Here's another cool showcase from GlobalFEST, the gift that keeps on giving. We had heard about Alif Naaba from a former Linker from Burkina Faso. She wrote and said "keep an eye out for this guy, he's good!" Well she was right, and he is. As usual it's hard to get good footage when there are lights flashing directly into the camera lens, but it's worth it to hear an artist who has not gotten much coverage in the USA. In his homeland, Naaba is known as the "prince with bare feet." As you'll hear, he has a lovely voice, and here sings in Mooré.  His songs are mostly topical and socially conscious; something we love here at Link.

NEXT WEEK: A very special interview with David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet!

Now that Spring has sprung, here's a dose of soulful fiddle music from two masters: David Greely, founding fiddler of Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys, and Joel Savoy of The Savoy Family Band and the Red Stick Ramblers. The duo was in town for GlobalFEST, at an "offsite event" at the Highline Ballroom. This performance (no interview -- it doesn't need it!) is a happy reminder that there are still places in the USA that treasure their ethnic heritage and play homemade music to enrich life. It's easy to imagine these two making music on the front porch in the midst of a warm Louisiana Spring day. So relax and bask in the sounds of some sweet strings.

Keep in mind that a lot of this is music for dancing off the work and cares of the day. In Cajun country there are still plenty of places to hear live, authentic music, be it Cajun, Creole or Zydeco. You go there to dance till you are ready to drop, till your endorphins kick in and do what they are supposed to.  For my money, that's a fun evening.

AND here's some other news:  When I attended WOMEX last October I met Karima Daoudi, a young woman with a major penchant for world music. She's got her own blog now, and it's off to a promising start. I love the video she chose to share and discuss. 

Hmmmmm....I'll have to try to get that for Link!

I find myself in the timely position of reporting on a fine Celtic artist and band just prior to St. Patrick's Day. Cara Dillon was in town for GlobalFEST, and treated the crowd to some truly wonderful singing and playing. My own affection for Celtic music probably stems from my early love of bluegrass and later, of country music. The Scots-Irish contribution to these idioms is inextricable and has influenced the way we hear our own popular music so much that we tend to slide right into it easily. It certainly felt that way to me, walking through GlobalFEST with its three stages and four acts each, from all corners of the earth. No matter how good they all might have been, when I landed on Cara's set, I felt like I was home.

The band, comprised of Sam Lakeman on keyboards and guitar, Ed Boyd on guitar, Brian Finnegan on various whistles, and Cillian Vellely on pipes, burned through jigs, ballads and reels. Dillon's voice can sound ethereal at times, but it is in fact a strong and precise instrument, and her choice of repertoire kept the audience by turns enthralled and bouncing. 

Some of the most exciting musical collaborations are happening between jazz, classical and world musicians these days. Musicians have always fed off interaction with other players, but the sheer variety of music that is available coupled with access to international artists has led to some truly exquisite sounds. In the classical world the work of Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble and its spinoff collaborations between Kayhan Kalhor and Brooklyn Rider come to mind, and of course, the by now venerable Kronos Quartet and maverick violinist Giles Apap. In the jazz world the same foment is apparent (the kora seeming to be the instrument of choice these days, appearing alongside jazz heavies) and when the world music extravaganza of GlobalFEST blew into town in January, it brought Nguyen Lê's "Saiyuki" with it.

Lê's name is practically synonymous with polyglot music; witness allaboutjazz.com describing his 2006 CD "Homescape" as a combination of  "post-Hendrix rock, Milesian harmon-mute free improv, Maghrebi trance music, Ellingtonia, ambient, a Papua New Guinea vocal choir. . .Delta blues, Vietnamese folk tunes, flamenco, Iranian modes, a Sardinian choir, Australian aboriginal ritual music, French chanson, Gregorian chant, and Indonesian gamelan/gong music." The man is eclectic, and joyfully so.

"Saiyuki," his latest aggregate, is a trio. In it, he has brought together Mieko Miyazaki (Japan) on koto and Prabhu Edouard (India) on tablas. (Lê played his backups in mid to low range to fatten up an otherwise treble sound.) The group's performance was one of the highlights of GlobalFEST, and I'm glad I got a chance to catch it on video, even with the uneven sound, and video quality attendant on these kinds of situations. . .note the shattered glass sound from the bar. . .oh well.

Each player brought so much of their own culture along that at times it seemed more like the music was "jazz enabled," with that form giving the musicians a more liberal harmonic matrix and greater freedom to fly. But the end result was something unusual and hard to classify; I guess "world music" as a term still has its uses.

Just as we start to take a nice deep breath from all that holiday partying, along comes globalFEST to rev up the energy again. For those of you who don't know, there are two major entertainment events that happen here in NYC in January: APAP, which is where presenters and presentees gather from all walks of the performance arts, and globalFEST, a one night showcase of world music acts held at Webster Hall (125 E. 11th St.) on January 10th. So here's a little preview of what's going to be there (a very little but tantalizing one!) from Vietnamese jazz guitarist Nguyen Li and a capella group Concordu de Orosei.

I'll be blogging the whole thing when it happens, so for sure there will be plenty more about this!