By Derk Richardson  July 28th, 2010 7:43 am  |  Comments (2)

Photo by Francisco Guerrero

A pot of long-cooked meats, including slices of pancetta or bacon, hearty vegetables and legumes, and a savory broth that becomes a vehicle for fideos (thin Spanish noodles)—how can you go wrong? In the September/October issue of Afar, Leah Messinger dives into the cultural history of cocido Madrileño, the filling stew long popular in Madrid, Spain.

According to food historian David Gitlitz, one-pot meals incorporating chickpeas and/or lentils have been ubiquitous around the Mediterranean since Roman times, mentioned in the writings of Pliny and Apicius. A dish called olla podrida (rotten pot) turns up in Don Quixote from the early 1600s.

So you can try it at home, Messinger provides a slightly more contemporary recipe—from Madrid’s Taberna la Bola, where cocido has been on the menu for a mere century or so.

By Derk Richardson  July 23rd, 2010 7:42 am  |  Comments (1)

Photo by Thomas Swick

Thomas Swick, who writes regularly for World Hum, has a knack for getting beneath the surface of place. When Afar came up with a random destination and sent Swick at the last minute on a Spin the Globe trip to Venice, Italy, he made the most of his spontaneous journey by swiftly and intimately connecting with a network of colorful locals.

His account, “Venice in Three Acts,” which you can read in the September/October issue of Afar, is full of magical moments and mysterious disappearances. But it stays grounded thanks to his engagement with members of an organization called 40xVenezia, dedicated to resuscitating authentic local culture and fending off the worst consequences of tourism.

In the video below, Skype Nomad Rebecca Campbell interviews a 40xVenezia activist who explains the group’s goals, as well as how to pronounce the name.

By Derk Richardson  January 7th, 2010 6:47 pm  |  Comments (16)

We all know that travel changes us.

But did you know it makes you more creative? A better problem solver?

That’s what Jonah Lehrer asserts in his “Your Brain” column in The Panorama Magazine, part of the one-time-only McSweeney’s newspaper project, The San Francisco Panorama.

Lehrer, contributing editor at Wired magazine and the author of How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist, titled his essay “Definitive, Incontrovertible Proof: Why Travel Makes You Smarter.” Citing research conducted at Indiana University, the Kellogg School of Management in Chicago, and the INSEAD business school in France, he comes up with several conclusions that should resonant with worldly travelers, especially those of an “Afar-ish” bent:

“When we escape from the place we spend most of our time, … we start thinking about obscure possibilities … that never would have occurred to us if we’d stayed back on the farm.”

“Experiencing another culture endows us with a valuable open-mindedness.”

And finally, when we travel, “We’re reminded of all that we don’t know, which is nearly everything; we’re surprised by the constant stream of surprises. … We travel because we need to, because distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything.”

The San Francisco Panorama hit newsstands and bookstores in early December and sold out immediately. It can be ordered from the McSweeney’s online store.

Lehrer posted his essay on his blog. You can read it here.

Tell us how his thoughts jibe with your experience.

By Derk Richardson  November 23rd, 2009 4:40 pm  |  Comments (1)

The music of Morocco has captivated Beats, hard rockers, and jazz improvisers for more than 40 years. For painter Brion Gysin, Rolling Stone Brian Jones, and free jazz avatar Ornette Coleman, it was the flute, reed, and drum trance music of the Master Musicians of Joujouka that mesmerized.

For trumpeter Don Cherry, pianist Randy Weston, and Led Zepellin’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, the spell was cast by the hypnotic drones of Gnawa music. Listening to the new CD, Ouled Bambara: Portraits of Gnawa, the source of their fascination is clear.

Gnawa music is simple in format: Chant-like singing is supported by the plucked guembri, a low-toned three-string lute used to set rhyhtm and simple melodies, plus hand claps, shakers, and castanets. But the intention of the music—to connect with unseen spirits and keep the fiercest at bay—is deep, and the effect of extended listening is transporting.

Ouled Bambara features four different groupings of musicians recorded live during a Gnawa ceremony in Marrakech. The CD and accompanying DVD are released by Chicago’s Drag City label, which knows something about trance music, being a prime purveyor of contemporary, psychedelic-tinged  freak-folk. While not slick and punchy like you might expect from Marrakech-to-New York pop star Hassan Hakmoun, the sound quality is remarkably clear and present for a field recording.

As Todd Pitock revealed in “An Old World Finds a New Path” in the premier issue of Afar, a journey through the daunting landscape of Morocco can be both challenging and deeply rewarding. It’s the same with Ouled Bambara, in which music serves as your guide and your transportation.

