The world’s mp3s

[Updated April 23, 2008.]

A directory of online concerns offering indigenous, local, traditional, site- or people-specific music. The audio sites are all free (or nearly), though some require registration, and although many are hardly of broadcast/webcast quality, they offer the landlubbed listener access to musical species not easily come by otherwise. Many of these sites require Real Player or Windows Media Player, though some just take you to streaming mp3 pages. All of these sites offer complete songs, not samples.

Please help out - if you’re fond of sites we’ve heretofore missed, please advise. And enjoy, and check back often for updates.

Alaghany
Great selection from across the Middle East and North Africa, including an extensive Rai section and all the heavy-hitters like Fairuz, Oum Khaltoum, Mohd. Abdel Wahab, and Farid Al Atrache filed, somewhat speciously, under “classical.” (Sabah Fakhri is here too, a man who I once saw perform in Morocco and who, disappointingly, bored me to tears. A British music journalist who caught up with me as I was sneaking out said Fakhri reminded him of a “singing bank manager.”)

Al Fikra
A site dedicated to the Sudanese Muslim scholar and activist Mahmud Muhammed Taha, who was executed in 1985 for his republican ideals and progressive teachings. (There was an interesting piece on him and his vision of a third way for Islam that appeared in the New Yorker in the fall of ‘06.) Click on the “Quran & Inshad” link for an mp3 collection of mystical chant (inshad). The “Al-Yateemu” inshad, under the second Abdelkareem Ali Musa link, is nearly impossible to get out of your head. Hamdulillah.

Asian Classical Mp3
An introduction to East and Southeast Asian classical traditions. Dr. Phong Nguyen’s dan tranh pieces are breathtaking.

Azeri Music
Traditional Azeri music (mugham) is some of the most stunning music there is, but the goods here are all over the spectrum. Some very beautiful Arabic tarab-sounding tunes sung by ladies Mələkxanım Əyyubova and Şövkət Feyzulla. Rəşid Behbudov gives me a vision of an Azeri Jacques Brel. And the great mugham master Alim Qasimov and his glottal shake are here. You really can’t ask for more beautiful music than his. A lot of files can’t be found, and many that can aren’t worth your finding them - but some of the pop is worth checking out: namely the melancholy Ağayev Faiq Balağa. Young Amil Həsənoğlu’s tunes won’t load, but his child-star photo certainly will, and that’s good news. Every page of the site is entitled “azerimusic.net” so I can’t link you directly to the music, but click on “Musiqi” on the home page, and then on any of the genres that appear - they all take you to the same artist list.

Bulgarvoice
A huge clearinghouse of all kinds of Bulgarian music, though, frankly, it’s Bulgarian to me. Not a whiff of English anywhere on the page (and why should there be?), so you just have to start clicking. Tons of absolutely unbearably schlocky pop, but there is some pretty enjoyable contemporary rock stuff. Follow this link to a fantastic album cover and some jangly kinda new wave band: [Music?] > Поп > Джанго Зе > Албуми > Луди жаби. The Циганско лято section seems to be for soundtracks, and features one listing: the soundtrack for a film called Gypsy Summer: Tales of Surviving, featuring the very good Karandila Brass Band. It’s all pretty overwhelming, frankly - is anyone who speaks Bulgarian willing to direct us to the choice bits, please?

Cajun Music MP3
Sacrebleu! From the ’20s to the present, a generous ensemble of Cajun artists are represented here, with high-quality audio streams. Don’t spend all your time in the 78 bayou with the Ardoins and the Breauxs and the Seguras. While I’d ask for more offerings of Harry Choates and Iry LeJeune, I’m pleasantly surprised by some of the contemporary material available, especially that of Cory McCauley & His Evangeline Aces. Very engaging and enthusiastic notes provided by your host Neil Pommier, and if you’re feeling especially adventurous or are prone to that certain kind of discographical obscurantism that is satisfied by matrix numbers and personnel comparisons, spend some time with the “Recording Activity in New Orleans in the ’20s” link.

