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 April Kilcrease  October 8th, 2009 5:09 pm  |  Comments (2)

Soft, creamy, sweet, there’s something so comforting about rice pudding. According to Afar writer Jeff Koehler, the milky dessert “is one of the few universal rice dishes around the entire Mediterranean.” In his latest cookbook, Rice Pasta Couscous, Koehler offers three regional variations on the delicious dish.

The oven-baked rice pudding with mastic (sakızlı fırın sütlaç) is inspired by his first trip to Istanbul in 1994. “The weather was cold and wet,” he writes. “Much of my time was spent in cafes and muhallebici, ‘dairy bars’ specializing in milky puddings. Creamy, baked rice pudding was a discovery for me, especially when flavored with mastic. Crushed tears of mastic give a piney flavor to the pudding and a chewier consistency.”

His creamy vanilla-scented rice pudding (rizogalo) is adapted from a Greek family recipe that has been “passed from mother to daughter for generations.”

He also includes a spiced rice-flour pudding (moghli) from Lebanon, where “families prepare this caraway-and-anise-laden rice-flour pudding for guests after the birth of a baby.”

Rice pudding (arroz con leche) is a favorite in Koehler’s Barcelona home. As he shares in his article “Absorbing Rice,” “when the weather cools, my girls start asking for…arroz con leche. These are the days when…the flat fills with the aroma of rice simmering in milk with sugar, cinnamon, and citrus peels. To me that smell announces autumn.” To make the traditional treat, follow the arroz con leche recipe at the bottom of his story.

What foods say autumn to you?

By Julia Cosgrove  September 17th, 2009 10:12 am  |  Comments (1)

I have a soft spot for people who think outside the box. Emily Pilloton is one such person. She wants designers to make practical tools that help the world. As the founder and executive director of Project H Design, a humanitarian non-profit with nine chapters around the world, Emily was recently awarded a $15,000 Adobe Foundation grant to support work on her new book Design Revolution: 100 Products That Empower People. Project H tackles such social and environmental issues as access to water, global health, and education—all on a manageable, local scale. One of Emily’s first projects involved redesigning the hippo roller, an innovative water transport system, which she then delivered to a community in Kgautswane, South Africa. For another initiative, she and her colleagues installed a “math playground” at the Kutamba School for AIDS Orphans in Uganda (shown here). Check out Emily and her many projects in this inspiring, short video from Adobe.

Photo courtesy of Project H Design.

By Julia Cosgrove  August 20th, 2009 8:30 am  |  Comments (0)

I Know How to Cook, translated from the French by Ginette Mathiot

Every country has one go-to cookbook that puts all others to shame. In France, that bible is Je Sais Cuisiner, or I Know How to Cook, first published in 1932, and passed down from generation to generation. There are 1,400 homey recipes included in this first American edition of the book, everything from such classics as coq au vin and cassoulet to such regional specialties as Provençale spaghetti and Breton navy beans.

Phaidon is the publishing house responsible for bringing I Know How to Cook to the States, and though the book doesn’t officially out until October, it’s worth pre-ordering for any Francophiles and foodies.