Originally released in 1971, Ame Debout was Catherine Ribeiro's third album and the first that she recorded for the Philips label. Ribeiro's often harsh voice evokes both pain and hope, while the group les Alpes backs her with an odd sort of progressive cosmic folk, with spacy guitar and keyboards and a pulsing bongo beat on some tracks. They turn up the energy on the spirited title track that opens the record, while "Diborowska" mellows out a bit, a flowing French neo-folk song that sounds similar to Brigitte Fontaine, but with a darker melancholic sound because of Ribeiro's deeper voice. Ribeiro sits out the next three tracks to let the group show its stuff. On "Aria Populaire," Ribeiro sings wordlessly over a strumming guitar, a simple but effective piece. "Kleenex, le Drap de Lit et l'Etendard" is the slowest piece on the record, as Ribeiro croons over a droning organ dirge, reminiscent of some of Nico's early stuff. "Dingues" ends the record with Ribeiro bouncing words around a steady and rollicking acoustic guitar lick for another odd dark folk melody in the Fontaine vein.

Her fourth album, Paix, is one of Catherine Ribeiro's more intense recordings. The band is less folkish on this outing and veering more into space rock, with a sound that is even more cosmic, especially on the 15-minute title track as well as the 24-minute "'Un Jour la Mort" that fills side two. Both tracks contain long instrumental passages with multi-layered keyboard and guitar soundscapes over pulsing percussion, as well as some of Ribeiro's more gutsy and emotional singing (especially on "Paix," where at some places she is practically screaming). "Jusqu'a Ce Que la Force" is a short moody piece, while "Roc Alpin," on the other hand, is joyful, with an upbeat rhythm and playful melody that Ribeiro vocalizes wordlessly. Her second album, simply titled N. 2, is just as good but almost impossible to track down, so Paix is probably the best place to start.

Released a year after Harmonium's debut album, Si On Avait Besoin d'une Cinquième Saison (If We Needed a Fifth Season) marked an impressive departure from the guitar trio folk-pop the band first played in cabarets. The first difference is the addition of two new members, reedist/flutist Pierre Daigneault and keyboardist Serge Locat (still no drummer). Second, the album is structured on a concept revolving around seasons, the first four pieces representing each one of them. Third, the fifth piece (or season) is a 17-minute epic suite. This is not folk-rock anymore, but a very personal form of progressive rock rooted in folk (the closest comparison would be early Strawbs). Special care has been put into the arrangements; the song "Dixie," a spirited summer tune, features dozens of instruments coming in and out, topped by Locat's grand piano solo (and the only apparition of percussion on the whole album, a hi-hat hit and a bass drum kick). Songs have gained in length and complexity, the use of Ondes-Martenot waves (courtesy of prog rock band Etcetera's Marie Bernard), mellotron, piano, and flute add another dimension to band's sound and point toward what L'Heptade would be. At the same time, acoustic guitars still provide the backbone of the songs -- but they are not easy-to-learn campfire tunes anymore. Vocalist Judy Richard guests on the beautiful "Histoires Sans Paroles" ("Stories Without Words"), one of Québec's finest progressive rock moments, once again without a single percussion sound. Between the folk simplicity of Harmonium and the symphonic grandeur of L'Heptade, Si On Avait Besoin d'une Cinquième Saison gave the band its unique voice. This remains one of the best transitional albums ever recorded and an essential item in Québec's music history.

Princess Nicotine: Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar chronicles the Burmese portion of ethnomusicologist Alan Bishop's travels through Indonesia and Southeast Asia. The influence of Western pop music on these songs is undeniable, but the artists integrate it in such a bizarre fashion that the end results are like discovering a new species of animal. Similar in their arrangements and high vocal timbre to the recordings that grew out of India's "Bollywood" scene, the 12 selections marry everything from fuzzy guitar rock, soulful piano, and Baroque pop string sections to the tabla-infused folk music of Southeast Asia with effortless dexterity and immeasurable charm, resulting in a collection of songs that world music aficionados and lovers of all things strange and quirky will covet as their own.

Situated between Afghanistan, India and Iran, the collision of cultural influences in Pakistan gave birth to music that was, and still is, unlike anything heard anywhere else on the planet. By the late 1960s, previous restrictions on musical expression began to soften and bands that were playing American and British pop covers became popular in Karachi’s burgeoning night club scene and at private dance parties. Long hair came into fashion among young men and hashish became the popular drug of choice on college campuses across Pakistan. Soon, hippies from both North America and Europe began flocking to Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar. Very few of the bands that formed during this time actually got to record. Like their neighbors in India, the Pakistani record industry was more focused on releasing 'filmi' music, which had just started to incorporate the electric guitar and electric sitar.

