Even though I listened to a great deal of music all my life – I tend to believe that it was something more than the average – I still discover some excellent pieces of musical art in music from all over the world. This is probably why this blog contains posts about Hawaian music, African Jazz, Cuba’s most treasured band (twice), Gypsy Music and more.  

Considering this, is easy to imagine the excitement I found when discovering this guide to world music published by The Independent. It features an excellent selection of some of the most beautiful pieces of world music which will help anyone discover something new to enjoy.

In briefing, the featured albums are:

Americas
- ’40 Temas Originales’ by Carlos Gardel – Argentina
- ‘Beleza Tropical’, compiled by David Byrne in 1987 – Brazil
- ‘The Buena Vista Social Club’ – Cuba
- ‘The Mighty Sparrow and Lord Kitchener’ – Carribean
- ‘Grandes Exitos by Juan Luis Guerra’ – Dominican Republic

African Music
- ‘The History of Township Music’ – South Africa
- ‘Golden Afrique, Volume II’ – Congo
- ‘Golden Afrique, Volume I’ – West Africa
- ‘Immigrés’, by Youssou N’Dour – Senegal
- ‘Moffou’, by Salif Keita

Europe
- ‘Rumba Argelina’ by Radio Tarifa – Spain
- ‘Clandestino’, by Manu Chao
- ‘Musique des Tziganes de Roumanie’, by Taraf de Haïdouks – Romanian. The description of the album is impressive: “This record shook us all. These Gypsy guys from the Balkans are a group with a fiddle, a cimbalom, and lots of other stuff – they play at an unbelievable speed, and change gear at the same time. Exhilarating.”
- ‘Napoli Mediterranea’, by Pietra Montecorvino – Italy
- ‘The Art of Amalia’, Amalia Rodrigues – Portugal

Asia and Pacific
- ‘Musst Musst’, by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan – Pakistan
- ‘Lata Mangeshkar: The Legend’
- ‘The Very Best of the Far East’ – China
- ‘The Gabby Pahinui Hawaiian Band’ – Hawaii
- ‘The Rough Guide to the Music of Thailand’ – Thailand

Middle East
- ‘Khaled, Khaled’ – Algeria
- ‘Fairuz: The Lady and the Legend’ – Liban
- ‘Ilham al Madfai’ – Iraq
- ‘Yemenite Songs’ – Israel
- ‘Tea in Marrakesh’ – North Africa

A nice sample of the music played by Taraful Haiducilor can be found in this live performance video.

I was happy to hear that some thought of the spirit of Vama Veche – and not only – in connection to the Folk music, not only rock. This is how Jurnalul National and Radio3Net managed to put together, for the second time, this folk festival – Folk You !.

Last year it took place in Vama Veche and at Gura Portitei, this year it is going to be in 4 locations – Mamaia, Neptun, Costinesti, 2 Mai and Vama Veche. I am not sure what sort of audience will follow them in the first 3 locations, but I hope I will catch them in one of the latter.

The festival is taking place between 3rd and 26th of August. On the stage you can find Florian Pittis, Ducu Bertzi, Mircea Vintila, Florin Chilian, Alexandru Andries, Nicu Alifantis and many others. You can find the entire schedule here.

Mihai gave me the sad news today. One of the teachers I admired most in University – Prof. Dr. Paul Bran – passed away because of a heart-attack. He was one of the few teachers actually trying to apply what he was teaching in the real business life and he had a great passion for his job. Also, he was one of the closest to the students and helped a lot of them in their activities.

Rest In Peace !

It seems summer is the statistics season, as more and more charts are emerging. One I found particularly interesting – and seems to reflect a lot of truth – is the top Rock Guitarists chart made by Digital DreamDoor. The chart has over 200 names, and the artists are ranked based on their impact, influence, creativity, technical skills and popularity.

The top 10 on this list are:

1. Jimi Hendrix*
2. Eric Clapton
3. Jimmy Page
4. Jeff Beck
5. Eddie Van Halen n
6. Stevie Ray Vaughan
7. Joe Satriani
8. Ritchie Blackmore
9. Steve Vai
10. David Gilmour

It is quite interesting that Clapton, Page and Beck, ranked on 2, 3 and 4 have all been members of the English Yardbirds band, which is well known for producing a great deal of guitarists over the time.

Also, the ranking features the “best of the decade”, which are:

90s – John Petrucci
80s – Eddie Van Halen
70s – Jimmy Page
60s – Jimi Hendrix
50s – Chuck Berry

Overall, I think it’s an excellent chart and any changes to this would be mostly on subjective basis – for example, I would have put Frank Zappa higher than 39th position. For the entire chart, here is the link.

