{"id":3811,"date":"2025-05-15T22:58:14","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T20:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mapamundimusica.com\/?p=3811"},"modified":"2025-05-16T09:08:55","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T07:08:55","slug":"may-25-talk-with-chris-eckman-from-glitterbeat-new-calls-and-83","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mapamundimusica.com\/en\/newsletter\/may-25-talk-with-chris-eckman-from-glitterbeat-new-calls-and-83\/","title":{"rendered":"May 25. Talk with Chris Eckman from Glitterbeat, new calls and + #83"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Summary\u00a0\ud83d\udc47<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

\ud83d\udd38<\/span><\/span>Editorial
\nAnd follow-up on the panel at Babel Music XP<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udd38<\/span><\/span>Talk with Chris Eckman about Glitterbeat<\/span><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udd38<\/span><\/span>A little something from my side<\/span><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udd38<\/span><\/span>Brief news from the media, charts and sister projects<\/span><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udd38<\/span><\/span>Open calls: Afro Pepites, Visa for Music Forum Activities<\/span><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udd38<\/span><\/span>Meet me at\u00a0\u2708\ufe0f\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u27a1\ufe0f This is the link for subscription<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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Hello, how are you?<\/b><\/h1>\n
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I hope you are very well. I can’t complain.<\/span><\/p>\n

The photo illustrating this section captures a charming moment: at the Joy Eslava nightclub in the center of Madrid, just after the MIN Awards ceremony \u2014 Premios Min, the Spain\u2019s independent music awards \u2014 where I\u2019ve served as a jury member for quite a few years now. I know the photo isn\u2019t great. In fact, it\u2019s a low-light selfie. But I like it. It reflects the contrasts of life: shadow and light, warmth and cold. And there we are in the middle, just like in the photo.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since the last newsletter, many beautiful things have happened. I met with Xabi Aburruzaga (picture below), who came to pick up his visas ahead of his upcoming performances next week at the Expo in Osaka. I managed to confirm the first concert of Thanos Stavridis & Drom in Spain. Vig\u00fcela performed during the San Isidro festivities in Madrid. Ali Do\u011fan G\u00f6n\u00fclta\u015f will make his debut in Lithuania next Monday and soon in June, in Poland. Hudaki Village Band progress on their new album and I have listened some of it and it is absolutely thrilling. All of this belongs to the bright side.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the dark side, the feeling of being exposed to forces against which we have the same capacity to respond as a leaf falling from the tree before the wind that sways it at its whim.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Xabi Aburruzaga leaving the Paseo de la Castellana, one of Madrid\u2019s main avenues, on the way to the airport back to Bilbao. Next Saturday they will fly to Osaka with his quartet!!! He has been selected by Acci\u00f3n Cultural Espa\u00f1ola for the Spain’s stand.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Follow-up on the panel at Babel Music XP<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In previous editions, I mentioned the panel at Babel Music XP in which I participated, titled “The New Narratives for Traditional Music in the Face of Current Political Challenges.” It\u2019s now available on the website<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 check the section “Music and Societal Challenges.”<\/p>\n

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Thanks for reading \u2014 and for being there. Our protagonist of this edition is Chris Eckman, from\u00a0Glitterbeat, a true reference whose words have given me great motivation and encouragement. I am sure his words will also touch you.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

If you enjoyed any part of this newsletter, feel free to share it with someone who might like it too. Thank you in advance.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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AND NOW THE FLOOR IS FOR:\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>
\nCHRIS ECKMAN, FROM GLITTERBEAT RECORDS<\/span><\/strong><\/h1>\n
This interview originated from a proposal by the magazine FolkGalore to conduct a conversation about the record label Glitterbeat. It will be published in German and in print, as well as in this digital format.<\/span><\/div>\n
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And although we focused on the label, I didn\u2019t want to miss the opportunity to also mention Chris Eckman\u2019s work as a musician.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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The portrait\u00a0\u2193 of Chris is by\u00a0\ud835\ude97\ud835\ude92\ud835\ude94\ud835\ude8a \ud835\ude91\u00f6\ud835\ude95\ud835\ude8c\ud835\ude95<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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About Chris as a musician<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

