When I first became of aware of pop music in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I noticed the occasional but, generally speaking, rare appearance on British radio, of popular songs sang in a foreign language. One of the earliest I recall was Volare, recorded by the Italian singer Domenico Modugno and released as a single early in 1958. My older brother, John, had started buying records in this period and one of his first purchases was a single, La Bamba, recorded in 1958 by the 17-year-old American singer Ritchie Valens. The teenage Valens (real surname Valenzuela) had been born in Los Angeles, but both his parents were Mexican. La Bamba was a Mexican folk song that Valens sang in Spanish.

In 1963, an even more exotic sounding song hit the charts, Sukiyaki by Kyu Sakamoto, a Japanese singer who sang the song in his native language. Also in 1963, Dominique, a 1963 French language song, written and performed by the The Singing Nun (Belgian singer Jeannine Deckers) entered the British pop charts. Three years later, in 1966, the American vocal group The Sandpipers had a hit record with the Cuban song Guantanamera, which they had sung in Spanish. The first foreign language song to reach No. 1 in the British pop charts was Je T'Aime… Moi Non Plus performed by the French singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg and his British girlfriend Jane Birkin. Although banned by the BBC for its perceived "offensive eroticism", the single became No. 1 in October 1969 and stayed on the UK pop chart for 31 weeks.

Given the history of emigration to North America, it is perhaps not surprising that songs with Spanish and Italian lyrics occasionally achieved commercial success in the United States (e.g.  In 1958, the Italian musician Renato Carosone saw his record Torero reach No.25 in an American pop music chart). The situation was somewhat different in the United Kingdom. There was large-scale Caribbean migration to England following the Second World War and this resulted in small inroads in Britain's musical scene. Aldwyn Roberts, a calypso singer from Trinidad, had a measure of musical recognition in Britain under the name "Lord Kitchener" between 1948 and 1962, the year he returned to the West Indies. Between 1957 and 1960, the Guyanese actor and singer Cy Grant performed " topical calypsos " on the BBC TV news programme ‘ Tonight '. In the early 1960s The Jamaican singer-songwriter and record producer Cecil Bustamente Campbell, known professionally as Prince Buster, helped to prepare the ground for reggae and ska music in Britain. My Boy Lollipop, a cover version of an American pop song from the 1950s, was recorded in 1964 by Jamaican teenager Millie Small. Millie's ska version of the song reached the No. 2 position in the UK Singles Chart and became one of the top-selling ska songs of all time. Mainstream musical success eluded musical artists from other ethnic and cultural backgrounds, although Radha Krishna Temple's recording of the Hare Krishna Mantra did reach No 12 in the UK music chart in 1969.

An early introduction to ‘World Music' came through an involvement in left-wing politics and my growing interest in the history of radical movements. As a result, I became more aware of the histories of other countries and began to realise that there were musical cultures that differed from my own. Socialism, I learnt, was an international movement and it was no coincidence that The Internationale was a left-wing anthem.

In my mid-teens I was living on the Harold Hill Council Estate on the outskirts of Romford in Essex. The ‘record lending' section of Romford's Central Library allowed me to explore music that was not readily available on the radio and local record shops. For the first time I was able to hear whole LPs from different parts of the world. From the age of 15, courtesy of Essex's library service, I was able to listen to Indian ragas, Spanish flamenco, music from South America and songs performed in a foreign language. I became particularly interested in music created in a left-wing setting. For instance, from Romford's Record Lending Library, I borrowed a copy of the French LP Chants De La Guerre D'Espagne (1963), a collection of original recordings of songs from the Spanish Civil War, performed by a group of anonymous singers and musicians in 1938. For my first ‘World Music' track, I have chosen a song from this albulm.

TRACK 1. Los Cuatro Generales (The Four Generals) from the album Chants De La Guerre D'Espagne (Songs of the Spanish Civil War). Appearing under the title 'Coplas de la Defensa de Madrid' (Couplets of the Defence of Madrid), this was a traditional Spanish song arranged by the Madrid-born composer Gustavo Pittaluga (1906-1975). The coplas are improvised verses created for satirical purposes. The "Four Generals", also known as the "Insurgent Generals" were the senior army officers (Mola, Franco, Sanjurjo and Queipo de Llano) who organized the coup d'état against the Spanish Republic and the song relates to the ‘Battle of Madrid' in November 1936, in which, against the odds, the Republican citizens resisted the assault of the Nationalist rebels.  This recording was performed by a choir made up of a group of exiled Spanish republicans in Paris in 1938, accompanied by an orchestra under the direction of Gustavo Pittaluga.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJKDzt9E3DY  

[A decade later, when I had become enamoured by "free jazz", I was taken by surprise to hear snatches of songs from the ‘ Chants De La Guerre D'Espagne' collection - El Quinto Regimiento / Los Cuatro Generales /Viva La Quince Brigada - on Charlie Haden's 1973 jazz album Liberation Music Orchestra.]

