Eric Burdon & War (Beat club 1970)

                     

John Heartsman and Circles - Music Of My Heart [1977]

John Heartsman is known as the guy who played on a thousand R&B hits. From the mid '50s to the late '60s he recorded countless sessions, backing up the likes of Jimmy McCracklin, Lowell Fulson, Sugar Pie DeSanto, and many, many more. Then is the early '70s, exhausted from constant touring and seedy late night gigs, he took up a low-key residency at a small Sacramento jazz club. Here, Heartsman finally got to do his OWN thing. And his thing went down so well with the local audience that he decided to record some material and offer an LP for sale. The album was quickly snapped up by the Basin St West regulars, and very few escaped the local area. A couple of decades later, and sadly a little while after Heartsman himself had passed away, a couple of copies surfaced on the funk collectors scene in LA and whispers and rumours of a set of sustained quality funky soul and jazz began circulating slowly. Very few copies have appeared since, making the LP almost as legendary as the long and hidden career of the man himself...

                                                              Enjoy!

Itzhak Perlman – Klezmer In The Fiddler's House [1995]

In his introductory note to this CD, Itzhak Perlman informs us that, more than anything else he has recorded, this is truly his own music--"what you might hear if you came to my house and I decided to jam with some friends." And jam he does--with some very talented friends indeed. Klezmer music, which combines the folk and religious music of Yiddish-speaking cultures with various musical traditions of countries such as Russia, Turkey, and Greece, is unusual territory for a major label and a superstar artist, but here the combination works perfectly. Perlman, who normally is the star of his recordings, just blends into the whole celebration. The playing of violin, accordion, mandolin, clarinet, and other instruments is stylish, infectious, and at times virtuosic.Perlman captures the careening, infectious spirit of klezmer with style and grace, making In the Fiddler's House an intoxicating listen. 

                                                                 Enjoy!
 

Merres Chrisimes!

V/A - Malaguena all over

Hi folks!I decided to make a selection of songs for you,actually of the same song!It is Malagueña,written by Ernesto Lecuona for his sixth movement of the Suite Andalucia,an old favorite of mine.There are quite numberous versions of this song,so I picked up some of the less known versions,but still interesting enough,across different styles.Hope you like it!

                                                                               Enjoy!

Master Musicians Meeting Club [2002]

Highly successful music from a troupe of African, Greek and Indian players. A Malian kora player meets a Greek clarinettist and a clutch of North Indian musicians. It could be a God-awful mess, but it’s musical poetry. That makes sense. Firstly, these are top artists: Ballake Sissoko is one of West Africa’s top kora (lute-harp) players and a clarinet-playing friend of mine considers veteran Greek player Petroloukas Chalkias one of the greatest in the world. The quartet of Indian musicians includes Rakesh Chaurasia (nephew and disciple of the legendary Hariprasad Chaurasia) on bansuri flute, alongside Rabindra Goswami (sitar), Devashish Dey (vocals) and Subhankar Banerjee (tabla). Secondly, this is a project with history. The Greek Saraswati label has, since 1998, produced five Greeks & Indians recordings, which are quite brilliant in the way they bring styles from the two countries together. This is music of rich and varied textures – the airborne, breathy sound of the bansuri contrasting with the dark Greek clarinet – all underpinned by the muscle of the tabla. The disc opens with short solos on the principal melodic instruments – kora, clarinet, bansuri – each bringing its own distinctive character, before they tumble into a laid-back West African tune with some inspired kora and bansuri duetting. The music is delightfully easy to listen to but always fresh as the players take musical cues from each other. It ends 70 minutes and six tracks later with an ecstatic Indian-style consummation of this extraordinary marriage...

                                                               Enjoy!

Omar Khorshid and His Magic Guitar - Belly Dance, Vol. 2 [1974]

Movie star and famed guitarist of the Middle east, he composed the music for thirteen films. Khorshid began recording albums under his own name for the prestigious Lebanese record labels Voice Of The Orient and Voice Of Lebanon. Working with visionary engineer Nabil Moumtaz at Polysound studios in Beirut, Khorshid would take his music into some of the most progressive musical terrain of its time.He recorded 9 albums between the years 1973-1977.
Khorshid’s prolific instrumental music enjoyed recognition that transcended class and status during the brief period he shone. It’s a testament to his immense talent and some of the finest guitar music the world has ever heard.

