Sound Tracks explores how music is transforming politics and culture around the globe. The one-hour pilot serves up a diverse menu of Russian pop, afrobeat, Portuguese fado, and symphonic music.
A fast-paced song for the trying economic times we live in, “Dirty Money” is the signature track from the band’s latest album on the Brooklyn-based Daptone label. It’s a two-pronged response to the 2008 financial crisis that still looms large around the world and the pressure of living in an oil-based economy.
The music of Antibalas is party music, but it’s innately political. What does that mean for a band that is trying to bushwhack its way through the tangled world of today’s music industry? It means they live the Afrobeat lifestyle from the streets of Brooklyn to the Broadway stage. The band’s Nigerian-born lead singer Amayo and trumpet player Jordan McLean share their experiences with Marco Werman.
“Sanctuary” was first released on the 2007 Antibalas album “Security.“ It’s a slow-burner of a tune, in the classic Fela Kuti style: a build-up of rhythm around drums, percussion, and Hammond organ. And then Amayo – the lead singer -- begins to preach the words. Where do you find sanctuary in a world that yanks us in multiple directions?
Travel the world in search of compelling music and hear the stories behind the music and its creators. 3/5/2013
If you’ve seen the animated Pixar/Disney film, “Brave,” which is set in a fantasy medieval Scotland, you’ve heard the voice of Scottish folk singer Julie Fowlis. She sings mainly in the Gaelic language – or Gallic, as they say in Scotland – and had a surprise hit in the UK a few years back with her version of the Beatles’ “Blackbird.” In this video, Fowlis performs “Tha Mo Ghaol Air Àird."
The Gaelic revival is just part of a vibrant debate in Scotland. Here’s a brief sample of opinions about an independent Scotland, featuring musician Julie Fowlis, Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, and author Alan Bissett.
Iceland has a long tradition of Nordic myths and folk tales, many involving spirits and animals transforming themselves into people. So, it’s not too surprising that a band like Of Monsters and Men would call their debut album, “My Head is an Animal,” and create a song like “Dirty Paws,” about an epic battle between the birds and the bees and a four-pawed beast that saves the day.
You’ve probably heard this song on the radio this summer. To the band’s amazement, it’s a worldwide hit. “It’s even big in Turkey,” they told us, shaking their collective heads, pleasantly bewildered. But it’s easy to see why the song has caught on with its rolling, infectious energy, that chorus of “heys!” and a foreboding lyric that ends up reassuring us we’re all going to make it back safely.
One of Senegal's best known guitarists, Jimi Mbaye has been playing with Youssou N'Dour since 1979 when they launched the "Super Etoile" band in Dakar. In this video extra, Jimi talks to Marco Werman about Jimi Hendrix and plays a song he wrote for Youssou called "Birima."
Original band members Dom Flemons and Rhiannon Giddens spoke with Quick Hits reporter Mirissa Neff backstage at the Mystic Theater in Petaluma, California. The two live and breathe African American traditional music, and once you get them started on the topic it's clear that their knowledge runs deep. The interview includes a sample of Thompson's music and a clip from a music video.
This Quick Hits video brings together all four members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, including cellist Leyla McCalla, for a rendition of a bluegrass standard, "Don't Get Trouble in Your Mind." It's hard to imagine a quartet being more in sync than the Drops are during this virtuoso, rowdy romp.
Featuring Dom Flemons on the bones and Rhiannon Giddens on the 5-string banjo, "Old Corn Likker" was performed backstage exclusively for Quick Hits. This is a square dance song with Flemons calling out to the dancers and telling the story of a man who fell off a wagon and lost his hat due to some overindulgence in some homebrew alcohol.
"No Man's Mama" was originally sung in the 1920s by blues diva Ethel Waters. At the time its lyrics were downright radical for detailing a woman's giddy liberation after getting her divorce decreed. This version features guitar and banjo strumming by Hubby Jenkins and Dom Flemons, but it's Rhiannon Giddens' impeccably fearless vocals that steal the show.
The album version of “ISHQ” features a vocalist singing in Hindi, “My body is an instrument, my heart is a melody.” Here, Sanjeev Shankar takes on the vocal role on the shehnai, a double-reed instrument rather like a cross between an oboe and a soprano sax. This all-instrumental version shows off some exceptional percussion.
The featured singer in this piece, Sandra Carrasco, is a traveler herself, crossing the globe as an evangelist for Andalusian flamenco singing. The words she sings are Anoushka’s, translated into Spanish by her collaborator, Javier Limon: “I deserve to spend my life dancing while leaning on my true love’s shoulder, dancing.”
This song renders the lyrics of a medieval Sufi mystic into Spanish: “If I cannot see her, at least I can think of her, and so, be happy.” But you don’t need to understand the words to hear the beautiful sense of longing.
Anoushka Shankar is a sort of musical gypsy, having grown up in London, Delhi and southern California, and touring the world in performances with her father, Ravi Shankar. Now she’s repeating the pattern by traveling with her child on her own concert tours. As she tells Arun Rath, she was pregnant when she recorded the album, and the song “Inside Me,” is about her unborn son dancing inside her.
Levon Helm - drummer and lead singer for The Band - presides over what he calls “midnight rambles” – concerts in his Woodstock, N.Y. barn, where he’s surrounded by musical friends and family, including his daughter, singer Amy Helm. His voice may be raspy, but his energetic drumming and high-beam smile can warm the coldest winter night. Part of the Sound Tracks: Quick Hits series by PBS Arts.
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