Fire on the Mountain

I'm hurredly typing this out and have decided to put articles up piecemeal otherwise I will never get never get around to publishing updates. It's already March!

The first three months have really been a blessing, and it's all about the music. Italy and Mexico are the two countries selected to be included in the testing of a new music channel, NatGeoMusic, a station that plays only world music. There has been some commentary in the music press due to the fact that the record labels have to supply the videos to the TV channel for free and the artists therefore get no royalties for airplay. Critics argue that World music is already a struggling niche market and therefore artists need whatever money they can get to survive. In response to these voices, of which I am wholly understanding, the reality is that a potential listener can install and download the entire album from scratch in about the same time it is taking to write this article. Therefore I think it is better for World artists to get free exposure where possible. As a result of the music channel I have discovered new artists and bought their albums. The music industry needs to wake up a little to on-demand reality of the music marketplace and stop applying the old its old ways, otherwise people will just continue to download and everyone looses out.

In my view the best of all the programming schedules is a show called "from A to Zanzibar", which showcases artists with an African focus.

One of the artists that is being featured strongly goes by the name of ASA. She's from Nigeria and is a mix of Tracey Chapman and Bob Marley. Really great lyrics and here's a track from her album.




SEU JORGE: A new brazilian offering from a man called Seu Jorge entitled 'CRU' was released at the tail end of last year...Here is the title track from his album! plus the lyrics which follow the video.....pure positivity!


Here are the lyrics...
I was right
I can tell u
It wasn't nice, wasn't cool
I wanna cry, it hurts
Thinking she's not coming, just hurts
But I'm just fine, gonna have some fun
It's about begginings, gonna move on with my life
And I ain't fooling around,
And u know how it is, I´ll go.
but I can come back, whenever u want...

In the next post we'll be sticking with the Portuguese flavour with an absolutely amazing voice from Capo Verde and a compilation from one of Portugal's Fado legends that is in the same league as Antonio Carlos Jobin.