Radio Eclectus #88: Radical world music (May 20, 2021)

Radio Eclectus presents an unusual program devoted to indigenous and traditional musics from around the world. We survey recent albums of (mostly) non-Western music, starting with Pacific Northwest powwow songs, then moving south through Latin America, with stops in the Andes and Amazon, then across the Atlantic to Africa, with an assortment of vocal, flute and percussion music, much of it now endangered.

We then cross the Mediterranean to sample an archaic Balkan genre before proceeding eastward across the Central Asian steppes to China, Japan and Korea, where we honor the great classical music traditions of the region alongside some aboriginal singing that seems to anticipate contemporary drone music. Then we circle back to Southeast and South Asia, ending with two newly-excavated historical gems featuring Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Ali Akbar Khan (the latter performing alongside a teenaged Zakir Hussain). Radical OLD music from the Northwest and beyond, with host Michael Schell.