World Music, Vol. III - Yat Kha

Shown above is a live version of one of my favourite songs, Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart", performed by the Tuvan folk/rock/electro/post punk band band Yat Kha, in a very unique and wonderful way featuring the distinctive Kargyraa style throat singing of vocalist Albert Kuvezin.

Here's the studio version:

Great stuff, from halfway around the world!

Paul Kimball

World Music, Vol. II - Claire Prendergast

Irish alternative folk singer-songwriter Claire Prendergast is my latest random YouTube discovery, part of a process where I'll input a string of words in the YouTube search engine, like "ukelele" and "folk", or "accordion" and "radiohead", and see what pops up.

Claire does some very charming cover versions of songs by artists such as Radiohead and A-ha, which I quite like, but it's her original material that really captured my attention...  after all, how can you not like a young Irish folk singer who writes songs about "zombies, polar bears and shovels"?

Paul Kimball

World Music, Vol. I

Corporatized pop music has become so pervasive, to the point where it now exists as a sort of soundtrack for our lives, that we rarely if ever are exposed to music from other genres, or from the rest of the world. Accordingly, I've decided that every now and then I'll be posting a video of some of that "other" music, like this wonderful and haunting piece on the morin khuur, a traditional instrument of the Mongol people, just to remind myself, if no-one else, that there is more to music, and culture, than the "pop tart" du jour.

Paul Kimball