This is an album full of deeply felt, wonderfully empathetic performances rooted in tradition but scoured of sentimentality. Doveman), better known as a colleague of Antony and the Johnsons, The National, Nico Muhly and Sam Amidon. The band is rounded out by two Americans, the masterly guitarist Dennis Cahill and, perhaps surprisingly, pianist Thomas Bartlett (a.k.a. It includes three Irish artists: the superb singer Iarla Ó Lionaird (who grew up as a traditional sean-nós vocalist but is also a veteran of the experimental Afro-Celt Sound System), the legendary fiddler Martin Hayes and the younger player Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, who plays a 10-stringed violin that he calls a hardanger d'amore, with its five playing strings and five drone-like sympathetic strings. Featuring an unusual lineup of singer, two fiddles, guitar and piano, The Gloaming is by any measure an all-star ensemble of Irish music.
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The lesson is that ancient, unamplified music can be just as fresh, exciting and of the now as something written last week.īands are too often hyped as supergroups, but The Gloaming is the real deal - and one that breaks free of the traditional boundaries of their genre. There are sonic surprises on this nearly eponymous album, too: Take for example the 100-year-old melody from Gambia, "Hamadoun Toure," which sounds as if it could have been written this year. Though Sidiki also has a burgeoning career as a hip-hop producer, he's also a profoundly gifted kora player - and this duet album is full of exquisitely filigreed interplay between their generations. The enormous political troubles plaguing Mali over the last couple of years urged the elder artist toward creating a joyous, music- and life-affirming project with his 23-year-old son, Sidiki.
But he is also the carrier of an astounding tradition that stretches back, according to family lore, more than 70 generations. Father Toumani has created an amazing array of globe-spanning projects, including albums with Taj Mahal and free jazz trombonist Roswell Rudd as well as a collaboration with Björk. They both play a magical and totally mesmerizing 21-string, plucked, bridged harp instrument called the kora. Many American musicians and fans have come to appreciate the deep West African roots of the blues, but very few music lineages can come anywhere close to that of these father-and-son griot artists from Mali. And believe me: There's more where these came from. But if using the category of "world music," or "global music" or "international music" allows some tiny portion of stunningly good projects to get onto the radar of American music fans, then that's reason enough to put these wildly diverse, joyfully gorgeous albums together. All music is rooted in a particular time and place, and in some culture or other. Here's what I have to say: All music is "world" music. That's my starting point for making this annual list of 10 must-listen albums, as problematic as the term "world music" continues to be. And only a tiny portion of it - even the very best produced each year - gets the attention of American audiences. This music takes you outside your own surroundings and gives you a different perspective. There are songs to dance wildly to and albums to crawl inside of. So, so much stunningly beautiful music, with amazing insights and great beats, is being made all around the globe.
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