Two CDs. Inner World is an offering of the Dalai Lama reciting mantras and giving short teachings all woven to a bed of music for the very first time. Released to honor his 85th birthday celebrations on July 6th, 2020, the album is a great dedication to the decades of his vision and work for world peace and educating the heart. Including previously released tracks "Compassion" and "One Of My Favorite Prayers", when asked why he accepted the request to make the album, the Dalai Lama answered, "The very purpose of my life is to serve as much as I can." He also added, "Music can help people in a way that I can't."

Sufism is the mystical branch of Islam. The Sufi strives for a direct connection with God. The rapture of music and dance is frequently used to create a transcendental experience in which the ego falls away, allowing direct experience of the divine. There is a saying: ‘If a man claims to be a Sufi, he is not, and any true Sufi will never claim to be one’. To call a music ‘Sufi’ is to thereby bring into question its authenticity. If we claim this is Sufi music, it therefore must not be. What we can say, though, is that Shafqat Ali Khan’s music is thoroughly rooted in the Sufi tradition. Many of the songs are ghazals, a poetic musical form in which the singer, taking the woman’s perspective, longs for the return of her lover. This longing, expressed in a romantic form, is understood to be a metaphor for the soul’s longing to be connected with the divine. The spiritual expression of Sufi music is robust and intensely emotional. This is no quiet background music for meditation, but deeply passionate music that wrestles with strong emotions, from melancholy and despair to rapturous ecstasy. By directly going into the emotion, in a way somewhat akin to how an American blues or gospel singer might, we find transcendence. The music takes us on a journey, and we emerge somehow changed.

Essence of Raga Tala is unique and compelling take on Indian musical tradition. Presented by producer and composer Kuljit Bhamra MBE, nine Indian ragas and selected talas are re-imagined for both traditional and western instruments in new and exciting directions. Kuljit Bhamra MBE is a prolific composer, musician and record producer whose main instrument is the tabla. He is best known as one of the record producers who pioneered the British Bhangra sound and for his many collaborations with musicians from different genres and continents. Kuljit has worked on numerous film scores, including Bend it Like Beckham, Bhaji on the Beach, A Winter of Love, and he appears on soundtracks for The Guru, The Four Feathers and Charlie & The Chocolate Factory. He is the recipient of many awards including a platinum disc for outstanding record sales presented by the much-loved BBC Radio DJ John Peel, who was a big fan of his music. His cutting-edge projects and ground-breaking educational work earned him the prestigious honor of MBE in Her Majesty The Queen’s birthday list 2009.

A potent cocktail of explosive footwork, haunting singing, virtuoso guitar playing and percussive handclapping from southern Spain with some of flamenco’s finest award-winning artists. This album was recorded live at a flamenco bar in the heart of Andalusia. JALEO began touring outside Spain in 1988, and ever since, their rigorous touring schedule has become more demanding each year including recording, theatre performances, workshops, TV and radio work. For three decades Jaleo have captivated the attention of audiences of all ages and walks of life with the universal appeal of their art. Their authentic and charismatic approach to performance – sometimes serious, sometimes humorous, but always sincere – has won them many followers and considerable critical acclaim from both press and public alike. Formed by award-winning flamenco artists from Seville who have each earned great recognition within their own country, Jaleo has now firmly established an international reputation as a very exciting and dynamic dance company with an innovative approach.

Modou Tour�, of Dakar, Senegal, plays highly-groovy rhythms; Afrobeat, pop-rock and funk. This album features sharp guitar playing harmonized with drums, bass, percussion and electric guitar. Tour�'s voice is powerful and sublime as it soars over energizing, contemporary music. Heir of the legendary group Tour� Kunda, the first West African group to achieve worldwide fame in the 1980s, Modou Tour� was born into music. His voice strikingly echoes that of his father, Ousmane Tour�, who was the inspiration for his choice of career. Passionate about music from a tender age, he was to be found regularly singing up a storm and playing the drums under his neighbors' windows in the modest district of HLM4 in Dakar, where he spent his childhood.

Two of the world’s most unclassifiable string players join the new Globe Music label to commemorate their sold-out performances in John Williams’ widely acclaimed 2014 and 2015 concert series at Shakespeare’s Globe. Jegede, a master kora player, cellist and composer of Nigerian and Irish decent brings his dynamic and cosmopolitan musical intelligence to bear on the heart of the Malian griot repertoire. South African guitarist Derek Gripper, who has been earning slack-jawed praise from Capetown to Carnegie Hall adapting music for the 21-string kora to the 6-string classical guitar, here records with a kora for the very first time. A combination of duets and solos, both artists record some of their most personal compositions and arrangements in an expansive and loving journey of West African songcraft. Originally paired and programmed by Globe Director of Music Bill Barclay, Jegede and Gripper’s duet concert was the only performance in the John Williams series that the great guitar master, feeling he had nothing he could add, sat out to enjoy entirely as a listener. ‘ ...wholly enjoyable, quite outstanding, an entrancing sound, a kind of ecstatic tingling in the ear underlay almost everything that was played’ The Independent on Tunde Jegede. ‘Absolutely impossible until I heard Derek Gripper do it.’ John Williams

