Funk and the Favelas: Talking Baile Funk with DJ Daniel Haaksman
DJ Daniel Haaksman hasn’t looked back on baile funk since his first trip to Brazil in 2004. Grimy, loud and frenetic, it’s a sound that speaks directly from the favelas of Brazil about the plight of the working poor. He talked to us in Berlin about this cheeky Latin American genre’s circuitous story. Baile funk...
Spirituals on Vinyl
The darkest chapters of a people’s history sometimes evince the size of their spirit. More so when the chapters are recorded not in prose but in verse and song. The spirituals accrued by slaves in bondage acquire this deep significance and have become an essential cultural artefact in American musical history. Considered one of the...
Scientist and Artist: Eduard Artemiev’s Space Odyssey
Eduard Artemiev inhabits the space between science and art, between the electronic avant-garde and popular music. Known best as the composer for Russian sci-fi classic Solaris, Artemiev also pioneered one of the first synthesizers and puts his central role in electronic music down to the finely honed calibrations of the cosmos. Early in the 1979...
Sviatoslav Richter – Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No.1
It’s true what they say about composers with big hands; they have big concertos. Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninov’s four piano concertos are about as big as they come – epic themes, sweeping Russian melodies and a pianistic virtuosity equal to the composer’s own skill at the piano. That said, his Piano Concerto No. 1 is...
Ethno-Musicology: The Music of Béla Bartók
There’s nothing new about mining Balkan states for musical inspiration. Combing his way through the Balkan states and getting as far east as Turkey, the classical composer Béla Bartók found his verve recording folk melodies in rural regions. With an output that is richly recorded on a number of LPs, the music his research compelled...
