Daniel Kahn and Painted Bird
Partisans & Parasites
A Detroit area native, Daniel Kahn has lived, played music, recorded, acted, directed plays and composed theatre music in New Orleans, Detroit, New York and Ann Arbor. In summer 2005 Daniel moved to Berlin, and, within a very short space of time, became an integral part of the city's folk and klezmer scene, playing in different groups and musical projects. As a corollary, he soon formed his own band, featuring a rotating roster of some of Berlin and New Yorks best young Klezmer and Balkan players. "The Painted Bird" concocts a mixture of Klezmer, radical Yiddish song, political cabaret and punk folk, kept together by Kahn's amazing abilities both as a songwriter and a performer; telling stories of outrageous incidents, poetically dark, tragically humorous and politically incorrect.

Orquestra Imperial
Carnaval So Ano Que Vem
The long-awaited debut by the Brazilian group, a 19 piece band that includes Kassin, Domenico, Moreno Veloso trio, Thalma de Freitas, Wilson das Neves (Ipanemas) and many more talented artists from the Brazilian rock, pop and electronica scene. Orquestra Imperial offers a panoramic snap-shot of Brazil's new generation of creative talent and their collective interpretation on the golden-age of samba is neither sepia toned or nostalgic - it's kaleidoscopic. Listen

Ensemble Sinigaglia
La crava mangia ij more
Enrico Negro, Mario Cosco, and Ignazio Viola are three skilled guitarists from Turin, already known by classical-music enthusiasts as Trio Vivaldi. But since music has no strict borders, it was not difficult for themn to trespas into the folk repertoire. Their guitars' melodies intertwine with Paola Lombardo's perfect voice to pay tribute to Leone Sinigaglia, the great father of the traditional Piedmontese patrimony of songs.

A3
Trasudando
This work has roots deep in the tradition, in the culture where women and men, elders and children, briganti and cumpari have all told their stories. This band from the Province of Bari, with their maiden discographic voyage, sails along the infamous A3, the motorway connecting Salerno and Reggio Calabria, one of the most conspicuous symbols of a cultural and territorial panorama that clashes with the pride and the desire for redemption of southern Italy.

Marisa Sannia
Rosa de papel
Marisa Sannia wrote: "We don't have to read poetry with our eyes , we have to read it with the voice. The eyes help us to decipher it, the ears help us to discover the rhythm of it, but it's with the voice that we can recreate it". The Sardinian singer probed the deep sea of Federico Garcia Lorca's poetry, choosing and collecting words and compositions of the great Andalusian poet. The lyrics of each song (except for "pequeño vals vienes" by Leonard Cohen and "La cancion de la mariposa" by Amancio Prada) were all set into music by the artist and performed in acoustic settings for piano and guitar

Bidaia
Duo
Basque composer, singer and multi-instrumentalist Mixel Ducau and Californian singer-songwriter and hurdy-gurdy player Caroline Phillips come back for their second recording as Bidaia, now a duo, with a repertoire that includes original compositions and traditional Basque songs. The Basque alboka and ttun-ttun are combined with acoustic guitar, hurdy-gurdy and bamboo clarinet to offer a strong second look at their original approach to the tradition.

Catriona McKay and Olov Johansson
Foogy
They met in Stockholm 2002 to share a concert with their bands, Väsen from Sweden and Shetland based Fiddlers' Bid. Backstage before the concert Catriona asked Olov "Do you know this one?" and played Eric Sahlström's Spelmansglädje. Join their exploration of traditional and new music from Scotland and Sweden, the sound of Scottish harp and Swedish nyckelharpa.

Omar Sosa
Across the Divide
Pianist composer Sosa presents A Tale of Rhythm and Ancestry that merges North America, Africa and the Caribbean in a song cylcle unlike anything I have heard. Guest vocalist Tim Eriksen offers up deep rooted American folk vocals against an Afro-jazz tapestry. Highly recommended. Listen

Varttina
25
2008 marked Värttinä's 25th year as a band. The CD includes twenty-two tracks taken from all their eleven albums and the Archive Live DVD plus an unreleased song "Vipinäveet" recorded during the sessions for their album Miero. The "25" album also features lyrics, fotos from their entire career and deluxe, four-color, digipak design with 24 page booklet.

Akasa
World Citizen
This powerful female vocal group from Australia performs original music with a political message, a global aural outlook and a real sense of rhythm and groove. Fans of Sweet Honey In The Rock will find an immediate kinship.

Bellowhead
Live At Shepherds Bush Empire (PAL DVD)
The carnival folk big band are captured live during their Burlesque tour at their sold-out London Shepherds Bush Empire show on September 26th 2007. This is the first ever official DVD from the much loved 11-piece group. In addition to the 98 minute concert, the DVD follows the group off stage and on the road with over an hour of bonus documentaries and interviews. PAL DVD Only

Rail Band w/Salif Keita and Mory Kanté
Volume 2: Mansa
The Malian National Railways formed the Rail Band du Buffet Hôtel de la Gare de Bamako to entertain guests at the hotel adjacent to the central train station in Bamako, but that unpromising origin belied how excellent a band it was and what an impact it made right from the get-go in 1970. The lead singer was a young man named Salif Keita. The band's dynamic fusion of jeliya and other traditional Malian forms with rock, blues and Latin music was audacious and brilliant. Salif Keita went on to start his own band, Les Ambassadeurs, in 1972, but by then another talented singer, Mory Kanté (who really was a jeli and not only sang but also played balafon) had joined the Rail Band. Around the same time the band hired a new guitarist, Djelimady Tounkara. Tounkara now leads the Super Rail Band. The three-volume Rail Band retrospective (compiled by Ibrahima Sylla) is not organized chronologically. Each 2-CD volume includes recordings from the 14-year span of 1970 to1983. Volume 2: Mansa includes five tracks with Salif Keita, five with Mory Kanté (including the title track, a 12-minute epic recorded in 1975), and eight others featuring singers Magan Ganessy or Djelimady Sissoko.

InChanto
Città Sottili
The members of InChanto share a common passion for ancient and traditional music, developing a personal repertoire, inspired by their place of origin: Tuscany, a deeply rooted, culture, and also a land receptive to other cultures that have been absorbed and interwoven into the Tuscan sensibility. These songs do not come from formal research or philosophy, but from the desire to offer original music, rooted both in European folk, and in the musical and literary culture of the Italian Renaissance. This 'alchemic sound,' strained through a Mediterranean sensitivity, evokes atmospheres balanced between old and modern, popular and cultured, in which the texts, composed in various languages or inspired by medieval lyrics, are very important.

Lomax Recordings
Spanish Recordings: Basque Country: Navarre
Sung poetry in the ancient Basque language as well as the sounds of the Navarrese jotas, pipe and drum ensembles, and the irrintzi, the reverberating cry that marked the culmination of Alan Lomax's sojourn in Spain. Recorded by Alan Lomax and Jeannette Bell. Remastered to 24-bit digital from the original field recordings.