museradio.fm blog

A beautiful treasure of an album with a great story.

Emahoy Tsegue Maryam is an unusual Ethiopian composer and pianist. Born as Yewubdar Gebru in 1923 Ethiopia to an upper class family, she was sent to study in Switzerland where she first learned the piano. When the Ethiopian Emperor Hallie Selassie forbid her from continuing her musical education in England, she was so heartbroken that it led her to secretly leave her family and join a monastery at the tender age of 19! She has been a nun ever since, continuing to play and compose through the years, and donate the proceeds from her music to help children and those in need. She currently lives in Jerusalem and might have gone undiscovered had it not been for Frances Falceto’s Ethiopiques Series.





If you havent heard it, imagine an improvisation of classical Western romantic piano, modern jazz, and Ethiopian music (although i dont know what Ethiopian religious music sounds like, it is one of her loves and influences!). Her compositions subtly combine different traditions and yet are more than the sum of parts they absorbed, creating something that sounds deeply familiar and yet strangely new. They are haunting, soothing, atmospheric and penetrating. One can hear something of Chopin’s Nocturne and Satie, yet also the sparse improvisational style of some modern jazz.  In the words of someone else: her music “filters the traditional Ethiopian pentatonic scale through classical technique– in the end sounding like impressionistic jazz.”


One of the last albums to make a large impact on the BBC radio presenter Charlie Gillett before he passed was this album, Vol 21 of the Ethiopiques series. I don’t remember how it got into my hands, but I selected the track Presentiment from it for the Museum of Everything playlist. Charlie first heard it playing at the actual Museum of Everything in London (the collection of outsider art is now showing in Turin, Italy) and was immediately struck by it. Strangely, it was the one volume of 25 that he was missing in his collection so although he was familiar with the whole series he had never come across this album before! It will always have a special place in my heart as it was an album we shared and was so present in his last days, playing on repeat in his living room one of the last times I visited. We didnt know if Tsegue Maryam Gebrou was still living when we started looking into it, but have since discovered that she is in Jerusalem, still playing at the age of 85.


I wonder, as often happens when I discover something that moves me and is unlike anything I know (as was the case with Orlando Cachaito Lopez’s classic album “Cachaito”), where can I find more stuff like this?!


A good biography of her life is on Emahoy Tsegue Maryam Music Foundation website.


And you can also look at Charlie’s notes on this album on his Sound of the World website forum.


Great description of her work by Thom Jurek


Guèbrou’s meld of blues, classical, and gospel music filtered through a jazz pianist’s sense of time and voicings is unlike anything anyone has ever heard. It’s ethereal yet rooted in the Ethiopian Orthodox sung tradition; it’s gauzy and fluid, yet worldly in its command of the musical languages she has chosen to display. It’s precise and ordered, yet unfettered and free to drift. It feels like songs of praise, prayer, charming conversation, and partying all rolled into a single exquisite voice that contains many.

For those of you who enjoy trawling through music blogs, Ive got a very good recommendation: Sound of the World, BBC radio host Charlie Gillett’s website. Charlie has been on the radio for the past 40 years or so, beginning on Capital Radio in the 1970’s, a time when England was into Rock, and where he was playing little known pre-1960’s American music. He’s traveled a long way musically, while never losing his roots so to speak, and currently selects and plays some of the best and least known contemporary music coming from many parts of the world.


These days Charlie has a weekly music program on the BBC World Service (the only music show on the world service!) and focuses mainly on music traditions from around the world. As strange a category as that may seem, he weaves together songs from different parts of the world that speak to one another through rhythm, instrumentation, melody or some less definable but palpable connection.


Im listening to the show currently posted on the BBC World Service site, and the theme is songs sung in languages invented by the singers! The first song is by Julien Jacob from Benin, followed by Rhett Brewer from the US and then DVA from the Czech Republic…


There is a fantastic forum on Charlie’s website, where people share comments on all kinds of topics ranging from live shows to music discoveries, to best youtube music video clips and playlists on spotify.

Marta Topferova is one of my favorite artists. Every one of her albums (sadly bar the latest) are filled with incredible songs and listenable the whole way through (something I find rare!). She sings almost entirely in Spanish, in an earthy sensuous tone, and is accompanied by beautiful acoustic arrangements. Every time I put on one of her albums, I feel immediately transported and uplifted, somewhere in between melancholy and joy.


Have a listen to a live version of Semana Azul with just her and her cuatro (small Venezuelan guitar): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmEmgOGYtJM


Anyone of her albums is perfect for a dinner party. Its very surprising and unfortunate that she hasnt been discovered by a wider audience… but all the better for you to catch her now at Green Note! Which brings me to the point of my blurb – she will be playing in London soon!! And you can see her, but tickets are running out fast. http://www.greennote.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=877&Itemid=6


The best part is that she is playing in a tiny, cozy little venue (reminiscent of college town music venues), big enough to fit a dozen tables, and small enough to feel super up close, called Green Note, in Camden. Ive got my tickets, so maybe see you there!

Some of you may already be familiar with Erlend Oye, Norwegian electro-pop writer and singer. He was part of Royksopp, and along with Eirik Glambek Bøe make up the acoustic indie band Kings of Convenience (featured on two museradio.fm playlists This City Never Sleeps and Funk Como Le Gusta). He also produced a remix album for the DJ Kicks series in 2004.


Im just listening to the album Dreams from his more recent project, The Whitest Boy Alive. More uptempo and rocky than Kings of Convenience, but with equally infectious melodies and his gentle voice crooning about love… The track Im listening to now is Fireworks. You can watch a great live version of it on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju7PJYuNG3o

I am shocked and deeply saddened by the news of Lhasa’s recent death to breast cancer. Lhasa de Sela was one of my favorite singers, someone with so much to say, who sung with such grace and sensitivity and whose music seemed to always come from deep within. She was only 37 years old and passed away before midnight on new year’s day, after battling breast cancer for 20 months.