Thanks to Romford's Record Library, I was able to access other "foreign" pieces such as Chants d'Auvergne (Songs of the Auvergne), a collection of traditional French folk songs arranged by Joseph Canteloube, and a repertoire of songs by Kurt Weill & Bertolt Brecht, sung in German by the wonderful Austrian vocalist Lotte Lenya. 

Since the age of 16 I have been a regular cinema-goer and I believe several of my early encounters with ‘World Music' was through film. For instance, when I attended a screening of Lindsay Anderson's 1968 film If....  I heard on the film's soundtrack the Sanctus from the Missa Luba, a Latin Mass sung by a Congolese choir known as Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin, a piece of music recorded in Katanga in 1958.  I heard the ‘ Gloria ' section of the Missa Luba when I viewed Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964). Soon after seeing Lindsay Anderson's film ‘If...' I borrowed a copy of Missa Luba from my local record library and made a copy on an audio cassette tape.

As an enthusiast for ‘World Cinema' I have had my musical horizons widened by viewing films from Africa, Eastern Europe, South America, Latin America and Japan. I believe my first experience of hearing the multi-stringed instrument koto and the distinctive bamboo flute (known as the ' shakuhachi ') was on the soundtrack of classic Japanese films. One koto piece I particularly liked was Minoru Miki's composition Mebae which became the theme for Nagisa Oshima's 1976 film In the Realm of the Senses. I have shared ‘Mebae' with the Musical Memories Group before, but because I wanted to include an example of Japanese koto music, I have chosen a piece entitled Lullaby of Itsuki performed on a 25-string koto by Kasumi Watanabe.

TRACK 2. Lullaby of Itsuki, a cradle song from Kumamoto Prefecture on the Japanese island of Kyushu, played on a 25-string koto by Kasumi Watanabe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FwbhI9lmnQ  

The Malian singer-songwriter Fatoumata Diawara (born 1982, Ivory Coast) first came to my attention when she appeared in the Mauritanian film Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako, 2014), which was partly about the suppression of secular music in Mali by extremist Islamists. On a previous occasion, I shared with the Music Memories Group the song Timbuktu Fasso, which Fatoumata Diawara performed in Sissako's film, so this time I have selected a track from Diawara's 2018 album, Fenfo.   

TRACK 3. Fatoumata Diawara - Nterini, a song from Diawara's second album Fenfo (2018). The album's title ‘Fenfo' means "something to say" in the singers native Bambara language. ‘Nterini' translates as "my love" or "confidant" and the song tells the sorrowful story of a migrant who is separated by distance from a lover.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sBqMBEehIs

I am not always a fan of the movies of Spanish film-maker Pedro Almodóvar but I am grateful to him for featuring the music of Brazilian musicians on the soundtrack of his 2002 film, Hable con ella (Talk to Her'). Almodóvar's film introduced me to the work of the singer and guitarist Caetano Veloso and the Brazilian vocalist Elis Regina (1945-1982).

Here is Caetano Veloso (born 1942, Bahia, Brazil) performing Cucurrucucú paloma (Coo-coo dove) - a Mexican song written by Tomás Méndez - on the set of Almodóvar's film ‘Hable con ella' .  The cellist who accompanies Veloso in this film clip is Jaques Morelenbaum, a well-known Brazilian musician and arranger.  

TRACK 4. Caetano Veloso - ‘Cucurrucucú paloma' (circa 2002) . The word ‘cucurrucucú' corresponds to the ‘coo-coo' sound made by the American mourning dove (aka turtle dove) which is a common bird in Mexico.  The lyrics allude to love sickness ("They swear that the dove is nothing but your soul that is still waiting for her "). Caetano Veloso is a Brazilian composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist who opposed the Brazilian military dictatorship during the 1960s. Veloso is a best-selling composer and performer in his native Brazil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1emgUdD3_pE 

Elis Regina's version of Por toda a minha vida (music by Antonio Carlos Jobim, lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes) also appeared on the soundtrack of Almodóvar's film Talk to Her. Here is Elis Regin a performing another song by Antônio Carlos Jobim - Águas de Março ("The Waters of March").