So, Chris Eckman is an musician, songwriter, and producer from the USA, best known as the co-founder and frontman of the alternative rock band\u00a0The Walkabouts<\/strong>, formed in Seattle in 1984. Eckman has also explored diverse sonic territories through projects like\u00a0Dirtmusic<\/strong>,\u00a0Chris & Carla<\/strong>, and\u00a0The Strange<\/strong>. Now based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, he continues to shape contemporary world music while maintaining an active solo career, with recent releases like The Land We Knew the Best (you can listen to it,\u00a0here<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u25b6\ufe0f\u00a0<\/strong>For more information about Chris Eckman as a musician, check<\/strong>\u00a0his website<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>–<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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About Glitterbeat<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

This will be the main topic on the interview so, if you don’t know Glitterbeat yet, let’s check their website<\/a>,\u00a0which explains that:<\/span>“Glitterbeat specializes in vibrant global sounds. The label was created to release records that simultaneously embrace evolving global textures and localized traditions and roots. Our artists are both culturally committed and resolutely contemporary.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Glitterbeat was founded in 2012 by co-owners Chris Eckman and Peter Weber and the label\u2019s first records were released in the spring of 2013. Peter Weber was the original manager of the band Tamikrest. Chris Eckman has a long history as both an artist (The Walkabouts, Dirtmusic) and as a producer (Tamikrest, Aziza Brahim, Bassekou Kouyat\u00e9). The label is headquartered in Hamburg (Germany) and is a five-time winner of the WOMEX \u201cBest Label Award\u201d (2014-2018).<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2017 Glitterbeat introduced a new label imprint:\u00a0tak:til, which focuses on global instrumental music.”\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

~ While you read the interview, you can enjoy listening
\nto the playlist Glitterbeat Records: New Releases,\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>\ud83c\udfb6<\/strong>~<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Without further delay, here is the interview.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Araceli Tzigane: On the website you explained that you work with a focus on \u201cquality creativity and cultural diversity\u201d. And there are so many great artists in the world. You work with world music. How do you choose, or which is the spark that calls your attention in such a special way to want to release their album?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Chris Eckman:\u00a0<\/strong>It\u2019s a very good question. When we started as a label, that’s like 12 years ago, it was a quite simple decision because, at that point, our only connections were in Mali because, even before Glitterbeat started, I already had done two records with Tamikrest as a producer. My future Glitterbeat partner Peter Weber helped with those and we offered them to a label he owned at the time, Glitterhouse. We worked with the great Lobi Traor\u00e9 and also worked with Ben Zabo, a guy who only ever did one album. This was where I started working, let’s say, in global music. It was in Mali. \u00a0So, at first it was quite easy to decide, because we, more or less looked for Malian bands, because that’s where we knew people.<\/span><\/p>\n

And one of the first records we did was with Samba Tour\u00e9\u2019s. And then we did Tamikrest\u2019s third album. And then I had a collaboration project that I’m involved with, called Dirtmusic. Then another Lobi Traor\u00e9 record\u2026 So that was basically our first year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Albala\u00a0<\/em>is the first album by Samba Tour\u00e9 release by Glitterbeat, which Chris mentioned in the interview.<\/span>
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After that, to try to define what the label is becomes more difficult, because we’ve done really a vast amount of music. Nearly 180 releases from all corners of the globe. And I think it’s pretty simple though still\u2026 we are not looking for certain kinds of music. I mean, we’re not really basically interested in the stuff that indie or rock or hip-hop labels would release. We’re looking for stuff that has an element of tradition too. I think this dialogue with tradition and contemporary sounds and contemporary ideas is really important to what we do. It’s not the only thing we do but I would say that that’s the center of what we do. So mostly we’re looking internationally at projects that are centered in that idea, this sort of conversation between tradition and contemporary ideas.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\nWhat makes us want to sign things, I think this becomes simpler. I think, especially at this point, it’s really this so-called \u201cwow factor\u201d. You just have to go \u201cwow\u201d. Somebody in the office needs to go \u201cwow\u201d. And then we all listen closely and then we deliberate and then we decide sort of collectively. But it has to start really with that very visceral physical spiritual emotional reaction to music. I think without that, we don’t have much, you know. I mean, we’ve been offered a lot of things over the years that we said \u201cno\u201d to. Some of them were rather big artists. Certainly, at the time that they were offered to us, we were a very small label and they were much bigger artists than us. This in itself was not interesting to us. You know, we held really strongly to the belief that if the work itself isn\u2019t something we\u2019re genuinely excited about \u2014 what\u2019s ‘great’ is subjective, of course \u2014 but if it doesn\u2019t excite us, then we\u2019re not interested.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

AT: And you started in 2012. You and Peter Weber. Why did you find the need of making a record label at that moment?<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

