日志

Take the 50 top artists in your musical profile, and create a cloud of the similar artists that are not in your top 50. The result is a collection of highly recommended artists for your personal profile. You can generate your own cloud (in BBCode) at http://anthony.liekens.net/pub/scripts/last.fm/recommend.php

My recommendations are Absynthe Minded Admiral Freebee Afel Bocoum Ali Farka Touré Andrew Bird Animal Collective Antony and the Johnsons Art Bears Art Zoyd Baaba Maal Beck Bob Dylan Bonnie 'Prince' Billy Boredoms Boubacar Traoré Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band Devendra Banhart Dragibus Eels Elliott Smith Etron Fou Leloublan Flora Purim Frank Pahl Habib Koité & Bamada Henry Cow Idrissa Soumaoro Iron & Wine Jeff Buckley Joanna Newsom Johnny Cash Klimperei & Pierre Bastien Leonard Cohen Lobi Traoré Lou Reed Moondog Moussa Diallo Mr. Bungle Neutral Milk Hotel Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Nick Drake Oumou Sangare Rokia Traoré…

US:

Alaska:
Kate Earl (Chugiak)
Melissa Mitchell

Arizona:
Courtney Robbins (Tucson)

California:
Kurt Adam (Hollywood)
Lauren Adams
Adrianne (Los Angeles)
Priscilla Ahn (Los Angeles)
Kawika Alfiche (San Francisco)
Anticon (San Francisco)
Augustana (San Diego)
Joan Baez (Menlo Park)
Roem Baur (San Francisco)
Blame Sally
Jeff Bonilla (Modesto)
Mataji Booker (Los Angeles)
Barry Big B Brenner (Tujunga)
John Bruce (Modesto)
Emma Burgess (Hollywood)
Rachael Cantu
Carolyn (El Cerrito)
Chicago Red (Los Angeles)
Correatown (Los Angeles)
Cosmologic (San Diego)
Deborah Crooks (San Francisco)
Deerhoof (Oakland)
Brett Dennen (Oakdale)
Rick di Dia (Oakland)
Diablo Dimes
DJ Egadz (San Francisco)
DJ Slate and Rocket 8 (Modesto)
DJ Werd (Aptos)
Aaron Durr (Modesto)
Eels (Los Angeles)
Elina (Los Angeles)
Aireene Espiritu (Oakland)
Melissa Etheridge (Los Angeles)
Evaline (Turlock)
Michelle Featherstone (Los Angeles)
Sean Fonda (Modesto)
…

I came across a last.fm mixtape group today that had for its November theme non-English music. I don't have the time to join the group, but I had made such a mix a couple years ago that I like a lot. There's very little instrumental music that I like. On the other hand, it's not necessarily important to me to understand lyrics (heck, there's a bunch of songs sung in English where I can't understand what's being sung). So I'm a big fan of music from around the world. I thought I'd upload the mix here in case anyone who sees this page has any interest.


1. Amoureuse Ou Pas - Axelle Red (Belgium/French)
2. Alt Und Jung - Wolfgang Ambros (Austria/German)
3. 747 - Giraffes (Israel/Hebrew)
4. Πесия Бравыx Πилотов (Brave Pilot's Song) - The Red Elvises (Russia/Russian)
5. Viietõistkümnes üü - Lõkõriq (Estonia/Estonian)
6. El Carretero - Buena Vista Social Club (Cuba/Spanish)
7. Carnaval de São Vicente - Cesaria Evora (Cape Verde/Crioulo)
…

It all started a few years ago. I had just read a book about the Tamashek. I know, most people know them as Tuareg but they call themselves Tamashek or Kel Tamasheq ('people of the Tamashek language') and that's the term I use. It's a matter of respect. (Don't worry, I won't start a 'Get your damn tags right' campaign ;) For no special reason I was curious how Tamashek sounds in comparison to Arabic for example. So I started googling ... without much success. But then I had the brilliant idea of searching for music instead of recordings of spoken words. Much better! The search results directed me to the BBC recording of Tinariwen's performance at the WOMAD 2004 festival.

My first impression after listening to the one-hour performance: "Nice guitar playing but apart from that ... ,uhm, quite exotic." However, over the next days I realized that the music didn't cease to linger in the back of my mind. So I returned two or three times to listen again with growing enjoyment. …

Take your top 20 artists. For each of these artists, collect the top 5 similar artists. The resulting number of unique artists is your eclectic score. If the score is small (extreme = 5) your musical preferences are very limited, and if it is large (larger than 80, extreme = 100), then you have an eclectic musical preference. You can compute your own score at http://anthony.liekens.net/pub/scripts/last.fm/eclectic.php

My eclectic score is currently

79/100


The 79 related artists for my profile are Afel Bocoum Amadou & Mariam Amália Rodrigues Aretha Franklin Asha Bhosle Beck Billie Holiday Bob Dylan (3) Broken Social Scene Cassandra Wilson Chris & Meredith Thompson Cristina Branco David Bowie (2) Dinah Washington Ella Fitzgerald Emmylou Harris Erica Wheeler Fairport Convention (2) Flogging Molly Fotheringay (2) Gillian Welch Gram Parsons (2) Grateful Dead Indigo Girls Iron & Wine Jimi Hendrix Johnny Cash Josh Ritter Kathleen Edwards Kronos Quartet Led Zeppelin Leonard…

It's been quite a year for West African music. Much-loved Ali Farka Touré passed away, not without leaving us one last album. He's survived by his nephew Afel Bocoum, who has started getting lots of attention for his music. Tartit, with their Tuareg electric guitars, brought out a new album as well. Toumani Diabaté and Ba Cissoko each put out some great eclectic yet still tradition-steeped music.

Rosanne Cash dealt with her father's passing (and the death of other family members) in Black Cadillac. Neil Young expressed his thoughts on Living With War. We went Crazy over Gnarls Barkley, The Dixie Chicks continued as outspoken as ever on Taking the Long Way, and Bob Dylan reflected on Modern Times.

Folk music is alive and well and mutating into new forms every day. In fact, I don't know if it's technology and the global village thing, but it seems to me that increasing numbers of musicians perform stuff that blends an amazing variety of influences from many genres, past decades and corners of the globe (what a funny expression). …