I love this collection of songs by Lili Boniche.

He is really one of my favorite singers and I like it because he’s able to have this incredible dexterity and creativity in bringing together so many different musical styles to create his own voice.

He’s a fantastic singer.

Originally published at NPR

World music DJ Betto Arcos returns to weekends on ”All Things Considered” to share what he’s been spinning on “Global Village,” the show he hosts on KPFK in Los Angeles. This week, Arcos brings some of his favorite new Cuban music. His picks include Pedrito Martinez’s convergence of Cuban and flamenco rumbas, an ancestral tale from The Creole Choir of Cuba, Tiempo Libre’s amalgam of jazz, funk, and R&B and Yunior Terry’s nod to salsa.

Originally published at NPR

Ibrahim Maalouf plays a four-valve trumpet — most just have three. The extra valve, attached to the button a trumpeter pushes down, allows the Lebanese musician to play quarter-tones — the notes between notes that characterize Arabic “makams.”

“The makams are scales and modes with quarter-tones and three quarter-tones intervals,” Maalouf says. “This is something that you cannot find in Occidental music.”

Maalouf credits his father, the renowned Lebanese classical trumpeter Nassim Maalouf, with the innovation.

“This trumpet that he invented is really pure genius. He invented the only Arabic instrument in which you blow, that allows you to play all modes, all scales, in all the tonalities,” Maalouf says. “This does not exist in Arabic music. It’s not only a trumpet that makes you play quarter-tones. He invented a way to blow in the instrument. He invented a new way to play the trumpet.”

Maalouf says there are many links between Arabic and Western music. He says when he’s playing jazz, he can incorporate Arabic scales thanks to one specific similarity.

“There’s this note that we actually call ‘the blue note’ and I believe it’s a heritage from African music,” Maalouf says. “Those notes that are right in the middle, between a note and another note, those are ‘blue notes’ that you bend with the lips. Those are quarter-tones. From these kinds of scales, I can switch to music that is very close to Arabic feelings.”

Ibrahim Maalouf’s latest project is his first devoted exclusively to jazz: a score he was commissioned to write for the 1926 silent film by French master René Clair, The Prey of the Wind. Maalouf’s inspiration was another trumpeter’s score for another French film: Miles Davis‘ music for the Louis Malle film Elevator to the Gallows.

“This music really, really has been probably one of my favorite musics for years,” Maalouf says. “So I used this opportunity to compose the music of a very, very old French movie of the ’20s, and I decided to compose something that would sound a little bit like the music of Miles on his movie.”

“So I used this opportunity to compose the music of a very, very old French movie of the ’20s, and I decided to compose something that would sound a little bit like the music of Miles on his movie.”

John Schneider, founding director of MicroFest, the country’s largest microtonal music festival, says Maalouf crosses the boundaries between jazz and Middle Eastern music elegantly.

“He’s using those seven notes in the scale but when it comes time for him to improvise, he strays off the path just a little bit — he’s breathing,” Schneider says. “It’s like spicing food in a particular way. So sure, we’ve all had chicken, but tandoori chicken is different from Mexican chicken or Chinese chicken, right? It’s still the same meat, but what you do with those spices make all the difference.

“It’s almost like an accent, too: an English accent, an American accent, a Southern accent,” Schneider adds. “The words we recognize, but how they’re presented, slightly different.

“The man obviously has Lebanese music, traditional music, in his ear. So when it comes time for him to ornament, he uses those strange, wonderful spices to get them an odd quarter-tone tinge and that gives you that flavor of the Middle East.”

Maalouf moved with his family to Paris when he was a small child. His father still lives there and, according to Maalouf, is not too keen on his son’s current career path.

“In some way, I think that he believes that I should have taken some other way,” Maalouf says. “Some other direction that would have been what he wanted me to do when I was young.”

He says his dad is not the only one. When he visits older musicians in Morocco or Cairo, he’s always confronted with the same reaction to his music.

“So I usually take my trumpet off my bag and I play him this very, very old kind [of] traditional improvisation,” Maalouf says. “And they start usually saying, ‘Oh this is what I prefer and this is what you need to do.’ And I say, ‘You know, I know how to do that and I love to do it. Today, I want to mix my music to the new world, to the new scene. I want to meet people who are discovering new colors — to participate, to create new music. I don’t want to remain in an old white and black postcard.’

