern France. He began his career playing in an annual gypsy pilgrimage in Carmargue, France but only agreed to play for a wider public ten years after the death of preeminent gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt. Pablo Picasso, on hearing him, exclaimed that Manitas de Plata was "of greater worth than I am!" He became known in the US in the 1960s, and he was father of many members of the renowned Gipsy Kings. He died in November, 2014. This song, Toringa, can be found on the 2014 album Flores de Mi Corazón.

Listen to songs like this and more on the KUNM Global Music Show every Monday night from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time. Live streaming, program information and the two-week digital archive can be found at http://www.kunm.org.

Happy Dance: Inflame and "Kirwani"

Inflame gives us some music that is a mix of two traditions for today's random tune. Inflame is a New York City quartet that got together a few years ago and realized they had something with a combination of traditional flamenco and classical Indian music. Featuring mandolin, flamenco guitar, tabla, flamenco cajon and darbuka, Inflame creates a new sound that still sounds rooted in the traditional. This song, Kirwani, can be found on Inflame's eponymous 2013 release. The notes on the song say "...this tune brings about festivity, joy and happiness....The melody of Kirwani evokes warmth and invokes dance."  Just scroll on the image above and you'll be able to play the tune.

Listen to songs like this and more on the KUNM Global Music Show every Monday night from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time. Live streaming, program information and the two-week digital archive can be found at http://www.kunm.org.

French Flamenco: Gaspar Claus and Pedro Soler with "Sale la Aurora (Por Serrana)"

Today's song, Sale la Aurora (Por Serrana), is an instrumental that mixes the contemporary with flamenco. It is performed by a father/son duo. Gaspar Claus (son) is a French cellist who plays improvisational, contemporary, flamenco and pop music and who has collaborated with a number of well known musicians. Pedro Soler (father) is a celebrated French flamenco guitarist who learned and performed with the great masters of flamenco guitar with an emphasis on an "archaic" style that emphasizes dynamics and sonority. Sale la Aurora (Por Serrana) can be found on their 2016 album Al Viento.

Going South: Inflame and "Sur (Fandangos)"

A mix of two traditions is featured in today's random song by Inflame, a New York City quartet that got together a few years ago and realized they had something with a combination of traditional flamenco and classical Indian music. Featuring mandolin, flamenco guitar, tabla, flamenco cajon and darbuka, Inflame creates a new sound that still sounds rooted in the traditional. This song, Sur (Fandangos) can be found on Inflame's eponymous 2013 release.

Light 'er Up: Incendio and "Song of Tiamat"

Incendio brings us today's random song, called Song of Tiamat. Incendio is an instrumental world music band built around a guitar song but incorporating other instruments such as mandolin, bouzouki, violin, Celtic harp, piano, bass, synthesizer and various ethnic percussion instruments. The band was formed in 1999 by Jim Stubblefield, Jean-Pierre Durand and Liza Carbé, and originally played music in the nuevo flamenco tradition, but has expanded into many other areas, including the varied stories of the individual band members. Song of Tiamat can be found on their 2013 release called The Shape of Dreams.

Must be Some Girl: Paco de Lucía and Ricardo Modrego with "La Niña de Puerta Oscura"

We have some flamenco for today's random tune, called La Niña de Puerta Oscura, as performed by the great Paco De Lucía and Ricardo Modrego. Paco de Lucía was a Spanish flamenco guitarist, composer and producer who was a leading proponent of the nuevo flamenco movement in Spain and helped legitimize it. Ricardo Modrego was a Spanish flamenco guitarist who recorded three albums with a young Paco de Lucía. This song was first released on the album 12 Éxitos para 2 Guitarras Flamencas (1965) by Ricardo Modrego and Paco de Lucía, and was released on the movie soundtrack to The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) Note: We had a tune by Paco de Lucía just a couple of weeks ago. Ordinarily I don't play two tunes in a month by the same artist, but since this was a duo I felt it was different enough.

