Have Some Heart: The Souljazz Orchestra and "Courage"

Today's song, Courage, is by Ottawa-based band The Souljazz Orchestra. Their music is a fusion of soul, jazz, funk, afrobeat and Latin styles. They came to worldwide attention when their 2006 song Mista President was voted into the top 10 of BBC DJ Gilles Peterson's worldwide radio program. They have shared bills with Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder and Femi Kuti, bringing them more attention. They have released seven albums. Courage can be found on their newest 2015 release, Resistance.

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/The_Souljazz_Orchestra; http://www.souljazzorchestra.com/

Smiling Through the Funk: Garotas Suecas and "Eu Vou Sorrir pra Quem É Gente Boa"

Garotas Suecas, a band from São Paulo, Brazil and whose name means Swedish Girls in Portuguese, brings us the random tune for today called Eu Vou Sorrir pra Quem É Gente Boa (something on the order of I Smile for Good People). The band incorporates many styles of sound, including funk, rock and soul. They have released two studio albums and four EPs, and are known for the high production quality of their music videos, which have won awards in Brazil. They also did a multi-country tour of Europe and the US in 2012. You can find Eu Vou Sorrir pra Quem É Gente Boa, a slow funk song with Beatlesque undertones, on their 2014 album Feras Míticas.

Space to Surf: Matorralman and "El Taxi del Mañana"

Feel like some electronic surf music with a space theme? Today's random song is just for you! El Taxi del Mañana is from Matorralman's 2010 album Guataque Estelar. The product of Mexican composer and producer Miguel Rizo, the band incorporates surf rock, French yé-yé, psychedelia, and a lot of twang guitar into a type of space pop. Matorralman lists Hammond Grooves, 60's garage, freakbeat, soul, psych, funk, porno beats, exotica, and lounge as influences, and takes as its inspiration European teen sexploitation films of the 1960s and 70s. The music is meant to be party music, says Rizo. Judge for yourself - are you dancing yet?

With Music You're Never Alone: Sara Tavares and "Bué"

As I was reading the biography of today's artist online, some words stuck out for me. According to Wikipedia, the Portuguese singer, songwriter, guitarist and percussionist of Cape Verdean descent, was "raised by an older Portuguese woman after being left alone by her father and mother." The bio goes on by relating that her father and mother divorced, and her father headed to the United States in search of a better life and her mother took her siblings and went south in search of the same. As an orphan myself, who was put up for adoption at birth and was not adopted until I was 2½ years old, the story of a child being left alone by her parents touches a chord in me. I don't know any more particulars about Tavares' story, and tried to search for more but didn't find anything substantial. Did Tavares' parents keep contact with her or did they simply abandon her? I don't have those answers.

What I do know from my own experience is that a child, if abandoned, carries that with him or her for the remainder of life. It is a chain and a weight around the ankle. If a child is raised by loving foster or adoptive parents, that goes a long way to mitigate the effect of the abandonment, but for those adopted into difficult circumstances, or those who are not lucky enough to be claimed by a family and who are raised within some kind of system or worse yet, have to fend for themselves, a self-inflicted stigma remains. It always takes some form of "What did I do?" or "Why wasn't I good enough?" It is a source of trauma. I was given up twice, once by my birth mother and once by a foster mother, and to this day I have difficulties dealing with physical and emotional abandonment and will do anything I can to avoid it.

However, out of this type of trauma also comes the source of intense creativity. I consider myself a creative person and the experiences of my childhood continue to remain a source that feeds my creativity. Sometimes, the chain around the ankle can also be the window into a complex and beautiful soul. And if one has talent in art, writing or music, it can serve as both an individual healing process and as something that gives joy to others. I am extremely glad that Sara Tavares has been able to share her talent with us, and has been able to nourish it even if it might have come from a painful place.

Friday's random tune slides us into the weekend with Tavares' reggae- and African-influenced song Bué. Born in Lisbon and still a resident there, she composes music with African, Portuguese and North American influences. Tavares sings in both Portuguese and Portuguese-creole, and is also known to mix other languages, including English, into her songs, as Bué demonstrates. In 1994, while still in her teens, Tavares won a Portuguese TV song contest by singing Whitney Houston's One Moment in Time, and reached 8th place in the 1994 Eurovision Contest. She has released six albums. Bué is from her 2009 album Xinti and as an added treat has an official video version!