“Then, after this discussion, they usually understand what I mean and they say, ‘You know what, you’re right. Don’t listen to your father. Do what you want.’”

Ibrahim Maalouf says he may not be playing or recording classical or traditional Arabic music, but he’s still holding on to the heritage he received from his father.

Tuesday’s Global Hit comes from the South American country of Uruguay, where percussionist Daniel ‘Tatita’ Marquez is working to get his country’s music better known around the globe.

Reporter Betto Arcos profiles Marquez and the Candombe drums that are an essential part of Uruguay’s music.

Cristina Pato was playing piano and the Gaita, the Galician bagpipe, back in Spain.

As a classically trained pianist, Cristina Pato can play Mozart to John Cage to The Beatles.

Now, she’s immersed in the jazz and world music scene in New York and focuses on playing the Galician bagpipe.

She says she’s found the freedom to play any kind of music on this instrument.

“Probably, for me right now, after almost eight years living in New York and working with musicians from all around the world, I feel more confident about taking my instrument out of its comfort zone,” Pato says. “I think I have an amazing instrument. I think we Galicians have an amazing instrument that is the Galician bagpipe, the Gaita.”

Originally published at NPR

World music DJ Betto Arcos returns to weekends on “All Things Considered” to share the music he’s been playing on “Global Village,” the show he hosts on KPFK in Los Angeles. This week, Arcos brings his favorite new tracks from Argentinean and Uruguayan artists.

From the spirit of the old style rooted in the bordellos of Buenos Aires to the Andean style known as huayno to an approach that weaves in orchestral and electronic elements, Arcos’ picks showcase the diverse landscape of tango.

Lara Bello grew up surrounded by Flamenco music and dance. Granada is one of the cradles of this emblematic Spanish tradition. As a teenager, Bello studied voice and violin at a conservatory. But before that she learned how to sing and dance Flamenco.

“Before I started as a musician I was a dancer,” Bello says. “I love very much to connect the sounds with the movements of the body. So I trained in flamenco and contemporary dance and Arabic dance because the Arabic culture there is very strong.”

Bello’s new album is called Primero Amarillo, Después Malva — First Yellow, Then Purple.

She says the title refers to the changing colors of springtime in Granada.

“The beginning of the springtime, the flowers are yellow, and with time, those flowers die and in purple ones appear in their place,” Bello says. “So that’s why I dedicated that title to the cycles of life.”

Bello says she used to see these colors on the road from her house to her flamenco teacher’s studio.

Bello’s Flamenco dance teacher was an American woman nicknamed “La Presy.” She moved from San Antonio, Texas, to Granada about 30 years ago to learn flamenco.

“And that means she came into a very, very strong community, very closed,” Bello says. “It’s not easy, even for people that are from Granada, which is a city where we all know a little bit about flamenco, even people that don’t play or are not musicians or dancers, they know about flamenco. And it’s difficult for us, so imagine for somebody who is from the other side of the ocean.”

La Presy became a well-respected figure in the flamenco world. She died in 2011. But Bello says she continues to be an important influence in her career. In fact, she dedicated her album to La Presy.

“So for all of us, all the students, she gave us a lot of power and also she taught us that your home is where the heart is,” Bello says. “It’s not a question about where you were born, or where you belong or the name of the city on your passport. It’s where your heart is.”

Bello moved to New York two and a half years ago. And she found a new home in the diverse community of musicians from Latin America.

“When I was living in Spain I didn’t know anything about Peruvian rhythms,” she says. “I started to work with them. I met great, not only musicians, but composers like Samuel Torres. And with two years in the city I wanted to put these strong roots into my music. And that’s how this CD has a little bit of rhythms and colors from Latin America, but also from New York.”

Originally published at NPR

DJ Betto Arcos returns to weekends on “All Things Considered” with more of the music he’s been spinning on “Global Village,” his world-music program on KPFK in Los Angeles.

