Traditional and theatre music from Vietnam, the celebrated singer mazily leading dan tranh zither, dan bau monochord, sao flute, dan kim lute, dan co fiddle, and trong percussion.

Profiling producer Theppabutr Satirodchompu — the first in a series of albums celebrating the key-players of modern molam music, from Northeast Thailand. Limited vinyl from Light In The Attic.

Virtuosic, sor-led molam music from Isan, the province bordering with Laos and Cambodia — sprightly melodies through haunting dirges, over woozy basslines, drones, clattering percussion.

Shashmaqom trio improvisation from Uzbekistan, artful and serious: heartfelt singing and fine tanbur lute playing, set off by the accompaniment of dutor and rabob lutes, and doyra percussion.

Deeply moving singing from Ferghana in Central Asia — classical, slow, suspenseful and meditative in a world of pain — accompanied by lutes, chang (a psaltery), nay flute, dayera tambourine, and ghijak spike fiddle.

Refined, improvisatory, endangered traditional music for a quartet of two-stringed spike-fiddle, zither, two lutes.

‘Shidaiqu means ‘songs of the era’: a hybrid musical genre arising in the cosmopolitan city of Shanghai in the late 1920s, blending traditional Chinese elements with western pop, jazz, blues, and Hollywood-inspired film soundtracks. It represented a musical and cultural merging that would go on to shape a golden age of Chinese popular song and film in the interwar period.
‘Waiting For Your Return ranges from early beginnings — like the 1927 recording Drizzle, often considered the first shidaiqu 78, composed by Li Jinhui and performed by his daughter Li Minghui — through to more polished examples in succeeding decades, by such stars as Bai Hong, Wu Yingyin, Yao Lee, and most prolifically Zhou Xuan.
‘The recordings here reach up until the shidaiqu’s local demise in the early 1950s, when the Chinese Communist Party denounced it as ‘yellow music’, outlawing nightclubs and the manufacture of pop music, and destroying western-style instruments. At this point many of these singers decamped to Hong Kong, enjoying further success throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s.’

Pipa master Wu Man and her Uyghur, Tajik, and Hui collaborators explore connections between the musical worlds of China and Central Asia.

The out-of-this world, near-extinct tones and effects of copper plate, balanced on either thumb, with left-hand fingers playing ornamentally, the melody with the right, as accompaniment to singing in the Sanaan style, setting courtly poetry in classical Arabic.