Description:
The Rough Guide to World Music is a magnificent book, capable of infinite interpretation. So how on earth does this CD, offered as a "taster" for Volume Two, manage to be such a travesty? It's not merely that some of its allegedly famous musicians don't figure in the book, nor that it ignores great stretches of the American and Asian musical maps. Its offence is this: while the book reflects a serious attempt to grasp music in all its forms, this record settles too often for homogenised pap. We get four or five ace tracks: Ruben Gonzalez, an acceptably nifty remix of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, some lovely Christian reggae
The Rough Guide to World Music is a magnificent book, capable of infinite interpretation. So how on earth does this CD, offered as a "taster" for Volume Two, manage to be such a travesty? It's not merely that some of its allegedly famous musicians don't figure in the book, nor that it ignores great stretches of the American and Asian musical maps. Its offence is this: while the book reflects a serious attempt to grasp music in all its forms, this record settles too often for homogenised pap. We get four or five ace tracks: Ruben Gonzalez, an acceptably nifty remix of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, some lovely Christian reggae from Vivian Jackson, and a gloriously untampered-with excerpt from sarod-king Ali Akbar Khan; that Aboriginal gadfly Archie Roach's song to his dead brother may come clad in country and Western garb, but it's still a cry of personal and political pain. But we also get Bollywood schmaltz, club treatment for Uzbek singers and South Seas choirs, and soupy orchestral Navajo. Plus a bland liner note which manages to tell us the "story" of the long-exiled Chilean protest-group Inti-Illimani, without one mention of politics. --Michael Church
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Manufacturer: World Music Network
Release date: 31 July 2000
Number of discs: 1
EAN: 0605633104424 UPC: 605633104424
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