Folk / Roots
357 products
Out of press in its original form for years, controversial beat poet Allen Ginsberg's East Village love-in 'First Blues' - a vast double-album of collaborations with everyone from Arthur Russell to Bob Dylan and Don Cherry - is newly reissued via Death Is Not The End. It's hard to deny Ginsberg's impact; his poetry alone was enough to shift the course of US counter culture, and you can visualise his contributions to downtown punk and folk. But his music career isn't quite as intimately understood, which makes 'First Blues' a pretty vital artefact for anyone looking to investigate further. Ginsberg wrote and recorded the material between 1971 and 1983, taking the opportunity to leaf through his lengthy phonebook and call up anyone he admired or had collaborated with in the past. So Dylan - who Ginsberg had collaborated with before - shows up on the first few tracks, helping to balance out his friend's wobbly-voiced, country-fried recitations with tangled acoustic twangs. The money shots comes with the majority of the remaining tracks, produced and featuring cello by Arthur Russell, given free rein to rumble through folk, blues, jazz and gospel over Ginsberg’s sexcapades, Buddhist revelations and conspiracy theories with bare-faced joy. 'CIA Dope Calypso' is a bonkers highlight, a chirpy Harry Belafonte reinterpretation that lambasts the Central Intelligence Agency for its under-the-radar drug peddling, while 'Sickness Blues' uses Russell's bendy cello tones as a crash mat for Ginsberg's pained lamentations.
Out of press in its original form for years, controversial beat poet Allen Ginsberg's East Village love-in 'First Blues' - a vast double-album of collaborations with everyone from Arthur Russell to Bob Dylan and Don Cherry - is newly reissued via Death Is Not The End. It's hard to deny Ginsberg's impact; his poetry alone was enough to shift the course of US counter culture, and you can visualise his contributions to downtown punk and folk. But his music career isn't quite as intimately understood, which makes 'First Blues' a pretty vital artefact for anyone looking to investigate further. Ginsberg wrote and recorded the material between 1971 and 1983, taking the opportunity to leaf through his lengthy phonebook and call up anyone he admired or had collaborated with in the past. So Dylan - who Ginsberg had collaborated with before - shows up on the first few tracks, helping to balance out his friend's wobbly-voiced, country-fried recitations with tangled acoustic twangs. The money shots comes with the majority of the remaining tracks, produced and featuring cello by Arthur Russell, given free rein to rumble through folk, blues, jazz and gospel over Ginsberg’s sexcapades, Buddhist revelations and conspiracy theories with bare-faced joy. 'CIA Dope Calypso' is a bonkers highlight, a chirpy Harry Belafonte reinterpretation that lambasts the Central Intelligence Agency for its under-the-radar drug peddling, while 'Sickness Blues' uses Russell's bendy cello tones as a crash mat for Ginsberg's pained lamentations.
Rare documentation of Afro-Pacific funerary ceremonies recorded in 2023 - not solemn, or Frank Sinatra, but heartical, rousing chants, songs and drums to raise the spirits and send brethren into other dimensions. Proper send-offs. "The gualíes, alabaos and levantamientos de tumba are burial rites typical of the Afro-Colombian Pacific communities. The rituals are performed to accompany the dead and their relatives when a member of the community dies, helping the deceased children (gualíes) or adults (alabaos and levantamientos de tumba) in the passage of their souls to eternity. The main objective of these practices is to alleviate and help in the management of grief related to death, based on acts of solidarity that allow us to reaffirm ourselves as communities and unite among family members, friends, neighbours and in general with all those who participate.For the Afro-descendant communities, death is a gateway to the other world, a place where the spirits, our ancestors, are present. We understand death as part of life itself and a necessary step "to enjoy the eternal presence of the Lord". For many of us, there is no doubt that there is a relationship between the living and the dead that does not end with the death of the person, but is simply transformed. Among the Afro communities of Medio San Juan, death means reunion with the Creator, triumph over sin. The Chocoan researcher Ana Gilma Ayala sums the alabaos as a way of "accompanying not only the mourners but also the deceased. For us, in our worldview, there is the idea and it is very African - that there is a road to the afterlife, a road on which the deceased needs accompaniment. So one way of accompanying them is through prayers and songs" According to Father Gonzalo Torres, the idea of links between the living and the dead is linked to our African heritage: "these manifestations are based on the idea of the African muntú, of the large extended family, which is not only lived here but is also transferred to the afterlife. And those who leave remain waiting for the one who stays. And for the same reason you always have to say goodbye to them rather than mourn them - although at some point you also mourn them, you first say goodbye to them so that they can leave peacefully, so that they can rest, so that they can wait for you in peace and not disturb the community" Thus, understanding that death is a step, the journey of a path towards the next life, preparation and accompaniment are necessary. The passage to the afterlife lasts several days beginning on the day of death, when the soul leaves the physical body, and ending nine days later when the soul is ready to leave this world. That is why the performance of each of these rites, the gualí for a child, and the wake, the novena and the raising of the grave or completion of the novena for an adult, are so important for us, as it is our way of saying goodbye and interceding before God for the souls of those who have passed away."