This week, Arcos selects some of his favorite new music coming out of Spain. His picks include a guitarist inspired by baroque music, an all-female quartet with a flamenco flair, a ballad singer and a Galician bagpipe master. To hear his conversation with NPR’s Jacki Lyden, click the audio link on this page.

Originally published at NPR

With all that’s going on in the Middle East right now, it’s easy to forget that the Arab Spring began just two years ago in Tunisia.

Singer Emel Mathlouthi has been called “The Voice of the Tunisian Revolution.” A video of one of her songs went viral and became an anthem for protesters in her homeland during the December 2010 uprising. She released her debut album in the U.S. last year.

Mathlouthi grew up listening to an eclectic mix of music — from traditional Tunisian songs to her father’s record collection.

“He was listening to vinyl of European classical music and some jazz and blues, old jazz and old blues from America, like Mahalia Jackson and Jack Dupree,” Mathlouthi says.

Mathlouthi started performing when she was 15 and joined a band in college. But she says there was no way for a young independent musician, let alone a woman, to get heard in Tunisia.

“Because there were no structures, there was no help from the government for music like I was doing,” Mathlouthi says. “I couldn’t go on TV, I couldn’t go to the radio, so I couldn’t reach a larger audience.”

Mathlouthi didn’t help her chances of getting on government-controlled media when she started writing songs against the regime of then-President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. In 2008, she moved to France and began working on the songs for her first album.

‘Songs Are Eternal’

Mathlouthi says she was writing a lot of political songs like “Dhalem” (“Tyrant”), but nothing was happening in Tunisia.

“I was posting my songs on the social media, and I was trying to reach a larger audience, especially in Tunisia, so I can talk to them, and I can give them all my strength,” Mathlouthi says. “But I felt, from time to time, like everyone and every artist — I was desperate, and I was saying, so the dictatorship is growing and I am here, like, writing songs, and so what?”

Then, she remembered a poem by the Palestinian writer Mahmoud Darwish called “There Is on This Land What Is Worth Living.”

“I realize that that was the power,” Mathlouthi says. “The power is to write songs, because the songs are eternal; the melodies will be here like witnesses. But the dictatorship and the persons will go, and this is why I wrote this song.”

In the summer of 2007, at the iconic Place de la Bastille in Paris, where the French Revolution began, Mathlouthi sang “Kelmti Horra” (“My Word Is Free”) to an audience of tens of thousands. A video of the performance reached Tunisia and resonated with protesters in the streets.

“She has so much courage to sing that around that time,” says MC Rai, a 35-year-old Tunisian singer and composer based in San Francisco. “When the dictators in Tunisia, the old regime, were in the top of their power — and for her to even have the courage to sing that, when she was living still between France and Tunisia — I thought she really was a true artist, because that’s what the art is about.”

Four years later, Mathlouthi returned to the streets of Tunis to sing “Kelmti Horra” just hours before President Ben Ali fled the country.

‘A Love Of Freedom’

The last song on Mathlouthi’s album is called “Yezzi” (“Enough”). It begins with a simple folk melody and unfolds into three cinematic images. In the first part, Mathlouthi sampled sounds of the Arab Spring street protests. The second part includes the last speech by the deposed Tunisian president. And the third part begins with an announcement of the resignation of Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak.

The chorus says, “Freedom is in the street / Freedom is in the countryside / Not inside your house.”

“And I think it still can talk to Arab governments because we are not seeing so much changes, not really,” says Mathlouthi. “We made revolutions, but maybe we are welcoming a new dictator, so we don’t know.”

Still, Mathlouthi has hope for the region. In her song “The Road Is Long,” she sings: “My country stands above all tyrants and oppression / and despite the long road ahead / My heart will forever shelter / a love of freedom.”

Fans of Mexican-American singer and actress Jenni Rivera are in mourning.

The Mexican-American singer and actress died after her plane disappeared early Sunday morning.

Rivera was killed when the Learjet 25 went down in Nuevo Leon state.

She had just given a concert in Monterrey, Mexico.

Also on board were four members of her entourage and two pilots.

She was born in California in 1969 to Mexican parents, sold more than 15 million records of norteno and banda music.

She was a judge in the popular television program “La Voz,” Mexico’s version of “The Voice.”