This collection, recorded by Michael Church, is a riveting journey. Songs From The Steppes reflects the vigour of Kazakhstan's present day bardic-tradition, the versatility of its horsehair fiddlers and the new magic which young musicians are creating with ancient instruments like the [...]
Greece has long been attractive to travellers. Some are entranced by its picturesque islands, others prefer the sparse villages of the mountains. Many have experienced the famous hospitality of Greek peasants and shepherds, but only a few have heard their traditional music [...]
For nearly fifty years Martin Carthy has been one of the most persistent and dedicated practitioners of English traditional music. He has been an essential figure in most of the significant developments in folk music during that time. To chronicle his career [...]
Albania's turbulent past, with its patchwork history of occupation, has produced a traditional rural music of remarkable variety as well as great beauty. Unaccompanied heroic ballads, funeral laments and political and lyrical songs are interspersed with dance-tunes on various lutes, flutes and [...]
Lying between Europe and Asia, Bulgaria displays in its traditional music both the formal solidity of the West and the exotic colouring of the East. These recordings, mostly collected by A.L. Lloyd on trips in 1954 and 1963, are very diverse, including [...]
Visiting the Yugoslav republics of Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Serbia and Macedonia, the collector Wolf Dietrich recorded these fascinating vocal solos and duets and tunes played on bagpipes, fiddles, flutes and clarinets. The raw part-singing of amateur village performers is of particular beauty. Croatia [...]
The village music of Turkey, collected by Wolf Dietrich in the '60s and '70s, includes pastoral airs on flutes, festival music on davul (drum) and zurna (oboe) and songs intricately accompanied on the saz and cumbus lutes. There are also examples of [...]
The music of the Tatar people of the Central Volga region of Russia is an important link, according to the collector Laszlo Vikar, in the vast east-west chain that connects the musics of China and Hungary. In these unique field recordings, made [...]
'If davul and zurna are not present,' runs the Turkish proverb, 'I cannot be a bride.' The coupling of drum (davul) and double-reed pipe (zurna), heard in many regions of the world, is particularly widespread among the gipsies of the Balkans. Collector [...]
Taarab is the most common style of music performed at weddings on the island of Zanzibar - a unique blend of musical elements from the Middle East, India and the West, combined with, to varying degrees, local African musical practices. It is [...]
Songs and dances of hunting, war, work, totemistic ritual, cannibalism, myth, initiation, courtship, rain-making, funerals, magical healing, shark catching and marathon feasting, recorded in remote coastal and inland villages in five far-flung regions of Papua New Guinea, to the north of Australia. [...]
The Sea Gypsies of the Andaman Sea have been sailing up and down the west coast of the Malay Peninsula for hundreds of years. Traditionally living on their Kabang (self contained houseboats) and trading sea slugs, pearls, shells and bird's nests for [...]