Calcutta Web
Bengali music page with a genre index to help you find your way - that is, until a limited aptitude with written Bengali sends you into paroxyisms of random clicking on titles? artist names? till you find something you like. (After making your choice, a player does appear that provides song titles.) The classical selections are all of 5 minutes long, at best, and the stream is a meager 33k, at best, but the most rudimentary familiarity with Indian pop music or Bollywood is rewarded with separate sections of Lata, Asha, Kishore Kumar, and a “modern songs” list heavy on the Mohammed Rafi. The pride of Bengal, Rabindranath Tagore, is well-represented, with a long list of rabindrasangeet (Tagore’s songs) and recitations of his poems.

Chabad Melodies
Say what you will about Chabad (I’ve had my own share of being accosted on the street by lulav-and-etrog bearing Chabadniks during Sukkot, and I don’t look terribly Jewish), they’ve done quite a service to the internet-listening public with the Jewish Music section of Chabad.org. Although all of the links to Shabbat melodies and music for the “Jewish home” seem to require an extinct plug-in, 14 (perhaps 16 if you purchase them?) volumes of Hasidic niggunim are available, sung a cappella or with (mostly) tasteful accompaniment provided by accordions, fiddles, pianos, the occasional woodwind (…) and even at one point the coconutty sound of a horse’s trot (…!). Accompanying commentary gives the usage for each nigun - mostly for the High Holidays or Shabbas - or offers descriptions such as a “serious and moving melody;” a melody “expressive of deep yearning for spiritual elevation.”

Digital Library of Appalachia
This huge and utterly wonderful research site is a cooperative venture between the 12 colleges that make up the Appalachian College Association, making the digital holdings of 34 libraries, museums, and archives available on-line. A sizeable portion of those holdings, of course, are aural, and the DLA has tens of thousands of audio tracks available for streaming. And it feels like it. More ballads, fiddle tunes, banjo breakdowns, and clips from vintage radio and concert appearances than you can easily conceive of, many of which are performed by folks you’ve never heard of if you weren’t making the rounds of Southern mountain folk festivals in the 1970s. Which of course means that there are some incredible gems here, as well as plenty mediocrities, so start with a search for a tune or song you like and see what pops up. Many of my favorites are here, with previously unreleased material on offer: E. C. Ball, Cas Wallin, Spencer Moore, Tommy Jarrell. Some great, if rough, tunes from Sam McNeil (late of the Floyd County Ramblers) were happy finds. Definitely spend some time browsing the old-time and gospel radio recordings, originally broadcast by some of the heavy-hitters on the Virginia dial in the 1940s: WDBJ (Roanoke), WPAQ (Mt. Airy), WBOB (Galax). And plenty of Piedmont and black Appalachian blues and dance tunes, as well as native American performances, provide a more complete picture of the region than what most outlets tend to paint. The DLA is proof that the internet is an awful good thing.

Dishant
Very generous South Asian music site, with pop old and new, ghazals, qawwali, bhangra, and not only Bollywood tunes but songs from India’s non-Hindi-speaking film industries and their respective regions.

Dismuke’s Virtual Talking Machine
Quote: “This site is devoted to vintage music from the early decades of the 20th Century. It is my hope that this site will help further the creation of a new generation of enthusiasts for an exciting, vibrant and, sadly, all but forgotten era of American popular culture.” Some familiar - Isham Jones, Kay Kyser, Tommy Dorsey - and some not-so-familiar pop tunes from the ’20s and ’30s. Keep your eyes peeled for the rare New Orleans platter, like Lil Armstrong’s New Orleans Bootblacks doing “Mixed Salad.” The Acoustical Recording section provides some real gems, with 19-Oughty ragtime from the likes of the Zon-O-Phone Orchestra and the banjo star Vess Osman. Site doesn’t look like it’s been updated in a couple years, but what’s a couple years to tunes from the teens?