Self-proclaimed as one of DINTE’s faves, the Pinoy Rock mixtape, originally broadcast on NTS, is graduated to cassette with nearly 90 minutes of haunted country blooz and folk rock from beyond the usual hotspots.
As ever, the selections enamour to a lesser-raked zone of interest bound to resonate with lovers of this sound’s roots in US prisms, and appears like a parallel to the sorts of far away but strangely familiar sounds surfacing via reissues of Leong Lau or DJ Sundae & Julien Dechery’s Sky Girl’ set.
Admittedly we, and probably many others, have no clue to vintage Filipino music, slo it’s a pleasure to allow DINTE do the heavy lifting, presenting a carousel of laid-back, hook-laden charms sung in Filipino and Tagalog and mostly erring to Western tunings, but also laced with subtle traces of their far South Eastern heritage.
Pastoral folk rock sits shoulder to shoulder with soulful ballads, purring folk shares space with more symphonic works that unusually recall Arabic classical, while psych rock power jams give way to balmy chuggers, eyes-closed lead guitar solos, and slow but hard blues rock and slide guitars, all with DINTE’s reliable seal of approval.
'Sweet England' along with its sister album 'False True Lovers', was recorded in the spring of 1958 when I was twenty-two years old. I had been living for the previous two years in London with Alan Lomax, the American folklorist, working for him as editorial assistant on his book The Folk Songs of North America and on his field recordings from America, Great Britain, Italy and Spain. The tracks that make up these two albums were recorded by Peter Kennedy and Alan in two days at Peter's home 'studio' in Belsize Park. English traditional music, at its best, expresses and provides everything in song that I need and feel, both musically and emotionally. Sweet England represents the first shaky steps of a journey that I have been on all my life, and that, happily, I still am." (shirley collins)
Collecting pop songs, poetry, solo folk performances and corridos, 'In Search of Revolutionary Voices' provides a cracked window into Mexican life at the turn of the century.
There's something magical about wax cylinder recordings - it almost doesn't matter what sounds are dubbed on them, the medium itself adds so much character. This anthology was inspired by a paper from musicologist Dr. Fatima Volkoviskii, who excavated the University of California, Santa Barbara's cylinder audio archive to examine the performance practices of Mexican singers. And we get a pretty wide selection of material: there are zarzuelas, Spanish musical theater excerpts with spoken dialogue and sung scenes, a little like a cross between pop, opera and folk, such as Rosete and Camcho's 'Agua, azucarillos y aguardiente'; corridos, poetic ballads that were popular during the Mexican Revolution, like J. Morales & Cortazar's foggy 'Los amores de un charro'; and weirder, more unexpected deviations.
Our favorite moments come from Rita Villa, whose harp-like recordings - 'Czardas' and 'Bagatelle' - sound like long-forgotten library cues, and Quinteto Jordá, who impresses with the noisy orchestral cut 'El Amor es la vida'. Like all good Death is Not the End anthologies, it's a history lesson.
Ethnic Music Classics: 1925-48. Restocked. Outernational Records is pleased to announce the third volume of this legendary series is now available on the vinyl format. This series of archival 78 transfers was originally released in 1995 on CD only. Now for the first time on vinyl, a deluxe gatefold presentation and limited edition pressing. Reissue produced by Hisham Mayet (Sublime Frequencies) in conjunction with Yazoo Records. Compiled here are many of the greatest performances of world and ethnic music ever recorded. This volume represents a trip around the world, stopping at each port to sample one of that country's finest recordings of its indigenous music. Each of these recordings was captured at a period during the golden age of recording when traditional styles were at their peak of power and emotion. Included inside are extensive notes and beautiful period photographs that work together with the music to communicate an exciting sense of discovery. Early 20th century recordings from Poland, Spain, China, Angola, Turkey, Mongolia, Russia, the Congo, and elsewhere, compiled by archivist Pat Conte.
