If you watch our premieres and blocks you know Jair Oliveira's songs "Intacto" and "Tiro Onda." Jair was in our studio the other day, and he gave us an exclusive performance of one of the songs off his latest CD, which is dedicated to his two year old daughter Isabella, and is now nominated for a Latin Grammy. The song is a delightful ode called "Showertime." This is just a teaser though.  He sang us five songs in all, so keep an eye out on the blog for a much more extensive interview and more music from this wonderfully sunny Brazilian.

Followers of this blog know that I try to spotlight some of the interesting musicians and world music projects that are working here in NYC. Sylvain Leroux is someone I'm going to focus on shortly, and you can see him in this clip by one of his bands, "Fula Flute." Link TV helped to make this clip a reality when we initiated a program with the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology to put talented media students together with world music musicians to make videos. The song "Djandjou" is ceremonial, something that would be played to accompany the arrival of a dignitary.

The technique for playing the Fula flute, or "Tambin", is fascinating, using a combination of singing and overblowing to create overtones. More about this soon.

One of the most wonderful things that happens when you watch the documentary we are showing on the channel this week, "Intangible Asset No. 82", is how much you learn about a culture that is often hard for Westerners to understand. In particular, I have found much of Asian music to be difficult to enjoy. I am on record for maintaining that the phrase "music is the universal language" is glib nonsense. (In my opinion the universal language is food.) But "Intangible Asset No. 82" gave me a way to enter what has seemed an impenetrable genre; no small feat!

The film documents the journey of jazz drummer Simon Barker, as he seeks to find the shaman whose music has made a huge impact on him.  His guide is Kim Dong-Won, a master of Korean Pansori.

We were fortunate indeed that Dong-Won was in town performing with YoYo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, and he spent some time with me answering my quesions about the movie, and about Korean music. Dong-Won apologized profusely for his English skills, but actually, although he hesitates a bit, he is really quite eloquent.  The interview has three sections, which concern themselves with the film, drumming and Pansori singing.

Feels like it's raining Magyars lately. I got an email from David Sasvari in Hungary the other day. He really likes the music programming on Link, but thinks we're light on the Hungarian videos. So he sent me a few links, and that's how I found this video.

Even though I think this video is visually incoherent, I think "Csináld csináld jól csináld" is a cool mashup of Hungarian and Balkan sounds. Balkan Fanatik is a find, for sure. Thanks, David!

I'm so excited to tell you that we just received a big shipment of programs about Central Asian music through the Aga Khan Foundation. Although the geostrategic importance of Central Asia is rising by the minute, it has not been spotlighted in the mainstream media very much, although here at Link TV we've been showing music videos from Kyrgystan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan for years. Now, we have even more to bring you from this fascinating area. It is indeed one of the last bastions of an ancient and rich culture that was shaped by the Silk Route. These programs take you into the day-to-day and spiritual lives of the inhabitants, while opening a door to places we should all know more about. Stay tuned for these remarkable programs...and as we head into our crucial pledge week, I hope you'll take some time to make a donation to Link TV.

This week we are airing a short profile of the band Tinariwen, and you can also see it here on our website. Usually we indicate the country that a band originates from, but Tinariwen are Tuareg (no, that's not just a car), a nomadic people who have been living in the Sahara for millennia. When you are watching these tall, swathed men playing their hypnotic rhythms, it is hard not to be carried off to an imagined, desert landscape. You can get some feeling for this in the live performance featured in the middle of the profile. The musicians have incorporated the electric guitar into their own tradition, creating a genre now called "Desert Blues." Since they came to prominence on the world music stage, there have been several others following suit. Oddly, all of them have names that start with a "t!" I invite you to write in and tell me who those bands are.

We recently had the great Brazilian singer-songwriter Chico Cesar in our studios for an interview. When we asked him who were some of his favorite interpetors of his songs, he immediately mentioned Maria Bethania, saying every time she sings one of his songs, it becomes a classic.  This was not exactly a surprse for us since the documentary we are showing th is week The Voice of Brazil - Maria Bethania shows very clearly the process by which Bethania makes a song her very own.

From her emotional involvement with any song she approaches, her dissection of its musical structure and potentials, and her relationship with the musicians who are accompanying her, the documentary allows us unusual access to this iconic singer, and sister of Caetano Veloso.