Global Music
Global Music Guru
by Amber Sasse
Mahewa. Ongaku. Müzik. Sangit. However you pronounce it, one thing is certain: Music is a distinctive and unifying feature of any culture. If you want to fully immerse yourself in a country’s customs, it may be helpful to familiarize yourself with the local music scene before you go abroad.
Music is an international lang-uage, and like any new language, if you want to be fluent you have to do your homework. Fortunately, the once distant international music scene is now readily accessible. Thanks to the Internet (and a few helpful websites), global music trends no longer have to seem so, well, foreign.
If your idea of international music stops with Enrique Iglesias or the British Invasion, there is a lot to learn.
And online radio programs are a free, easy way to discover popular artists abroad.
AOL radio offers a World/International station with 22 channels, featuring music from 11 countries. Some of the stations are dated and a tad cliché, but the French scene, Japanese pop, and Urbano-Reggaeton streams play fresh, contemporary songs you can almost imagine blasting at a club in Nice, Tokyo, or São Paulo. iTunes Radio also has an international channel with 184 streams featuring everything from Parisian Electronica to Persian pop. Listeners beware: the streams are fairly Eurocentric and the non-European streams are rather Americanized. But the variety of stations allows for exploration.
For those who prefer a little more musical guidance, “Passport Approved” is a fantastic resource. This internationally syndicated and imported radio show—which you can access for free on Yahoo! Music—is the brainchild of British-born, Los Angeles-based D.J. Sat Bisla. D.J. Bisla collaborates with radio stations from around the world to unearth the latest tracks from popular international artists in his weekly show. He also keeps a blog where he profiles up-and-coming international artists, charts popular songs, and posts playlists from his previous shows. If you are timid about traversing the language barriers that often obstruct our access to foreign music, DJ Bisla provides the perfect combination of spinning and hand-holding.
On your journey to becoming a worldwide music whiz, www.mp3.com is also a valuable stopover. The site features news about popular international bands, new music videos from prominent artists, and explanations on more than 200 styles of international music. The web page also categorizes and rates international musicians, thereby filtering out the ones that don’t fit your interests. Mp3.com even has a billboard chart that tracks the most popular international artists by decade—anyone curious to know who topped the global charts in 1960?
For a truly authentic experience you can listen to actual foreign radio stations on your computer. Websites like www.radio-locator.com and www.live-radio.net allow you to search for radio stations by country and provide access to the stations that stream live online. This is an invaluable resource for the budding global music guru—where else can you listen to Albanian radio?
So whether you rock out to German death metal, bop to Japanese hip-hop, or dance to the beats of Bollywood, prepare your listening palette for a broader music taste.