Hope you've had a good week.
Thanks for all your feedback and comments and cd's that have started to come through. So so much great music, GondwanaTowers is alive again.
We've picked the latest Nascente release as our album of the week. World Routes - On the Road is out today, as they say, in all good record stores ( if there's any left - record stores that is ! ) Its packed to the brim with heartfelt melodies, twangs, bangs and joyful tunes from eighteen countries, all brought to life even more, by the engaging sleeve notes, recounting the story behind each recording. Entering their twelfth year on air and in their own way doing so much to document and preserve musical traditions around the world it must have been a tough job selecting material from their archives. What a gig, being a sound recordist for the BBC Radio 3 broadcast, adventuring into unknown territories, discovering earth moving music and getting paid !
We bring you three cuts or 10% of the album in this week's broadcast. Plus I am totally hooked on the Sahelsounds blog run by Christopher Kirkley who seems to be living the life of Reilly, travelling the Sahel region and constantly happening upon some of the best guitarists in the world. Here in Europe we get to hear about the Rail Band, the Orchestra Baobab and the Ali Farke Toures but there's plenty of unsung guitar heroes hoping just to get a gig on some of the tourist boats. Their music would happily sit on a World Circuit or a Nascente comp - so much to explore and Chris seems to do it so well.
So, as we are featuring World Routes - On the Road, I thought it would be a nice touch to introduce you to another avid field recordist. He's now putting albums together in partnership with Mississippi records. You can buy one of the limited vinyl editions or download the music at bandcamp, where the majority of what you chose to pay, goes to the artists. We feature one of his discoveries Lewlewal de Podor from Senegal on this weeks broadcast.
Also out this week on Strut, is Sparrowmania, which does what it says on the tin - a two cd release of the Wit Wisdom and Soul of the King of Calypso the Mighty Sparrow. We stick with a couple of cuts and add some more retro sounds form the 70's from both Trinidad and Ghana. A rareity dug up by the Soundway crew and courtesy of Secret Stash Records we bring you the full flavour of the track Blitz sampled in last week's opener.
and to finish off we'll go over to Argentina before coming back to the UK with a duo who are going places, Randolph and Byron.
We're making some changes to the website, so please pop over for news, reviews and live dates
http://www.gondwanasound.co.uk
you can listen to last week's broadcast in the playlist section where you will find we have started a new feature "Mixtape of the Month"
or you can go to our mixcloud page to listen to the recent and selected archives, when I'm not busy trying to catch up on some sleep there will be more to enjoy.
http://www.mixcloud.com/GondwanaSound/
Where you can also follow the broadcasts, tweet them, like them and even embed the code into your own blogs and what nots
to help get the music out there. You'll also find us on Radio Groovalizacion and World Music Central.
Anyway its silly o'clock again and I need some sleep to have my wits about me for tomorrow's broadcast.
Hope you can join me live in the studio every Monday 14:00 - 15:00 GMT Sheffield Live 93.2FM and http://www.sheffieldlive.org.
Stay tuned
Jill