Dove Song
A curious site of sacred and classical music coming from what seems to be, how you say, a very good place: stressing, and I quote, a “positive music repertoire.” MP3 libraries of white and black material from the 20s through the present, with the most popular of the black quartets of the ’40s and ’50s (Soul Stirrers, Swan Silvertones, Selah Jubilee Singers) representing the latter and some of my personal favorites the former: three sides of the sublime Alfred G. Karnes are here (the singing evangelist from Corbin, Kentucky, who was on hand for Ralph Peer and the “birth of country music” in Bristol, 1927) and the Kentucky duo McVay and Johnson’s thrilling “Ain’t Gonna Lay My Armor Down.” Distinctions are made between “blue grass” [sic] and “mountain gospel,” with the latter meaning old-time; find the Monroes and the Stanleys in the bluegrass section. Also, perhaps more interesting, collections of classical music on 78 from India (with an emphasis on the temple tradition of dhrupad Northern classical singing, as opposed to the contemporary khayal), Iran, China, some Oum Khaltoum bits and some very worthwhile, cylinder-era Arab recordings. Strange, small section of “positive jazz” too, bearing a photo of Jelly Roll Morton and Hot Peppers but not providing any. If Jelly Roll ain’t positive, what in goodness’ name are Bird and Django doing here??

Farsitube
Outfitted like that one site with all the videos, Farsitube also has a prodigious music section, with tunes running the gamut from classical, folk, rock (from killer psych to the chintziest and most vapid of ’80s material), to contemporary pop. You kinda just have to jump in and start clicking, as the artists are listed in alphabetical indexes. My advice is to find what you like below at Iranian.com and come listen to it here, as the quality is exponentially better. Caveat emptor, however: the music videos will utterly devour your day, not unlike that other site with all the videos.

Folklore Cordobés
It’s no surprise that a lot of the “folk music” one turns up is of the Kingston Trio variety, slicker than a raincoat. Though there are plenty of records out there of South American folk music - from tribal material to a million and one “roots of” salsa/tango/etc. compilations - I’ve had a hard time finding online sources for specific regional traditions. Here’s a site of some beautiful guitar playing and singing from Cordoba, Argentina. The cuarteto is the local taste there, has been for decades, and some of the earlier recordings of cuartetos I really enjoy, but try wrapping your ears around the chintzy trainwrecks of the contemporary variety. These traditional tunes offer a nice alternative.

Folkstreams
“A National Preserve of Documentary Films about American Roots Cultures.” A much-needed and much-appreciated site streaming free folklorically inclined videos, dealing with music, dance, art and craft, and topical issues. Far too much great content to list here, so I’ll give a plug for Martha E. King’s 2005 portrait of the ballad tradition of the Sodom Laurel, Madison County, North Carolina, of which Cas Wallin, a singer I hold most dear, was a standard-bearer. That film is “The Madison County Project.”

Gaida
Ah ha, here’s the great Bulgarian mp3 site I knew existed somewhere. Nothing to it: a list of albums of compilations and solo artists, all of which are very satisfying to the ears. (Especially after the time I just spent digging at Bulgarvoice.com, above.) The Bulgarian Folklore Masters comps are wonderful, and there is familiar material here too: a full album of the famous Phillip Kutev Ensemble and of course two records of the Mystere des Voix Bulgares. If you like something you hear and want more information, or perhaps even to buy the thing (as the mp3s aren’t of terribly high fidelity), check out the useful Vox Bulgarica site, as there isn’t a whole lot of info here at Gaida. Great site, though, especially with the lovely rotating pastoral photos on the homepage.

Gamelan Nyai Saraswati
Live recordings of the Gamelan Nyai Saraswati of the Department of Music, UNC Chapel Hill.

