The World’s music features this week: Bulgaria National Radio, Carlos G Lopes and Graveola
Brazil's alt-tropicalia band, Graveola
Each week on The World, we feature a unique selection of music, and every week we put together the highlights for you here.
Here's the latest, curated by director April Peavey. (If you're looking for all the music you heard on the show, go here.)
Bulgaria National Radio plays oldies
Bulgaria National Radio is in a legal dispute with a music distributor over copyright royalties. So ever since January, it's been forced to limit its on-air playlist to archival recordings for which the 70-year copyright has expired. That means going back to pre-1946 tunes.
"The interesting twist," says Bulgarian journalist Boryana Dzhambazova, is that the radio station "was worried that this switch would discourage listeners from tuning in, but instead the station has received many congratulatory calls, and their ratings were up by 20 percent in January."
The station says its been challenging to come up with a copyright-free playlist. But BNR music director Lilly Goliminova says she's actually re-discovered music she didn't even know they had, including old George Gershwin and Scott Joplin recordings, and Beethoven concerts performed by the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony, as well some contemporary Bulgarian bands who've offered up their music to the station. "So that makes the mix very interesting now because we have classical music and jazz and some new emerging bands in Bulgaria, some of the best. So we've rediscovered amazing, amazing Bulgarian rock and all kinds of music from bands who keep coming to us and giving us the option to play their music for free."
Here's one of the new Bulgarian bands they've been playing, Funky Miracle.
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A tune from Cape Verde
Carlos G. Lopes is a singer-songwriter from Cape Verde. He's now living in Nice, France. I met him at a world music expo (WOMEX) last October. I asked him to share one of his songs. He wanted us to hear "Mamai," a song about his grandmother.
oembed://https%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DpBHedQRbPV4
Alt-tropicalia from Brazil
To help us get in the spirit of Carnival, which kicks off this weekend, we turn to music from the band Graveola. They're at the forefront of the alt-tropicalia movement in Brazil.