The Country, Folk & World Recommendation Thread

[Drjohnrock]

Originally Posted by Safar

Chico Chico e Fran - Ninguém (Brazil)




Big Thief - Masterpiece (USA)

Thanks as always for your interesting and informative posts, Safar. I've heard about Big Thief but never heard anything by them until now. This song has more heft than stuff I've heard from other bands mining a similar musical vein. I look forward to checking out more of their tunes.

[Safar]

Until a few weeks ago i didn't even know the band name, Big Thief. Nice discovery.

Spoiler for Big Thief - NOT:

Mary Chapin Carpenter returns with Personal History, an 11-song collection recorded at Real World Studios in early 2025 and produced by Josh Kaufman. Framed as a musical memoir, the album finds Carpenter reflecting on the lessons of growing older, charting a course through life’s joys and sorrows with lyrical intimacy and emotional clarity.

Mary Chapin Carpenter feat. Anaïs Mitchell - Home Is a Song (USA)

The Marani Ensemble, founded in 1993, is a men's choir dedicated to the Georgian repertoire. Georgian polyphony has an absolutely unique flavor. It is a music capable of intriguing and touching both the discoverer and the discerning listener. To come together and sing these polyphonies, whether sacred or secular, is to perpetuate and inscribe in the present an ancestral culture.

Ensemble Marani - Netavi Gogov (Georgia)

Spoiler for Ensemble Marani - Tchela:

[Safar]

" ... The Scorpios have a unique story. The collective originally hails from Sudan but fled to London in the 1980s amid the fundamentalist takeover of the country. Before that, several of the musicians had played traditional music at weddings and religious festivals across East Africa and in the Arab states for many years. The collective’s lead singer, Regia Ishag, comes from a renowned musical family, and her father was the guitarist in the Sudanese band from the 1970s with a very similar name, The Scorpions. In London, they met guitarist Adam Bulewski, and The Scorpios were born. Today, the collective also includes musicians from Ghana, Jamaica, Poland, Japan, and the UK, and in 2017, The Scorpios released their self-titled debut album via Afro 7...."

The Scorpios - Azzah (Sudan)

A Sudanese Reggae & Fusion artist, and an accomplished singer-songwriter, composer & multi-instrumentalist. Wd AlZain is one of the most highly regarded voices & figures in contemporary Sudanese Music & Pop Culture. Wd AlZain’s songs tell stories that revolve around everyday issues of Sudanese youth, using a poetic rendition of the simple, colloquial Arabic of modern day Sudan. Peace & Love are the motivation & purpose of his music.

WD Alzain - Aktobi lai - أكتبي لي (Sudan)

[Safar]

They first came together after the split of the Syli Orchestre National and were originally founded in Conakry by the government of the newly independent state of Guinea. Created by the then president, Sékou Touré, they became one of the most prominent national orchestras of the new country…

Orchestre de la Paillote - Kadia Blues (Guinea)

Guillermo Portabales has become one of the greatest names in Cuban music, sharing stages with Joseíto Fernandez, Celina y Reutilio, Barbarito Diez and Beny Moré. His music was hugely influential on the Cuban artists who came together as Buena Vista Social Club, and has spread as far as West Africa where his tunes, in particular El Carretero, have been widely covered by artists such as Cheikh Lô, Africando, Etoile 2000 and Orchestra Baobab.

Guillermo Portabales - Al Vaivén De Mi Carreta (Cuba)

Spoiler for Guillermo Portabales - Tristeza Guajira:

Hailing from Detroit, The Trumpelettes were a gospel group active throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s. They issued a few albums and a couple of 45’s in this time, issuing a lot of their material via Ohio’s Bos Records.

Trumpelettes - Soon One Morning (USA)

[Safar]

Fimber Bravo is one of the most influential exponents of cutting edge steel pan in contemporary music....
Hiyah Man fuses high energy steel drum melodies with highlife fusions. It glistens with energy and races along to an energising beat that you can’t help but get whisked up in. This just feels good and as lyrics sing of “melodies that touch the soul”, you can’t help but feel a part of something bright and evolving!