Haqa Online
I’m going to mention this site, although the audio seems to be disconnected. Hopefully that won’t last long. So much great stuff here, from calls to prayer to Koranic recitation to many varities of Sufi trance practice. “Arabic comedy” too, though I can’t vouch for it.

Honking Duck
A digital hillbilly goldmine of banjo-hyper-collector Jim Bollman’s stacks of 78s. Extensive catalogs of the stars - Fiddlin’ John Carson, Jimmie Rodgers, the various and sundry Skillet Licker incarnations - as well as great records from the cream of the obscure, such as Dr. Smith’s Champion Hoss Hair Pullers and Luke Highnight and His Ozark Strutters (though, sadly, their “There’s No Hell In Georgia” is not included here). The link above takes you to the artist page, though there is also a title search option. Donations accepted - indeed, encouraged.

Iranian dot com
America might be Ahmedinejad’s “Great Satan,” but he should keep an eye on the electric guitar riffs gracing some of the unbelievably guiltily-pleasurable pop tunes available here. In the prodigious alphabetical list of predominantly pop performers, there are also the big names in classical Iranian music (big enough for me to be familiar with - thanks, Kamrooz), and surely others I’ve never heard of. Man, and then there are the caches of vintage radio performances, songs of the Revolution, World Cup songs!, and very generous section of ethnic/tribal folk music, interpretations of Persian trad songs, and some progressive folk revivalists too. (Check out the Kourosh Yaghmaie [or Koroush Yaghmaee] stuff.)

Iraqi Music
They were moving servers for sometime, and are now back up, but unfortunately the classical maqam pages are empty with a “Files will be added soon” note. Consoling myself with a trip to the “general songs” section, I have to admit that a good amount of it sounds like please-hold, a-representative-will-be-with-you-shortly music, about as canned as can be, but at least it’s being made at all, right?

Juneberry: The Roots Music Listening Room
Holy god. Lock yourself in your room with a Coleman camper stove and some cans of soup and an internet connection and this website and maybe we’ll see you later. This site is nearly too good to be true, and home to just too much to mention. Black and white, pre-war and post-war, fiddlers from Cape Breton and Appalachia, sacred and secular, calypso and corridos. Even Lomax’s 1937 Library of Congress recordings of Kentucky fiddler Luther Strong are here, presently only available elsewhere on Yazoo’s Kentucky Mountain Music box. Just one recommendation for now, lest I never get off this computer: check under “1940s [& 1950s] Blues on Independent Labels” and get your mind blown by Dan Pickett’s stunning version of Buddy Moss’s “Going to Your Funeral In a Vee Eight Ford” - “Ride to A Funeral In A V-8.”

Kannada Audio
Thrilling and huge selection of film tunes, folk music, devotional material, Carnatic performances, songs for to accompany the Yakshagana dance traditions of Karnataka, and many recorded story-tellings! The bhajans to Shiva are especially stirring, but those with any taste for Vijay Anand and the zany antics of the Kannada-language film music composers past and present, you’re in business with the decade-spanning archives.

Khmer Midi
They couldn’t have tried to make this site any less user-friendly, but once you get past the totally non-intuitive menus, you’re in Cambodian pop HEAVEN. And though the Borat Era (and G. W. Bush Era) have made English misconstructions passé: “Every Khmermidi forum members and supporters are invited to join KhmerMIDI Chat Room where is new place for friendship [sic].”

Kurd Online
There’s a sensation hard to describe - roughly akin to simmering anxiety of a claustrophobic kind, but not wholly unpleasant - that’s born of experiencing something deeply beautiful yet entirely inscrutable. Thus is the effect of this site’s music on this listener. The many a cappella performances available from Sakiro Sakiro are - there’s no other word for them - sublime, and I wish I knew something more about them than just how affecting they are. Googling the singer brings up 59 entires, none of which are of any use whatsoever. The Dersim Muhabbeti ensemble provide a more familiar approach (not many discernible differences from Turkish classical music to these novice ears, with the use of duduk and saz), but also a very beautiful one. Karapete Xaco seems to be a respected vocalist of an older school, with the several of his 20 songs I’ve listened to thus far being absolute stunners, but all available information about his in transliterated Kurdish. Such is the way throughout, giving rise to the aforementioned feeling - though a small price to pay for this thrillingly lovely and unfamiliar music.

