«Blues? That’s American Deep South stuff, right? Well, not only. The quest for “authenticity” in music has taken so many spurious turns in recent years that it has perhaps managed to overlook the overarching patterns. It’s these patterns that have made up the blues, that inimitable form of misery set to music that’s as vibrant today as ever. It has a long history – musicologists have traced the

«Presenting hits from 10 countries African Rebel Music – Roots reggae and dancehall gives a first insight into the new reggae dancehall movement in Africa (24 page booklet). So far only two reggae artist have had real international success: Lucky Dube and Alpha Blondy. A new generation has long arrived but although many of them are stars at home and regulars in their local charts, this

«Kakolobango is a Zambian guitarist, raised in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), where he learned a guitar style that is now "relegated to the local equivalent of the 'oldies' bin," as the liner notes so aptly put it. The resulting album, in its updated traditional style and grassroots sound, recalls not only the legendary Jean-Bosco Mwenda, and Euro-American folk and blues singers,