Drowning in Flamenco: Paco de Lucia and "Entre Dos Aguas"

Today's random tune is an instrumental called Entre Dos Aguas. It is performed by Paco de Lucia, who was a virtuoso flamenco guitarist composer and producer from Spain who was a leading proponent of the nuevo flamenco style. He was well known for his fast picados (fingerstyle runs) and juxtaposing picados and rasgueados (flamenco strumming) with more sensitive styling. He also added jazz influences that put him on the leading edge of nuevo flamenco and flamenco-jazz fusion in the 1970s. He died at age 66 of a heart attack in 2014. He has been called by Richard Chapman and Eric Clapton "a titanic figure in the world of flamenco guitar" and by Dennis Coster "one of history's greatest guitarists." You can find Entre Dos Aguas on de Lucia's 1986 album of the same name.

Strange, Beautiful Bedfellows: Inflame and "9 Beats"

A mix of two traditions is featured in today's random song. 9 Beats is by Inflame, a New York City quartet that got together a few years ago and realized they had something with a combination of traditional flamenco and classical Indian music. Featuring mandolin, flamenco guitar, tabla, flamenco cajon and darbuka, Inflame creates a new sound that still sounds rooted in the traditional. 9 Beats can be found on Inflame's eponymous 2013 release.

FlamIndia: Anoushka Shankar and "Kanya"

The daughter of an Indian legend brings us the random tune for today. Anoushka Shankar is the daughter of Ravi Shankar, famed Indian sitar player and companion to The Beatles. She is also the half sister of performer Norah Jones. Anoushka Shankar is a famed sitar player in her own right. She began training to play sitar under her father at age seven, and by age ten she was accompanying him on tanpura in his performances. She gave her first public performance on sitar at 13, accompanied by tabla player Zakir Hussain. At fifteen, she assisted in the production of Ravi Shankar's landmark Chants of India, and producer George Harrison put her in charge of notation and conducting the accompanying musicians. She signed her first record deal at 16, and released her first album, Anoushka, in 1998. After her second album, she took time off from recording to concentrate on building a career outside of her father's ensemble. In 2007, she collaborated with Karsh Kale on an album mixing classical Indian sitar with electronica. Since then, she has had a prolific and very creative period as an artist and performer. This song from her Grammy nominated album Traveller (2012) is called Kanya. The album as a whole is an exploration of the shared history of flamenco and Indian classical music.

Picasso was a Fanboy: Manitas de Plata and "Toringa"

A bit of random flamenco today from Manitas de Plata, a French flamenco guitarist who flouted flamenco rhythmic conventions and achieved worldwide fame. He was born Ricardo Baliardo in 1921 in a gypsy caravan in southern France. He began his career playing in an annual gypsy pilgrimage in Carmargue, France but only agreed to play for a wider public ten years after the death of preeminent gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt. Pablo Picasso, on hearing him, exclaimed that Manitas de Plata was "of greater worth than I am!" He became known in the US in the 1960s, and he was father of many members of the renowned Gipsy Kings. He died in November, 2014. This song, Toringa, can be found on the 2014 album Flores de Mi Corazón.

The Eyes Have It: Amr Diab and "Nour El-Ain"

I'm a typical guy. I miss a lot of things. For instance, I will often ask my wife where the peanut butter is located. "Right there in front of you!" And it magically appears, because it was there the whole time but for some reason, my guy brain decided to remove it from the picture - as if my mind opened up an organic version of Adobe Photoshop and decided to remove all the pixels that coincided with peanut butter. Which is why I rarely notice eyes. I've noticed that women are often very attentive to eyes. I've had women come up to me and comment on my blue eyes, as if they'd seen them shining from across the room and came like a moth to the flame. And I'm thinking "hey, you have eyes! That's so cool!" So it's funny to me to hear a song, like today's Nour El-Ain, extolling the eyes of another person, because it just isn't what I do. Of course I notice eyes from time to time, particularly if they have some kind of deformity, but also if they are out of the ordinary. I probably would have noticed Liz Taylor's violet eyes to die for, and certainly I would notice the red eyes of an albino, but for the most part, I'm just kind of clueless. Sorry ladies...