TRACK 5. Elis Regina - ‘ Águas de Março' ("The Waters of March"). Performed live in a 1973 TV Special. ‘Águas de Março' refers to the heavy March rainstorms that mark the end of the Summer in Rio de Janeiro. The Portuguese lyrics of the song do not tell a story but present a series of images that evoke both the passing and promise of life ("A stick, a stone, It's the end of the road, It's feeling alone, It's the weight of your load … It's the curve of a slope, It's an ant, It's a bee, it's a reason for hope").  The song's composer Antônio Carlos Jobim , aka Tom Jobim , (1927–1994) is considered one of the great exponents of Brazilian music and is known as the "father of bossa nova". Elis Regina was a popular singer in Brazil during the 1960s and 1970s. Elis Regina died in 1982 from a lethal combination of alcohol and cocaine at the age of thirty-six.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI1b9RK10JI    

The films of the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar have proved to be a useful source for my discovery of Spanish singers. Both Estrella Morente and Concha Buika have performed songs on Almodóvar's film soundtracks.

The emotional tone of flamenco music has always appealed to me. I think I saw my first performances of flamenco music in the dance films of Carlos Saura e.g., Blood Wedding (1981), Carmen (1983).

In the 1980s, my wife was friendly with a woman named Ann, who worked with her at a Brighton library. Ann was keen on Spanish flamenco and attended flamenco dancing lessons. I liked flamenco music and owned a few records featuring flamenco guitarists Paco Peña and Paco de Lucía. Ann wanted company for a flamenco concert she was attending at the Brighton Dome, so I went along. After this introduction, I attended a couple more flamenco shows. It was during the live performances that I realised I was getting a bigger thrill from the singing than I was from the dancing. I had had a similar experience when I watched the Carlos Saura films. It was the male singers (cantaores) in the film that made the greatest impression. However, for my chosen piece of flamenco music, I have chosen a performance by a female singer - María de los Ángeles Martínez Toledano (born 1995, Villanueva de la Reina, Jaén, Spain) who, somewhat confusingly, is billed on YouTube as either Ángeles Toledano or María Ángeles Martínez.

TRACK 6: Alegrías. Cantaora: María Ángeles Martínez. Guitar: Eduardo Rebollar (2014). Apparently, an Alegrías is a flamenco musical form, which has a rhythm consisting of 12 beats. I have no idea what the cantaora is singing but I enjoy the range of emotions conveyed in this live performance. The word ‘Alegrías' literally means "joys."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0MUws00a1M

I probably listen to modern jazz more than any other music genre.  Occasionally, I come across a collaboration between a jazz musician and a player from a different musical tradition. In my own record collection, I have the jazz pianist Herbie Hancock on synthesiser alongside the Gambian kora player Foday Musa Soso, viz. Village Life (1985), the Brazilian singer Milton Nascimento as a guest vocalist on the LP Native Dancer (1975), an album by jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter, and the great flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia joining jazz guitarists John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola in a live concert viz. Friday Night in San Francisco (1981). Perhaps the most unusual combination involved the appearance of a Sardinian vocal quartet on an album by the jazz bassist Marcello Melis.

TRACK 7 : Annex B, featuring Gruppo Rubanu, a Sardinian vocal quartet. From the jazz album The New Village on the Left by Marcello Melis (1977).  The Gruppo Rubano comprises Nicolò Rubanu (bass vocals), Antonio Buffa (falsetto vocals), Sebastiano Piras (baritone vocals) and Egidio Muscau (solo vocalist). The vocal quartet was recorded in July 1974 in Orgosolo, Sardinia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvAeAxGwf7k  

In my youth, I rarely listened to ‘pop music' on the radio, but occasionally I would dip into the radio programmes curated by music pioneers such as John Peel and Andy Kershaw and their producer John Waters, whose motto was: "We're not here to give the public what it wants. We're here to give the public what it didn't know it wanted." Andy Kershaw was an enthusiast for African music, and it was probably through him that I was made aware of musicians such as the Malian singer and multi-instrumentalist Ali Farka Touré, the singer-songwriter Salif Keita (also from Mali) and the Zimbabwean band The Bhundu Boys.

During the 1980s, my niece had been working for UNICEF in Africa, so, for a birthday present, a gave her a copy of the Bhundu Boys' first UK album, Shabini (DiscAfrique, 1986). When I met up with my niece, she admitted she did not like the music on the Bhundu Boys' LP and returned it to me, so consequently, ‘Shabini' became the first African album to enter my record collection. The second African record I purchased was Salif Keita's debut album Soro (Mango, 1987).