Fimber Bravo - Hiyah Man (Trinidad)

Spoiler for Fimber Bravo - Santana's Daughter:

[Safar]

With Mambísimo Big Band the golden ages of the great Latin Big Bands come to life again. This 16-piece band takes you back to the legendary performances in the New YorkPalladium and Tropicana in Havana.
Leading by the famous Dutch trombonist Jeroen Kleijkers

Mambísimo Big Band - Sofrito (Netherlands)

Grammy and Latin Grammy-nominated PALO! is from Miami with artists from Cuba and the United States. PALO! mixes salsa, jazz and funk to create super groovy Latin music.

PALO! - "Fumando" (USA/Cuba)

[Safar]

Mary Chapin Carpenter - A Heart That Never Closes (USA)

Spoiler for Mary Chapin Carpenter - A Heart That Never Closes:

Hemphill was born near Como and Senatobia, Mississippi, in northern Mississippi just east of the Mississippi Delta. She began playing the guitar at the age of seven and also played drums in various local Mississippi fife and drum bands. The first field recordings of her work were made by blues researcher George Mitchell in 1967 and ethnomusicologist Dr. David Evans in 1973 when she was known as Jessie Mae Brooks, using the surname from a brief early marriage, but the recordings were not released.

Jessie Mae Hemphill - Standing In My Doorway Crying (USA)

[Safar]

At the dawn of the 1980s, Senegal was immersed in the "beautiful era" of Cuban influences, African-American soul and funk.
A group of passionate musician friends want to shine in this construction of a revolution in Senegalese music. Their credo will be to claim a spiritual search, that is the meaning of the word Gestü in Wolof. The songs on the album, like the cover, denounce certain taboos in Senegalese society, such as polygamy and child abandonment. As such, it was denounced by religious authorities as soon as it was released.

Gëstu de Dakar - Ngoulok (Senegal)

[Safar]

The Baka musicians from Gbiné have come a long way since the release of their last album Gati Bongo. Whereas none of them had ever performed outside their forest home before Gati Bongo was recorded, since it's release they have toured in UK, Belgium and Holland as well as around Cameroon and Congo. They have formed a tight rhythm section which melds with their polyphonic vocal harmonies to create their own unique style as can be heard on the new recording.

Baka Beyond - Spirit of the Forest (Cameroon)

Spoiler for Orchéstre Baka Gbiné - Kopolo:

Jerry Douglas is widely renowned as perhaps the finest Dobro player in contemporary acoustic music, and certainly the most celebrated and prolific. His main foundation is bluegrass, but Douglas is an eclectic whose tastes run toward jazz, blues, folk, and straight-ahead country as well, and he's equally capable of appealing to bluegrass aficionados or new agers with a taste for instrumental roots music.

Jerry Douglas – Transatlantic Sessions l Route Irish (USA)

[Safar]

Traditional, polyphonic singing can sound very exciting. Just like the Latvian women's vocal ensemble Saucējas. The vocal artists from Riga are an independent ensemble at the Latvian Academy of Culture and uphold the spiritual heritage of the small Baltic republic. In order to be able to sing the old songs with historical fidelity, they draw on existing archive recordings and maintain contact with sheet music collectors and enthusiasts. The double album “Dabā” (translated: In Nature) follows an approach that is as purist as it is unique: the focus here is on traditional singing in the great outdoors. “This is a unique project,” emphasize Saucējas.

Saucējas - Zīdi, Zīdi, Lynu Druva (Latvia)

The big band OMNIVERSAL EARKESTRA from Berlin set off for Mali to experience the legendary musicians of the seventies and their music live. The result is the Le Mali70 project. During the trip to the hometowns of now almost forgotten bands such as the Mystère Jazz de Tombouctou, the Kanaga de Mopti, the Super Bitons de Segou and the Railband from Bamako, unconventional modern big band arrangements of the old pieces were created, which were recorded together in Salif Keita's venerable Moffou studio during the final week.

Omniversal Earkestra - Batumanbe (Germany)

Super Biton de Ségou, Super Biton for short and also known as the Orchestre Régional de Segou and Super Biton National de Ségou, are an African jazz musical group. They were especially popular and influential in the 1970s, when they became the national orchestra of Mali, and in the first half of the 1980s.

Orchestre Régional de Ségou - Batumanbe (Mali)

Spoiler for SUPER BITON - CHE: