Ton Maas

When Lebanese singer Rima Khcheich was asked to join the Yuri Honing Trio from the Netherlands for a cross-cultural collaboration called "Orient Express" in 2002, a very special and unique musical friendship was forged between her and double bass player Tony Overwater. Since that first project Khcheich and Overwater have frequently performed as a duo, mainly in the Arab world. When I met the two recently in Holland, Khcheich told me that before meeting Honing and his colleagues, she had rarely listened to jazz.

"Having been trained as a classical Arabic vocalist, I was used to singing with an orchestra playing exactly the same melody. So all those strange chords and counter melodies were really very confusing at first."   Read more...

When Riccardo Tesi discovered the melodion (diatonic harmonica) more than thirty years ago, the only people playing it were folk musicians from Southern Italy and Sardinia. Being a sophisticated city dweller from Tuscany, Tesi couldn't care less about the simple dance tunes played in these rural areas, but the sound of the instrument haunted him. In order to use it to play the music he liked - contemporary chamber music and jazz - he had a special version of the melodion made which is chromatic rather than diatonic, which means one can play in any key, rathen than just one plus its parallel minor. De Castagnari brothers, renowned melodion builders from Italy, supplied him with exactly what he needed and he has used their instruments exclusively ever since. The three-row chromatic version designed especially for Tesi at first, is now part of their regular catalogue.   Read more...

This year's edition of Sfinks (festival for world music just outside Antwerp) was number 29, making it one of the oldest of its kind. The program was a mixed bag with quite a few disappointments but also some remarkable highlights.

By far the most surprising of those was a magic performance by Cryptonique, the bellows duo of composer and accordion player Fabian Beghin and diatonic harmonica virtuoso Didier Laloy, both hailing from Wallony, the French speaking part of Belgium. I was already familiar with their repertoire from the excellent CD Cryptonique they released in 2006, but their spectacular live performance rendered that album bleak in comparison.   Read more...

Another highlight of the Sommelo Festival in Finland was Jouhiorkesteri, otherwise known as the Horse Hair Orchestra.

Thanks to musician, instrument maker and researcher Rauno Nieminen another ancient instrument has been revived from museological hibernation. This time it's not the kantele - a plucked zither which, according to recent theories, has been derived from Celtic lyres - but the jouhikko, a bowed lyre which has been in use around the Baltic Sea until the beginning of the 20th century. Its strings are stopped by simply resting the finger on them instead of pressing them down on a fingerboard.   Read more...

Just got back from a wonderful festival called Sommelo, taking place in Finland (Kuhmo) and across the Russian border in Viena Karelia (part of the republic of Karelia).

This annual event, founded in 2006 by singer and song collector Pekka Huttu-Hiltunen, focuses especially on the old Karelian tradition of runo singing, epic songs with a typical meter of eight syllables. The young Finnish artists who are now reviving this ancient art form, study not only field recordings and transcriptions, but also visit the last remaining runolaulaja (female runo singers) still living in remote vilages in Viena Karelia.   Read more...

Boi Akih ("princess Akih" in the language spoken on the Indonesian island of Haruku, part of the Moluccan archipelago) is based in Amsterdam. Both guitarist Niels Brouwer and vocalist Monica Akihary were born in the Netherlands, yet musically they are true global citizens. For starters, Akihary sings almost exclusively in Harakunese, a language which very few people around the globe can understand. Her vocal prowess is spectacular, even more so when you realize she is completely self-taught. Brouwer, her musical and life partner since twelve years, did get a proper training as a jazz guitarist, but since then shook off all references to bop.   Read more...

Having visited Central Asia myself two years ago - performing duties as a jury member during the 3rd Sayan Ring Festival in Shushenskoye (Siberia), with a trip to Khakassia and Tuva afterwards - I was extra excited about a recent festival of nomadic music here in Amsterdam, called "Echoes from the Steppes".

For three nights, singers and epic storytellers from Khakassia, Tuva, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, some of whom had never visited Europe before, performed at the intimate stage of the "kleine zaal" (small room) in the Amsterdam Tropentheater. For me, the absolute highlight of the event was the performance by Khakassian vocalist and instrument builder Sergey Charkov, together with his daughter Yulia Charkova.   Read more...

Back in Amsterdam, after a well-deserved holiday in the Andalucian Alpujarras, one memory from Womex still haunts me: Taksim Trio's killer performance during the last night of the festival.

Three giants from the Turkish music scene - all independently wealthy - teamed up for a labor of pure love: to rejuvenate the classical music of the Ottoman empire with new flavors.   Read more...

If the latest project by a musical hero--kora virtuoso Toumani Diabaté with his La Symphonie de la Kora--was any indication, the future of the traditional music of Mali was looking rather dark. On Diabaté's latest CD, no less than seven koras (21-string harp-lutes) are plucked simultaneously, seemingly without preconceived plan. Had megalomania replaced the subtlety of previous projects such as Songhai, Djelika and In The Heart Of The Moon, those wonderful duets with the late Ali Farka Touré?

So when Diabaté's longtime collaborator Bassekou Kouyate released an album with no less than four ngonis (lutes), I didn't even bother to listen. Granted, four times three to five strings was a far lesser evil than seven times 21, but the prospect was uninviting nevertheless.   Read more...

Womex isn't just a tradefair with showcases, it's also a meeting point for people from all over the globe who are involved with world music. And it's not just booking agents, festival programmers and label owners attending the fair, but also quite a few artists. If you're lucky, you can run into a musician you've been eager to meet for many years.

This year I had the great fortune to talk to a singer whom I've admired ever since I heard Aloukie, her first international release, in 2002. Zulya Kamalova hails from the former Soviet Union but has been living in Australia for many years now. Her work is firmly rooted in the tradition of her ancestors, the legendary Tatars.   Read more...

Who would have thought there are bagpipes in Iran? I certainly didn't. Thanks to Womex, this piece of ignorance is a thing of the past. Saeed Shanbehzadeh and his troupe from the south of Iran played a dazzling set in the Teatro Lope de Vega in Seville last Thursday. In ages/exchange/postings/PA253754-2.jpg" class="imageLeft" align="left" />contrast with the subtle melismatics of Persian classical music, the combination of repetitive drum patterns and ecstatic dancing gives their music an almost African flavor. Saeed started the performance with a solo on the neyjofti (a double flute), using his own cheeks as a "bag" for these "pipes".   Read more...

Since last Tuesday I am in Seville, Spain to attend the annual World Music Expo (Womex). This year's crop was indeed very good, with some spectacular highlights that will no doubt make their appearance on many world music festivals around the globe.   Read more...

During a recent trip to Italy I had the pleasure of being introduced to two great musicians who not only treated me to a wonderful Sicilian meal, but also taught me a few things I had been completely unaware of. The Mancuso brothers hail from Sicily, but emigrated to England in their late teens, where they worked in various factories to escape the poverty of their home village. It was there, and later in Spain, that they started to explore the possibility of blending the vocal tradition from their roots with various other genres and styles, such as Andalucian music and jazz.   Read more...

Last night I traveled to Rotterdam to see Hamilton de Holanda and his quintet from Brazil during their brief tour of the Netherlands and Belgium. This was the second time I saw them live; the first time after their spectacular showcase at last year's Womex (World Music Expo) in Seville. They played only new material from their forthcoming album. The tightness of the performance became even more impressive when Hamilton told me afterwards that this was just the third time they had played the new pieces live.   Read more...