For a history of the Gnawa, visit Afropop Worldwide.

Watch one of Ouled Bambara’s featured performers, Abdelkbir Marchane:

Related posts: A new Afarish guide to music and travel; Singing in the Sahara with Tinariwen

By Derk Richardson  November 2nd, 2009 9:57 am  |  Comments (3)

When it comes to contemporary music around the world, the new Museyon Guide, Music + Travel: Touring the Globe Through Sounds and Scenes, is on the same page with Afar magazine’s Sounds department.

In Afar’s premier issue, Zachary Mexico broke down the history and latest developments in Beijing’s avant-rock scene; in the December-January issue, on newsstands Nov. 10, Dan Strachota does the same for the digital cumbia movement in Buenos Aires.

Music + Travel touches down in 12 locations. Among them are Paris (”New Rap City”), Australia (”Art Rock Confidential”), Addis Ababa (”Swing Shifts”), Mumbai (”Passage to Indipop”), Berlin (”Techno Color”), and, yes, Beijing (”Experimental Methods”) and Buenos Aires (”The Digital Domain”).

Music scenes in Chicago, Southern California, Dublin, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Istanbul get similar close-up treatment.

Not only do Museyon Guides, which include three volumes of Film + Travel and the new Art + Travel, take the Afarish approach of tapping local experts to take readers on “a far-reaching, accessible, and inventive journey into the things they love,” but, like Sounds, they get inside the local culture through a mix of text, photos, time lines, maps, and annotated discographies.

Bringing the synchronicity full circle, at Museyon’s New York City launch celebration for Music + Travel, the special guests will include Beijing avant-rock stars Zhang Shouwang (Carsick Cars and White) and Xiao He. The party takes place from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., Wed., Nov. 4, at Von, 3 Bleecker St. Admission is by RSVP only, but you can find the open invitation on Museyon’s blog. Of course you can become a Museyon Facebook fan and follow Museyon on Twitter.

Related posts:

• Listen to the sounds of Beijing rock
• Imogen Heap spins the globe and scores a hit
• Singing in the Sahara with Tinariwen

By Derk Richardson  October 13th, 2009 12:20 pm  |  Comments (2)

The October 13 U.S. release of Tinariwen’s Imidiwan: Companions, an hour-long CD packaged with a 30-minute DVD, marks a homecoming for the African desert blues band. In more ways than one.

Photo by Thomas Dorn.

Since 2001, when The Radio Tisdas Sessions brought Tinariwen to the attention of Western world music fans, the troupe of guitarists and singers has ranged far from its Saharan roots, traveling the globe and performing in venues as varied as the San Francisco Jazz Festival and a castle in Ireland, where the band opened for the Rolling Stones and played to an audience of 65,000.

Fans of West African guitar, especially the Delta blues–echoing riffs of the late Ali Farka Toure and his rising-star son Vieux Farka Toure, get their fix six times over from this string-bending ensemble.

Plus, Tinariwen, hailing from the nomadic Tuareg tribal culture, comes with a compelling 30-year back story rife with tales of exile, refugee camps in Libya, rebellion in northern Mali, sponsorship by the French band Lo’Jo, an appearance at the first Festival in the Desert outside Timbuktu, and much more.

Two polished studio CDs, 2004’s Amassakoul and 2007’s Aman Iman, enhanced Tinariwen’s reputation. But those productions slightly smoothed out the splintery grain of the band’s music. The difference on the new CD is subtle, but recorded in and around the band’s hometown, Tessalit, in the mountains of northeastern Mali, Imidiwan: Companions (World Village) is a stronger, edgier representation of Tinariwen’s music.

“We didn’t know what we were doing when we started,” Tinariwen cofounder, songwriter, and guitarist Ibrahim Ag Alhabig told UK journalist David Hutcheon for a feature in the August 2009 issue of Mojo. “We didn’t understand the [recording] process, we couldn’t take control. Sometimes, on Amassakoul and Aman Iman, we didn’t recognize ourselves so much.”

Continuing its return to roots, Tinariwen has scheduled appearances at four desert festivals in Africa: three in Mali—the Camel Fair in Tessalit, Dec. 29–Jan. 1; the Essouk Festival, Jan. 2–4; and the Festival in the Desert, Jan. 7–9—and one in Algeria, in Tamanrasset, the unofficial capital of the Tourareg people, Jan. 14–17, where Tinariwen has not played for nearly 30 years.

