“International” (Used 21 times)

Excavated Shellac is an incredible resource for rare international 78rpm recordings. With each post, shellac excavator Jonathan Ward takes great care to ensure that the transfer is as clean as possible. His blog posts always go the extra mile in placing the music within a larger cultural and historical context (on the side, JW is a professional writer and researcher).

With the motto "good music is best when it's shared", JW has done just that for upwards of 100 songs that might otherwise go unheard, and we're honored to be hosting the Excavated Shellac archives here on the FMA.

For those who would prefer to hear this music on vinyl, we're in luck! Excavated Shellac has produced its first-ever LP, titled Strings, in collaboration with Dust-to-Digital's Parlorphone imprint. Strings collects fourteen previously unissued performances on various stringed instruments from around the world, including the fiddle, shamisen, charango, Paraguyan harp, Indian vina, Vietnamese moon guitar, Persian violin, and Lebanese oud,. These recordings -- made between 1920 and 1950 -- are all presented with the detailed liner notes we've come to expect from Excavated Shellac.

Anybody with an interest in historical music might already be familiar with the Dust-to-Digital catalog, which includes releases like the Ian Nagoski-curated Black Mirror: Reflections in Global Musics 1915-1955. Here's one of my favorite tracks from that compilation -- a rare performance by the Irish uilleann piper Patrick J. Touhey:

Black Mirror is available here, and you can pick up a copy of Excavated Shellac's Strings LP here. The new LP featured tracks that are not otherwise available -- not even from the Excavated Shellac blog -- but after the jump there's a fantastic mix of other stringed tunes from Jonathan Ward's archives.

I thought it would be fun to take a listen back to some of my favorite music from the Free Music Archive's "world music" library. I'm hesitant to use term "world music" since 98.6% of the audio on the Free Music Archive comes from this world, and we have curators, musicians and listeners from over 200 nations. But I do feel it is important for site visitors be able to find music you're looking for browsing by genre. We try to use the International genre classification for music that incorporates indigenous folk traditions, which aren't necessarily part of the american/british folk, blues, or Western classical traditions.

The recording of Djara -- New York's premier Haitian rara group -- comes from one of Transpacific Sound Paradise's remote broadcasts from Barbés, a fantastic venue (and record label!) in Brooklyn.

 The Orkestra Keyif and Zlatne Uste track was part of WFMU's coverage of the 2009 Golden Festival, a grassroots Eastern European music and dance festival organized by NY Balkan music pioneers the Zlatne Usted Brass Band. The 2010 event is slated for Jan 15 & 16 -- more info here.

This mix concludes with an emersive raga, part of an on-air preview of the annual NYC Indian Classical all-night festival this past May.

And although it's not featured on this 2009-oriented mix, Excavated Shellac is an amazing resource for impossible-to-find international 78rpm recordings. Joe McGasko recently picked out some of his favorite shellac excavations take a listen here.

As always, please click "i" for more info on each artist and track!