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STCD 1129CD
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Amira Kheir, "the diva of the desert" -- as Le Journal du Mali dubbed her and the BBC World News echoed -- has finished her third album, and it has already received a warm welcome. Her first release, View from Somewhere (2011), introduced "an identity that transcends geography," as African Business observed. Songlines described the album as "bold and poetic -- beautiful and fearless." With that, she embarked on three years of performing in settings that ranged from intimate folk clubs and jazz clubs to prominent concert halls and several of the world's most celebrated festivals, earning reviews such as "a charming performer -- comfortable with both high drama and intimate balladry" (The Independent) and "a stunning set infused with many influences but anchored in the sounds and identity of her homeland Sudan" (Fly Global Music). Back in London -- her adoptive home for the past decade -- she recorded her second album, Alsahraa (STCD 1122CD, 2014), in a church with a small acoustic group. "Amira Kheir sings from the heart and soul," Inside World Music praised, and fRoots lauded her "engaging presence" and "lovely honey 'n' spice voice." Ms. Kheir's new album is an elegant collection of traditional songs and dances and original compositions for acoustic and electric instruments in which even the Kurt Weill-Ogden Nash classic, "Speak Low", fits comfortably. The latest issue of Songlines describes Mystic Dance (a five-star "Top of the World" selection) as "an album that hangs in a shimmery ether somewhere between Afro-Latin jazz, desert blues and ancient Sudanese music," and declares "whatever it is, we love it." So will you.
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STCD 1127CD
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Sterns Music present Vieux Kanté's The Young Man's Harp, a treasure nearly lost forever amid the vast wealth of Malian music. The blind kamalé ngoni virtuoso Vieux Kanté had many fans in Bamako, thanks to his electrifying shows in the city, but he was practically unknown outside of Mali. He had just finished recording an album that almost certainly would have launched him and his band on a brilliant global trajectory when he died unexpectedly at age 31 in 2005. This is the first time the album has been released. Vieux Kanté was an innovator. Having mastered the kamalé ngoni ("young man's harp") while just a teenager, he grew frustrated by the instrument's limitations, and so he added two strings to the standard six, enabling himself to reach notes beyond the traditional West African pentatonic scales. Eventually he graduated to ten and finally twelve strings, and extended his range still further by bending the strings like a blues guitarist. Exemplified on this album, his signature techniques also included popping the strings to accent beats, rubbing them to produce squeaks and moans, and lightly placing his fingers at just the right points to produce bell-toned harmonics. But for all Vieux Kanté's dazzling abilities, his music is enriched by the skills and sensibilities of his bandmates, especially his djembe drummer, his funky bassist, and singer Kabadjan Diakité. The Young Man's Harp is a musical revelation. The album notes are by the author of In Griot Time, Banning Eyre, who also contributes his unpublished photos of Vieux Kanté.
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STCD 4002CD
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2003 release. Identifying Kazufumi Miyazawa as a Japanese rock star is true enough but not even the half of it. Yes, he formed The Boom with a bunch of school friends in Kofu, Japan, in 1989, and before long the band's post-punk, neo-ska rock attracted a cult following and a major record deal. And yes, "Shima Uta," The Boom's rock update of an Okinawan folksong, sold over one-and-a-half million copies and won the Japanese Record of the Year award in 1993. But since then, while sustaining The Boom, Miyazawa has followed his fascinations with Indonesian degung, Argentine tango, Brazilian samba, and other adventurous styles via a solo career and projects with a very different band, Ganga Zumba. His most celebrated solo album to date is Deeper Than Oceans, released internationally by Sterns Music in 2003. Produced by Arto Lindsay and recorded in Tokyo, Okinawa, Rio de Janeiro, and Salvador with some 40 musicians, including Takashi Hirayasu and Moreno Veloso, Deeper Than Oceans is a musical exploration that covers wide expanses without ever losing Miyazawa's personality. Includes remixes by Chris Franck, Trüby Trio, and Ryukyu Underground.
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