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Sing Me the Song of Your People (International Music)

Lost SalientLost Salient blink twiceif you'd like me to mercy kill youRegistered User regular
in Social Entropy++
So I know there's a video game music thread and we've had a new music thread, and I think somewhere around here there's a thread devoted to Will.i.am's pants being too tight for his Little Will. There's always the YouTube thread, but it's hard to keep up with that one. At least if you're me, because I can't internet at work.

Therefore, this thread! I am really into finding non-English-language music, and I would like to force you to listen to it jam about it with you guys! I'm going to try to keep it varied, too - we all know I love me some K-Pop but not everyone wants to watch ridiculously attractive and fashionable Koreans dance in sync to super poppy tunes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pw972Kl3L0

Whoops.

Ahem, anyway. Back in October I found out about this amazing Peruvian garage band from the 60's called Los Saicos. They've got a serious proto-punk sound, they sing in Spanish, and if you dig noisy surf rock you will probably be about as obsessed with their album Wild Teen Punk from Peru as I am (which is a lot). Apparently they were huge in Peru at the time, although they never broke into the international market. I highly recommend you check them out! Also there's a documentary about them I guess, but I haven't seen it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fML-0M3e6Tk

These days I'm also pretty interested in the Eleki movement in Japanese music of the 60's. Basically from my understanding, The Ventures toured Japan at some point in the 60's and people went batshit for their sound (understandably, because The Ventures are fuckin' rad). The term 'eleki' comes from 'electric' because of the electric guitar driven... uhh... licks? I'm not a musician, so I don't really know what is the right word here. The point is, they became HUGE and a bunch of Japanese surf rock bands sprang up in their wake. The amount of American sound they adopted varied - some of them retained more of the Japanese musical tradition, which made for some cool fusion stuff. There are dozens of bands to discover in this niche, although a lot of their actual music is hard to come by it seems. A really accessible and popular musician is Takeshi Terauchi, who played with the Bunnys and the Blue Jeans among (I think) other groups. He's basically the proto-Guitar Wolf.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI5coxuM-mw

For the interested, there is a movie that 'stars' Takeshi Terauchi and the Bunnys and it's on YouTube and uhhh it appears to be basically insanity.

Okay let's move it to the present day! Enough of my bizarre obsession with the garage sound of the 60's as interpreted by other nations.

Basically anywhere you go in today's world you are likely to find some amazing music happening. I was in Paris during the Fete de la Musique one year and it was over ten years ago now and it was so amazing that I still bring it up in conversation, so. On which note, do you guys like Yelle? BECAUSE I DO. Yelle is French and they have a catchy as hell electro-pop sound. Think, mmm, Nouvelle Vague but not covers of other songs. They're working on a new album and have released some stuff in the last year but their last big album was in 2011 and was called Safari Disco Club.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c-GeBqUgAA

And then there's this Belgian artist I've just been getting interested in! I think, along with Yelle, Stromae sounds like he's been influenced by the electro-swing movement. This song is also in French but Stromae is Belgian so it doesn't count as the same country.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiKj0Z_Xnjc

Moving on. Tinariwen is pretty well known. They're Tuareg, from Northern Mali, and they are goddamn flat-out incredible. I love their albums. As of 2012 the northern regions of Mali have been taken over by the Ansar Dine, a militant Islamic group, and they banned all performance and broadcasting of secular music. One of the members of Tinariwen was in fact captured by Ansar Dine, although I guess he's released now; point is, they perform amazing music and persist in their art despite circumstances that are... shall we say... strenuous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA2-vJS6tvc

I also really dig on Amadou & Miriam and Die Antwoord but I think my OP is getting a little out of hand, so let's stop things here.

Music from other countries that, say, don't speak English, can be fuckin incredible! What are you guys jamming to that isn't from around here? I'm not the boss of anything which means I can't put a ban on English language music in the thread. It's just that 99.9% of what people hear just about anywhere in the world comes from the States, Canada, or from The Further British Invasions, so I'd rather focus on music from lesser-known places and artists. Please share with me what you like from other places! Non-English places! I'd like to know what you know and like about tunes from countries not your own. On a purely selfish level I'm not really interested in film scores (obviously Morricone is a genius but we've had threads about that before) and I couldn't give two poops about music for video games, but if that's your bag I won't come whack you with a hammer or anything.

Probably.

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"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
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