Laos, Music & Songs In
Laotian field recordings, collected by the Archives of Traditional Music in Laos and the Lao-German Research & Development Project at the Laotian National Library in Vientiane. Lots of lam, the national singing style, accompanied by bells, drums, and the khaen, a complex mouth organ made of bamboo tubes connected to a windchest through which the player blows. Instrumental selections too, with a Voice of the Khaen portion, and a separate section is devoted to the music of the Khmu highlanders, though to these entirely novice ears, the differences seem too subtle to ken. There are also songs recorded among the Lao people in Northeastern Thailand - folk songs, lullabies (a beautiful piece called “Dear Moon” that asks the moon for a “gold water scooper … sticky rice for my precious sister … [and] Lam, the Isan folk opera, for my sister to enjoy.” Thus the moon giveth - down below there are a dozen Isan pieces, some of which are really stirring, though distorted and lo-fi they may be. And finally: did you know there was a song to the Champa flower, extolling its noisome virtues? There is, and it’s winningly sung (a little flat) by some children at the “Children’s Home for Cultural and Education.” (Don’t get your hopes up over the potential pop links at the bottom of the home-page - none of them work.)

Mastana
Afghan site with gobs of mp3s, though it does require a lot of picking through a swamp of pretty unsatisfying pop material. If you still want more Afghan music, you might want to spend some time with the links - though many are obsolete - listed at http://afghanistanmusic.com/.

Monsoon Country
A new project of the Southeast Asian Music Enterprise. Their site explains their mission better than I can, so I’ll just recommend the “roots music” audio medleys they offer (although they give you no title or artist info), found next to the respective genre descriptions native to Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Music China
Decent indexes of contemporary Peking opera tunes and (slick) instrumental performances. If you’re into it, there are plenty of “revolutionary” numbers under the “Chinese songs” tab. Didn’t see my favorite - “Communist Do Everything With No Difficulty At All” - filed under either the opera (from The Red Lantern) or the revolutionary sections, but “I Love Beijing Tian An Men” is a stirring consolation.

Music India OnLine
Yet another prodigious Indian music site, this one a little harder to traverse than Dishant above, but, if your taste is less pop-oriented, much more rewarding. Mostly leaning towards classical, the site is well-stocked with both Hindustani and Carnatic artists (or “artistes,” to use the vernacular), and a great search function for a particular raag brings up your results separately according to their regions, genres, or applications, with album titles and thaal (beat), when applicable, for each. Spend time with the many Kishori Amonkar records. But you needn’t feel bound to ragas alone. Lots of regional musics and qawwalis (though the latter are filed under “light” music, which seems unfair to me), and even if the stream sometimes sounds like about 1.5kb, the fidelity can’t be said to be much worse than the $.60 South Asian variety store cassettes you can gamble, and frequently lose, on. (Not sure why some songs play from the built-in player, and others have to stream through RealPlayer, but be warned that you need the latter.)

Oriental Tunes
Sophisticated collection of big names from the Middle East, North Africa, South and Central Asia; especially good for oud material. Check out the “rare tunes” link for some classical Arabic gems from the 78 era, as well as a handful of live recordings. The Saliba al-Qatrib session is sublime.

Ossetians
Here’s something different. A fiercely proud site devoted to the Osset people, whose national self-regard is geopolitically limited to two small republics, North and South Ossetia, wedged between Russia and Georgia and sprinkled on either side of the Caucasus. Check out the “folk songs and ballads” link at the bottom left of the English home page for some a cappella wonderment lifted from vintage records.

