Not Western Music

One of the things you will notice about most of the posts is that I refer almost entirely to western music. I am western, I was brought up in Australia and have lived in a few places, visited a few more, and I have noticed that much of the music around the world is western music. The appeal of Metallica, Iron Maiden, and most unfortunately U2 is that they represent the West.

Many countries have some sort of quota of not western music that they have to play each hour on the radio. I have always found this a great thing. There is nothing like hearing something local when you go to a place. you always notice that it fits in far better with your surroundings than listening to the latest hit from Green Day.

There are a few bands who have made it out of the not west, I use this term because I do not want to say East, or Latin, or African, Middle Eastern etc because everything not west is all of this brilliant music. Back to the point, some bands have made it in the West despite not coming from there and it has enriched our lives immensely.

There is of course the brilliant Bob Marley. My favourite song by his royal Bobness is 'Could you be loved'. He is however best known for Redemption song, here is a very cool acoustic version.

His music still stands up very well despite it being 30 odd years old now. There is a freshness to the music that doesn't age because it is so different from everything else. Well everything that is not reggae. He is seen a as great uniter in many ways. I have never been entirely sure about this. I have read many stories that he was effectively a gang leader, who also happened to be brilliant musically. None-the-less there must have been millions of white boys around the world who have been touched by his music in their teenage years and embraced some of the pot smoking ideals of Rastafarism. Not a bad thing in so far as it opens horizons, the music that is. Not the pot.

Another band from the Not West who has become very much a part of the culture, of metal heads at least, is the mighty Sepultura. I am a very big fan of Sepultura. For good reason, they properly rock. They are Brazilian and they bring some of the percussion based Brazilian beat to what is a very heavy band. My all time top favourite song by Sep is Troops of Doom.

I think you will agree that it is a very heavy song. I like it very much. In fact my little son, who I am very proud to say is developing a lot of 'taste' in music is also a massive fan of dancing around like a mad man to that tune. In fact that is how we spent the first few hours of Christmas in the snow 15 months ago.
Sep's story is a pretty interesting one in terms of why and how they came to be and I will not go into it here, but if you do like the metal then I recommend exploring them a bit. In fact if you like metal and you haven't then you aren't really into metal that much. Sep are still going, although without the main men Max and Igor Cavalera. Their music is still great though.

If we go across the other side of the world and look a little into the past, we find a three piece from Osaka Japan. I have spoken about Shonen Knife before. I was always a pretty big fan of Shonen Knife because there is a great energy to their music. Simple pop punk, making people want to get up and dance. Their music is quite often, properly awesomely Japanese weird, I mean look at this

What is going on in that video? I mean what the hell? The girl has laser shooting eyes and she uses them in a banana chips factory? what? A lot of Shonen Knife's music is like that. The song with the most hits on You Tube is ' I am a cat' . Right, ok, you're a cat. Please don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting that there is anything wrong with it. Like I said, it is awesome. But different. Which is perhaps the whole point. Perhaps  a little more mainstream, but in a very similar vain, you get the 5,6,7,8s.

That is just plain good fun. Even though they are actually singing they are blue. The music scene in Japan is extremely vibrant, and J-Pop in particular is a huge business. It all sounds kind of similar and I have spoken about it before also. Very little of it is in English and as such it does not cross over very well. Well, not to anywhere that doesn't speak Japanese, so cross over outside of Japan then.

Which is one of the reasons a lot of music doesn't cross over into the west. If it is not sung in a language that the market understands then they are obviously going to be less likely to buy it. It is one thing to like the music , but if the lyrics are not understandable then it is to be expected that it's reach will be limited.

That said, The Gypsy Kings seem to have gotten around this issue reasonably well. I guess because their music incorporates a lot of what would be described as folk or traditional music. This somehow would not sound correct if it was sung in English. My favourite song by them is actually a cover they do of Hotel California. I am not sure why I love this version so much, but it sounds like it should have originally been sung in Spanish.

I really like listening to the classical Spanish guitar. It is a fabulously rounded sound. One that always seems to inspire feelings of warmth and distant exotic places.

We should all try to listen to more not Western music. I see from the stats of the blog that a number of people from the not west are reading. Do you have anything you would recommend to me?