Pakistan’s musical revolution ended in June 1977 after a coup d’état and the establishment of a pure Islamic state governed by Sharia law. This marked the end of the “Swinging ‘70s” in Pakistan as night clubs and alcohol were banned throughout the country. Television and cinema, as well as popular music, were now subjected to government censorship. After the clamp down, many Pakistani musicians left the country and moved to America, Canada and England. The audio quality here is top notch, sourced straight from the original EMI Pakistan masters

The late Omar Khorshid remains an iconic legend of the Arab world, though he’s received criminally little international acclaim. Born in Cairo in 1945, the glittering age of Egypt's cultural reinvention, Khorshid was soon to become one of its luminaries and most well-known, if short-lived, voices. He is regarded as the greatest guitarist the Arab world has ever known. By the mid 60s Khorshid was established with his group Le Petit Chats, an Egyptian beat group modeled after the prevailing influence of Elvis and the Beatles. It was at this time that one of the reigning figures of contemporary Arabic music, Abdel Halim Hafez, asked Omar Khorshid to join his orchestra. With Baligh Hamdi composing, Hafez with Khorshid in place would create some of the most innovative modern sounds in the Arabic musical canon.

Time with the Hafez orchestra offered Khorshid instant fame, and it wasn’t long before he was asked to play with the queen of Arab music, the voice of Egypt herself -Oum Kalthoum. Over the next few years Khorshid became a well-established and integral part of the Arab musical landscape. He was featured heavily in live concerts, national TV and radio and studio recordings, playing for the leading artists of the day. The guitar had now become an essential ingredient in the Oriental orchestra.

Khorshid began recording albums under his own name for the prestigious Lebanese record labels Voice Of The Orient and Voice Of Lebanon. Working with visionary engineer Nabil Moumtaz at Polysound studios in Beirut, Khorshid would take his music into some of the most progressive musical terrain of its time. The tracks included here in this retrospective are from the prolific span of Khorshid’s career in Beirut from 1973 to 1977. The venerable Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish best encapsulated this time in Lebanon: “unfortunately, it was paradise”.

Khorshid’s prolific instrumental music enjoyed recognition that transcended class and status during the brief period he shone. It’s a testament to his immense talent and some of the finest guitar music the world has ever heard.

For centuries, the Jemaa El Fna (Rendezvous of the Dead) has remained the stage for one of the most spectacular social forums on the planet. By day, this central square in the city of Marrakesh, one of Morocco's great imperial cities, fosters a kaleidoscope of entertainment for its local inhabitants; storytellers, acrobats, magicians and snake charmers all create intriguing displays of bewitching spectacle. As the sun sets, the evening grows frantic with the pulse of the crowd; it is then that the night musicians set up. Free from the restrictions and expectations of light entertainment for a tourist crowd, these musicians manifest ecstatic performances that animate the audience and players alike. The groups represented on this album; Troupe Majidi, Amal Saha, and Mustapha Mahjoub, are working and carrying the torch of their musical heroes nightly in the square. These songs come from the repertoire of Morocco's greatest musical exports: Nass El Ghiwane, Lemchaheb, Jil Jilala, Larssad and many others from the Chaabi (Moroccan popular music) canon and are given a raw, emotional and fiery interpretation. Instruments are powered by car batteries and blown out through megaphone speakers. These recordings represent a rare opportunity to hear this music at such close proximity taking in all the power and passion of the performances. The raw fidelity captures an unflinching immersion of what is simply some of the greatest street music on earth.

There is a legend in Burma stating that swarms of male dragonflies gather to join in choruses of high-pitched tones to court their mates. The ones that don’t succeed in mating eventually scream so loud that their chests explode and they drop dead to the ground. These recordings are a tribute to this legend. Droning cicadas, dragonflies and other insects display their charm as masters of the High Frequency Airwaves recorded live and unprocessed by Tucker Martine in the lush settings of Laos, Thailand, and Burma. Enter the supernatural world where Entomology and Electronica converge in a tropical hallucination of alien sound. Anyone who’s ever wondered if these strange symphonies could be recorded or preserved AS precisely as they sound in the field need look no further! Martine has done it and you will be transported to the exact experience one would encounter in these mysterious lowlands.