This year I decided I will take a vacation. A typical one, 2 weeks long, going someplace nice with some nice friends and such. Therefore, the planning started and there are various options to consider. From going to a distant island and doing nothing to travelling around the country or just hanging around the house and doing all those things you never find the time to do – all of them sound somehow interesting.

But one of them looks particularly interesting, too bad for the price tag which makes it quite unaffordable – a walk in the space.

“Space Adventures Ltd., a company based in Vienna, Va., that has sent three very wealthy men to orbit the earth on the International Space Station, is planning to announce today that future customers will be able to take an hour-and-a-half trip outside the station as well.

The price? Just $15 million, on top of the $20 million for the flight itself.

The spacewalks have been approved by the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation, which provides training and transportation to the station on Soyuz rockets, said Eric Anderson, the chief executive of Space Adventures.”

So finally you can get to know how a spaceman feels like. For a preview of how it should feel like, Babylon Zoo’s Spaceman might provide some insight. Really nice track, with an excellent video.

UPDATE: And, if you are to go for it, here is what the wake-up tune in space is – ABBA – I had a dream :) Here is the story.

Speaking about influencial bands – The Who, one of the most influent rock bands in the 60s and 70 is comming back, 25 years after they stopped making any music. The Who performed a concert earlier this month in Hyde Park, London and they are to tour the US later this year. They already performed some concerts in Europe in July and June, and their are to start the US tour in September.  

Also, in October they are about to release a new album, called WHO2. This will be their first release after It’s Hard, in 1982. The first preview, entitled Wire & Glass, has been released as a maxi-single on 17th of July on iTunes.

More info about the comeback are to be found on www.thewhotour.com. Also, for you to remember, here is one of their old famous tracks – I Can See for Miles.

Quite newly launched, www.sideload.com offers free msuci to listen and download over the web. Looking at it, it offers quite some interesting music – I was able to easily find Johnny Cash, Bob Marley, Nirvana, U2 and a lot of other high-profile bands in there.

Also, the site integrates with mp3tunes.com, using a plugin called Oboe Locker which you can easily download for free.

So, I wonder how this can all be legal, with allowing you to freely download music. Well, it’s quite simple. Looking at their terms and conditions, it’s written: “Sideload.com does not store any music, but rather links to files publicly available other places on the net. Sideload.com respects the intellectual property of others, and we ask our users to do the same.”

Might be an interesting model, I wonder how long this will last before somebody sues them, as it seems this is getting quite a popular practice in the industry.

My Old Kentucky Blog made a top of the best songs released this year. While I must admit my “ignorance” in not listening to all those tracks, it is hard for me to understand why none of David Gilmour’s songs on Island never made it to that list.

Good thing that at least Regina Spektor is there.

Update: Thinking more about it I realize that neither Red Hot Chilli Peppers latest release – Stadium Arcadium – is not there. Nor is Tool, Johnny Cash and a lot others.

The Observer published the top 50 albums that influenced music. It is a very nice review, describing each album and mentioning to each of them what whould have/have not happened wihout it.

I think the list is pretty well put up, even though, as music is highly subjective, a lot of comments can be added to. For example, Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All album is missing from the list, while it influenced a lot of future (speed) metal bands.

Likewise, Oasis is missing, while they influenced Brit music greatly. 2 PAC influenced hip hop a lot and is not there, Madonna or Elton John are not in the top 50 either and this could go on and on…. but it is a very nice effort and I think a lot of the albums deserve to be where they are – even though I would put Bob Dylan‘s higher in the list.

I know someone will feel very good finding Velvet Underground on the first place :)

Some while ago, there started this big buzz around the media with the music publishers going to sue the websites which publish music lyrics without any approval or – to be more exact – without paying any copyright fees.

Some actions were taken against software tools which search for lyrics – like pearLyrics - and it seems they had the effect the publishers aimed for, as now websites started buying licenses for publishing the songs lyrics.

Gracenote took one of the first steps in this directions and bought the right to publish the lyrics of around 1 million songs from Bertelsmann AG’s BMG Music Publishing, Vivendi’s Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing and other publishers.

Now, this seems quite stupid to me to charge for publishing the lyrics of the song which is something everybody hears, they are meant to be this way. Plus, knowing the lyrics of a song is, in my opinion, quite likely to make you buy it and maybe the whole album. I myself found out a lot of nice artists and songs just by searching on Google for the lyrics of a song heard on the radio or in

Hopefully it won’t end up with the companies charging money from the user every time you read the lyrics or start humming them in the street.

And I wonder…how much money can you charge for the right to publish the lyrics of this song ? :)