World, Reggae + Latin

This post is part of our Disco 101 program, an in-depth series that looks at the far-reaching, decades-long impact of disco. Curious about disco and want to learn more? Go here to sign up. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or just sending your friends this link. They’ll thank you. We thank you.Thanks to a cadre of specialty imprints, as well as guerilla crate diggers like Awesome Tapes From Africa, music fanatics can now explore numerous reissues and compilations that chart the evolution of dance music in post ’60s Africa. It’s from this wealth of archival work that Resident Advisor has constructed “Afro Disco,” a collection of cuts that show how the scorching syncopation of mid-’70s Afrobeat gradually cooled into a purring, disco-inspired repetition by the dawn of the ’80s. Another key change is a heavier reliance on synthesizers and chunka-chunk guitars fed through the kind of coked-out effects that Chic’s Nile Rodgers pioneered. RA’s aesthetic is so tightly focused (big surprise there) that one could easily imagine these tracks being released as their own compilation.

Khyam Allami, Ola Saad, and 47Soul are just some of the names associated with a rising generation of rockers, singer-songwriters, and electronic producers creating alternative music in the Middle East and North Africa. While Western news headlines tend to focus on the struggles of Syrian refugees and the protracted fight against ISIS, the past decade in the region has seen a paradigm shift in the fields of art and music. From Cairo to Tehran, artists have looked beyond borders and mass-market media sources, adopting wifi, social media and home production programs like Pro Tools to establish new networks of collaboration and distribution.Among the talents are the band 47Soul, who capture the spirit of Arab youth culture and speak to their Palestinian roots with their analog synthesizers, political lyrics, and Levantine dabke rhythms. There’s Khyam Allami, an artist of Iraqi descent who runs the influential label Nawa Recordings, who made avant-garde punk on the soundtrack for the 2015 Tunisian indie film As I Open My Eyes/À peine jouvre les yeux and explores the boundaries of Arabic oud with the avant-garde group Alif (which features members from Egypt and Lebanon). And there’s producers like Ola Saad, who engages with her surroundings through provocative ambient electronic music and sound art.There’s a long tradition of cross-cultural collaboration and avant-garde exploration in the Middle East and North Africa, but this music today is fundamentally unique — reflecting a time of conflict and global division but also of trans-national enrichment and creative possibility.

The 20th century saw a verdant tapestry of sounds emerging from Brazil, presenting a rich variety of approaches to the essential rhythmic underpinnings in South American music that constantly evolved with the political landscape of the times. But of the many different styles and perspectives that Brazil has gifted us over the years, none are so enchanting, so tranquil, and so forlorn as the smooth sound of bossa nova music.Exemplified by its jazzy sense of repose and shuffling nylon-guitar picking, bossa nova was coined by João Gilberto in the mid-1950s when he wrote the amusingly slight “Bim-Bom,” a representation of the women he would see passing by the São Francisco river with loads of laundry balanced on their heads, the baskets swaying with their hips in a delightful rhythm. The genre would spawn a cross-cultural musical conversation, with local heroes like Antônio Carlos Jobim and Bola Sete mingling with American converts like Vince Guaraldi and Stan Getz, leading to an increased interest in the genre throughout the ‘60s that eventually culminated in Brazil’s psychedelia-fuelled Tropicália movement.Though those unfamiliar with bossa nova may relegate it to the forsaken category of lounge music, its sound is subtle and powerful, as demanding of its musicians as it is accommodating for the listener, evoking the tender beauty of nature in the same breath that it laments the simple pains and heartbreak of everyday life. It may have fallen by the wayside as Brazilian music continued to blossom into other exciting shapes and colors over the years, but the magic of bossa nova is that its calming spirit can resonate with anybody curious enough to gaze a little more closely into its winsome foliage.

