Shepherd’s Reign, hail from South Auckland and describe themselves as a five-piece Polynesian metal band that fuses the Samoan language and culture with metal.”The more elements you can draw from, the better,” guitarist Oliver Leupolu told Nesia Daily. “Fili [lead singer Filiva’a James] likes bringing in his Backstreet Boys chops… it’s not obvious, but those little […]
Brahms – Hungarian Dances
The Hungarian Dances by Johannes Brahms, are a set of 21 lively dance tunes based mostly on Hungarian themes, completed in 1879. They vary from about a minute to five minutes in length. They are among Brahms’s most popular works and were the most profitable for him. Each dance has been arranged for a wide […]
Hetty & the Jazzato Band
Hetty Loxston, a classical and jazz-trained singer from London formed Hetty and the Jazzato Band at the end of 2015 with clarinettist, and childhood friend Charlotte Jolly, and three Italian musicians Fabrizio Bonacci, Riccardo Castellani and Alessandro Cimaschi, upon moving back to London after a period of living in Bologna and Rome for five years. […]
Jose Feliciano
José Feliciano was born in September 1945, in Lares, Puerto Rico, the fourth child of eleven sons. He was born blind as a result of congenital glaucoma. Feliciano’s knack for music became apparent when at age seven, he taught himself to play the accordian. About two years later, when he was nine years old, his […]
Tinariwen
Tinariwen (meaning “desert”) is a collective of Tuareg musicians from the Sahara region of northern Mali. The group was founded by Ibrahim Ag Alhabib; he and bandmates Alhassane Ag Touhami and Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni have all been present since 1979. Tinariwen first started to gain a following outside the Sahara region in 2001 with the […]
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is a song by the English rock band The beatles from their 1968 double album The Beatles (also known as the “White Album”). It was written by George Harrison, the band’s lead guitarist. Harrison wrote “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” as an exercise in randomness inspired by the Chinese I […]
Night Train
“Night Train” is a twelve-bar blues instrumental standard first recorded by Jimmy Forrest in 1951. “Night Train” has a long and complicated history. The piece’s opening rff was first recorded in 1940 by a small group led by Duke Ellington sideman Johnny Hodges, under the title “That’s the Blues, Old Man”. Ellington used the same […]
Farandole
The Farandole is an open-chain community dance popular in Provence. It bears similarities to the gavotte, jig, and tarantella. The carmagnole of the French Revolution is a derivative. No satisfactory derivation has been given of the name. Diez (Etymologisches Wörterbuch der Romanischen Sprachen) connects it with the Spanish farándula, indicating a company of strolling players, […]
Bourrée
The Bourrée is a dance of French origin and is often referred to as the “French clog dance”. The bourrée resembles the gavotte in that it is in double time and often has a dactylic rhythm. However, it is somewhat quicker, and its phrase starts with a quarter-bar anacrusis or “pick-up”, whereas a gavotte has […]
The Swingles
The Swingles are an a capella vocal group. The Swingle Singers originally formed in 1962 in Paris under the leadership of Ward Swingle. In 1973, Swingle disbanded the French group, and formed an English group known initially as Swingle II and later as the New Swingle Singers, before settling on the Swingles name. They began […]