Herman Dune
The Portable Herman Dune Vol. 2

Mehr and Sher Ali’s seminal Qawwali session from 1992.With roots in both India and Pakistan, Qawwali conveys the message of Sufi poetry through religious song and is performed by a group — the Qawwal — of 3 to 13 professional male musicians.Mehr Ali and his brother Sher Ali belong, like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, to the Qawwali school known as Panjabi ang. One of the surprising features of their approach is the simultaneous use of several languages (one verse might be in Farsi, another in Arabic, part of another in Punjabi and the last in Urdu) for obvious purposes of communication, arising no doubt from the particular history and geography of the Punjab.

The discovery of a previously unreleased recording of “Non chiedermi più” – the only duet ever recorded by Piero Ciampi – through the work of Journalist Lucilla Chiodi, has given way to the reissue of this expanded and fully remastered version of the album “Lucia Rango Show”. Recorded by the singer in 1967 with the full involvement and supervision of Ciampi himself in the recording studio, the album was arranged and conducted by Maestro Elvio Monti, and also features the valuable participation of Alessandro Alessandroni's I Cantori Moderni. Forgotten by most and having become over time a sought-after collector's item for all fans of Ciampi's output and Italian music in general, the album contains a selection of tunes belonging to the early years of the Leghorn singer-songwriter's career, and as many as six songs – very precious – written by Ciampi specifically for Lucia Rango, who consigns to history their only interpretation ever recorded.____________________________________________________Missed opportunities, never-released albums, wrong or hasty decisions... The world of music – like many others – is full of fascinating stories and “what ifs”, to use comic-book jargon.The story of Lucia Rango, an Apulian singer who was active for a short period during the Sixties, rightfully belongs to that category and meets all requirements for becoming a legend. In 1967, when she was almost unknown, she recorded Lucia Rango Show, an entire album made of songs taken from the repertoire of her friend Piero Ciampi, who worked closely with her on their selection and arrangements.Being one of the most maudit and personal authors of national songwriting, Ciampi had always been a perfect outsider: blunt, shy, extremely talented, and unable to adapt to the rules of the music business. But above all, the Leghorn-born singer was a superb songwriter. The match between his songs and Rango's classical voice and ethereal beauty looked like a very promising one, but never brought any success.Arranged and orchestrated by Maestro Elvio Monti, and embellished by the participation of Alessandro Alessandroni's I Cantori Moderni, the record is a perfect child of the Sixties, featuring beat tunes and “yè-yès”, Italian canzone, intense ballads, Brigitte Fontaine-like atmospheres and the rediscovered duet of Lucia with her friend Piero, “Non chiedermi più”, whose recording was known among insiders at the time but sadly appeared to be lost forever.Ciampi's voice lives again in a song that has remained unreleased for more than 50 years within this new expanded version of Lucia Rango Show, thanks to the long research of journalist Lucilla Chiodi (Musica Jazz). Needless to say, the album is an enormously valuable historical document for all fans of Ciampi's output and Italian music in general: along with classics such as “Fino all'ultimo minuto”, “Quando il giorno tornerà” and “Hai lasciato a casa il tuo sorriso” – all originally included in Ciampi's first LP released under the alias Piero Litaliano in 1963 – Lucia Rango's voice consigns to history as many as six songs conceived and written specifically for her recording debut by Ciampi along with Elvio Monti. To date, Rango's invaluable interpretations are the only versions ever recorded of “Samba per un amore”, “Il tuo volto”, “Stasera resta qui”, “Primavera a Roma”, “Ti ho sognato” and “Sono stanca”.

Filled with songs from Madagascar in the electric guitar-driven boogie music known as ''Tsapiky''. First created in the late 1970s, tsapiky has become the required music at large family ceremonies (circumcisions, weddings, and especially, funerals),

Two decades since they formed in New York City and over ten years since their last album, Tel Aviv based quartet Shotnez are back with Dose a Nova, an album of 10 exhilarating jazz filtered jams, with vibrations indebted to tuareg desert blues, Ethiopian-jazz, 1950's Afro Cuban recordings, surf- rock and folk from across the East Mediterranean basin.Featuring the original Balkan Beat Box producers Ori Kaplan and Tamir Muskat alongside Uri Kinrot from Boom Pam and Itamar Ziegler from The Backyard, four musicians who are all producers and share love and deep connection to hip hop and jazz, Shotnez reunited in 2020 meeting up for improvised sessions and jams, once a week over a period of about four months at a carpentry turned music studio in suburban Tel Aviv.Downing midi cards, triggers and synths, the day to day tools for these four producers and picking up and playing their respective traditional instruments - saxophone, clarinet, guitar, bass, percussion and drums – the group was immediately liberated by the moment. In the middle of a strict lockdown, they had no preconceptions, no deadlines, no labels or managers knocking on the door. This was an opportunity to rebuild the camaraderie that developed on the other side of the world two decades back, to reconnect as brothers and seek a higher spiritual plane, all the whilst fully encouraging each other to express their diverse musical backgrounds channelled within, during their time apart.

Mahmoud AHMEDEre Mela MelaHeavenly Sweetness FranceThe re-release series of original Ethiopian classic vinyl continues -- the finest Ethio jazz by Mahmoud Ahmed and his band from 1975 plus two tracks from 1978.