Luaka Bop

Compiled by former Talking Head David Byrne and released in 1989, with liner notes and translations by Arto Lindsay, Beleza Tropical documents a New York hipster's first infatuation with the rich, deep, and varied spectrum of Brazilian popular music from

Samba, like many other Afro-Latin music forms, propels and ignites the lower body–the hips, the butt, the pelvis, etc.–by letting the downbeat “float.” By de-emphasizing the first beat of each measure a rhythm becomes more sensual and ethereal; one “float

I heard this music when I visited Salvador, Bahia for the first time in 1986(?). Forro was not a sound I expected to hear. It sounded like a mixture of Ska with Polka! The closest equivalent I knew of was Zydeco, the music made familiar by the late great

The folks who brought you Brazil, the Portuguese, were the Renaissance envelope pushers — extreme explorer / traders like the Polynesians and Phoenicians of earlier times. They were also hard-nosed colonists who didn’t limit themselves to South American

In this compilation you will only hear the Mutantes at the best and most humorou phases of their career " a surprisingly creative rock band that even in the 90s counts such bands as L7, Redd Kross, the Posies and Stereolab, not to mention the late Kurt Co

Little is known about William Onyeabor, and that’s the way he likes it.

Sure, you might hear something about him if you go to Enugu, a rural and isolated town in Eastern Nigeria, where he lives in a hidden palace in the woods. As a crowned High Chief o

Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda’s devotion to spirituality was the central purpose of the final four decades of her life, an often-overlooked awakening that largely took shape during her four-year marriage to John Coltrane and after his 1967 death. By 1

After ten years of wrangling, Luaka Bop is set to release 'Nobody Can Live Forever: The Existential Soul of Tim Maia' a fifteen track survey of Maia's 1970s recordings, completely remastered, commemorating what would have been the Brazilian musical legend

Gospel music that is not about God or Jesus, but instead how we deal with each other. Sourced from small label gospel singles from the 1970's from fairly obscure groups. Jonathan Lethem - These songs are resplendent with love and yet are not love songs, n