Ethnic Music Classics: 1925-48. This series of archival 78 transfers was originally released in 1995 on CD only. Now for the first time on vinyl, a deluxe gatefold presentation and limited edition pressing. Reissue produced by Hisham Mayet (Sublime Frequencies) in conjunction with Yazoo Records. Compiled here are many of the greatest performances of world and ethnic music ever recorded. This volume represents a trip around the world, stopping at each port to sample one of that country's finest recordings of its indigenous music. Each of these recordings was captured at a period during the golden age of recording when traditional styles were at their peak of power and emotion. Included inside are extensive notes and beautiful period photographs that work together with the music to communicate an exciting sense of discovery. Early 20th century recordings from Bulgaria, Puerto Rico, India, Mozambique, Ukraine, Trinidad, Kazakhstan, Ceylon, Tibet and elsewhere, compiled by archivist Pat Conte.
Subtitled: Ethnic Music Classics: 1925-48. This series of archival 78 transfers was originally released in 1995 on CD only. Now for the first time on vinyl, a deluxe gatefold presentation in a limited edition pressing. Produced by Hisham Mayet (Sublime Frequencies) in conjunction with Yazoo Records. Compiled here are many of the greatest performances of world and ethnic music ever recorded. This volume represents a trip around the world, stopping at each port to sample one of that country's finest recordings of its indigenous music. Each of these recordings was captured at a period during the golden age of recording when traditional styles were at their peak of power and emotion. Included inside are extensive notes and beautiful period photographs that work together with the music to communicate an exciting sense of discovery. "One of the most consistently rewarding world music compilations in years, the cuts range from Macedonian fiddle jaunts to Puerto Rican Christmas tunes, from Abyssinian religious chants to ominous Japanese court music. The instruments include Ukrainian sleigh bells, Sardinian triple pipes, Vietnamese moon lutes and Ethiopian one-string violins...a profound artistry lurks beneath the alien vernaculars." --Village Voice; Vol. 1 contains music from Nigeria, Sardinia, Russia, Ceylon, Rajahstan, Cuba, Rumania, Vietnam, Macedonia, Morocco, Society Islands, South Africa, India, Japan, Jamaica, Fiji, and more.
Often regarded as Japan’s first female singer-songwriter, Sachiko Kanenobu created an enduring legacy with Misora, a timeless classic of intricate finger-picking, gently soaring melodies, and rustic Laurel Canyon vibes. Originally released in 1972 on URC (Underground Record Club), one of Japan’s first independent record labels, the Haruomi Hosono-produced album remains one of the most beloved works to come out of Japan’s folk and rock scenes centered around Tokyo and Kansai areas in the early 1970s. Born and raised in Osaka in a large, music-loving family, Kanenobu picked up the guitar as a teen just as the “college folk” boom swept through university campuses in the Kansai area in the mid-60s. The Pete Seeger and American folk-leaning scene didn’t appeal much to her, however, and instead gravitated towards the British sounds of Donovan and Pentangle, teaching herself guitar techniques by listening to their music. Kanenobu made her songwriting and recording debut as part of Himitsu Kessha Marumaru Kyodan, whose sole single was released on URC in 1969. After years of being pushed aside by the label in favor of newer male artists who were more “folky” in a traditional sense, it was her friendship with the groundbreaking band and labelmate Happy End that ultimately helped her secure the opportunity to record a solo album. With Hosono on board as producer, Kanenobu spent seven days recording the songs that would become Misora, with most songs recorded in a single take. By the time Misora released in September 1972, Kanenobu was gone. She had left for America, eager to start a new life with Paul Williams, a music writer who had founded Crawdaddy Magazine in 1966. Without the artist to promote it, “_Misora_ was asleep for a long time,” she said. Meanwhile Kanenobu settled near Sonoma in Northern California, retiring from music and concentrating on raising her two children. It wasn’t until Philip K. Dick, the famed writer and family friend, heard Misora and encouraged her to get back into music, that Kanenobu felt the urge to pick up the guitar again. Soon new songs started flowing, and Dick helped finance a single for Kanenobu in 1981. He was committed to producing a full length when he died unexpectedly in 1982. While she enjoyed success (especially in Germany) with her hard-hitting group Culture Shock in the 1980s, and continued to release albums in American and in Japan in the 1990s, it’s Misora that keeps coming back to her. Every few years a new generation of fans discover the album. Devendra Banhart, Jim O’Rourke, Steve Gunn, and many others continue to tout its greatness. Kanenobu played a series of sold-out homecoming shows in Japan in 2018, playing Misora in its entirety. Surviving members of Happy End came out to support, some even playing in her backing band. Audience members included old and young, some young enough to be her grandchildren. “I love it,” she said. “They love Misora, they’ve heard it so many times. And here it rose from death…because for them, they can’t believe it—she’s still alive!”
