Live from Cambodia via California its Dengue Fever! I never really liked the term"world music." It set up this weird neural pathway in my mind that led to lowered expectations of excellence. Walking into any number of coffee shops and hearing so so music that defined itself more by what it wasn't (Western) than by what it was, led me to be very dissmissive of the genere in general.
I think that these compilations are what really hardened my heart. By trying to appeal to everyone they attracted no one in particular.
In any case that is neither here or there in relation to this band. A beautiful Cambodian singer with a groovey western backing band combine to make some great music. This lonesome ballad is off their last album, Escape from the Dragon House. There are other great tunes on there that mix surf, and other 60s styles into a whole that remind me of a Bond movie fimed in Cambodia that never was.
Dengue Fever - Hummingbird
2 comments:
"World Music" is just another convinient ghetto term like "New Wave". It's a real lazy way for "The They" to explain how they want to move from David Gray and the Dave Matthews Band into something 'deeper.' But as Kickboy Face famously remarked in "Decline of the Western Civilization", "New Wave(world music), doesn't mean shit!"
I loved this shit. I'm so glad you turned me on to it.
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