TRACK 8: The Bhundu Boys - Zvichatinesta. A track from the band's 1986 album Shabini. I don't have a translation of the lyrics of Zvichatinesta. [The LP cover just provides a brief summary of the song's message viz. "We'll be in trouble – What will we do when our parents die? "]. I find this band's music joyous, energetic and uplifting.  The name of the band – ‘The Bhundu Boys' – derives from the Zimbabwean word  ‘bhundu' which means "bush" or "jungle" and is a reference to ‘the bush boys', the young lads who gave aid to the nationalist guerrilla fighters who were opposing the white minority government of Rhodesia during the 1970s.  Biggie Tembo (Biggie Rodwell Tembo Marasha), the lead singer of the band and composer of most of the group's songs, had been a ‘bhundu boy'. The Bhundu Boys played a style of music that mixed Zimbabwean chimurenga (‘liberation') music with American styles of popular music.  The Bhundu Boys' brand of popular dance music became known as ‘ jit' .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEI8ThhyZuY

Personnel: Biggie Tembo (guitar, lead vocals); Rise Kagona (guitar, backing vocals); David Mankaba (bass guitar backing vocals); Shakespear Kangwena (keyboard, backing vocals); Kenny Chitsvatsv a (drums, backing vocals). The Bhundu Boys declined in popularity after Biggie Tembo left the band in 1990. During the early 1990s, three members of the band died of complications from AIDS. Biggie Tembo, the force behind the original band, became mentally ill and eventually hanged himself in a psychiatric hospital in 1995.

TRACK 9 : Salif Keita - Wamba. A track from Salif Keita's 1987 album Soro.  The gatefold LP cover provides an English translation of the song Wamba. Keita's song is about a wayward wife ("Wamba's not where she ought to be.") and her husband's disillusionment concerning marriage. ("Nowadays, marriage is by no means a hit, Lovers tear each other to bits. Marriage – there's no future in it.").

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3Um93Wo4tY  

Salif Keita (born 1949, Djoliba, Mali) was ‘high-born' but was driven out of his native village because of his albinism, which was seen as sign of bad luck. Keita played in bands in Mali and the Ivory Coast before moving to Paris in 1984, hoping to reach a larger audience. His music combines traditional West African music styles with influences from both Europe and the Americas. Soro's sleeve notes mention musical influences from a wide range of countries – Mali, Guinea, Senegal, Cuba, Spain and Portugal. 

When I attended a teachers' training college in the Midlands during the early 1970s my musical tastes were rather narrow, being mainly restricted to American soul music and modern jazz. At college, I met a young man from Birmingham named Brian Millicheap, who shared my interest in modern jazz but also had a liking for the bizarre when it came to music. After I qualified as a teacher, I returned south to take up a teaching post in Essex, but I remained in contact with Brian and we would, over the years, meet up in London to attend art exhibitions and music concerts. During the 1990s and early 2000s, Brian would send me audio tape cassettes containing compilations of recordings taken from two late night BBC Radio programmes, ‘Mixing It' and ‘Late Junction'.

First broadcast in 1990, ‘Mixing It ' was a Radio 3 programme which showcased " experimental" and "crossover" music that " blurred the established boundaries between genres ". For instance, one of the editions of ‘Mixing It ' featured Tanya Tagaq , a "punk Inuit throat singer" from Canada. Late Junction was a music programme on BBC Radio 3 which was billed as " experimental music for adventurous listeners" . This radio programme embraced a wide range of musical genres including avant-garde electronica, free form jazz and international folk music. It was through Brian's ‘mix-tapes' that I was introduced to music artists such as Sainkho Namtchylak, a singer from Tuva (a Russian republic, just north of Mongolia), the Argentine bandoneon player Astor Piazzolla, and the Bulgarian choir Le Mystere des voix Bulgares ("The Mystery of Bulgarian Voices").

TRACK 10 : Sainkho Namtchylak - Tchasphy-Hem. From Sainkho's 1993 compilation album Out of Tuva. ‘Tchasphy-Hem' is a traditional Tuvan song arranged by the singer Sainkho Namtchylak.  This particular track was recorded in Moscow sometime between 1986 and 1988.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwusLAqJ_uI

On Saturday, 11th November 2000, at the Sallis Benney Theatre in Brighton, I saw Sainkho Namtchylak live in concert with Yat-Kha, a band from Tuva which played a mixture of traditional Tuvan music and rock, featuring a distinctive throat-singing style known as ‘ kanzat kargyraa '. By this date, Sainkho had almost abandoned traditional Tuvan music and was experimenting with a decidedly avant-garde vocal style.

