About four years ago, when I was rooting around for Chinese music videos, I was sent a charming animation from a band called Shanren. The song "30 Years" was about the trials and tribulations of moving from the country to the big city to look for work. This is a motif that resonates with all working folks, and I won't even go into the hundreds of great songs dealing with this from the West's Industrial Revolution right through to today. "30 Years" describes what is going on in China currently, as its rapid industrialization is causing a vast shift in population from rural to urban centers. I was therefor already interested when I was contacted by the band's publicist, informing me that they would be playing on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, at Pianos.

The band comes from Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, with members from the Wa and Buyi minorities. The name Shanren means "mountain men." During a chat with James Pang, the band's Chinese manager, he mentioned that the people of these minorities live up in the mountains, are kind of wild living, like to brew their own liquor, and dance.

Being a lover of country music and bluegrass, I could not help but start drawing parallels between some of the characteristics of our own folk heritage and what I was about to see and hear. I was not let down. Listen to this music and tell me that you don't hear something that sounds remarkably like our own "Old Timey" music, with its trance-like repetitions. People like banjoist Abigail Washburn have been mining these parallels for years, and you can hear why. (The band even uses something that looks mighty like a banjo!)

The song is called "Left Foot Dance of the Yi".

The Yi people, as I mentioned before, are one of the ethnic minorities of southwestern China. There's a family of songs called left foot dance songs ("kind of Yi party music" their manager Sam Debell writes). This is the band's own arrangement of a very well known left foot dance song. It’s usually a circle dance, but the band adapted it, so they do it in a line (in a circle it must look positively Balkan... but I’m not going to get into that, at least not here).

A sample of the lyrics (xianzi is a stringed instrument):

- Brother play the xianzi.
- Sister sing the song.
- The moon is already risen.
- And we're waiting to dance.

And something from our own repertoire:

"Late in the evening about sundown
High on a hill and above the town
Uncle Pen played the fiddle, lordy how it would ring,
You could hear it talk, you could hear it sing."

To contact the band:
Sam Debell (Asia) at unitysam@gmail.com and +86 152-1027-0868.

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Douglas Lora and Dudu Maia (who I have covered previously) were in town, this time at the Caffe Vivaldi and with Douglas' brother Alexandre playing tambourine. The room was packed, so I only got this one good take out of it. But it's a sweet one!

Choro is a kind of urban folk music that grew out of a merging of European and Brazilian sensibilities, and it calls on the player to be agile, inventive and swinging. The emphasis on improvisation makes people compare it to jazz, but if one is going to do that, let's specify that it's a lot more Django than Miles. It's accessible music in every way.

Lora is a classically trained and plays a seven string guitar, and Maia also plays an altered instrument, a mandolin (called bandolim, in Brazil) with 10 strings, as opposed to the usual 8. Both are well respected musicians back home, and part of their tours generally consist of choro workshops. They are also part of a full-out band called Caraivana, so look out for that aggregate as well.

For more of Michal's original music videos, visit inter-muse.com

From an entire night of a capella magnificence and magic at DROM, comes this praise song for inventor Nikola Tesla. (Surprise of evening was the presence of Debbie Harry in the audience.)

Here are Svetlana's notes on the song:

"The song in honor of Serbian Scientist Nikola Tesla, made by my old godfather Milan Bilbija from Cirkin Polje, Prijedor, Bosnian Krajina. He died in 2008. Melody made by Svetlana Spajic."

The brief shot of the overhead image of the gusle, the Serbian instrument upon which the epic singers (guslars) play, with image of Tesla, is the property of multi-instrumentalist Darco Macura, who I finally met face to face along with Svetlana, in Belgrade in 1997. I had used several of his musical performances in a compilation of music I was producing. He was also Svetlana’s first mentor.

Lyric translation by Svetlana Spajic:

My soul is in pain, but I sing this song, I sing the song from Nikola Tesla

Oh Nikola, brilliant and smart, you invented electric power, magnetic waves and transformers

Oh Nikola if you'd lived longer, you would have made electric power from the sun. Where are you now?

Where are your New York doves? Does the new America remember you?

Scientists don't care for monuments; yours, Nikola, stands at Niagara Falls

Oh Nikola, from the village of Smiljan, the gusle is adorned with your image

Oh Nikola, it doesn't matter that you are a Serb, the generations of the world will remember you

For more of Michal's original music videos, visit inter-muse.com

The brainchild of John Kruth and Jeff Greene, TriBeCaStan is a whimsical melange of timbres, textures, and tunes (Oh my!) and a very fun outlet for all the musical eclecticism of its founders.

During APAP week I ventured to the East Village to the Duo Multicultural Arts Center, which has a historic old theater in the East Village, where Greene (who  has a mural restoration company) had snagged a night to showcase the band. The wine flowed, folks schmoozed and we were treated to a high energy night of musique trés intérresant, complete with dancers. I've chosen the first song "BedBugs" to present here, even though it got off to a bumpy start -- and apologies for the camera's audio, there isn't much sound separation. But as I like to say, "Ya can't make chowder without a clam or two, but oh my my it's a tasty stew!"  You'll get the idea.

For more on the band visit: www.tribecastan.tv

To see a TriBeCaStan tango, click here.

TriBeCaStan is John Kruth Jeff Greene, Claire Daly, Todd Isler, Kenny Margolis, Boris Kinberg, Chris Morrow, John Turner, Dave Dreiwitz, and Mike Duclos

For more of Michal's original music videos, visit inter-muse.com

With the Holidays in full swing, I find myself getting more and more cheer deprived... so we might all need a little energy boost. Here's some super-positive fuel from Blitz the Ambassador from his set at WOMEX 2011 in Copenhagen.

The multi-level Koncerthuset was the setting for four nights of world music of every possible shade, from ethnographic to eclectic. Blitz the Ambassador is surely one of the latter, and one of those hard to categorize artists; he's an amalgam of Ghanaian and Western influences, taking what he likes best from each to create his music and his message. If you think you hear Afrobeat, Hip Hop or HighLife coming off the stage, you're right. It's all there, and the music had the audience swinging and swaying.

"Akwaaba" from Blitz's most recent release Native Sun is a fairly straightforward song, that explains itself.

The Embassy Ensemble provided a tight backup (albeit a few a"brown notes" on the horns... but hey, it's hard to play and dance at the same time) and deserve mention: Ezra Brown on sax, Clemens Braun on trombone, the appropriately named Sydney Driver on kit, Raja Cassis on guitar and Ramon de Bruyn on bass.

To find out more about the artist go to blitz.mvmt.com

For more of Michal's original music videos, visit inter-muse.com