From Melbourne, Australia, singer-songwriter Ruth Parker releases her album, Otherwise Occupied, featuring a rich tapestry of acoustic instruments like guitar, ukulele, accordion, bouzouki, cello, and mandolin, all woven together with her delicate and intimate vocals. The sound, which carefully preserves quiet space, places the album squarely within the indie-folk and singer-songwriter lineage. However, its lush textures and mellow resonance also give it a dream-folk quality, resonating with listeners and allowing them to relive moments of introspection and subtle emotional shifts. Rather than focusing on grand gestures, it's an album that rewards those who lean in to appreciate its finer nuances, wrapping you in a gentle and profound sense of depth.
Olvido Records is proud to present African Steel, a follow-up to 2019’s African country-western compilation Bulwayo Blue Yodel. Here we have a compendium of beautiful songs highlighting the early years of the slide guitar in southern, central and eastern Africa. Featuring traditional and popular regional styles adapting the acoustic lap-steel guitar, African Steel reveals intriguing influences from southern American country and blues, Argentinian and European tango, and back to the Hawaiian origins of the instrument, long before the shimmering electric slide guitar of Docteur Nico, and the pedal steel mastery of Demola Adepoju of King Sunny Ade's African Beats. Ranging from up-tempo dance numbers, to plaintive bottleneck-blues style ballads, to a Ugandan string-band cover of a Jimmie Rodgers classic, each song presented here is a unique glimpse into the early years of the slide guitar’s incorporation into various African musical cultures. These fourteen songs have been carefully restored from rare shellac and lacquer discs to honor and celebrate a previously under-represented chapter in global music history, and includes a booklet with contextual notes and translated lyrics.
Mei Semones’ sweetly evocative blend of jazz, bossa nova and math-y indie rock is not only a way for her to find solace in her favorite genres, but is an intuitive means of catharsis. “Blending everything that I like together and trying to make something new – that's what feels most natural to me,” says the 23-year-old Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and guitarist. “It’s what feels most true to who I am as an artist.” ‘Tsukino’, Mei’s debut, self-released EP, is being released physically for the first time ever on Bayonet Records! The EP will be released by itself on CD & Tape formats, and will be included in a vinyl pressing on the B-side of Semones’ landmark EP, ‘Kebutomushi’! Plinking guitar tones and asymmetrical time signatures exemplify Semones’ forays into angular indie rock more now than ever before. Originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, Semones began playing music at a young age, starting out on piano at age four before moving to electric guitar at age eleven. After playing jazz guitar in high school, she went on to study guitar performance with a jazz focus at Berklee College of Music. College is where she met her current bandmates, including string players Noah Leong and Claudius Agrippa, whose respective viola and violin add softness and multidimensionality to Mei’s intricate guitar work. After releasing a slew of singles and an EP in 2022, coinciding with her move to New York City, Mei and her band have since gone on to collaborate with post-bossa balladeer John Roseboro and embark on their first-ever tour with the melodic rock outfit Raavi. Semones chronicles infatuation, devotion, and vulnerability in her songs, complete with sweeping strings, virtuosic guitar-playing and heartfelt lyrics sung in both English and Japanese, that have all become part of her sonic trademark: ornately catchy, genre-fusing compositions serving as the backdrop to tender lyrics touching on the universalities of human emotion.
Sir Richard Bishop returns with Hillbilly Ragas, a feral and fiery take on solo acoustic guitar that digs into the roots of American Primitive style and rips them up by the fistful. Drawing on decades of exploratory playing across records like Salvador Kali, Improvika and The Freak of Araby, Bishop pares things down to their essence: one man, one guitar, no overdubs, no effects. But simplicity doesn’t mean safety. These nine tracks are anything but tame. Inspired by East Indian raga, rhythm-heavy phrasing and a self-imposed exile from traditional structure, Bishop envisions an uncontacted hillbilly mystic conjuring his own untamed folk music deep in the woods. His goal? To play with abandon, rejecting the polished edges of the American Primitive genre for something darker, stranger and more unhinged. Hillbilly Ragas is an unfiltered excursion into a haunted backwoods sound-world — part ritual, part rebellion, all delivered with the ragged conviction of an artist hell-bent on carving out his own language.
