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!