Music that inspired an adventure

Obsessive Reader! For just $0.00 sign up now to listen to the Aridland Ambassador playlist and chill out free of charge!

Music binds us with a power that lyrics alone lack.

Bombino tearing it up Tauregy...desertrancy dripping dancing at Tel Aviv's Barby

My parents raised us on a steady diet of green salad, fish tacos, and matzo balls. By the time of my sister and my Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, we had both graduated to a level of definite cultural tongue-tiedness. JewISHAMERicaNSOUTHafriCANMEXicANCALiforNian what?!?! At this rate, the only antidote was the World music we'd also been raised on. Brazilian beats, hippie strumming, Yiddishe wails, Cuban heat, South African thumps. Most of this stuff was in languages we didn't know a bloody syllable in. But we got damn good at gibberish, Tam and I. Skerbibelplex Amarat?!

Our parents were similarly confused, continent hoppers that they were. Yes, with each passing generation a few of our relatives had switched to another hemisphere (East Europe, Middle East, Southern Africa, North America). So it was okay that we were all listening to weird music that we didn't understand. It freed us to be what we were - mixed up and fused. And it inspired this trip.

Obsessive Reader! For just $0.00 sign up now to listen to the Aridland Ambassador playlist and chill out free of charge!

This music is all about fusion, and each of these artists had something to say about another culture of the world they encountered, from the Yoruban influence on Brazilian percussion, to the amaXhosa adaptation of Khoi Khoi and San (Bushman) clicks, the Middle Eastern bands drawing from the near east and North Africa, and our homegrown USA Neville Bros. calling to the oppressed peoples of the Caribbean and Africa. Rock on, World, Rock on!

Obsessive Reader! For just $0.00 sign up now to listen to the Aridland Ambassador playlist and chill out free of charge!

Here's the playlist:

1. Khoisan meets amaXhosa - CliQX like a bushman
2. New Orleans unites the Nations - Zydeco rally
3. Jewish Londoner turns to Le Zulu Blanc - Shake like Shaka
4. Yoruba bounces trans-Atlantic - Woo'ed by the latin suave
5. Arab Jew Who? - Le route de parfums sweetens the desert warmongers
6. Portugal's fun side - Everyone in Bahia sambas dia e noite!
7. Abassid-Yiddishe-Ladinos - the Israeli melting poitjie
8. Seattle's most popular percussion - Zimbabwe guitar stars

Obsessive Reader! For just $0.00 sign up now to listen to the Aridland Ambassador playlist and chill out free of charge!