Today's random tune is by Amr Diab, who is an Egyptian singer and composer of pop music. A winner of the multiple music awards, he is known as the "Father of the Mediterranean Sound," referring to his blend of Egyptian sounds and textures with Western rhythms and instrumentation. When you listen to his music, you can catch touches of flamenco and raï blending with Western pop and traditional Arabic music. He is also a pioneer in video, being the first Egyptian artist to appear in music videos and helping to popularize them in the Arab world. He has also appeared in film. He was recently criticized during the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt for maintaining his silence and moving to London during the tumult, but after Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak was deposed he recorded a song called Masr A'let (Egypt Has Spoken) and released it in conjunction with a video showing many of those who had died, and established a charity he established to help rebuild Egyptian society. He has released 28 official albums. This song, Nour El-Ain, extols the eyes of a lover and the glow she puts into his eyes. It can be found on his 1996 album of the same name, and on the Putumayo North African Groove CD (2005).

Suffused Beauty: Ottmar Liebert and "Morning Light"

I am not a morning person and I should be. I should be up and at them in the morning because there really is nothing like morning light. It has been a constant wherever I have lived - as the hint of the sun slowly appears on the horizon, or behind the mountains, or at the edge of the plains, the light in the sky moves from dark blue to pink to blazing orange, and then as the sun appears, long shadows suddenly appear only to shorten. The earth is diffused with a glow, and in a place like New Mexico where I live, it changes the very color of the landscape, contrasting the natural colors of rock and sand against each other and against sky and and river.

Today's random tune is by a somewhat controversial artist who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Ottmar Liebert, originally from Germany, began studying classical guitar at eleven years old and flamenco guitar at fourteen. He played rock music in Germany before moving to the United States and eventually settling in Santa Fe in 1986. He released his first album in 1989, and initial sales were so good a remastered version was released in 1990 under the title of Nouveau Flamenco. This angered flamenco artists, who felt that Liebert's work was a poor imitation of not only traditional flamenco but also the Flamenco Nuevo movement to reinvent flamenco music. This left Liebert to explain that while his music has elements of flamenco, he was required by his record company to come up with a label for it and felt that flamenco was the closest description that people would know. Liebert cites influences such as Carlos Santana, Paco de Lucia, John McLaughlin, Robert Fripp, Jeff Beck and Miles Davis. He has released 28 albums, of which 11 are certified gold or platinum. This song, Morning Light, can be found on his 2008 album Scent of Light.

Don't Cheat: Ojos de Brujo and "Quien Engaña no Gana"

Short and sweet today, because I went on a hike and I have to go to an event tonight.

Today's random tune is Quien Engaña no Gana by Ojos de Brujo. The tile means "He who deceives doesn't win." Ojos de Brujo (Eyes of the Sorcerer) was a Spanish group from Barcelona active between 1998 and 2011. Flamenco was a central part of their sound, to which they fused hip hop, rumba, Afro-Cuban, dub and other types of music into a sound they called "flamenkillo." The group also took on social and political issues in Spain, but never directly. For instance, in highlighting poverty they wrote a song which looked through the eyes of a person who woke up hungry every morning. This approach made them popular among Spanish youth. Because their style was not pure flamenco, they came under criticism from flamenco purists but the group responded that they were under no illusion that they were a flamenco band. "...I would say that flamenco is the strongest ingredient, but we don't pretend we are doing flamenco," said one member of the band." Quien Engaña no Gana can be found on their 2005 album Bari, and also on the BBC R 3 Music Awards for World Music compilation album of 2005.

Flamingos Have Guitars?: Carlos Piñana and "Templanza (farruca)"

Another short post as Megan and I are still on our anniversary trip. The title of this post refers to a misconception I had as a child. When I first heard the term "flamenco guitar" I thought I heard "flamingo guitar." Soon enough, my confusion came out causing much adult laughter.

Today's tune is by well-known flamingo guitarist Carlos Piñana from Spain. Carlos Piñana comes from a well-known Spanish musical family - his grandfather is the patriarch of the "cantos minero" tradition - and he grew up soaking in the flamenco tradition. While studying classical guitar at Murcia University, he began exploring flamenco guitar. He has since won numerous awards. Often performing with orchestras, he has also released six CDs as a soloist and has written music for movies and stage. He now serves as professor of flamenco guitar at Murcia University, headmaster of the of the International Academy of the Foundation of the Cantos de las Minas, and as artistic director of the Murcia International Guitar Festival. This song, Templanza (farruca) can be found on his 2011 CD Manos Libres. It can also be found on the Rough Guide to Flamenco Guitar compilation CD.

