To listen to audio on Rock Paper Scissors you'll need to Get the Flash Player

Sample Track 1:
"Ketawang: Puspawarna " from Java: Court Gamelan (this track is on a gold-plated record that NASA launched into space in 1977)
Sample Track 2:
"Bubaran: Hudan Mas" from Java: Court Gamelan
Buy Recording:
Java: Court Gamelan (this track is on a gold-plated record that NASA launched into space in 1977)
Buy mp3's:
click here
Layer 2
Buy these records

Click Here to go back.
Whoot, Buy these records >>

Nonesuch Explorer Series

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 endles reinvention - when I heard Brazilian music for the first time.  I couldn't believer there were tones, instruments and rhythms I had never heard before.  Now I'm foever chasing new sounds.  I also like to meet new people and learn about their lives.  And isn't music just the product of thse who make it.  Nonesuch seesm to think so.  In August the label started re-releasing its Explorer series, which consists of recordings made between 1967 adn 1984 by ethnomusicologists who did things like going into a Kenyan village and recording the "music" of the 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.   12/19/02
Click Here to go back.