Ska was the first truly Jamaican music that spread all around the world. It
came to prominence during the early and mid-'60s right around the time the
island was granted its independence. Based on R+B, Jazz, Mento, Calypso and
African rhythms, ska ensembles blended electric instrumentation and horns most
popular in jazz (saxophone, trumpet, trombone).
The Sidis of Gujarat are a tribal Sufi community of East African origin which
came to India eight centuries ago and made Gujarat their home. They carried with
them their exceptionally rich musical tradition and kept it alive and
flourishing through the generations, unknown to the rest of the world.
A brass band? While the Central European ones preach musical idiocy, their peers on the Eastern side of the continent spark with energy, brisk rhythms, and fire. Their breathtaking music is powered by home-made slivovitz and Gypsy feeling - and there is still more to discover. When the enslavement of Romania's Gypsies ended in 1864, several thousand moved the United States, often settling in the black ghettoes. "Who's to say our cousins who went to the US didn't help invent jazz?" says Ioan, Fanfare Ciocarlia's oldest member.
She grew up earning her crust by singing in the cafes of Bijeljina, a small
Bosnian town, before moving to Belgrade. There she became the doyenne of
Skadalia, the old 'fun' quarter of the Serbian capital where men would drown
their sorrow and their pain in slivovice , or 'plum brandy', and music. In 1987
she vanished from the Balkan music scene, and in 2002 she recorded a new album
on the Connecting Cultures label. They call her the 'Gypsy Ella Fitzgerald' or
the ' Billie Holiday of Gypsy Music', but in reality, she's the mother of gypsy