CE:\u00a0<\/strong>I think it was this experience that I had producing records and giving them to other labels. At that point, Peter Weber owned a label called Glitterhouse, not Glitterbeat. It’s a long running German independent label. He is a friend of mine. And we ended up going to Mali together a couple times in those early years, even before Glitterbeat, and he helped somehow with those records also. It\u2019s not that we thought we knew what we were doing \u2014 because we didn\u2019t, we really didn\u2019t. I think it was more that we saw that when working with global artists, especially artists from places like Africa, where the financial differences are huge, and the cultural differences are huge, you have to take a very specific approach to work on those kinds of situations. And it became clear to us that the label we were working with \u2014 even though Peter owned it \u2014 wasn\u2019t deeply interested in navigating the complexities of all of that.<\/span>So we took a risk and said \u201cokay, let’s start\u201d. But, to be honest, we started with a very small idea. I mean we were really thinking we would release three, two or four records a year, maybe do it for a couple years and see what happened. We had no big plans to make this a 12, 13 years project, or that we would have 40 or 50 artists living all over the world. This was not at all part of the beginning plan.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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AT: And when you started, Spotify was already around, and it was growing very fast but it wasn’t the huge force that is today. Now a lot of people blame Spotify. They consider, when talking about how much the way of accessing the music has changed in more or less the last two decades, people see Spotify as the villain, they blame specifically Spotify. You have an account in Spotify, with many of your albums, like many other record labels that are in Spotify. What is your relationship with this? Because I think it hasn’t been everything bad. Also, if it was not a Spotify, there will be other options. Maybe people don’t blame YouTube and I think I use more YouTube for listening to music than Spotify.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

CE:\u00a0<\/strong>And YouTube pays less than Spotify even…<\/span><\/p>\n

AT: So they blame Spotify. If it was not a Spotify there will be another way. What is your relationship with this?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

CE:\u00a0<\/strong>I think it’s a complicated question, but I think, to begin with, I agree with you. You know as much as I don’t like Spotify, and I’m not talking about the user experience of streaming although I have problems with that too, but that’s not really where my complaints are. My complaints with Spotify would be what they are for most people who complain about it: it has become a monopoly. It\u2019s so large that it actually dictates the terms of the music business \u2014 even more than the major labels do now. It\u2019s such a huge and essential player, and that in itself becomes problematic. That much power should not be placed in the hands of a single company, and that\u2019s the main issue, I would say.<\/span><\/p>\n

Streaming itself is not all bad. It’s a great way to discover music if you are not a passive listener. I don’t think it’s doing us a lot of favours in general when it comes to reaching new audiences. That becomes a bit of a problem. But you know, there are several aspects to this \u2014 we could spend a long time on it. I remember when Darek Mazzone (from KEXP) was speaking at Budapest Ritmo and one thing he said that\u2019s absolutely true, and that I\u2019ve witnessed myself, is that Spotify, because everything is available, it creates a kind of strange time elasticity. So older music can suddenly become very contemporary, very quickly \u2014 maybe through a placement in a TV show, or sometimes even with less. Something just bubbles up and boom. I\u2019ve seen this several times going to concerts of, let\u2019s say, indie rock bands that I knew from the early \u201990s or late \u201980s \u2014 ones that weren\u2019t even that big \u2014 and the room is sold out, mostly with people under 35. And you\u2019re standing there wondering, how the hell is that possible? Well, it\u2019s possible because of Spotify. It\u2019s all there. There are playlists \u2014 the kind that everyone interested in a certain genre ends up touching \u2014 and that opens up, in a way, a wide range of music, both new and old.<\/span><\/p>\n

The problems in general are that it’s algorithmic. This is the general problem with streaming services, especially Spotify, where the algorithm is really dominant. I mean the statistics are telling, they’re clear: 50% of all Spotify music has been played less than 100 times. Some say 35% or 40% has not been played at all. It’s this huge warehouse of undifferentiated music, unless you are on editorial playlist. And the chances of the kind of music that you and I are involved with on being on editorial playlists is very small. You know we certainly have success stories with that. Samba Tour\u00e9 is a great example. Not somebody you would pull out of the stack of Glitterbeat artists and say “This is a guy who does well on Spotify.” Guess what Samba Tour\u00e9 does great on Spotify. Why does he do great? Because there are actually playlists for this \u201cdesert blues\u201d kind of music. This is a subgenre of global music that really does have support at streaming services. Korean music like Dalum or Park Jiha plays are not so much. There’s not really the infrastructure at these streaming services for that music.<\/span><\/p>\n

