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My absolute favorite CD discovery happens to be a 2008 release on ECM. It's Melos by Vassilis Tsabropoulos, Anja Lechner and U.T. Gandhi on piano, cello and percussion respectively [ECM 2048 1757980]. With three numbers by Armenian mystic G.I. Gurdjieff made over by Tsabropoulos, the remainder originals by the pianist, this is luminous chamber music pared down to the essentials like a great poem. The inherent minimalism instills a great calm profundity of the sort that wears exceptionally well to make Melos a stupendous find that, for audiophiles, carries the extra bonus of having three of the most difficult instruments -- piano and cello and triangle -- recorded terrifically well. If you know Anouar Brahem's Le pas du chat noir on the same label, you're properly primed already to know what to expect here.

Pere & fils (Father & son) teams up the phenomenal Manouche Jazz guitarist Romane with his son Richard Manette on the always delivering Iris Music label [3 001 981]. While Angelo Debarre has a new 2008 release, it's last year's release of the two guitarists with Marc-Michel Lebevillon on upright bass that's got me at hello. Where Romane's duels with Stochelo Rosenberg are the stuff of already legendary virtuosity, this outing celebrates more of the lyrical aspects of Gypsy Jazz, with the old and young men trading solos on nearly exclusively original compositions. Swing comes in many guises. Yet there's something particularly charming and quintessentially French about the rich vein first worked by Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli and ever since inspiring others to continue the tradition. Romane is one of the present leaders of this movement and the evidence on record here assures us that the next generation is already well set to fix us up in the future.
Goran Bregovic tunes make appearances in many movies and the compilation Ederlezi [Mercury Polygram 558 350-2] sports some of his most memorable ones with appearances by Iggy Pop, Cesaria Evora, Ofra Haza, Johnny Depp and Scott Walker. Bregovic is a master of combining traditional ethnic instruments and folks tunes with electronic touches for the evocative effects expected from superior film music where setting an instant mood is paramount. As a regular in recording studios, Bregovic also has a deft hand with the controls to make for well-crafted sonics. Nor does he shy away from apparently crass juxtapositions only to resolve them artistically without apparent sweat with his Weddings & Funerals band.
Thierry Titi Robin is a regular here at Casa Chardonne's DJ table but it took an overnight stay in Lyon to catch an early flight to Bologna to discover that, a/ their FNAC's world music section is stacked far better than ours in Geneve and, b/ Ces Vagues que l'Amour Soulève, [Naive 145080], an album I knew existed from Robin's website but had never actually laid hands on. Even though FNAC's scanner had this album in their sampler section to pre-audition, I didn't bother. Anything Robin makes is a must-own for yours truly. This one's a stunner, with two wonderful center pieces called "Nouvelle suite pour bouzouq" and "Nouvelle suite pour 'oud". Those who decry the dearth of good new music are blind and deaf. You just must know where to look. There's cherries all over and some even come with whipped cream.
Guangzhou's AV Fair 2008 was my first time on terra firma Chinoise and this My Engagement with the Grassland album [Wanqi] is one favorite software memento from that trip. The singer is Mongolian and endowed with a very fluid, powerful high voice that makes serious demands on your heart strings as well as transducers. The gorgeous production values of the accompanying materials and CD enclosure are reflected aurally and the folks at Melody in whose exhibit I first heard this disc affirmed that the lyrics are exceptionally moving poetic affirmations of the beauty of Mongolia's endless steppes -- oceans of grass -- and the devotion they inspire in the local nomads. While Western music is filled with love songs about people, this music is love songs about a country. You needn't understand one word to feel this and have visions of yurts and horses, streams and vast skies and colorfully costumed wild characters living simple but content lives away from the concrete jungles of the big cities ...
The Analysis Audio exhibit at the Munich show played a track of Quadro Nuevo's Moccaflor [GLM Musicverlag FM 110-2] to immediately raise my hackles. Turbans and tangos, bass clarinet and vibrandoneon intersect and we're whisked away to instrumental coffee bars that could have been visited by Bratsch or Beyond the Pale just minutes before. There's Spanish guitar, Neopolitan mandolin, Greek bouzouq and the sansula cousin of the kalimba. There's psalterion, udu and tarabuka drums and even an ukulele. Accordeon, saxophone and double bass. It's inventive stuff with high-level virtuosity that might just as well have shown up on the m.a. label in their Sera Una Noche sector.