Subscribe to the Spotify playlist right here.Within the ever-evolving world of Latin music, we’ve seen some sensational moments and headline-grabbing spectacles in 2016. Colombian urban powerhouse J Balvin solidified himself as the reigning king of the new reggaetón movement via the skyrocketing Energía; Marc Anthony and J.Lo stunned global audiences with their surprise reunion at this year’s Latin GRAMMYS with a tropical rendition of Pimpinela’s “Olvídame y pega la vuelta” (and their now-infamous kiss!); our beloved Mexican legend Juan Gabriel passed away too soon yet left behind a charming duets document, Los Dúo 2, starring everyone in Latin music and their mothers (well, not really, but you get the point). Because these buzzed-about folks and their 2016 material are doing so well without our help, having a spot secured in nearly every big publication out there, we’ve decided to spotlight some sparkly hidden gems, exciting artists worthy of your discovery, and killer songs you might have missed by respectable acts. And boy, do these 50 Best Tracks resonate loudly in our hearts.Spunky electro-pop wunderkinds Alex Anwandter, Cineplexx, and Selma Oxor kept things intriguingly hyperactive through iridescent synths and a dash of mystery. Hypnotic electro-tropical masterminds Systema Solar, Compass, and Orkesta Mendoza continued to bend the boundaries of cumbia and folkloric sounds via their dashing experimentalism and love of tradition. Alt-norteño took the throne in unconventionalism in the good hands of regional Mexican iconoclasts Juan Cirerol and Helen Ochoa while staying true to form. Debaucherous punk made waves across borders through the awesomely cacophonic powerchords of daredevils AJ Davila, Sexy Zebras, and Los Nastys. For our utter excitement, we also saw the return of alternative rock royalty Café Tacvba, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, and Andrés Calamaro. Oh, and not to mention 2016 also brought us surprisingly killer renditions delivered by the likes of Mexrrissey and Vanessa Zamora. Here are the 50 most riveting tracks hailing from indie and non-conformist Latinx acts. Happy listening!

This post is part of our Psych 101 program, an in-depth, 14-part series that looks at the impact of psychedelia on modern music. Want to sign up to receive the other installments in your inbox? Go here. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or just sending your friends this link. Theyll thank you. We thank you.It’s been said that Jamaica has produced more records per capita than any other nation. And of all of the recording facilities that have served the island nation’s massive music industry, none is more steeped in legend than Lee “Scratch” Perry’s Black Ark.Operational for just under six years, from 1973 to 1979, the Black Ark was crudely fashioned in the backyard of the legendary dub/reggae producer’s family home in Washington Gardens, Kingston. It was as much an anachronism for its time as it is now a template for today’s DIY home studios. Where other Kingston facilities like Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One and Duke Reid’s Treasure Isle were places of efficient commerce, run by businessmen-producers, The Black Ark was one of unfettered creativity. Unconstrained by time, logistics, and restrictions on marijuana smoke, this was a place where Perry could unlock new levels of bass by thumping microphones buried under the base of palm trees, and where mooing cows could be summoned by applying tin foil to cardboard tubes.Perry has been the subject of a meaty biography (2006’s People Funny Boy by David Katz), two feature-length documentaries (Ethan Higbee and Adam Bhala Lough’s The Upsetter and Volker Shaner’s Vision of Paradise), and a 1994 issue of the Beastie Boys Grand Royal magazine. All grant his Black Ark years their just due as Perry’s peak period of creativity. Yet the mystique of the Black Ark— which Perry is said to have burned down to ward off the presence of evil spirits — seems to grow greater with each retelling.From the outset of his career, Perry was committed to experimentation. His use of a crying baby on 1968’s “People Funny Boy” is widely regarded as the earliest use of a sample (to say nothing of its status as one of the first reggae songs and earliest diss tracks). With the launch of his Upsetter label in the late ‘60s, he revolutionized the role of the producer, beginning his first experiments with dub and making himself the featured act from behind the boards.The opening of the Black Ark in 1973 coincides with Perry’s estrangement from Bob Marley and the Wailers, whom he had molded from a marginal, suit-and-tie-wearing vocal trio into the fierce, defiant soul rebels first announced on the group’s 1970 debut LP. Perry was the first producer in Jamaica to use drum machine, which he first employed on Marley’s raw, unfinished “Rainbow Country,” and an early version of “Natural Mystic.” (A rhythm, known as Chim Cherie and credited to Perry’s band The Upsetters—and recycled over the years by other producers for tracks like Shinehead’s “Billie Jean”—also dates from this time). In 1973, Perry also released his landmark Blackboard JungleDub album, which featured Perry’s mix in one channel and engineer King Tubby’s in the other (though it should be noted that the rhythm tracks from this release pre-date the Black Ark).Other early Black Ark recordings include Junior Byles’ “Curly Locks,” (1973), Susan Cadogan’s “Hurt so Good” and Dr. Alimantado’s “Best Dressed Chicken In Town” (1974). The latter would form the nucleus of a 1978 album that launched Greensleeves Records’ London-based reggae empire, while “Hurt so Good,” one of the more straightforward songs to ever emerge from the studio, enjoyed great success on the U.K. charts.The Black Ark era peaks in 1976-77, a period in which Perry produced The Heptones’ Party Time, Max Romeo’s War Ina Babylon and Junior Murvin’s Police and Thieves albums, as well as his own dub LP, Super Ape, each issued through Island Records. If reggae was becoming known as the sunny sound of the tropics, these albums offered a much darker vision of the genre. War Ina Babylon depicted a biblical battle between good and evil in its lyrics (and cover art), particularly on the classic title track and “Chase the Devil.” That song’s haunting opening line would later color The Prodigy’s “Out of Space” and Jay-Z’s Kanye-produced “Lucifer.”The Heptones’ deceptively titled Party Time contained weighty material including a cover of Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” and the Perry-penned “Sufferer’s Time.” And the title track from Murvin’s album, “Police and Thieves” would be retroactively remembered as the soundtrack to clashes between Caribbean immigrants and cops at that year’s Notting Hill Carnival in London. Super Ape, meanwhile, remixed pieces of these and other Black Ark recordings, while introducing an alter ego Perry has continued to revisit throughout his career. (His latest release, Super Ape Returns to Conquer, is a wholesale revisiting of that LP, with new versions of each track).The Clash covered “Police and Thieves” on their 1977 debut and tapped Scratch to produce “Complete Control” during the producer’s visit to London that year. Joe Strummer and crew never reached the Black Ark, but they helped it become a magnet for musical tourists. These visitors—or at least their record labels—were generally flummoxed by Perry’s unusual methods. Paul McCartney sought Scratch’s services for his wife Linda’s quickly aborted solo career, travelling to Kingston to record covers of ‘50’s bubblegum hits “Sugartime (by the Maguire Sisters) and “Mister Sandman” (popularized by The Chordettes). The tracks would not emerge until the posthumous Wide Prairie in 1998. Robert Palmer visited in 1978 for a session that yielded only “Love Can Run Faster,” the little-known B-side to classic rock staple “Give Me The News (Doctor Doctor).”Likewise, the record many regard as Perry’s apex as a producer was rejected by Island Records in 1977: Heart of the Congos, by the titular trio of Cedric Myton, Roydel Johnson, and Watty Burnett. The album was instead issued by Perry in a run of several hundred copies, its legend left to grow over subsequent decades and reissues. After reuniting with Perry in London to record 1977’s “Punky Reggae Party,” Bob Marley visited his former mentor’s studio in 1978, recording demos—”Who Colt The Game” and “I Know A Place”—which, too, were only released posthumously.By this time, reports had begun to surface of erratic behavior and a possible descent into madness on the part of Perry. Fortunately, his eclectic nature manifested itself in increasingly odd, but brilliant recordings, the contents of which continue to baffle and inspire. This includes 1977’s Roast Fish, Collie Weed & Cornbread—in which the aforementioned cow noises were achieved by running Watty Burnett’s baritone voice through a tin foil–laced cardboard tube—and 1978’s jazz-inspired Return of the Super Ape.Sometime around 1979, Perry was seen covering the walls of the Black Ark in indecipherable magic-marker scrawlings, crossing out all of the vowels. Recent retellings suggest that this and other acts of seeming insanity were possibly a calculated effort on Perry’s behalf to free himself of the figurative “vampires” who’d set upon his home and studio—mobsters seeking a cut of label profits, or underemployed singers who’d taken to squatting on the premises.In fact, Perry’s legendary act of arson may be a distortion. Family members have been quoted as saying the studio actually burned in an electrical fire in 1983. Perry, now 81 and residing primarily in the Swiss Alps, still owns and keeps a home on the property that formerly housed the Black Ark.