It's no accident that the phoenix is an exalted moral, mythical, and figurative symbol in Iran. Like the phoenix, Iranian culture is in constant flux and, at times, elusive, with its existential wavering and blurred panoramas. Most of contemporary Iran's artistic and creative leanings, its grapples with history and identity, are loosely and mystically conjoined and contested in memory. Iran is marked by the complex interplay of diverse constituencies, philosophies, and influences: ethnic, religious, political, geopolitical and historical. The glorification of pre-Islamic antiquity (in search of authentication) marked the socio-cultural attitude of a bygone era and is witnessing revival in the present day. The discordant reality of eastern traditions complicated by the rampant confusions of modernity has become a norm in Persian dialogue, not to mention revolution, exile, and diaspora. Like many other countries, the Sixties and Seventies were a time of tumult in Iran, bringing growth (via petrodollars) and freedom (under the banner of socioeconomic development) while exacerbating inequalities within the country. The music and voices that blossomed during those decades exemplify the turbulence and excitement of the age. It is worth recognizing these `left out' and `lost' artists individually and as a group in the global happenings of 60s/70s psych, rock and folk, while exploring their influence and relevance to the present day. Is it possible that there is a genus of delectable sounds and fetching images that almost exclusively reside in the elbowroom of memory and nostalgic `yesteryear' storytelling? Little consideration has been given to the correlation of these sounds and stories within the universal psychedelic phenomena: parallel to the shared stylistics of British and American players, and the radical politicking of their Turkish and Korean counterparts. This collection endeavors to re-contextualize these songs from the realm of reminiscence, nostalgia, and memory into a specific and accessible narrative to share and relate within the universal musical gamut. It is for aficionados, the curious, and collectors alike. We hope that Iranians around the world will rediscover these songs. This collection is, in some sense, dedicated to a generation in self-imposed mental exile, due to years of war and catastrophe; decades of lies and bombs; a fundamentalist theocracy of reformist shams; addiction; isolation and alienation; unemployment, and inflation. These are voices and stories that may again prove relevant to a psychologically damaged and spiritually corrupt society, a society whose discontents recall the latter years of the Shah's rule. The recordings excavated here are highly sexual musings, voluble love songs, and simple folk tunes. In many of these songs, there are subtle voices of political protest. Here is a personal best, a handful of artists and diversely stylized songs, presented on Finders Keepers.

Group Inerane is the now sound of the Tuareg Guitar Revolution sweeping across the Sahara Desert and inspired by the rebel musicians that started this music as a political weapon used to communicate from the Libyan Refugee camps in the 1980s and 1990s. Spearheaded by the enigmatic guitar hero Bibi Ahmed, Group Inerane has been together for several years and carries the rich tradition of Tamachek guitar songs for another generation. These ten tracks are a combination of amplified roots rock, blues, and folk in the local Tuareg styles at times entering into full-on electric guitar psychedelia. This music is performed with two electric guitars, a drum kit and a chorus of vocalists.

This is Rai Music from Algeria as you've not heard it before. In the early 1970's, a new group of singers and musicians were operating on the northwest coast and what they pioneered was a sound that eventually reached worldwide status by the end of the decade, however their names are relatively unknown to this day outside Algeria. This crucial and defining period of the development of Rai is criminally ignored and overlooked by Algerian music historians and Raï's fans. Due to censorship and government controlled music diffusion, this scene and lyrical style was forced underground and banned from broadcasts yet slowly built a small following around the seaside cabarets of Wahran (Oran). The early 1970's witnessed the rise of artists such as Groupe El Azhar ("The Flowers" group) and Messaoud Bellemou, who can comfortably be considered the godfather of the modern Raï's sound. His group, L'Orchestre Bellemou, rewrote a heritage of centuries by using modern instruments and especially the trumpet which became, during the 1970's, the backbone of the Wahrani genre. Reinterpreting the gasba melodies on trumpet, Bellemou backed singers such as Boutaiba Sghir & Sheikh Benfissa who carried on the lyrical tradition of their forefathers singing about daily preoccupations and problems as well as love affairs, alcohol, or simply owning an automobile! Toward the late 1970's, Cheb Zergui brought a newer ingredient: an electric guitar with a wah wah pedal. Thankfully, the late 1960's saw the development of vinyl pressing in Algeria. This new industry allowed many small artists including the Wahrani "scene" to record and release singles documenting their repertoire.

