Today I am skipping around the earth’s continents and seeking out beautiful music. Come travel outside of your quarantined space and experience a worldly music connection.
I have to begin with a sweet collaboration of 200 artists from 28 countries around the world. The video is Major Lazer + Marcus Mumford “Lay Your Head On Me”. It is filled with great music, great dancing, and captures glimpses of scenes around the globe. I love the new world intimacy of sharing personal/private home spaces with others. Zoom has become a new connection. Love it or hate it, we can all benefit from the kind faces we greet.
Our first travel spot is the United Kingdom. Bibio is Stephen James Wilkinson. He leans into a more folk-oriented, electronic, and experimental sound. His newest release, “Sleep On The Wing”, is dreamy and soothing. It showed up right when I needed it.
Next is a song with a chill vibe and a subtle dance beat meant for toe tapping and body swaying. Straight from Moroccan Rabii Harnoune and Frankfurt electronic producer V.B.Kühl, is “Baniya” which fuses traditional North African Gnawa with the sonic pleasantries of modern club music. It spans across the world, creating a sound that connects us all.
“It’s a telling about a journey by a father and his son, who are visiting different places and historical monuments, to collect wisdom for keeping the spirituality” Rabii explains.
The Beths, from New Zealand, have announced a new album Jump Rope Gazers out on July 10th. This song has been out for a couple of weeks, but I am gaga about all things Beths and their music never disappoints. I can’t wait for more and bet they continue to release songs up until their July date.
Let’s skirt over to another continent….Gym and Swim is a Bangkok-based tropical pop band featuring members from a host of different bands in Thailand. It is straight up fun. Don’t we all need that right now? Listen to “Round and Round”.
I recently heard from a young band out of India, Blood Brothers, and found their story to be pretty cool. They are more metal, hard rock than I usually share, but there was something kind of wild about how young they are and how they are writing their own amazing material. So I thought I would share. This is hot off of the presses, and it is beautiful and jam packed with hope in these uncertain times. Be sure to listen to the stellar guitar riff at @ 3:00 minutes in, and catch a sweet glimpse of the band at the end.
“Every time the song gets played, we pay the double of what we get to the COVID relief fund. This is because band wants their song to actually give people hope. Just that one word is all the world really needs right now. And what better way to spread that message than through the wonderful language that’s music.”
Juan Pablo Vega was born in Bogotá, Colombia. He grew up surrounded by music, and as a child he remembers accompanying his Dad’s piano performances at home with a Fisher Price gas station that he turned into a drum set. I listened to his latest release and was transported to another place instantly. I travelled without going anywhere, but in my head and my heart. I needed the outside force of a worldly influence. Perfect.
“Juan Pablo Vega’s fresh and original sound certainly agglomerates most of today’s independent music movements of Hispanic America into one unique style”.
Circling back to North America, I fell instantly for the San Francisco band, Field Medic. There is a perk to waiting out this pandemic safely in Atlanta, and I am one to benefit. Overhearing music from my closest music family has been a true plus to a tough quarantine situation. Through shared music, I find the brightest light in the darkness of it all.
“Any song that’s true is a good song in my mind,” says Kevin Patrick, the lo-fi bedroom folk artist better known as Field Medic. “That’s why I never find it necessary to add too much stuff to my recordings. I’m just into songs themselves.”