Thanks, Cenotaph ! It´s good to have a nomination from you again - you always dig up something interesting. :thumb:

http://cdn.7static.com/static/img/sl...865313_350.jpg

Kath Bloom & Loren MazzaCane Connors - Restless Faithful Desperate & Moonlight

Some beautiful folk from an improvisational guitarist and a female folk singer. This is a two disc album that contains the first two albums of this duo. The songs are hauntingly emotional, mostly because of Bloom's vocals. Connors plays some good and somewhat noodly backgrounds to these songs that complement Bloom's style very well. I don't know if Connors is improvising or not, but it's a stunning product either way.

I love Iag Bari! :) Thanks for posting, Cenotaph! They play some songs from that album at a bar I like to frequent in Istanbul. ;)

I nominate Niyaz's first album, the self-titled Niyaz. Great Persian flavor, although some songs are in Turkish also.

I think this is one of the best songs on the album. Enjoy.

Thanks, Frownland and Miss P ! It´s good to have some new material for the next poll. That´s going to open on April 7th. Hope it doesn´t seem a long way away; rather at variance with the internet, the pace of this club is slow and steady - but we always get to the good albums in the end. :)

I've been debating putting this one up for a while mainly because it is of more a classical bent but I figure you can't get much more international folk than medieval French troubadours.

Heliotrope - The Romance of the Rose (Feminine Voices from Medieval France) 1995

While the songs were sourced from 13th century texts the actual melodies on these recordings were kind of educated guesses as there was little musical notation from the period.




More info here: The Romance of the Rose

Milton Nascimento - Clube de Esquina (1972)

Fifth album from Brazilian Milton Nascimento. Well technically it's a collective effort of "The Corner Club".



(Video features entire album apparently)

Hey, thanks for the nominations, stp ! I´ve only just noticed them - luckily in time to put them in a poll that I´ll open later this evening. Funnily enough, I was exploring some medieval music the other day too. Perhaps you and I were motivated by the same question; what are the earliest discernable roots of European folk music ? Whatever the case, looks like you´ve picked something interesting for us !

Not a nomination and not European but I thought you might be interested in this.

Hurrian Songs
The Oldest Song in the World

musical notation on clay tablets from Syria dated to around 1400 BC

and this



based on tablets from Syria (I imagine they are the same tablets but in the notes on YouTube they claim they were dated to 3400 BC. I think they meant to say 3400 years ago.).

That´s a very interesting link, and a nice piece of music too. I wonder how certain they are about the transcribing process; I though that casting it all for a classical music orchestra rather detracted from the authenticity of the sound. What did you think, stp ?

( haha, yes, I think you´re right about correcting the Youtube date!)