Pakistani Music
Such a great site, with tons of material: qawwali, ghazals, wedding songs, Lollywood, folk and pop music. Junoon, Pakistan’s rock n roll phenomenon, is available under the “modern age” link. After I played my first Musarrat Nazir tape into the ground I came here for more.

Phnom Penh
Another killer Cambodian music site. Although it’s not predominantly a free one, I’m including it here because the download fees are all of FIFTEEN CENTS a song. For those of you unwilling to take the plunge, the “Free MP3 Music” link at the top offers some “oldies” as well as two great snippets of vintage Kampuchea Radio broadcast. [However, at press time, a click on those "free MP3" files pull up a Not Found message...] The list of genres on the home page are tantalizingly obscure to this non-Khmer, though the distinctions made between “Rock,” “Slow Rock,” and “Slow” are appreciated. This site is especially good for its link to “The Good Oldies,” songs termed “Bolero” for their adoption of the Cuban rhythm. (For other appropriations of Western rhythms, see also “Cha Cha Cha,” “Jerk,” and “Twiss [sic?].” (Thanks to the above site, Monsoon Country, for edifying me on these points.)

Polish Folk Music
Site of contemporary purveyors of Polish folk music, across the spectrum of “traditional.” Each of the artists listed on the right have mp3s available under their bios - that of the young, hip, pouty Warsaw Village Band is especially good.

Proud To Be Sikh
My goodness, this site is massive. Tons of kirtan (Sikh devotional singing) recordings, as well as recitations of Sikh poetry and daily ritual practice. Just throw yourself into one of the “jukeboxes” and get lost. They’re accepting donations, too. It’s the right thing to do, as you can get a hundred times more for free here than you can buying even the bargain-priced $2 cassettes at the Punjabi Deli on Houston Street in NYC.

Public Domain 4 U
The title’s an anticipation of how Prince’s catalog will be described in 50 or so years, but this totally sketchy looking site is actually a nice little stop for some wonderful old-time and blues tunes. The Weems String Band’s cello-heavy, gut-rumbling, dirge-like “Greenback Dollar” - one of my favorite records ever - is here for the taking, as is Long Cleve Reed and Papa Harvey Hull’s addictive (and impossibly rare) rendition of Stagolee (”The Original Stack-O-Lee Blues”). These are presumably mostly lifted off CD reissues - in most cases the mp3s live in the peerlessly well-meaning, if hard to traverse, stacks of Archive.org - but who cares. PD4U just makes getting at these classics that much easier. Thx 2 U.

Punjabi Songs
Painfully extensive site for bhangra and its ever-increasingly hip-hop dimensions. Ryan Singh’s “Dholicious” album is well worth your time. Especially check out 2-Dark’s “Vichorday” with Pavan Pali.

Radio Tunis
Aggressively poor quality, but a killer site with links to archival programs (in Arabic) from five different Tunisian radio stations, and a modest mp3 music collection. You can also listen live to the national Radio Tunis itself.

Red Hot Jazz
An amazing resource for discographies, biographies, and mp3 libraries of the salad days of jazz, 1895-1929. If a musician played hot, they’re here. Catalog numbers, personnel, and recording dates and locations are included, and mp3s of rare sides abound. It’s fun to pick names you know and explore all the multitudinous bands that person was in, with whom, and where - I never knew that Clarence Williams was in a group called the Blue Grass Foot Warmers (whose records, by the way, are KILLER). A couple blues records made it past the gate, as a bonus: you’ll find some of Texas Alexander’s sessions with Mississippi Sheiks Bo (”Carter”) and Sam Chatmon, and the cream of the jug band crop too - Clifford Hayes’ Original Louisville, Cannon’s, Cincinnati, King David, Whistler. But the first things to check out, just out of sheer weirdness and hilarity, are two sides of Dan Parrish’s orchestra providing musical accompaniment to Jean Cocteau’s poetry recitations. That is, recited by Cocteau. He whistles too!

