If you’re as allergic to crowds as I am, Chicago’s many neighborhood music festivals can be a mixed bag. But one event I unequivocally associate with a certain kind of chill is the Square Roots festival in Lincoln Square. And that low-stress atmosphere seems likely to be by design. Launched in 1998, the weekend-long festival, […]
Tag: world music
Posted inMusic
Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder celebrate their folk-blues heroes Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee
Soulful musical polymath Taj Mahal and guitar god Ry Cooder go way back. In the mid-60s, they played in Los Angeles band the Rising Sons, one of the country’s first integrated bands fusing rock and R&B (along with Arthur Lee’s Love). The group also featured jazz drummer Ed Cassidy (later of Spirit) and bassist Gary […]
Posted inMusic
Sir Richard Bishop continues to chart his own guitar language in the studio and onstage
Sir Richard Bishop has spent about as much time recording under his own name as he did with the Sun City Girls, a deftly bohemian, genre-bending avant-rock act that dissolved after the 2007 cancer death of founding drummer Charlie Gocher. For almost 30 years, the band (which also included Bishop’s brother Alan) teased at the […]
Posted inMusic
Mandingo Griot Society: a global exchange born in Chicago
Foday Musa Suso absorbed centuries of tradition growing up in Gambia. As part of the griot caste, his family had performed a centuries-long role in Gambian society, narrating historical epics and singing praise songs while playing the kora, a harplike 21-string instrument his distant ancestors invented. Suso dreamed of bringing his music to places far […]
Posted inFilm
A love letter to Ravi Shankar
Just as Shankar provided the music for several films, several films have been made about the music legend.
Posted inMusic
Sublime Frequencies releases an entrancing field recording of traditional Ghanaian gyil music
First things first. The gyil is a traditional West African xylophone with dried gourd resonators hung below most or all of its hardwood keys. (A similar instrument is called a “balafon” in Francophone Africa.) It’s usually tuned pentatonically, and its full, luminous tone is haloed with a cicada-like buzz, created by vibrating membranes made from […]
Posted inMusic
What to see at the 2018 World Music Festival
The World Music Festival’s 21 free concerts feature a crowd of international talents—among them hallucinatory Argentine singer-songwriter Juana Molina, generation-spanning Cuban big band Orquesta Akokán, and omnivorous Congolese groove machine Jupiter & Okwess.
Posted inBlogs
After seven years away, Africa Hi-Fi returns for one night in Hyde Park
A reunion of Sonia Hassan and Ron Trent’s beloved Africa Hi-Fi DJ night closes the Harper Court Summer Music Series on Wednesday.
Posted inBlogs
Andy’s Music announces lineup for its metamorphosis event
The all-day show will help usher in the shop’s new era.
Posted inBlogs
Andy’s Music raises funds to become Worlds of Music Chicago
The Roscoe Village world music staple is in the process of changing hands.
Posted inBlogs
Bodega Pop unearths Cambodian rock gems
New finds from Astoria, Queens’ premiere world-pop blog
Posted inMusic
People Issue 2012: Dave Mata, the educator
Eclectic music curator: “I feel a great deal of responsibility as a DJ in this town.”
Posted inMusic
The World Music Festival: Down but not out
Bureaucratic fumbling has diminished the World Music Festival, but its lineup still includes some highly recommendable acts
Posted inBlogs
Welcome to post-Orlove Chicago
Congolese street band Staff Benda Bilili, who had to cancel a long-in-the-works Pritzker date last year due to visa problems, skip Chicago on their first U.S. tour
Posted inBlogs
More Sounds from Sofrito
British DJ crew Sofrito serves up another killer comp of Caribbean, South American, and African grooves