Oh, I’m tired of looking for homeAnd asking about my loved onesMy soul is woundedSo the Syrian singer Omar Souleyman cries on “Mawal,” the penultimate track off his 2017 album, To Syria, With Love. After six years of war in his home country, the man known among Westerners for his dabke jams, for his laments to heartsickness, and for his ubiquitous keffiyeh and sunglasses can hold in his feelings no longer—he misses home.The war in Syria has spurred a global refugee crisis, stoked xenophobic and Islamophobic fears across Europe and America, and prompted U.S. president Donald Trump to add the Levantine nation to his list of countries thrown onto a controversial travel ban. But Syria’s musical traditions offer a much-needed escape from the horrors of war. Indeed, as this playlist shows, there is much to explore, from honey-voiced pop stars like George Wassouf and Assala Nasri to classical and folk traditions championed today by the likes of Ibrahim Keivo and the Orchestra or Syrian Musicians (members of whom performed a much-heralded concert last year in London with Damon Albarn and other guests as part of the musical collective Africa Express).Even before the war, Syria was never given a good rep in Western media representations; talk was all about Bashar al-Assad and the “axis of evil.” But in the Middle East, this country is famed for its rich traditions of art, music, and culture. Indeed, the capital Damascus contends as one of the oldest cities in the world, while the major city of Aleppo was famed as a center for sacral chants and the poetic and musical form called mowashah, preserved for centuries among Sufi and Christian musicians. Today, the situation may be incredibly dire for millions of Syrians, but there’s still the music, helping us heal from yesterday to today.