So the algorithm is the dangerous part because the algorithm tends to centralize it. It starts to look very much like late-stage capitalism: 1% of the artists get 90% of the revenues. It’s like that in the world as a whole and it’s like that at Spotify. But Spotify very much moves you to music that’s popular. You can fight against it. You know you have obscure tastes; I have obscure tastes by Spotify standards. So our algorithm will look much different. But if you’re a passive listener, you’re going to miss a lot of music. And niche musics really suffer in the streaming environment.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

AT: And you work with niche music and not only niche but even more niche because you made a Tak:til, a sub-label, in 2017, specifically for instrumental music, that is even more difficult, isn\u2019t it? Why did you consider it needed a specific sub-label?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

CE:\u00a0<\/strong>Yeah. I don’t know\u2026 It’s another brilliant business decision, I guess (laughter). You know\u2026 it’s funny, but now instrumental music, is kind of having a mainstream moment. Bands like khruangbin are mostly instrumental and they’re playing in arenas, in basketball stadiums and places like that. We’ve done quite well with Y\u012aN Y\u012aN. Which is basically an instrumental band from Holland. They have really strong streaming numbers. But what you say is generally true. I think this was just pure love of certain kinds of music. We saw opportunities there. We were sent some records that we really liked but they didn’t really fit into what we felt was the main flow of Glitterbeat. And it gave us an opportunity to expand. For example, we have a band from Slovenia, they’re good friends of ours, called \u0160irom. I came across them upon recommendation of Silvij, who works at Glitterbeat. I went to see them play in a small club here in Ljubljana and I really felt like \u201cwow, that could play anywhere in the world\u201d. You just don’t see that kind of music. You don’t hear that kind of music anywhere. There’s no one who sounds like them. This alone is something really fascinating in this time when everything is so interconnected. So, we had this idea, well, we could we work with them. And then we realized that for Glitterbeat it would be a stretch so, in a way, we started Tak:til for \u0160irom. But we realized that nobody internationally knew them yet. So we waited till we saw something that we could release that would make more noise and then \u0160irom would follow. And that’s how it started.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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I Can Be a Clay Snapper\u00a0<\/em>is the first album by \u0160irom that Glitterbeat released in 2017. Click to listen:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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AT: So you have mentioned the business side of this, because of course this is a business, and you have to earn enough money to keep on going on. I think few people buy CDs; few people buy vinyls also nowadays. So which are the incomes for a company of this? Is it not selling physical CDs? And we are talking about the revenues from Spotify, for this niche music, that are so reduced. How can a company like you make your living and which are the other sources of income for a record label nowadays?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

CE:\u00a0<\/strong>For us we have very few sources of income because of the way our contracts work: we’ve never taken publishing for the artists. We don’t touch it. We don’t even take a percentage of it. So that already limits us to some degree. I would say another revenue is streaming. And sync rights, mostly when our music is used in a film, this can bring in some extra income in a year. But generally we make our income from physical sales and streaming. And you have to be very very careful. You have to run a very very cost-conscious business to do that. Yeah, it’s not it’s not easy.<\/span><\/p>\n

We’ve been lucky that we’ve had some fairly big successes, like Alt\u0131n G\u00fcn. This helps a lot. We’re getting to the point now where our average release is starting to get stronger again. It’s a combination of things: just curating better sharper than we did in the past, also just knowing how the business works more, knowing where there are places you can save money and\u2026 yeah, how to run a really tight business.<\/span><\/p>\n

I’m sure you can imagine it’s not easy at all. But I think you know the death of the CD is also sometimes overstated. The CD is way down from where it was of course, massively down, insanely down. But we have some artists that have very solid CD sales. And I’m not even talking about the bigger artists: some of the niche artists, the folk stuff we’ve been doing, like British and Irish folk stuff, Landless and Br\u00ecghde Chaimbeul, they have sold solidly with CDs. \u00a0Ana Lua Caiano sold very well with CDs, relative to what some artists sell. So, it’s interesting. It’s still a reasonable format to commit to. But, again, you have to be careful. When we started, our average CD run was 2 to 3,000. Now our average CD run is around a thousand. So it’s way down from where it was, but it still brings income.<\/span><\/p>\n

AT: Is there or are any releases that you will consider particularly significant in the label’s history?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