The long-awaited foray into the Vietnamese Rock, Pop and Soul sound of the late 1960s and early 1970s is finally here. Saigon Rock and Soul delivers the goods International retro collectors have been searching for in vain for many years - and it delivers beyond belief. Every song is a mini-masterpiece be it heavy acid rock psychedelia, horn and guitar drenched funk grooves, or gripping soul ballads reflective of life during wartime.
The tracks that form this collection cut a window into a rich musical Vietnamese music scene that has long been obscured, and for the most part, forgotten. As the scope of electrified Vietnamese music from the 1960s and 1970s begins to be revealed, it becomes evident that this was among the heaviest and most eclectic musical scenes of South East Asia at the time. These songs tell of war, love and what war does to love. All of them were recorded in makeshift studios and even US army facilities while the Vietnam War raged – and were issued by a handful of Saigon record companies on vinyl 45s and reel or cassette tapes.
Westernized forms of music in Vietnam had appeared during the latter nineteenth century, and especially during the early 20th century, under the influence of the French colonizers. Tan Nhac (modern music) always incorporated both domestic and international sounds, and continued to develop alongside Western musical trends.
During the 1960s and 1970s, pulp ballads were being recorded by leading crooners of the time who alternated between modern and traditional forms of regional music. When the electric guitar hit the streets of Saigon, Vietnamese renditions of contemporary instrumental trends such as surf rock, beat and twist soon emerged, followed by some pretty deep soul sounds inspired by Motown radio hits as well as funk grooves brought on by James Brown and his contemporaries.
By the mid-1960s, Vietnam had been ravaged by war for years. American G.I.s had become a standard fixture in Saigon, as did many of the cultural artifacts they brought with them. This certainly included the music. The sounds of rock and roll dominated the radio waves, and Saigon nightclubs were teeming with new sounds. Musically, the Shadows and the Ventures soon gave way to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones as an enthusiastic set of young Vietnamese rockers signed on to the lifestyle, always eager to hear the latest musical trends the G.I.s would bring in on LP or tape. This era saw the birth of a vibrant rock scene yet rock music and anything that came close was commonly referred to as ‘soul’ in the Vietnamese genre-listings.
Like many cultures in Asia, Vietnamese music is recorded, marketed, listened to and disposed of in a relatively quick manner. This level of advanced ephemera ensures a degree of difficulty when trying to unearth and discover cultural histories. Literally, most of the music heard here has been brought back from the dead. Artists featured include some of Vietnam’s most popular at the time: Elvis Phuong, Hung Cuong, Mai Lei Huyen, Le Thu, Thai Thanh, Giao Linh, Mai Lei Huyen and the CBC Band

Sublime Frequencies is pleased to present the 2nd volume of Northeast Syrian Dabke music from legendary vocalist Omar Souleyman and his group. This CD was compiled by Mark Gergis to coincide with the Sublime Frequencies UK/European tour in May and June of 2009 featuring live performances by Omar Souleyman. Culled from dozens of cassettes recorded in Syria from 1999-2008, the music here is an extension of Omar’s “Highway to Hassake” release touching on some previously unheard angles. Their trademark serpentine synthesizers, electrified bouzok (traditional stringed instrument) and driving rhythms forge a severe form of “new wave dabke” with a live energy and integrity that captures the essence of the Syrian Northeast; one of a kind Syrian Dabke party tunes, regional Atabat-styled crooners, and unbelievable Iraqi party jams

Dara Puspita (Flower Girls) was arguably the world’s greatest all-female garage rock band. The reason you’ve probably never heard of them was that they came from Indonesia where they were extremely popular during the 1960s. Their career spanned from 1965 until 1973 including 3 years (1969-1971) living and touring in Europe. The four albums recorded by the original members between 1966 and 1968 (the material represented on this CD) is one of the great chapters of 1960s popular music history never to be reissued, let alone recognized beyond a few tuned-in souls and adventurous record collectors in the Western world. Twenty-six of their most spectacular tracks (from the albums Jang Pertama, Special Edition, Green Green Grass, and A-Go-Go) are now finally available to hear in this essential release.

Dara Puspita formed in their hometown of Surabaya in 1964. After relocating to Jakarta, the group began to create quite a stir with their wild stage shows. Their local performances were attended by teenagers grooving to the band’s raw garage rock sound. The first all-female Indonesian pop group that could play their instruments and sing, Dara Puspita also attracted the attention of Indonesian president Sukarno who labeled Western rock music “a form of mental disease”. In 1965 (an eventful and critical year for the group), the girls endured a month long interrogation by the government for performing “outlawed” rock and roll music, became the house band in a Bangkok nightclub for three months, and were introduced to Dick Tamimi of Mesra records, the man who would launch their recording career. The tracks featured in this compilation were recorded at the height of Dara Puspita’s popularity during the immediate post-communist era of General Suharto’s new order; a time when Indonesia’s musicians and artists were finally capable of launching their own creative renaissance.

This collection is guaranteed to appeal to all fans of the beat a-go-go era of the mid-late 1960s and is a significant missing piece of the global pop music history puzzle. Every single track is a classic, the sound quality is superb, and it should only take one listen to become completely addicted to and charmed by this legendary Indonesian group. Tri-fold Digipack CD with 20 page booklet featuring rare & unseen photos provided by Dara Puspita for this specific reissue project and extensive liner notes of the band’s phenomenal history by Alan Bishop.