Sir Richard Bishop returns with Hillbilly Ragas, a feral and fiery take on solo acoustic guitar that digs into the roots of American Primitive style and rips them up by the fistful. Drawing on decades of exploratory playing across records like Salvador Kali, Improvika and The Freak of Araby, Bishop pares things down to their essence: one man, one guitar, no overdubs, no effects. But simplicity doesn’t mean safety. These nine tracks are anything but tame. Inspired by East Indian raga, rhythm-heavy phrasing and a self-imposed exile from traditional structure, Bishop envisions an uncontacted hillbilly mystic conjuring his own untamed folk music deep in the woods. His goal? To play with abandon, rejecting the polished edges of the American Primitive genre for something darker, stranger and more unhinged. Hillbilly Ragas is an unfiltered excursion into a haunted backwoods sound-world — part ritual, part rebellion, all delivered with the ragged conviction of an artist hell-bent on carving out his own language.
Sir Richard Bishop returns with Hillbilly Ragas, a feral and fiery take on solo acoustic guitar that digs into the roots of American Primitive style and rips them up by the fistful. Drawing on decades of exploratory playing across records like Salvador Kali, Improvika and The Freak of Araby, Bishop pares things down to their essence: one man, one guitar, no overdubs, no effects. But simplicity doesn’t mean safety. These nine tracks are anything but tame. Inspired by East Indian raga, rhythm-heavy phrasing and a self-imposed exile from traditional structure, Bishop envisions an uncontacted hillbilly mystic conjuring his own untamed folk music deep in the woods. His goal? To play with abandon, rejecting the polished edges of the American Primitive genre for something darker, stranger and more unhinged. Hillbilly Ragas is an unfiltered excursion into a haunted backwoods sound-world — part ritual, part rebellion, all delivered with the ragged conviction of an artist hell-bent on carving out his own language.
Manchester’s Sferic label (Space Afrika, Jake Muir, Bianca Scout, Roméo Poirier++) return with a fire debut from ungoogleable Greco-Canadian anomaly Anastasia Patellis, aka Any, featuring additional instrumentation and co-production from Klein/Lolina cohort LA Timpa. It's a set of "squat pop" experiments that thread nocturnal soundscaping and pop hooks through hallucinated outlines written on harp and broken synth, highly recommended if you’re into Astrid Sonne, Tirzah, Nala Sinephro.
Greco-Canadian artist Any was bedding down in a Cretan squat when the album's title, μέγα ελεός in Greek, boomed from loudspeakers next to a bonfire, courtesy of a midnight Orthodox church sermon. Moving to the sunny, ancient island had provided her with an escape from big city burnout, but she ended staying far longer than expected - years rather than months. It’s this prolonged sense of suspension that provides the album with its wandering spirit, using harp as an emotional core.
Listening to Breton music made on the Celtic harp from artists like Kristen Noguès and Alan Stivell, Any sketched out song outlines that were then tweaked by Lagos-born, Toronto-raised journeyman LA Timpa, who flew out to Crete last summer to put his idiosyncratic stamp on the record. Like the dusty songs on Astrid Sonne's 'Great Doubt, ‘MEGA MERCY' sounds as if its drum line was duped on dictaphone from an old beat tape, then spliced with field recordings and vocals.
Half sung, half spoken, she murmurs around the beat, not exactly over it, adding circuitous, boss-tuned harp twangs when necessary. It's music that's spartan rather than lo-fi; a sort of bare-bones reaction to electroacoustic experimentation and outsider folk. It makes perfect sense that an artist as thematically on-point as LA Timpa is involved - Any's instrumental vamps are roughly pasted around pinprick boom-bap snaps and crunchy foley denouements, eventually cooled into contemplative Nala Sinephro-esque meditations.
Sections bring to mind Tirzah's most psychedelic early excursions, with dry asides set against a slurping, off-axis beatbox loop and distant, barely-audible synths. The record is tied up on 'WEATHER LIKE TIDE', an instrumental callback to the opener, book-ending the album with a melancholy, humid kinda ambient folk, purposefully melting the timeline.
JACKSON C. FRANK is the highly regarded debut and the only official album he ever released, produced by friend and fellow musician PAUL SIMON in England and released on Columbia Records in 1965. Jackson has been called the most famous folk singer of 1960s that no one has ever heard of and his influence was felt more in England, where his album was a hit, rather than in the U.S., where his record was a commercial failure at the time of its release. His most famous song “Blues Run The Game” has been covered by scores of musicians including Simon and Garfunkel, Counting Crows, Colin Meloy, Bert Jansch, Laura Marling, and Robin Pecknold, while Nick Drake also recorded it privately.