I recently met Lhasa when Charlie Gillett interviewed her for his BBC radio show. I didnt realize then why she had such short hair and seemed tired. Nor when I first listened to her last album, self-titled “Lhasa”, which departed from the previous two in how melancholic and introspective it was, laden with images of parting, the unknown and death. What did strike me however, upon first listening (apart from how immediately and deeply struck I was by it), is how much she stood out from many other contemporary artists.


Each of her 3 albums has shown her evolution as an artist; as someone who followed and carved out her own musical journey. I felt so refreshed to discover that her third album was as powerful and beautiful as the previous two and yet charted new territory. It felt like the creation of it was done outside the context of the contemporary folk, fusion or indie music scene, with their trends, production style and time-line. And instead inside her own rich musical world, with its own references. For example, “Lhasa” was recorded entirely in analog, a practice few if any artists do in the current age of digital recording. It took her 5 years to release her second album “the Living Road”, and it another 6 after that to release “Lhasa” in 2009. She was an artist who really was “going in” and who brought us the fruits of that journey. She was an artist whose journey I believed in and was excited about. A rare and wonderful thing.


And now we have lost her. But her music will stay with us, all the more haunting.


The lyrics from “I’m Going In” from her last album:


When my lifetime had just ended
And my death had just begun
I told you I’d never leave you
But I knew this day would come


Give me blood for my blood wedding
I am ready to be born
I feel new
As if this body were the first I’d ever worn


I need straw for the straw fire
I need hard earth for the plow
Don’t ask me to reconsider
I am ready to go now


I’m going in I’m going in
This is how it starts
I can see in so far
But afterwards we always forget
Who we are


I’m going in I’m going in
I can stand the pain
And the blinding heat
‘Cause I won’t remember you
The next time we meet


You’ll be making the arrangements
You’ll be trying to set me free
Not a moment for the meeting
I’ll be busy as a bee


You’ll be talking to me
But I just won’t understand
I’ll be falling by the wayside
You’ll be holding out your hand


Don’t you tempt me with perfection
I have other things to do
I didn’t burrow this far in
Just to come right back to you


I’m going in I’m going in
I have never been so ugly
I have never been so slow
These prison walls get closer now
The further in I go


I’m going in I’m going in
I like to see you from a distance
And just barely believe
And think that
Even lost and blind
I still invented love


I’m going in
I’m going in
I’m going in


- Lhasa de Sela


Listen to “I’m Going In” on youtube


23 March 2010


I’ve just added our first museradio.fm podcast in tribute to Lhasa de Sela and Charlie Gillett, who both passed this year.


You can listen here: Lhasa de Sela music tribute


In this podcast, I’ve featured some of my favorite Lhasa songs, including De Cara a la Pared, Con Toda Palabra and I’m Going In. I also discovered some songs where she featured on other artists’ albums, including Patrick Watson’s album Wooden Arms, a moody, experimental ambient indie pop album with lots of chimes, guitar, piano and a high pitched voice slightly reminiscent of Antony & The Johnsons. The track, Wooden Arms featuring Lhasa, and track 5 on the museradio.fm Lhasa podcast, is my favorite on the album however.

A lot of people are getting excited about the young new singer songwriter Nneka, based in Germany and from Nigeria. Check her out.

Watch this video: Heartbeat

You can download a free song here

What a mouthful of a name… Hardly know anything about him but his debut album Opa Hey!, just released, in amazing!
From Bulgaria, really creative mix of acoustic and electronic. Horns, flutes, percussion, strings and interesting folkloric style vocals layered together in a beautiful way. All the tracks have a beat. Im going to burn my digital copy onto a CD now and listen as I drive through the dark city streets. Perfect!

You can listen to more: http://www.myspace.com/kottarashky

or buy the album here: Kottarashky

Have been listening all morning to Lisa Hannigan’s “Sea Song” which I discovered on a Southbank Center newsletter!


They were offering a free download of this song to promote her upcoming concert at the Southbank Center on November 23. Turns out that it’s a gem.


Beautiful wispy singing, that with the gorgeous layered violins move into a climatic chorus that has had me gripped since I put it on.


Turns out she has been nominated for several awards, including the Mercury Prize, and appeared on Gregory Colbert’s show, Jay Leno’s, been featured in the NY Times…. Still, she was a discovery for me. Sea Song is off her debut solo album “Sea Sew”. Other songs I like are “Keep It All” and “Lille” although I haven’t properly listened to the whole album yet.

If you haven’t discovered Céu, a Brazilian singer-songwriter from São Paolo, then you’re in for a treat.

She has just released her second album, Vagarosa, which translates to “slow, easy-going” in Portuguese. Friday night she played at the London College Union theatre and I went to check her out, in the flesh.

Listening to her album you wouldn’t be sure that it would translate to a successful live show.  Yes, she was sexy, entrancing us with her sultry confidence on stage, moving around freely in her short school girl skirt and neon yellow suspenders, grooving to all of the songs.  But thankfully, I realized, she is not the product of a group of great producers and musicians. Her voice was excellent live. She has her own unique style, moving between lush nonsensical sounds to intensely belting out the lyrics. She brought her studio engineer and some great musicians, so the overall sound was fantastic. Always so satisfying to have this sense of confirmation when you see an artist you love play live.

Check her out. Her first, self-titled, album is also excellent. She does a great cover of Concrete Jungle and Ave Cruz and Malemolencia are two other highlights.