Belly dance series with Omar Khorshid have  various international standards that have nothing to do with the middle eastern title but  the music arrangments  with the Omar signature is what makes the difference. Could be a list of Omar favorites or choosen show how Omar would make the world music obey his talent...

                                                                               Enjoy!

Wizard – Rare Jazz Fusion Gems From The Czechoslovakian Vaults Vol 2 [2000]

Excellent funky jazz work from Eastern Europe – very much in the spirit of recent compilations on the Jazzanova label, or similar sets on Cosmic Sounds. The album collects sublime material from the vaults of Supraphon, a hip Czech label that cut records so cool they're beyond description. The 8 tunes on the set are a mixture of Latin jazz, big band grooves, and funky electric fusion – but they all share a wonderfully fresh approach to arrangements, with modal bits hitting straighter jazz bits hitting choppy rhythmic grooving, in a blend so cool it'll have you digging through record shops for all things Czech. There's a lot of similar styles to some of the best 70s MPS work on the record – and you can also hear the influence of the music on some of the current European groove scene.

                            
                               

                                                                             Enjoy!

Nils Petter Molvær - Khmer [1998]

Khmer is surely the most unusual album ever released by ECM -- unusual because the label, which is best known for elevated chamber jazz, presents the solo debut of trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer as a production that plays with modern electronica methods while not eschewing the well-known ECM aesthetic. Molvaer's music is somewhere between scary and majestic, and changes between ominous ambient sounds and hard breakbeats, along which atonal screeching guitars combined with melancholic melodies, create a fascinating mélange. Above all this thrones Molvaer's trumpet: lyrical, hectic, calm and sad, trembling and screaming. Molvaer is one of the most progressive and intelligent voices in jazz today, and with Khmer he's recorded one of the best jazz albums of the '90s.

                                                                                Enjoy!

Tihomir Pop Asanovic - Majko Zemljo [1974]

Having left TIME after their phenomenal first album, Tihomir Pop Asanovic joined them again during the World Youth Festival, held in (East) Berlin 1973, on which occasion he played his rewarded composition "Berlin". The following year he recorded his first solo album "Majko Zemljo" (Eng. "Mother Earth") which is celebrated as the first recorded solo album of a rock keyboardist in former Yugoslavia! Also in 1974 Asanovic formed a super-group called JUGOSLOVENSKA POP SELEKCIJA (Yugoslavian Pop Selection) which gathered a dozen or so prominent rock and jazz musicians of the time, who performed at many concerts in ex-Yugoslavia, including the popular "Boom" Pop Festivals in Ljubljana '74 and Zagreb '75. POP SELECTION would transform into band SEPTEMBER in late 1975, but before that Asanovic invited many of these musicians for his solo LP, which basically consisted of the old material previously worked out with POP SELECTION.

This is a very good jazz-rock album with certain funk and R'n'B influences that does not require close attention or extraordinary jazz knowledge as preconditions for enjoyment. However, the keyboard nerds will have enough time to explore the sounds of Hammond, piano, clavinet and vintage synths played by one of the best ex- Yugoslavian musicians during the "golden" prog era. 

                                                               Enjoy!

Geraldo Pino and The Heartbeats - Heavy Heavy Heavy [2005]

Geraldo Pino (aka Gerald Pine) is one of the hidden heroes of African popular music. A singer, guitarist and bandleader from Sierra Leone, Geraldo had a major influence on the burgeoning soul/funk/Afrobeat scene in West Africa during the 1960s and 70s. He made a huge impression on the young Fela Kuti who praised him effusively but his music has remained largely unheard for the past 30 years.
Pino's party grooves and the Funk Imperative which underlines his musical philosophy make these dance tracks sound just as vital today as they did back then.

                                                              Enjoy!