Posted on September 16, 2017
Since that’s where I am at the moment. It is, by the way, a surprisingly handsome city. Just looking at the city center you’d have no idea how much stress Ukraine is under.
For those who haven’t seen previous clips, no, they aren’t doing traditional music or wearing traditional costumes — it’s more a sort of imagined thing, and the music has a lot of influences. But it’s great, which is what matters.
Posted on July 25, 2017
NPR has created “a list of the greatest albums made by women between 1964 and the present, as an intervention, a remedy, a correction of the historical record and hopefully the start of a new conversation. Compiled by nearly 50 women from across NPR and the public radio system and produced in partnership with Lincoln Center, it rethinks popular music to put women at the center.” Le Mystere des Voix Bulgare’s 1987 Nonesuch LP, which first put them on the radar of the music world, appears in the list at #78.
Spine-tingling, otherworldly beauty is not what the world might have expected from a Soviet-ish group called the Bulgarian State Radio & Television Female Vocal Choir. And yet a string of albums, beginning with an alluringly named 37-minute compilation called Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares (The Mystery of Bulgarian Voices), cracked open a whole sonic world largely unknown beyond the Balkans, full of gorgeous dissonances and fierce, sung-out emotion. Originally released in 1975 by the Swiss ethnomusicologist Marcel Cellier, who ran his own boutique label, the first Mystère album became a hotly sought-after prize among cognoscenti, who dubbed cassette copies for each other. One of those fans was 4AD Records founder Ivo Watts-Russell, who managed to license the material and re-release it in the U.K. in 1986 (and in 1987, Nonesuch did the same in the U.S.). Soon these women from all over Bulgaria became international stars, with their plushly layered, plangent voices weaving together Bulgarian dissonance and Western European-style choral singing. Despite any lyrical context (given that in their U.S. and U.K. versions, these translation-less village songs carried such unrevealing English titles as “Diaphonic Chant”), the music’s emotive power and haunting beauty comes shining through. —Anastasia Tsioulcas (NPR Music)
Posted on February 27, 2017
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 2/24/2017
Russia’s riot grrrl activists, Pussy Riot, reveal a 9 date West Coast warm-up tour around the SXSW premiere of their psych rock theater production, “REVOLUTION.”
Based on the original novel by Maria Alyokhina, this show tells the story of everyday women gathering to resist the fascist regime of President Vladimir Putin. From their balaclava-clad punk prayer in Saviour Cathedral to their guerilla-style protests in Moscow’s Red Square, the hour long piece reveals the group’s excruciating account of a corrupt trial, years of violent abuse in the Russian prison system, and their never-ending demand for justice in a hostile state. REVOLUTION brings attention to the ever present problems of censorship in the media, violence towards the LGBTQ community, corruption within Russia’s judicial system, and use of tyrannical use of violence within the country’s prison complex.
The roster of performers include Maria Alyokhina herself, Kiryl Kanstantsinau, AWOTT (Asian Women On The Telephone) psycho-punk duo, and VJ Vasily Bogatov.
Directed by Yury Muravitsky and produced by Alexander Cheparukhin, with video footage by Taisia Krugovykh and video art by Katya Sсheglova, this is a one-time world debut.
The evening will end with a conversation with members of the creative team.
Catch Pussy Riot Theatre’s ground-breaking “REVOLUTION” here:
Posted on February 27, 2017
Gisele João, Portugal’s most widely acclaimed fado singer to emerge in this decade, headlined the NY Fado Festival this past weekend at the Schimmel Center. Jon Pareles of the NY Times had this to say:
“From her first song, “Madrugada sem Sono” (“Dawn Without Sleep”), Ms. João summoned a full spectrum of fado’s tempestuous passions, from hushed melancholy to eruptive, rough-edged, tearful peaks to aching resignation. Each of her ballads was its own drama, a white-knuckled journey through seismic emotions.”
Read the full review here.
Riot Artists