Watch: Tinariwen on YouTube from the Imidiwan: Companions DVD

By Derk Richardson  September 24th, 2009 8:00 am  |  Comments (0)

Though Irishman Jonathan Swift praised the luscious mollusks in poetry, oysters might not seem likely cornerstones of Celtic cuisine—until you’re in Ireland eating them with a slice of brown bread and a pint of stout. For 55 years, Galwegians, living close to Ireland’s west-coast fishing beds, have celebrated the opening of oyster season at the Galway International Oyster Festival, a four-day indulgence in all things oyster. September 24-27, you can cheer the shuckers during the international oyster-shelling contest, and sample chowders and raw oysters all day long. Join the locals at the opening-night party, afternoon tastings, and the Saturday-night gala ball and banquet.

Check out the oyster shucking and slurping action in this Fresh From the Sea episode on Galway.

By Derk Richardson  September 14th, 2009 1:51 pm  |  Comments (2)

Heap spun the globe before recording Ellipse.

Imogen Heap’s albums don’t sound like “world music.” They don’t obviously tap tribal rhythms or incorporate traditional ethnic instruments. But the British pop artist took a page from Afar (unwittingly, I’m sure) when seeking songwriting inspiration for her new CD.

Tapping the same impulse that drives Afar’s Spin the Globe department, which sends a writer on a spontaneous journey at a moment’s notice, Heap cast her muse to the wind before recording Ellipse, recently released by RCA and already a top 5 hit in the U.S.

“I didn’t want to be in London, where I’d be doing my washing,” she told the Wall Street Journal’s Jim Fusilli.  “I got my laptop, went to Google Earth and spun.” Her spin took her to Hawaii, Japan, Australia, China, and Thailand, and provided fodder for a dozen compositions.

Fusilli (@wsjrock on Twitter) compares Heap’s “smart, textured modern pop” to that of Kate Bush and Annie Lennox. Ellipse certainly won’t make you think of Oumou Sangare or Asha Bhosle.

But the album is global in its own right, full of geographically untethered soundscapes that blend acoustic guitars, piano, and electronics plus found sounds from Heap’s family house in Sussex, England.

An active Twitterer with more than a million followers, Heap told Fusilli, travel “put my brain in an interesting space.” That’s what happens when you spin the globe.

By Derk Richardson  August 31st, 2009 8:37 am  |  Comments (0)

Os Mutantes, the Brazilian band that psychedelicized Tropicalia in the 1960s, is back with its first studio album in 35 years.

Sergio Dias Baptista fronts the steaming Os Mutantes

That’s great news for fans of all kinds of music–bossa nova, samba, acid rock, freak-folk, prog–although in the fractured Os Mutantes approach, those styles and more get chopped up and reassembled in a frenzied collage.

For the new CD, Haih or Amortecedor, co-founder and long-time leader Sergio Luis Baptista assembled a new lineup and brought in Tropicalia “golden age” peers Tom Ze and Jorge Ben as songwriting collaborators. The result is a mash up of electric and acoustic guitars, psychedelic keyboards and effects, boisterous horns and reeds, sawing strings, rock drums and Latin percussion, found sounds, and alternately sensitive, hysterical, and comic vocals. A movie pitch would read: hilarity ensues.

Os Mutantes was once a best-kept-secret among alt-rock and acid-folk musicians (Kurt Cobain, Flaming Lips, Devendra Banhart, Beck) and savvy scavengers of world music: David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label issued a crucial compilation, Everything Is Possible! The Best of Os Mutantes, in 1999.

Now these musical mutants are poised for a broader international breakthrough. The band launched a U.S. tour on August 28, and Haih or Amortecedor, issued by the high-profile indie label ANTI-, arrives in stores September 1.

Download an MP3 of “Anagrama,” from Haih or Amortecedor, from Stereogum.

Watch Os Mutantes perform “Virginia” in London from 2006:

By Derk Richardson  August 17th, 2009 1:28 pm  |  Comments (0)

If the all the 40th anniversary hoopla left you with a Woodstock hangover, “Global Hit” has a surefire antidote: the Guca Festival, an annual trumpet blowout that takes over the Serbian town of Guca every August.

“Global Hit” is the music segment of PRI’s weekday radio news magazine, The World. Its recent Guca story is quick-hit coverage with boisterous videos, including a live performance of “Alkohol” by Serbian superstar Goran Bregovic.

For a deeper profile of singer-songwriter Bregovic, and more on the Guca fest, check out the interview Steve Hochman posted last June in his Around the World column at Spinner.com.

What under-the-radar international festivals have rocked your world? Let us know in the comments.