Short and Sweet: Sulman and "Maria"

The next few posts are going to be short and sweet, as Megan and I are celebrating our 19th wedding anniversary this weekend and I may not have a lot of time to write until Tuesday. And, that's fitting because today's random song, Maria by Sulman, has occasioned one of those rare times that I cannot find any information about the artist. Sulman is apparently Spanish, as his song appears on the album Pure Spain: Tapas (2005). He made a music video of the song, but as much as I culled through the internet, I could not find any information on Sulman. Maybe he was a one-hit Spanish wonder. Maria is interesting - it has a definite R&B groove, some talk on it reminiscent of hip-hop or rap, and if listen very carefully you might hear a hint of flamenco or maybe the Moorish influence in Spain suggested by the artist's name.

If you have any information on the artist, please feel free to post!

Crossing all the Boundaries: NovaMenco and "When the Dead Come Alive"

One of my favorite holidays is now Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. Growing up, I always knew this day as Halloween, but of course I never understood the significance of the ancient tradition. Halloween to my young self was a fantastical time when I dressed up in a costume and walked the streets, ringing doorbells and hoping that I would get free candy. It wasn't until I began living in areas with a significant number of Hispanic people that I began to understand the full significance of the holiday. And as a kid, how could I know the ancient antecedents of the holiday. My parents didn't know, and nobody I knew had that type of historical knowledge.

What appeals to me know about Halloween, and Day of the Dead, is the idea that for a brief period the lines between worlds blur and even disappear. In the Gaelic/Celtic tradition, as the days wind down to the end of the harvest, the boundaries between worlds grows weaker until, for a day, faeries can cross over into our world. Lest you think that faeries are small, good sprites, in Celtic mythology they take on a bit more of a complex character, and have been known to steal children and take them back to the faerie world. At this time, spirits and demons could also walk the earth, interacting with living people and causing havoc on occasion.

What I love about Dia de los Muertos is that it puts a more positive spin on this idea of spirits roaming the earth. In some ways, it seems that the theme of this particular holiday is that the spirits are lost because they have crossed back into our world. The spirits are those of our loved ones passed away, and instead of fearing them, we can lay guideposts for them to come to join us in a meal and see once again their precious possessions and family. Many families put together altars, called ofrendas, and sprinkle them with marigolds which are believed to be brightly visible to spirits from the other world and beacons to them. The ofrendas contain offerings of food and those objects that were important to the spirits when they were alive.

In Albuquerque, a very nice parade takes place in the South Valley. Named the Marigold Parade, participants march painted as skeletons, their faces painted as grinning death masks called calaveras. It is a reminder that death and life are very intertwined...after all we will spend most of the universe's existence in death. The parade ends at a community center which is filled with ofrendas that deliver social messages. I've seen those ofrendas take on environmental messages (death of the earth), commemorate people important in Albuquerque's and the South Valley's history, and one year a very moving and tragic one commemorating the newly discovered but previously forgotten victims of a unknown serial killer who murdered a number of Albuquerque women over many years and buried them in shallow graves on the mesa to the city's west.

Megan and I celebrate Day of the Dead on the KUNM Global Music Show during our first Monday of November by playing global songs referencing death, spirits, and Dia de Los Muertos or its equivalent in other cultures. We first happened upon NovaMenco's tune When the Dead Come Alive for one of those shows. NovaMenco is a family of musicians based in San Diego. Started in 1995, they mix jazz and Mediterranean-style music, and even more currently funk, rumba and classical music with flamenco, creating a modern, innovative take on traditional flamenco styles. They have performed in some of the heavyweight jazz festivals around the world, including the Newport Jazz Festival. I don't know why, but flamenco music like this in a minor key always reminded me in some way of a macabre dance, and I even sometimes think that actual flamenco dancing with its twirling and stomping and sexual suggestiveness somehow encompassed all of life and death, so it was fun to find a song that even referenced death in the title. You can almost picture, listening to When the Dead Come Alive from their 1998 album Flight to Paradise, the dead rising up again to dance in our reality in glad abandon on a late October evening until the curtain draws over them and conceals their world for another year.

Not Your Mama's Lounge: Charanga Cakewalk and "Volcanico"

The enduring image of the lounge singer, so immortalized in all its cheesiness by Bill Murray in Saturday Night Live sketches, or even as satirized by Richard Cheese (his lounge version of Baby Got Back has to be one of the best song parodies of all time), has been taking a beating lately. That's because lounge music is cool again.