The John Donald Robb Collection
A huge cache of field recordings made by John Donald Robb, former Dean of Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico, made primarily in that state, but also in Arizona, Colorado, Mexico, from the 1940s to the 1970s. Native material (dance tunes, ritual pieces, game songs), lots of corridos, religious performances, frontier and border ballads both Hispanic and Anglo, and a couple really nice cowboy pieces. There are some Spanish recordings too, made in 1970 - religious pieces and lyric fandangos. Quality is pretty poor, and if you don’t know what you’re after (like me), getting lost is easy - genres aren’t identified - but well worth an expedition. Thanks to DS Monoclonius of undismayed.blogspot.com for the tip.

Secret Museum of the Air on WFMU
MP3 archives of Pat Conte and Citizen Kafka’s broadcast of the world’s local music (”historic old recordings”) on 78. A show, so sadly deceased, that needs no introduction, and that is so completely without peer as to almost make you desperate. “Vespers Ringing” - the dizzying two-part tour though the world’s religious practice turned at 78 rpms - is the most brilliant and edifying compilation ever made. Full stop.

Wisconsin Folksong: The Helene Stratman-Thomas Collection
Helene Stratman-Thomas was a song-collecting giant in the 1930s and ’40s, yet she’s virtually unknown to most folks, perhaps because she recorded in places (Maine; Vermont) that just aren’t as rough-and-tumble as Southern prison farms or Appalachian coal camps. She spent six years in the field in Wisconsin, and the good people at the Mills Music Library at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have digitized the fruits of her labors. Lots of material of Scandinavian and German derivation, as is to be expected from this part of the world; Ho Chunk and Ojibwe Indians; emigres from the Southern mountains up for factory work; plenty of singers of Child and other old English ballads and topical pieces. There’s a single disc on Rounder called “Folk Songs of Wisconsin” that gives an introduction to this material, but why buy it? It’s all right here, streaming at a generous 96k, even if it’s a little hard to negotiate if you don’t know what you’re looking for. I don’t. Start with the Rindlisbacher family’s sentimental tunes played on accordion and “Viking cello.”

Wolf Folklore Collection at Lyon College
Great big old treasure trove of ballads, religious material, play party songs, banjo and fiddle tunes, and stories collected by John Quincy Wolf, Jr., primarily in Arkansas, in the 1950s and ’60s. Lots of unfamiliar names here, and some really charming if rough stuff. Tons of recordings by the great ballad singers Aunt Ollie Gilbert and Almeda Riddle, and of the peerless Neal Morris. Have a listen to the wonderful and rare duet on “Moses In the Bulrushes” with Neal and his son, one-time RCA (and Rackensack) recording artist Jimmie Driftwood. Just as simple as can be: search by song title or artist, you get the date and location of the recording and the lyrics. Why can’t everything be this easy? Only complaint is that playback is in the right channel only.

Zapatista Radio Insurgente: La Voz De Los Sin Voz
Recently the music audio files haven’t been opening, but the player on the home page directs you to the live broadcast outta Chiapas, which works with some frequency, and there are tons of archived programs, lectures, and public service announcements available. My Spanish ain’t great, but I still really enjoy the programming. I also keep Zapatista coffee in the house, so I’m partial.

Zim Sounds
Zimbabwean site primarily geared towards retail, but the “jukebox” selection looks good, with a lot of Thomas Mapfumo material, mainstays like Oliver “Tuku” Mtukudzi and System Tazvida, and apparently some contemporary tunes. I say “looks good” and “apparently” because I can’t get any of the audio files to play. Maybe you’ll have better luck.

INDIVIDUAL ARTISTS:

A. L. Phipps & the Phipps Family (Barbourville, KY)

Mohammed Abdel Wahab (Egypt)

Oum Khaltoum (Egypt)

Nazem Ali Ghazali (Iraq)