Cheb i Sabbah's Devotion [Six Degrees] does for Indian contemplative music what Mercan Dede's Su and Nefes did for the Turkish Sufis. That is, mix expert electronic ambience with premier acoustic instrumentalists and singers to present the traditions in modernized guise without diluting the core essence. That's a very difficult tightrope walk but Cheb i Sabbah's past exploits already proved him more than capable. Devotion spotlights the talents of Anup Jalota, Rana Singh, Master Saleem, Riffat Sultana, Harnam Singh and the great Shuba Mudgal. Unlike the terribly confused Wanderlust by Kiran Ahluwalia whose debut album was so promising, this latest in the Chebbah's canon continues a winning streak but mines its golden vein even deeper than before.
One of the very best albums of the year when it was released has its slam-dunk follow-up in Bebo & Cigala's live album Blanco y Negro [Sony BMG ]. It also sports the matching concert DVD for the full hit of phenomenal talent at work when an octogenarian Cuban piano ace mixes it up with one of Spain's best current Flamenco cantaors. Exceptionally generous in quantity with 19 tracks, this CD is equally generous when it comes to emotional calories. Unlike culinary excess which might have your intestines in a twist the day after, this kind of musical excess stimulates energetic digestion to make you feel young, passionate and simply great afterwards. Or as my wife says, "I think the crayfish is my favorite singer ever." While that's bound to change, it is exactly what you feel each time you hear El Cigala. And unlike the typical sufrimiento crap, the Spanish lyrics here are as rich and double-entendre as imaginable.
Juan Gómez Chicuelo is the guitarist who helped bring El Potito, Duquende and the great Faiz Ali Faiz together for a genre-defying celebration of Flamenco and Quawwali. His Diapasión [Flamenco Records] returns him to his Spanish focus with a collection of fandangos, bulerias, rumbas and colombianas and the ever-present Carles Benavent on double bass. Besides the de rigeur batteria and cajon, there are also trumpet and flugelhorn, viola and bongos to signal that Chicuelo's flamenco absorbs thoroughly modern influences. With my Flamenco collection grown well beyond 200 albums, Diapasión and the following are my two favorite discoveries in this genre this year. Smmmokin'!
Concha Buika is a black lady living in Spain and singing Flamenco-flavored 'Spanish Blues'. Except that categorization doesn't begin to do her justice. Niña de Fuego [Casa Limón] just as easily veers into
South-American idioms. Nor is her voice typical of flamenco. Which hasn't prevented her from powerful accolades and a welcoming embrace of Spain's Flamenco cadre. It's perhaps most fitting to call her a sort of female counterpart to El Cigala. It hints at an equal ability to bridge different cultures in such a seamless way as to suggest they were always connected. Except no one has done it that particular way before. And did I mention just what a memorable kinky voice this lady calls her own? With it she walks the knife edge of revealing raw emotion in a perfectly intimate way.
If all that wasn't a terrific crop of audiophile and music blessings -- and there have been far more of the latter still but we've capped this year-end feature at 10 titles -- the arguably overshadowing factor this year was the extreme generosity encountered by our hosts in Milan, Guangzhou, Serbia and Sicily. I occasionally question my involvement in activities that boil down to toys for (rich) boys when things around us are teeter-tottering. It's when you encounter, first-hand and in various places around the world, what our work means to people by their undisguised reactions in person that I make peace again with the fact that I'm no inventor of some life-saving medication or any other obvious form of large-scale real benefit to mankind.


We've all got to use the talents we've been given to the best of our ability. We should not underestimate the ways in which higher guidance (or however else you prefer to relate to the universal presence) can make use of us amidst even the most mundane of circumstances as long as we have the according intention. While on the one hand, 6moons is indeed about toys for (mostly) boys (of the mostly affluent kind), there's clearly something else going on as well with the other hand. What that is is best left to be articulated by our many readers. Those who agree. Others may focus solely on the hardware compulsion. Which is real too. But the bridge is the music. From there you jump off into other cultures as easily as a benign Hollywood alien telepathically understands all our languages and thoughts. And as 2008 proved to me, that's the greatest fun and reward of all. What I like to call the human element. I'll endeavor to cover it again and again in 2009 as, when and where the opportunities present themselves. If I can manage my schedule accordingly...