A lot of this makeover of lounge music has to do with electronic advances in music. Ambient sounds can be utilized very effectively to create a mood, just as in the old days lounge singers tried to create a mood with their vocal stylings and downtempo versions of popular songs put to exotic rhythms, as well as utilizing themselves the sounds available to them. So whereas my mom would have gone to Vegas to see the Rat Pack, Wayne Newton and Louis Prima (who, for the record, I absolutely love), nowadays people listening to lounge can find it incorporating music from all over the world. It's not as if lounge hadn't done that before - Brazilian forms such as samba and bossa nova were part of the lounge landscape in the 50s and 60s - but the availability and knowledge of different styles of music from other areas of the world is much greater in a world so interconnected. And I find that it is within the bounds of world music that lounge has become so interesting.

In this vein, today's artist is Charanga Cakewalk. Charanga Cakewalk is the brainchild of Michael Ramos, a Latino Chicano Mexican who also describes himself as a citizen of the world. A once sideman and rocker who played with John Mellencamp, Paul Simon, Patty Griffin and others and was a sometime member of the BoDeans and The Rembrandts, he maintained a keen interest in the Latino music of his childhood. Ramos has made Charanga Cakewalk the leading proponent of a style called cumbia lounge. Within his musical landscapes, you might hear tejano, flamenco, merengue, salsa, garage rock, ska and reggaeton. Charanga Cakewalk has released three albums. This song, Volcanico, is from the 2005 album Loteria de la Cumbia Lounge.

A Little Gnawledge Never Hurt Anybody: Gnawledge and "Qanun al Tarab"

It's taken me awhile to learn what is truly meant by the term "world music." Or should I say, what I think the term "world music" really means, and how it is different than the term "global music" that characterizes the show on which Megan and I present tunes from around the globe. However, all of this is up for debate, and the debate is often rigorous.

Megan and I take a broad definition to the term "global music," which can include pretty much most types of music from around the world. Thus, our Global Music Show is pretty wide open, and you'll a mix of styles, including pop and rock music, from different places around the world and mostly focused on music from outside the United States though we will play some music from inside the U.S. as well, particularly if it is Cajun or Native or comes out of a distinctly global character.

"World music" is definitely somewhat more defined and was explained to us by fellow DJ and concert promoter Neil Copperman, who if I remember correctly felt that world music had to be anchored in local, traditional music. It might be fused with modern genres and styles, but the base, he felt, had to be local and traditional. In truth, this is where Megan and I find the most innovation going on today. At the risk of sounding like my grandmother, who once told me bluntly in the 70s that the music that I liked sounded like a bunch of chimps jumping up and down and screeching, I don't find much innovation in the pop scene today, and I haven't found much of interest in the indie scene either. That's probably just me and my tastes being left behind by a younger generation. What I do find exciting, however, are these fusions of genres and styles in world music that have opened up an entirely new aural playground for my enjoyment. I've been partial to some of the mixing of electronica and modern rhythms to all kinds of different folk musics. Megan has been more specific in seeking out fusions of seemingly unrelated musics, such as Celtic with African for example. Regardless, these adventurings of musicians young and old, who are willing to work with each other to explore vast new landscapes of sound, have resulted in some phenomenal work and have opened my perceptions to what is not only possible, but what I thought I could like.

Today's tune is a product of this type of exploration. Qanun al Tarab is off an album called Granada Doaba which was the product of a musical exploration by DJ and producer Canyon Cody of Gnawledge Records. On the strength of a demo CD, he received a Fulbright and used the money to go to Spain and construct a recording studio over a flamenco guitar shop in Granada. There, he and rapper and producer Gnotes worked with 16 local musicians to create a flamenco/hip-hop collaboration. Not content to stop there, Gnawledge Records made Granada Doaba available for free download on their website with the instructions to share and remix. It is this type of collaboration and willingness to share to allow others to create that seems to define world music and most fully brings to life the old adage that "music can unite the world." In these last few days, as turmoil roils the Middle East and Eastern Europe and casualties are reported daily, the world could use something to unite it, and music is as good as anything.