Judy is one of if not my favorite voice in Latin music criticism/journalism, and she created an interesting playlist for Rhapsody: Latin songs that pay homage, either directly or in spirit, to Che Guevara. She correctly identifies Che as being more of a pop cultural meme than a revolutionary figure at this point, but it is interesting just how positive most of the tracks are towards the man. Spending nearly a year in Miami, I wouldve guessed that his legacy in music would be a bit more mixed. There are even several albums dedicated specifically to Che.

Whats This Playlist About?: In the words of musical polymath David Byrne, "I assume I dont have to explain where the shithole reference came from." This is the avid cyclist/art-pop masterminds thoughtful way of exposing some of musics brightest talents from what some people (ahem, certin presidents) deem the bleakest of locales. More from Byrne: "Heres a playlist that gives just the smallest sample of the depth and range of creativity that continues to pour out of the countries in Africa and the Caribbean… can music help us empathize with its makers?"What You Get: A whole lot of fantastically funky rhythms and sun-soaked celebrations that are undeniably infectious. Byrne starts and ends in the Caribbean, with the 60s-rock-infused Cuban pop of Los Van Van, the dizzying drums of Irakere, and the heart-pumping beats of Haitian greats like Michel Martelly. But he spends most of his time exploring the rich, rhythmic traditions of the African continent, from Mali duo Amadou & Mariams hypnotic Afro-blues to Senegalese band Orchestra Baobabs smooth Afro-Cuban grooves.Greatest Discovery: Jupiter & Okwess’ fusion of slick Congolese rhythms and sizzling psychedelic guitar, with some fresh keyboard work from Damon Albarn.Will This Inspire You to Catch the Next Flight Out to a Beautiful Shithole? For sure. And if you can’t quite do that, it will at least have you daydreaming of stunning subequatorial sunsets and crazy fun dance parties——all pleasantly far away from this D.C. shithole.

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!There is but a single label that’s played a key role in the evolution of reggae, post-punk, dance, industrial, and experimental music alike, and that’s On-U Sound. Founded by English producer, remixer, and bandleader Adrian Sherwood in 1979, the label’s been in the throes of a massive reissue campaign since 2016. In addition to dusting off long out-of-print titles from the likes of African Head Charge and the Singers & Players collective, Sherwood has given the green light for a slew of anthologies, including Trevor Jackson’s brilliant Science Fiction Dancehall Classics and two volumes of Sherwood At The Controls that have helped contextualize the label’s sweeping legacy.About that legacy: On U-Sound initially made a name for itself with a slew of titles that opened up the stylistic parameters of dub while at the same time remaining loyal to the movement’s spiritual core. Where albums like Creation Rebel’s Starship Africa and African Head Charge’s My Life in a Hole in the Ground—yes, that’s a cheeky Eno/Byrne reference—sound like echo-drenched alien transmissions smothered in futuristic electronics, Congo Ashanti Roy’s African Blood and Bim Sherman’s Across the Red Sea are moving meditations that ease ’70s roots music into ‘80s New Wave.But Sherwood and U-Sound were never content with remaining tethered to dub. Indeed, what made the label so innovative throughout its peak years in the ’80s was an ability to fold dub’s trademark qualities—shuddering reverb, hulking bass, tape delay, and shuffling rhythms turned inside out and upside down—into a wide range of cutting-edge genres. The Sherwood-produced collision of world grooves, tape manipulation, and punk politics heard on Mark Stewart & The Maffia’s Learning To Cope With Cowardice opened up entire vistas of avant-garde expression that 21st-century explorers such as Gang Gang Dance and Sun Araw have since colonized. Similarly radical is Tackhead’s Whats My Mission Now? 12-inch, a speaker-shredding collage of hip-hop drum machines, fidgety electro syncopation, and aggressive industrial samples that hasn’t lost any of its radical bite.While the bulk of these tracks are drawn from the On U-Sound catalog, listeners will also encounter a handful of relevant Sherwood projects that weren’t released by the label. For example, The Slits’ “Man Next Door,” co-mixed by Sherwood, is an early example of the cross-pollination between dub and post-punk. Then there’s the long-forgotten Sherwood production “Dead Come Alive,” which didn’t see the light of day until Science Fiction Dancehall Classics. This hybrid of hip-hop and ’80s club music features a young Neneh Cherry rhyming over bubbling, pointillist electronics that are so prescient, they could’ve been created just last week—something that holds true for just about every cut on this playlist.

Jason Gubbels, who has done an admirable job as the world critic over at Rhapsody, highlights the work from one of Jamaicas greatest and generally overlooked producers, King Jammy. As Jason points out, King Jammy has played a great influence on at least two eras of reggae. He was the dub master at King Tubbys studio during the 70s, and then later basically invented dancehall in 1985 with his single for Wayne Smith, "Under Me Sleng Teng." This is a very enjoyable playlist featuring everyone from Black Uhuru to Shabba Ranks.