What the What?

Jimmy Cliffmore photos

What the what? Can it really be the beginning of December?  I feel like I just blinked and all of the sudden, here we are. And with that, here we are discussing this week's World Music Show (12/1). Like all the many parts that make up a year--the seasons, the highs and lows of life--this week's show will be somewhat in the same vein, which means basically a mix-up of genres and styles. In fact, to beat this comparison a tad longer, the show may be little like one long run-on sentence, ala a Jack Kerouac novel. 

So let's begin at the beginning. Open scene, hour one, first set. In this set we'll hear from the likes of Tom Ze, who, along with Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, founded Brazil's Tropicalismo movement. And what a great movement this was, too. It was a renaissance of art, film, writing and music. Ze's music is acousticly quirky and even magical. Piggy-backing on Ze will be another track of a fun CD called Rhythms Del Mundo: Cuba, which takes popular songs by some well known artists and adds a Cuban beat to them. Plus, the folks behind this grouping, Artists Project Earth (APE), did it for a good cause--to help places recover after natural disasters. Mixed in this chunk too will be some actual Cuban music from the band San Francisco Tiene Su Propio Son.

To keep the Latin theme or run-on sound sentence theme going, we'll stay in the land of Latin beats a little longer. We'll hear another track from the latest CD by Ecudorian/New Yorker Eljuri, as well as a couple of tracks from the Brazilian songstress Ceu and some upbeat Tropical Discotheque music. 

We'll turn the page on the beats and move to some French music, mostly 60s style. We'll hear from famed actress Brigitte Bardot, who was actually quite the singer. Plus, we'll hear from the singer Monty, as well some tunes in the Ye-Ye style, which is all-girl pop at its best. One tune will be from Charlotte Leslie and another from France Gall. And we'll close this set with a tune from the great, huge, multi-talented band Pink Martini. 

Closing out the first hour will be tunes from The Pogues and the Chieftains--a sort of yin and yang of Irish music. And in hour the wobbly jobbly jumble of musical styles continues. We'll start off with Karsh Kale with some Indian Tabla Beat music then morph into some Brazilian rock and pop featuring Seu Jorge and the band Almaz. Piggy-backing on them will be a couple of tracks from a David Byrne/Fatboy Slim CD called "Here Lies Love," which is about the life of Imelda Marcos. One of the tracks we'll hear features B-52's songstress Kate Pierson and another song that features Sharon Jones, who normally swings with the Dap Kings. 

From there, the tables will tuen to some classic Ska music by Monkey Spanner, who do the original version of "Pressure Drop," and by The Paragons, who do the orginal version of "The Tide is High" (the cover was later done by Blondie). We'll also smush some English Beat tunes in this set, too, with the songs "Rough Rider" and "Jackpot." 

To close out the show, we'll transission from Ska to Reggae (I know, not a far leap) to hear more new music from the legendary Jimmy Cliff followed by some Stephen Marley and a track from the Marley family when they were in Ziggy Marley & the Melody Makers. 

Sounds like a good, mixed-up sort of show, right? It will be. The World Music Show aires Saturday nights at 10pm on WCVE Public Radio, 88.9FM or online at this website. You can also follow my updatges via Twitter, @wcveworldmusic.