CE:\u00a0<\/strong>Yes. I think that there are always some game changers. They’re not always the most popular. Sometimes there are other stories, other narratives that are equally important to the label. I mean all the releases are stuff we believe in or we wouldn’t have done it. But I think we have to look at Tamikrest in the beginning. I think if we hadn’t had Tamikrest, we probably would not have lasted more than a year or two. Tamikrest had already released two records, as I said, on Glitterhouse. So we got them on Glitterbeat with already a functioning touring band that we were not building up from zero. I produced the first two records and, the third, the first with Glitterbeeat,\u00a0Chatma<\/em>, was a big success. We sold nearly 25,000 physical copies of that. Without that, it would have been tough to keep building\u2026 Also, they gave us visibility. Forget about the money and the sales. This is important but not the only thing. It was very well reviewed \u2014 even in more mainstream rock, pop, and indie magazines, websites, and so on. It broke outside of what we might call the \u201cworld music bubble.\u201d Yeah, that was very important.<\/span>
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Chatma\u00a0<\/em>is the first album by Tamikrest released by\u00a0Glitterbeat. Click to listen:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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And there is a lot of small things that kept us going, smaller things after that, that kept us going over the years. I remember one that’s kind of a weird story I’ve told it before. People are always like \u201creally, I’m not sure I understand what you mean\u2026\u201d. But for example, the first record we ever did with Ian Brennan, it was a field recording record, and this got reviewed in the British rock magazine Uncut. And for me\u2026 I remember coming to the office and I said “This is success\u201d. I mean that record’s going to sell very little, but we broke into this very rock, rock and roll, classic rock, mainstream mentality. We broke inside that with a field recording record. And it made me feel that Glitterbeat was making more of a difference than with some of our more successful artists. You know Alt\u0131n G\u00fcn was going to be successful without Glitterbeat. Tamikrest would have been successful ultimately at some point without Glitterbeat. But fighting for these small releases like a field recording from Cambodia started to become something where it felt like we were actually helping to change the conversation a bit.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

AT: For someone who is not familiar with these kinds of music sometimes I think they see them very far and very strange and they are challenging to the listener when they are not used. What would you say to some people who may have some curiosity to encourage them to start exploring these kinds of music? And would you suggest one or two albums for them to begin with?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

CE:\u00a0<\/strong>It’s interesting. There are, let’s say, gateway kinds of sounds, that that work better than others to our, generally, westernized ears. I think that’s one reason why Touareg music has worked so well. This is not to take anything away from it. I’ve thought about it a lot because you just wonder like why that, but it already has this element of rock music. And it’s not some element of rock music that’s forced on it. So, contemporary Touareg music was made by musicians who were listening to rock music. This is not something that some western producer said \u201cnow you need to take an electric guitar and you need to\u2026 maybe a little bit more Dire Straits, maybe a little bit more Santana\u2026\u201d They were listening to that music. So they changed the paradigm. The market did not change the paradigm. And I think, because of that, it’s an interesting music as an introductory music. It’s not to say that it’s only an introductory or it’s watered down or light: it’s some of the most amazing music made in the last 40 or 50 years to my mind. But nevertheless it lines up with our, let’s say, general sensibilities, westernized sensibilities, because there is a continuity. I think that this is one example.<\/span><\/p>\n

AT: So, Touareg music could be one example.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

