For those of you who love Desert Blues, that loping, hypnotic guitar music that we associate with the Tuareg and the Saharawis, consider this: The electric guitar has reshaped traditional Saharawi music, but the situation in the refugee camps grows more dire every day, with fewer and fewer guitars for young people to play, thus further endangering an already endangered cultural legacy.   
Got an electric guitar that is gathering dust somewhere?  Want to put it to truly good use? Check this out!

Okay, if you've gone to the URL above, you know that this is a great site.
It's maintained by my old friend Angel Romero, and it's a terrific resource for what is going on in world music, and as you can see, what is happening on many tangential levels.

Let's get some of the PR out of the way.  Yes, he is currently on tour, and yes, he has a new recording out called "Alkohol." BUY IT. It rocks, it has soul.  What more could you want?

Without question the most successful musician to come out of Sarajevo, Goran Bregovic has brought the sound of the Balkans to millions, first from his soundtracks for such films as Emir Kusturica's "Time of the Gypsy" and "Underground," followed by a plethora of collaborations with top flight musicians as disparate as Iggy Pop and Sezen Akcu, (remember "Prawy do Lewego" with Polish diva Kayah?) and more recently by touring with his "Wedding and Funeral Band."  His music is special to me, just because it touched me deeply during the days after 9/11. It seemed to reach out and say "I know how you are feeling." So I was a teeny bit nervous meeting him. I needn't have worried.  We laughed a lot! Maybe I should have brought along a bottle of Slivovitz.

The video for Jeremija was filmed at the Guca Brass Festival and Competition in Serbia, and if you want to know more about that giddy event, check out our documentary "Guca".

And speaking of Balkan Brass, we have to mention that it's getting to be quite the hip club thang, pushed by Deejay Shantel across the water (as in:Disko Partizani) and other mixmasters this side of the pond as well. --And right here in NYC we have our own Zlatne Uste Brass Band, that can pump it out with the best of them.