TRACK 11: Astor Piazzolla & The New Tango Sextet - ‘Tanguedia'. A video of a live concert given at the BBC in 1989.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VWfsea7tnw

Ástor Piazzolla (1921-1992) was an Argentine tango composer and bandoneón player who revolutionized the traditional ‘tango' into a new style called ‘ nuevo tango '.

TRACK 12: The Bulgarian State Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir - Pilentze Pee Govori ("A Nightingale Sings and Speaks"). The opening track to the best-selling album Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares ("The Mystery of Bulgarian Voices").

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyH4O258ESE

My favourite track on this album is, in fact, Kalimankou Denkhou ("The Evening Gathering") which features the amazing solo voice of Yanka Roupkina, but I played that choral piece as part of my first personal presentation to the Musical Memories Group. Although Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares was released in the UK in 1986, the Bulgarian folk songs on this album were recorded over a period of 30 years (between 1955 and 1984), having been compiled as part of a 15-year project by Swiss ethnomusicologist Marcel Cellier. In the sleeve notes on the 4AD reissue of this compilation album, Marcel Cellier comments on the successful synthesis of archaic diaphony and modern polyphony. According to Marcel Cellier, the distinctive nature of Bulgarian choral music evolved over a long historical period being affected by a succession of different musical cultures (Thracian, Byzantine and Ottoman): "Originally monodic, it became diaphonic, developing its own polyphony, before encountering Occidental harmony in the Twentieth Century". In Cellier's words, the result is " a mordent atonality, in total contrast with our traditional Western harmonic system. " 

Nowadays, I get my weekly fix of ‘world music' from the Radio 3 programme Music Planet which offers " roots-based music from across the world" and goes out on a Saturday afternoon at 4 pm. A recent discovery that was made courtesy of Music Planet was Värttinä, a Finnish folk music band. I heard this band for the first time in 2021, yet they have been in existence since 1983.

TRACK 13: Värttinä - Katariina. A live performance from 2013. The band line-up in this video is as follows: Mari Kaasinen (vocals); Susan Aho (vocals); Karoliina Kantelinen (vocals); Matti Kallio (accordion); Hannu Rantanen (bass); Mikko Hassinen (drums & percussion).  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqKo1IbQ_6w

Värttinä (a word that means "spindle") is a Finnish folk music band that was started in 1983 as a music project created by two sisters, Sari and Mari Kaasinen from Rääkkylä, a village in the south-eastern region of Finland. Over a 38-year period the band has changed in character and its personnel. The band now consists of three lead female vocalists supported by three acoustic musicians. Mari Kaasinen is the only survivor from the original band. The vocalists sing in the Karelian dialect of the Finnish language.

TRACK ONE (SPAIN): C oplas De La Defensa De Madrid  aka ‘Los Cuatro Generales' (1938)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJKDzt9E3DY

TRACK TWO (JAPAN): ‘Lullaby of Itsuki' , played on a 25-string koto by Kasumi Watanabe (2020)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FwbhI9lmnQ

TRACK THREE (MALI): Fatoumata Diawara - ‘Nterini'  (2018)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sBqMBEehIs

TRACK FOUR (MEXICO/BRAZIL): Caetano Veloso - ‘Cucurrucucú paloma' (circa 2002). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1emgUdD3_pE

TRACK FIVE (BRAZIL):. Elis Regina - ‘Águas de Março'   -"The Waters of March"(1973). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI1b9RK10JI  

TRACK SIX (SPAIN): ‘Alegrías' . Cantaora: María Ángeles Martínez . Guitar: Eduardo Rebollar (2014)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0MUws00a1M

TRACK SEVEN (SARDINIA): ‘Annex B' , featuring Gruppo Rubanu , a Sardinian vocal quartet (1974)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvAeAxGwf7k

TRACK EIGHT (ZIMBABWE): The Bhundu Boys -‘ Zvichatinesta' (1986)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEI8ThhyZuY

TRACK NINE (MALI): Salif Keita - ‘Wamba' (1987)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3Um93Wo4tY

TRACK TEN (TUVA): Sainkho Namtchylak - ‘Tchasphy-Hem' (circa1987)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwusLAqJ_uI

TRACK ELEVEN (ARGENTINA): Astor Piazzolla & The New Tango Sextet - ‘Tanguedia' . (1989)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VWfsea7tnw

TRACK TWELVE (BULGARIA): The Bulgarian State Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir - ‘Pilentze Pee Govori'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyH4O258ESE

TRACK THIRTEEN (FINLAND):  Värttinä - ‘Katariina' (2013).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqKo1IbQ_6w