CE:\u00a0<\/strong>Yes. I’m not saying only push Touareg music. Another thing, Araceli, is something I saw you actually post once and I almost wrote something. And I understood what you were saying in this post. You were talking about like how do we get this music out to people. You know, like it’s so frustrating sometimes. We believe in it so much and it makes so much sense to us and we know how beautiful it is, and we know how the spirit of it is so powerful\u2026 And I think that part of it is by liberating ourselves from preconceptions about how the music can get out there. So in other words, one thing that Glitterbeat did right in the beginning, and it was not because we were so smart: it’s because of where we came from. I mean I had spent years in indie rock bands and making Americana music and so on. I knew this other media and that’s the media I knew better than world music media. I didn’t know world music media at all, actually. I had no idea even what it was. I was introduced to this once we started releasing records. And I just felt, and others like me, like Chris Kirkley from Sahel Sounds\u2026 There are a lot of people that are out there that have had the same idea: just that we should treat this music not as specialist music. We should be blind to the fact that it’s specialist music. We should put blinders on, like literally ignore that it should be classified as specialist music. We have to know that this music is on the same level as any other. It has the power to move people \u2014 if you can just get them in the room. So we need to, I think, become more na\u00efve about how hard it is \u2014 like, deliberately force ourselves to be na\u00efve \u2014 because we\u2019re not na\u00efve. We know how hard the market is but possibly we have to remind ourselves sometimes that naivety is really important. Just to say go to places where you don’t think it’s going to work. And I’m talking about venues, festivals, media. And I think one thing we can say with Glitterbeat is that we’ve shown this can happen \u2014 we show it, we do it regularly.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We went to\u00a0Wire\u00a0<\/em>magazine, strongly, right when we started. We did see Noura Mint Seymali as some kind of experimental musician. As much as she\u2019s grounded in deep tradition and so on, the fact that she chose to work with an American drummer \u2014 she could have worked with anyone \u2014 stood out. The American drummer learned all the different percussion patterns and incorporated them into a drum kit and electric bass. These were things that weren\u2019t very common, even in Mauritanian music. And again, not something forced on her by some Western producer or market \u2014 she was already doing this in Mauritania. She understands what her role is, and she knows she\u2019s different from other Mauritanian singers. And there\u2019s no reason why experimental Mauritanian music shouldn\u2019t be playing at experimental festivals in Holland, Spain, the UK, and so on.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Tzenni\u00a0<\/em>is the first album by Noura Mint Seymali released by\u00a0Glitterbeat. Click to listen:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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So it\u2019s partly about, you know, just being stubborn about what we expect. And you\u2019re going to fail most of the time \u2014 don\u2019t get me wrong \u2014 failure is built into the attitude. It\u2019s like, yes, we\u2019ll fail most of the time, but then there are those days when you go to the office and think, “Actually, we succeeded”. It might have been on a very minor level, but something happened \u2014 something beyond our expectations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thank you, Chris!!!<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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A LITTLE SOMETHING FROM MY SIDE<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

I mentioned earlier that <\/span>Thanos Stavridis & Drom<\/strong>\u00a0will be coming to perform in Spain (and I hope this will be the first of many other gigs together).\u00a0It will be in July, and I\u2019ll share more details soon.<\/span><\/p>\n

My connection with Thanos began a little over a year ago, when he contacted me as a mentor, with the upcoming release of his band Drom\u2019s album in mind. The album is now finished, and it\u2019s absolutely fascinating. The music is captivating, and they are all true masters of their instruments and their craft.\u00a0No doubt, they have every reason to be as happy as they look in the photo!<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udfb6Listen to the extraordinary\u00a0fygame<\/em>,<\/span>\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The Ukrainian\u00a0Hudaki Village Band<\/strong>, for their part, are finalizing their new album. The tracks are not mastered yet, but I have heard it. At the beginning of this letter, I said that we are “exposed to forces against which we have the same capacity to respond as a leaf falling from the tree before the wind that sways it at its whim.” When I think of Hudaki, that idea vanishes: they are creating some of the most fascinating music I have ever heard, in spite of all those forces against them. They make me feel pride in the human being.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These are pictures from the recording sessions of the new album by Hudaki Village Band:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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BRIEF NEWS FROM THE MEDIA, CHARTS AND SISTER PROJECTS\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n
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\ud83d\udd38#1\u00a0for\u00a0Transglobal World Music Chart in May of\u00a02025<\/a>\u00a0is: Songhoy Blues’\u00a0H\u00e9ritage\u00a0<\/em>(Transgressive \/ Remote)<\/span><\/p>\n

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\ud83d\udd38Mundofon\u00edas<\/a>: the three favourite of the month are\u00a0Thanos Stavridis & Drom’s\u00a0Fygame\u00a0<\/em>(self-released),\u00a0Mara Aranda’s\u00a0Sefarad en el coraz\u00f3n de Bulgaria\u00a0<\/em>(self-released) and\u00a0Tsapiky! Modern music from southwest Madagascar<\/em><\/span>\u00a0[V.A.] (Sublime Frequencies)<\/span><\/p>\n

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Remember: if you have any news of interest for our community, let me know. Thank you very much for your attention.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi M\u00fasica |\u00a0+34 676\u00a030 28 82\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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OPEN CALLS\u00a0<\/strong><\/h1>\n

This section is open for news. It is free of charge. You can let me know if you have any open call of relevance to the community.<\/p>\n

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NEW THE NEWSLETTER:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udd38\u00a0Visa For Music Forum Activities<\/strong><\/span>
\nVisa For Music 2025 will take place in November 19 – 22 in\u00a0Rabat, Morocco.\u00a0The application’s deadline for the Forum Activities is on\u00a0May 25, 2025 and they have three formats:<\/p>\n