Classical Music

BEST OF

Two CD set. 25th Anniversary edition featuring previously unheard tracks from the original 1996 recording sessions, previously unseen photos, and new liner notes. Buena Vista Social Club is both the name given to this extraordinary group of musicians and the album, recorded in just seven days in 1996 in Havana's 1950s vintage EGREM studios. It was clear from the atmosphere of the recording sessions that something very special was taking place. However, no one could have predicted that Buena Vista Social Club would become a worldwide phenomenon - awarded a Grammy in 1997 and, at 8 million copies, outselling any other record in the same genre. The acclaim of the original album has elevated the artists (including Ibrahim Ferrer, Rub�n Gonz�lez and Omara Portuondo) to superstar status, inspired an award-winning film by Wim Wenders, and has contributed to popularizing Cuba's rich musical heritage. Produced by Ry Cooder for World Circuit, the timeless quality of the music and the sheer verve of the veteran performers have ensured that this will go down as one of the landmark recordings of the 20th century. To celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the album's recording, producer Ry Cooder and World Circuit's Nick Gold have gone back to the original tapes and into the archive to produce this deluxe remaster package, featuring previously unheard tracks from the original 1996 recording sessions, previously unseen photos, and new liner notes.

Modern Bellydance: Lebanese Nights

Encore is a new album produced from previously unheard archival recordings by the legendary Bahamian guitarist Joseph Spence, made in 1965 at the height of his career. Spence's radically innovative guitar style transformed elements of Bahamian traditional music into adventurous, joyful improvisations and influenced players worldwide. His powerful singing stemmed directly from the rhyming tradition created by Bahamian sponge fishermen early in the 20th century. The music is punctuated by Spence's unique, sometimes otherworldly vocalizations including humming, short bursts of lyrics, and near-scat singing. Some of the recordings include singing by Spence's sister Edith Pinder and her family members Raymond and Geneva Pinder. Producer Peter K. Siegel captured these performances at Spence's only New York concert, at the performer's cottage in Nassau, Bahamas, and at Siegel's apartment in Manhattan.

Nayan Navaa is an album full of life, sun, kindness, compassion and joy. NAMGAR contribute to the preservation of the Buryat language, one of the listed endangered languages of the world. NAMGAR’s aim is to save and promote traditional Buryat melodies by working with archives, collecting songs, and performing them both in their homeland and around the world. In 2019, band members Evgeny Zolotarev and Namgar Lkhasaranova worked in the archives of St. Petersburg, Moscow and Ulan-Ude, Buryatia, collecting 100 forgotten traditional Buryat songs, a selection of which feature on this album.

The pianist and composer Beata Hlavenková is a respected authority on the Czech musical scene. She has been known above all as a musical partner of the famous singer Lenka Dusilová – in the Baromantika and Eternal Seekers projects – and as co-author of a great number of Dusilová’s songs, but also thanks to her own albums and collaboration with various local and international artists. The author’s new project, “Bethlehem”, mostly comprises new arrangements – or re-compositions – of traditional Christmas songs of the Czech, British, Polish, German and French provenience, but also a handful of Hlavenková’s own compositions, all in the author’s solo piano performance. The Christmas carols recast into new original form and combined with the author’s clearly discernible style bring profound aesthetic experience.

Classical Music

The musical collective Anavantou! was formed in 2013 on the initiative of Belgian music producer Damien Chemin and Brazilian musician Dudu Prudente. Seeking a way to bring their cultures closer together through music, they proposed the meeting between the percussive group Membrana and the singer Nino Karvan both from the State of Sergipe in Brazil, and the Belgian instrumental group Turdus Philomelos. Anavantou's music is inspired both by Brazilian Northeast forro rhythms and Belgian surrealism, and turns out to be a surprising explosive and festive transatlantic cultural dialogue. The name Anavantou comes from a creole transformation of the French ''En avant toute'' inherited from the French colonization in the Northeast of Brazil. It is used to direct dances during traditional forro balls. It expresses the hybrid identity of the band which proposes an unconventional encounter between zabumba, triangle, saxophone, diatonic accordion, harmonica, violin, organ and bass to form the ensemble's own sonority. Brincantes presents mainly original compositions by the band and a few pieces of the folk repertoire. The group's playful and festive approach unfolds freely thanks to the energy and original arrangements of the musicians in collaboration with musical director David Bovee. The album also features singer dona Nadir, one of the greatest voices of the traditional music of the Sergipe region, as well as the astonishing pifano flutes group Os Vitos.

Fernanda Jiménez Peña (1923-2006) was born in 1923 in Utrera, one of the towns located in the main cantaora region. Hailed as one of the greatest cantaoras of the last decades, Fernanda accompanies her voice of echoing sobs with gesticulation and superhuman concentration. Silence, panting, and gestures of impotence and agony transform her more inspired concerts into magnificent, liberating events laden with tragic pathos. Bernarda Jiménez Peña (1927-2009), Fernanda’s sister, is a cantaora specialised in the bulerías, which she performs with incomparable mastery. Although the bulerías have been considered as a minor form of cante, they are extremely difficult to execute due to their pulsating rhythm and the exactitude of their compás. Bernarda’s bulerías convey infinitely complex psychological states and adapt to a wide variety of melodic lines, to create a personal, disorderly and expansive mood, further enhanced through her sense of intimacy and ability to move listeners.

