Stuffy Music for Unstuffy People;
Hip is overrated anyway.

People always ask me why I write about world music. One reason is that I'm easily bored. I was just getting tired of listening to American music--despite its endless reinvention--when I heard Brazilian music for the first time. I couldn't believe there were tones, instruments and rhythms I had never heard before. Now I'm forever chasing new sounds. I also like to meet new people and learn about their lives. And isn't music just the product of those who make it? Nonesuch seems to think so. In August the label started rereleasing its Explorer Series, which consists of recordings made between 1967 and 1984 by ethnomusicologists who did things like going into a Kenyan village and recording the "music" of a witch doctor healing a sick pregnant woman. There are 92 such recordings that will be released by region. Right now Africa is getting its due. Each CD includes the original liner notes by the person who made the recording and who is, therefore, the best person to explain what you're hearing. And if what you're hearing is a group of young girls in Burkina Faso standing in a circle and clapping and singing or rituals accompanied by instruments you couldn't have imagined existed, it's pretty amazing. This series will transport you and teach you, and if that doesn't sound stuffy, I don't know what does. But don't you want to hear things you've never heard before? I know you do.

--Liz Spikol