The Country, Folk & World Recommendation Thread

[Chiomara]

I cannot believe I neglected to mention Abner Jay!





And I don't believe I've seen Kath Bloom mentioned around these parts, which is a shame!

[Lisnaholic]

John Fahey has made so many great albums, but some of you other recommendations are new names to me, Chiormara. I particularly liked Hurrah For The Riff Raff, with their drunken fiddle sound - I'm going to check them out now on YouTube.

In the meantime here is some more fiddle playing, the first one with accordion by Sharon Shannon. Apparently she is "the Jimmy Hendrix of the accordion" if that means anything:-





And from French Canada, something without instruments, apart from boot-heels, I suspect:-

[Chiomara]

Wonderful! Two of my favorite instruments. I've heard of Old Crow Medicine Show (and your selection was lovely), but not the rest! French Canadian folk is something I really must delve into more often, apparently.

(Do you play any instruments by the way? I've been dying to learn either the dulcimer or pixie harp. In my head I am part of a very successful Tom Waits/Moondog cover band, you see.)

Speaking of fiddles-- I discovered Laura Cannell recently and have been blown away to smithereens. Very romantic and haunting; you can definitely hear the medieval folk inspiration/influence:

She also utilizes a technique called over-bowing that I'm reading about now in her interview on The Quietus: The Quietus | Features | In Extremis | Fragments Of Fragments: An Interview With Laura Cannell



And I stumbled across this one just now earlier while seeking out more Mexican, Spanish and south American folk-- it's startlingly beautiful:

I have not even skimmed the surface of her catalog, so I can't say whether I recommend it, but she has such a pure and lovely voice.

Oh, and here's one more Hurray for the Riff Raff song! I really love the dive-bar-in-the-deep-south feel of this one:




Her voice reminds me a little bit of Cat Power.

[Lisnaholic]

No, Choimara, I don't play any instrument - never had that kind of patience or talent. And how about you? Do you play anything already, or would you be starting from scratch with the dulcimer or pixie harp?
Those Laura Canell tracks were beautiful; as you say, very haunting. And thanks for posting some more Riff Raff. I've downloaded a few tracks from Look Out Mama and like them all, so maybe I'll investigate Cat Power, who I don't know anything about. Your clip, Little Things, is good too, but I got a big surprise when I came across a video on Y/tube for Hungry Ghost. What a dramatic change of style and appearance!

French Canadian music has plenty of accordion, but La Bottine Souriente (= The Smiling Boot) are the best I've found so far. They have an album called En Spectacle, and they have what is probably my favourite live music clip, which I'm now posting for about the fifth time on MB:-



For a completely different style of accordion playing, I can recommend this album by Hailu Mergia, from Ethiopia. This is the amazon page:-
https://www.amazon.com/Hailu-Mergia-...06E36B6DRDFVNP

And here's a little taste of his music, which is lively, cool and mysterious all at the same time:-

......

[Stephen]

Not sure where to post these guys but here's as good as anywhere I guess. The Teskey Brothers sound like they're channeling Otis Redding at his bluesy best.

[grindy]

Pretty sure I've already posted this at some point, but whatever, I'm all drunk, Russian and spammy.

[Chiomara]

^ I like it, grindy.

Apologies for the delayed reply, Lisnaholic; I've been in a bit of a folk music rut (and on a 1950s music kick again as usual) but your selections were great as usual. I find non-American (north American that is) folk to almost always be better nowadays (with the exception of the French Canadian stuff); I'm not sure why that is. Cajun music can certainly be interesting, though.

I liked Hailu Mergia especially; I can imagine this playing in a 1970s opium den. (Also, I wish I had the energy of the dancing girl in the first video.)

No, I don't play any instruments at all, so I would indeed be starting from scratch.
What are your music-finding sources, by the way? If you have a main one, I mean.

Oh, and Cat Power is merely okay (not at all folksy, really) though her voice is kind of sultry and nice. It seems incredibly rare to stumble upon singer-songwriter vaguely-folksy indie artists that are truly memorable and don't just mumble over mournful guitar melodies. (Though I've ranted about that already.)

I found these when aimlessly poking around youtube the other day; have you heard of them? They're a Polish quartet:






^ different name, but same group.

[Chiomara]

Banjo interlude!
Here's an arrangement of Tam Lin that I miraculously (I cannot go a full day without listening to Tam Lin--I would literally die, I think) hadn't heard before, even though I lurk on his channel a lot:



This cello version is quite lovely too:

[grindy]

Leonid Fedorov time once more.

I love how he structures this song around a tweaked Eminem sample.

[Lisnaholic]

The virtues of Fedorov Leonid are still not coming through to me, grindy, but I really liked this song, especially when the unexpected slide guitar came in and the vocalist comes back with a cranked up attack on the words. I wonder what the band's name is in, you know, real writing not cyrilic script.

Originally Posted by grindy

Pretty sure I've already posted this at some point, but whatever, I'm all drunk, Russian and spammy.

And thanks for some more great clips, Chiomara. I haven't come across CKB before and I particularly liked the Devil Circle song and the one you included under their "Bester Quartet" name.

I've heard Tam Lin by Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention, but never singled it out in my mind as a song to particularly investigate. Both the versions you posted are beautiful in their different ways, and they prompted me to look at this page to see what the backstory was :- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tam_Lin

(No, don't really have any special sources for finding music, I'm afraid; perhaps like you, I just nose around and follow up on tips, so MB is actually a prime source!)