Macedonian bellydance music has a distinct ''Balkan'' flavour with its typical instrumentation blended with contemporary instruments - modern, exciting, quirky, and very ''bellydanceable''!

Hossam Ramzy, Egypt’s Ambassador of Rhythm, was born in Cairo. His musical career began early, when at the age of three he was given his first drum- an Egyptian table. His passion for percussion was noted by his family who encouraged him to master his craft by studying with the leading music teachers of Egypt. A move to Saudi Arabia introduced Hossam to many of the Bedouin tribes who gave the young Hossam a rich insight into the cultural origins of Middle Eastern music that became the inspiration for many of his later rhythmic directions. Faddah (“Silver”) is an album of classical style Egyptian Dance compositions, created by Hossam Ramzy. Creating music for a dance routine is rather complex and requires vision and innovation. You have to be able to see the dancer in your mind while writing such music for her, counting her every step, caring about her every move and working it out rhythmically, melodically and making sure it flows from mode to mode, from beat to beat with logically worked-out transitions.

This album features original Egyptian dance compositions as well as traditional pieces with a modern touch, by Essam Rashad. Essam Rashad was born in Cari, Egypt. He learned music from his father early in hi life. In his twenties, he worked as a composer for the national Egyptian radio station. After his father’s death, he began to study violin and joined a small orchestra, recording a great number of songs by various Middle Eastern composers. Thus he gained a great wealth of knowledge and wide-ranging experience in different musical styles and techniques. Gradually he became highly regarded as a talented musician, whereupon he was appointed to join the Egyptian National Classical Orchestra as a specialist of the oud, his first instrument. In 1981, he came to England. He then began to teach music privately, while also looking for an opportunity to release his musical works. He worked on arrangements for Indian and Western music with his special skills. At present, he is completing work on original pieces of full orchestrated modern classical music.

An exciting album with a fine collection of fiery Flamenco. 14 pieces, sung, as well as instrumental, from the very traditional to today's modern renditions, presented by some of the finest exponents in the genre.

Istanbul is the interface between orient and occident. The noises and urban sounds in connection with Turkish, Armenian, Kurdish and Macedonian songs as well as nomad chants belong to the culture of Istanbul like the centuries old architecture in the city. Some notable artists featured on this album include Volkan Yilmaz, who was born in Istanbul and studied at the Istanbul Conservatory under Fuat Tukelman and Salih Bilgin and began his career as a soloist at the radio station Istabul TRT, Gulay Diri, who was born in Southern Turkey where semi-nomadic people continue their lifestyle and she was influenced by their folk music, and Muammer Ketencoglu, who is an internationally renowned musician and one of the foremost Turkish artists performing today. These are folk songs, modern compositions, nomadic chants, and improvisations, all brought together to paint an aural portrait of this ancient city.

Rhythms of West Africa, tapestries of authentic African voices, Senegalese / West African blues fusion, a cappella from Southern Africa, Namibian songs on guitar, serenades from Ethiopia and more... This African compilation is a stunning journey across the continent. The songs compiled on this release have been hand-selected from Arc’s vast catalog of African music albums. Musicians include Nii Okai Tagoe, Tinyela, Modou Toure and Ramon Goose, Musa Mboob and XamXam, and many more. Details on each song, the musicians, and the albums from whence these pieces were chosen are all included in the booklet.

Classical Music

After their successful first album ‘Old Tunes, Dusted Down’ – a concept album devoted to the impressive fieldwork of folklorist Hubert Boone – MANdolinMAN dug even deeper into Flemish folk music with the album ‘Unfolding the Roots’. Played on four mandolins, the music took on new forms and the historic melodies were injected with a modern and contemporary vigor. Instrumental Flemish Folk music had never sounded so exotic! For their next project, they decided to again breathe new life into tradition, but this time looking a little further afield than Flemish Brabant and Flanders. With this new album – ‘MANdolinMAN plays Bossa Nova’ - the foursome explores the bossa style of Brazil and gives the sound of South America a new original touch.

Seasons of India has captured the essence of Indian life that is infused with the customs and cycles that have shaped generations over millennia. There are regional variations in the timings and precise nature of the seasons, but there are major seasonal festivals celebrated throughout India alongside local customs. Baluji Shrivastav grew up in rural India experiencing first-hand the rhythm of the seasons flavored by sounds, smells, songs, dances, legends and poetry. Although India is being modernized, for the majority of people those seasonal festivals, foods and customs remain the same. The intense power of nature and her influence on music is encapsulated through the knowledge and imagination of this great multi-instrumentalist virtuoso and composer. It is the reflection of a life dedicated to the rich and boundless beauty of Indian music.