- remix by the masters at work.

Les Négresses Vertes, formed in 1987, are a French music group who are best described as a fusion of world music and some aspects of alternative rock. Their particular musical influences were Gypsy music, Punk rock (Gypsy punk), Algerian raï, Mediterranean and South American music and French café music.

Samira Said was raised in Rabat in Morocco and Cheb Mami in Algeria. To many fans, this was a dream collaboration.

Carol Samaha is a Lebanese musician and actress. She has released three studio albums. Carole has a masters degree in acting and directing, which she has earned in 1999. She has won two Arab Music Awards.
Carole was born in Beirut, Lebanon on 25 July 1972

Henryk Gorécki (1933) is a polish composer of contemporary classical music. Górecki’s most popular piece is his “Third Symphony”, also known as the “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs”. The work is slow and contemplative, and each of the three movements are composed for orchestra and solo soprano. The libretto for the first movement is taken from a 15th century lament, while second movement uses the words of a teenage girl, Helena B?a?usiak, which she wrote on the wall of a Gestapo prison cell in Zakopane to invoke the protection of the Virgin Mary. The third uses the text of a Silesian folk song which describes the pain of a mother searching for a son killed in the Silesian uprisings. The dominant themes of the symphony are motherhood and separation through war. While the first and third movements are written from the perspective of a parent who has lost a child, the second movement is from that of a child separated from a parent.

The first paintings are from El Greco (1541-1614) – a painter, sculptor, and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. El Greco’s dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century. El Greco is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism, while his personality and works were a source of inspiration for poets and writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Nikos Kazantzakis. El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school. He is best known for tortuously elongated figures and often fantastic or phantasmagorical pigmentation, marrying Byzantine traditions with those of Western painting.

The second paintings are from the austrian painter Egon Schiele (1890-1918). A protégé of Gustav Klimt, Schiele was a major figurative painter of the early 20th century. Schiele’s work is noted for its intensity, and the many self-portraits the artist produced. The twisted body shapes and the expressive line that characterize Schiele’s paintings and drawings mark the artist as an early exponent of Expressionism, although still strongly associated with the art nouveau movement (Jugendstil).

Artist : Dr. Victor Olaiya
Album : The Best Of Dr. Victor Olaiya
Genre : Nigeria Highlife
Label : Premier Music

Victor Olaiya: 50 years of ingenious highlife on stage -
By Richard Eghaghe, Entertainment Correspondent (Daily Independent Online.)

A native of Ondo State, Dr Victor Olaiya was born on December 31, 1931, in Calabar, Cross River State, where his parents, Alfred Omolona Olaiya and Bathsheba Owolabi Motajo, had gone to settle. The 20th child of a family of 24, Olaiya speaks Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba fluently.

He took to music at a tender age, while equally pursuing his education. Young Olaiya had his first feel of playing music at the African School, Onitsha, where he was exposed to playing such instruments as Bb Flat Bombardon and Eb French Horn.

He moved to the commercial city of Lagos on completion of his secondary education and took to full time music. He played with such bands like the Sammy Akpabot Sextet and the Old Lagos City Orchestra.

The turning point in his music career came when young Victor broke away from the popular Bobby Benson Jam Session Orchestra, where he was leader and trumpeter of the second band, to start his own band, Cool Cats, in 1954he made his debut that same year. Ever since, there has been no stopping Olaiya from blowing his trumpet and making the waves with highlife music.

His band gained national recognition when it was selected to play at the state ball, which highlighted major activities of Queen Elizabeth of Englands visit to Nigeria in 1956. His Cool Cats band was also the sole band chosen to play at Nigerias Miss Independence zonal competitions in 16 centres nationwide. On the independence D-day, his band also emerged as the sole band to perform at the state ball to mark the day, attended by Princess Alexandria, who represented the Queen.

The band was also on hand to perform at the state banquet, when Nigeria adopted a republican constitution in 1963. The band was again there to share the stage with the great jazzist, Satchmo Armstrong of blessed memory.
Olaiyas band was in hot demand, essentially for its discipline, high sense of commitment and outstanding performances.

Quite unbelievably, Olaiya rose to the rank of a lieutenant colonel (honorary) in the Nigerian Army when his band was commissioned to play at the various war fronts, during the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-70. He was also drafted to perform for the troops on the United Nations mission to the Congo (now Zaire) crisis.

He was awarded the honorary doctorate degree in African music when he led his band, which he eventually changed from Cool Cats to All Stars Band, to represent Africa at an International Jazz Festival in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He has not only shared same stage with highlife music giant, E. T. Mensah of Ghana, he released a joint album with him, which was a best seller with the Ghanaian highlife idol.

Apart from hitting top music chat with series of his album releases, Olaiya was also engaged in the thriving business of importation and distribution of musical instruments and accessories, which spans the entire West African sub-region. He equally established the ultra-modern Stadium Hotel in Surulere, which today provides an outlet for a good number of Nigerian artistes to showcase their acts just as it has provided the popular acclaimed highlife evil genius a convenient venue to thrill his teaming fans with regular weekend gigs.

A talented sports man and lover of pets, Olaiya was in 1990 conferred with the fellowship of the Institute of Administrative Management of Nigeria and another doctorate degree (honorary) by the City University of Los Angeles, California, USA. He was former president of the Nigerian Union of Musicians (NUM) and still played his highlife gigs to thrill at his Stadium Hotel complex.

Orchestra Makassy – Legends Of East Africa (The Original Recordings)
In 1980 a 15-man band from Dar Es Salaam got together in a Nairobi studio with some young Brits who wanted to cash in on the Afropop boom that was sweeping the nation thanks to Nigeria’s King Sunny Ade. Mzee ‘Elder’ Makassy was the leader and principal vocalist of the band named after him; Tshimanga Assosa of Maquis Original contributed singing and songwriting skills. The songs are sung in Shona, Swahili and Lingala.

Mose Se Sengo a.k.a. ‘Fan Fan’ is often mentioned in connection with the band as he had been chef d’orchestra before striking out on his own. The excellent, bustling Kasongo Shinga played bass, there were two drummers, a tumbador, and four horn players, including Twalib Mohamed as trumpet soloist and Akuliake Saleh on alto sax. In short, a classic East African dance-band line-up.

The opening track ‘Mambo Bado’ become a dance-floor hit. It still gets you going from the first note. ‘Mambo Bado’ should have prompted the group to international stardom but Virgin failed to promote them. In 1984, they broke up after the release of a little known album Muzuki Orchestre Makassy. Fortunately, guitarist Mose Fan Fan used some of the bands early recordings on an album called Agwaya.

The CD is a mixture of haunting ballads such as ‘Nakolela Cherie’, about a man whose wife has abandoned him and their kids and ‘Kufisilika Sio Kalema’, a mover and shaker in the Virunga style. Most of the songs contain wry social commentary. ‘Mosese’, a track written by FanFan, is about a man complaining to his fiancée, this is followed by ‘Athumani,’ a song in which a young married woman complains about her husband running around. The bass is high in the mix for the moody ‘Mke Wangu’ another classic track in which the singer tells of a man who lavished material goods on his wife only to have her leave him. It’s as if Fan Fan, Makassy and his many disciples had never been away. ‘The Original Recordings’ is a fresh, retro sound – which will leave you wanting an extra helping.

BBC