The Country, Folk & World Recommendation Thread

[Safar]

Robert Ogilvie Noakes (13 May 1947 – 11 November 2022) was a Scottish singer-songwriter. Noakes was at the forefront of Scottish folk music for over 50 years and recorded over 19 studio albums. He toured folk clubs and often performed at the Glasgow music festival Celtic Connections.

Rab Noakes - I've Hardly Started Yet (Scotland)

Spoiler for Rab Noakes - Tennessee Waltz:

The Joy is a South African band, whose members met in a small town near Durban during a singing competition in high school. Encouraged by their teachers and classmates, the group mixes traditional Zulu music and acapella singing.

The Joy - Hlala Nami (South Africa)

On their 5th studio album, Connection, Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog have pushed their long-brewing tension between traditional pop songcraft and avantgarde improvisational music to the breaking point, bridging their customary genre-agnostic approach with elements of glam boogie, minimalist disco, psychedelic boogaloo, garage-punk-against-the-machine agitprop, and so much more.

Marc Ribot - Crumbia (USA)

[Safar]

Singer/songwriter Kelly Hunt’s new album, OZARK SYMPHONY, is the fruit of her many journeys. The songs tell universal stories of life’s peaks and valleys with stories set against a backdrop of the prairie, mountains, and river delta spanning the Midwest and deep South, all of which intimately shaped the contours of her life. Taken as a whole, the album establishes Hunt as a vital voice Americana music, ...

Kelly Hunt - Top of the World (USA)

Spoiler for Kelly Hunt - On the Bayou:

Spoiler for Kelly Hunt - Bittersweet Goodbye:

Bristol-based multi-instrumentalist Elliott and Cairo-based oud virtuoso Elazhary and friends run the gamut from morris dance to classical Arabic traditions.

Tamsin Elliott & Tarek Elazhary - El Hara (GB/Egypt)

[Safar]

Composition of Campino.
"Written in October 2019 when we launched the regular trad session meetings at Café Comptoir Chez Colette in Tours. Inspired by compositions by Gilles Chabenat with whom I grew up, in particular his "Mazurka of the schoolchildren of Saint Genest".

Bonnin Campino Laplanche - Mazurka de Chez Colette (France)

Spoiler for Nicolas Campin - Lisière (valse):

[Safar]

André Le Meut, born December 4, 1964 in Ploemel, near Carnac, is a renowned Bombard player from Morbihan. He has been champion of Brittany several times, either as a couple or leading the Roñsed-Mor bagad from Locoal-Mendon (1993, 1999, 2003), as well as winner of the 2003 Kan Ar Bobl Grand Prix. Also a singer, he works at the "archives départementales du Morbihan" on the publication of traditional songs.

Philippe Bataille · André Le Meut - J'étais lassée d'être jeune fille (France)

Spoiler for Philippe Bataille · André Le Meut - En hani dilézet:

Spoiler for Philippe Bataille · André Le Meut - Dérobé de Guingamp:

2020 and the confined years that followed inspired them to bring medieval festivities into the heart of homes by offering unpretentious videos of polyphonic songs from the great notes of the medieval repertoire, such as standards popularized in their time by Malicorne, Mélusine or la Bamboche.

Luc Arbogast, Le Condor, La Rioule des Compagnons du Monde - Réveillez vous belle endormie (France)

[Safar]

Danûk, a group of exiled Middle Eastern musicians come together on Morîk to reignite a shared consciousness of the value of homeland through the rediscovery of centuries-old sounds. Danûk manifests archived phonograph recordings of Kurdish folklore and wedding songs that have been preserved in wax cylinders and discs for more than a hundred years in The Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv and The Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, into phenomenal auditory icons of profound cultural heritage and identity.

Danûk - De Çêkin (Syria)

"O Rouanez Karet an Arvor" is a traditional Breton hymn sung mainly to Sainte Anne d'Auray.

O Rouanez Karet an Arvor (France)

Eliza Amy Forbes Carthy, MBE (born 23 August 1975) is an English folk musician known for both singing and playing the fiddle. She is the daughter of English folk musicians Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson.

The Eliza Carthy Band - Dribbles of Brandy (GB)

In MacColl’s hands, the whole idea of the haar – the sea mist that inspired the album – becomes both metaphorical and literal. Literal in the sense that the visual images created by the title track are recognisably foggy, tricky, slightly eerie; metaphorical in that those same images represent something bigger.

Lauren MacColl - Haar (Scotland)

Spoiler for Lauren MacColl - An-raoir:

Spoiler for Lauren MacColl - The Lost Bell / Women of the Shore:

[Jaxx]

Thanks for the MacColl, I really liked it.

[Safar]

Nice to read that you also like MacColl`s style of play.


Some more twist and turns in the may be sometimes "foggy, tricky, slightly eerie" musical landscape.

Synthesized Sudan: Astro-Nubian Electronic Jaglara Dance Sounds from the Fashaga Underground.
In his hometown of El-Gedarif, not far from Sudan’s borders with Ethiopia and Eritrea and just outside the disputed Fashaga triangle, the artist known as Jantra is an underground superstar. Known among small local circles as the creator of the genre Jaglara, loosely translating to “craziness”, Jantra draws on regional rural dance styles and celestial inspiration in creating some of the most exciting music to ever emerge from a Yamaha keyboard, albeit one specially modified to suit Sudanese aesthetics better. The well-hidden street parties that result are tremendous, ecstatic affairs.

Jantra - Jaborouna Jabor (Sudan)

Spoiler for Jantra - Shabal:

[Safar]

Bamanya is responsible for building Africa's first DIY modular synthesizer, a huge wall of home-made modules and FX units that he dubbed, fittingly, The Afrorack. His reason for embarking on this difficult project was simple: as he began to investigate the world of modular synthesizers, he realized it would be difficult to acquire the technology in Uganda. His starting points are often abstractions of acid and techno, but Bamanya curves East African rhythms and different scales into these familiar structures, splintering them into fractal shards.

Afrorack - Osc (Uganda)

[Safar]

Translated to "Stars of Agadez," Etran de L'Aïr is one of the longest-running wedding bands in a city renowned for guitar. Constantly performing at outdoor weddings, both in the city and the surrounding countryside, Etran plays exhaustive concerts, late into the night. Even for a guitar band, they push the instrument to the extreme, with three guitars playing simultaneously, soloing over one another, creating a dreamy cacophony of sound.

Etran de L'Aïr - Toubouk Ine Chihoussay (Niger)

[Safar]

Silent Night can sound like a dirge, as anyone who has heard it rendered by the year 4 violin group at a school Christmas concert can attest, but there is something beautiful about its images of tranquility, particularly when you know it was written in the aftermath of a war. Sinéad O’Connor’s version peels away the overfamiliarity.

Sinéad O'Connor - Silent Night (Ireland)