JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 101st anniversary of the birth of the legendary Celia Cruz.
Tag: world music
New Single: Carmel Shares Gorgeous Ballad “Mariposa Al Fuego”
Spanish-based singer/songwriter Carmel proudly boasts having mixed Moroccan, Argentine and Middle Eastern heritage. And her music reflects that heritage, as she blends flamenco, soul and other global sounds with lyrics written and sung in Spanish, English and Hebrew.
Her debut EP, Contraste will see her continuing her genre-blending sound and approach through collaborations with musicians and producers from diverse backgrounds, including Spanish flamenco guitarist José De Maria, as well as Latin and global producers.
The Spanish-based singer/songwriter’s latest single “Mariposa Al Fuego” is a flamenco-tinged pop ballad that according to Carmel is inspired by the image of a butterfly being irresistibly drawn to a flame with the song diving into the pull of destructive relationships and the struggle to break free from dysfunctional patterns. The song’s cinematic arrangement serves as a lush bed for the Spanish-based artist’s pop ballad belter-like voice. At its core is a message of self-awareness, self-love, resilience and resolve, seemingly rooted in lived-in experience.
“We’ve all been that butterfly at some point—drawn to what we know will hurt us .This song is that mirror, but also an invitation to choose ourselves,” Carmel says.
New Video: Vanille Shares Slow-Burning and Swooning “Un chant d’amour”
Rachel Leblanc is a Montréal-based singer/songwriter and creative mastermind behind the critically applauded recording project Vanille, which has seen the French-Canadian artist craft a sound that meshes elements of 60s folk and chanson in a way that brings the listener into a dreamlike world of dense, verdant forests and swooning heartbreak.
Her recently released, Christophe Charest-Latif-produced third album Un chant d’amour sees the acclaimed French-Canadian artist marking the beginning of new creative chapter, that sees Leblanc’s and a talented cast of musicians, including Jules Encore and Corail‘s Julien Comptour; Velours Velours‘ and Corail’s Philippe Noël; Carla Chanelle‘s and Roselle’s Christophe Rosset-Balcer; Allô Fantôme‘s Samuel Gendron; Arielle Soucy; and Velours Velours’ Raphaël Pépin-Tanguay crafting a sound that draws from retro soul and the mid 1960s-early 1970s sunshine pop movement. Leblanc’s melodies and lyrics are rooted in sentimental overtones. And as a result, the album’s material is meant to unfold like a scented letter received from a mysterious valentine.
Un chant d’amour‘s latest single, album title track “Un chant d’amour” is a slow-burning ballad anchored around Leblanc’s achingly melancholy delivery, atmospheric Rhodes and a syrupy slow-dance inspired backbeat. And while seemingly channelling 70s AM radio rock, “Un chant d’amour” is the sort of song you’d play when you want to slow-dance at the midnight ball with your long-held crush or your loved one.
Directed by Irina Tempea and Elizabeth Landry the accompanying video for “Un chant d’amour” is an swooningly sentimental visual featuring a mixture of dusty found footage and the rising French-Canadian artist in a wedding gown to create a wedding that never really took place.
Throwback: Happy 87th Birthday, Fela Kuti!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 88th anniversary of the birth of Fela Kuti.
New Video: Amadou & Mariam Share Swooning “L’amour à la folie”
Over the course of their almost 50-year career run together, the iconic and beloved Malian duo Amadou & Mariam have had an illustrious career that saw them take the Malian blues that made them a household name in Africa and opened it up to rock, hip-hop and EDM/dance influences, which led to spreading their country’s culture and beloved sounds, as well as the pair’s unique joie de vivre. “We’ve always dreamed of tearing down walls and opening people’s ears to new sounds so the whole world can discover and appreciate Malian music,” Amadou & Mariam says.
Late last year, the pair released the compilation album La Vie Est Belle, an album that highlighted their legacy as one of Africa’s most famous duos and the massive influence they’ve had while paving the way for an exciting, new generation of African artists, who have begun to dominate the Western mainstream.
The legendary Malian duo have also acted as Afro-pop ambassadors, who have collaborated with some of the biggest names of Western mainstream music, including U2, Coldplay, Stevie Wonder, Sofi Tucker, BLOND:ISH, Santigold, Akon, TV on the Radio, Damon Albarn and David Gilmour — with their seven studio albums selling over one million records globally. Adding to a globally recognized profile, the duo made the rounds of the global festival circuit, playing sets at Coachella, Lollapalooza and Glastonbury. They’ve also performed at The World Cup, NPR’s Tiny Desk and last year’s Paris Paralympic Games Closing Ceremony, where they covered Serge Gainsbourg‘s “Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je Me’n Vais.” And lastly, they made the run of the late night TV circuits of both the US and UK.
The duo’s final album together, L’amour à la folie is slated for an October 24, 2025 release. Written and recorded together over the past seven years, the acclaimed and beloved Malian duo’s soon-to-be released eighth album conveys the duo’s raw joy through incandescent, exuberant music that perfectly complements their messages of love and unity — and the hope of a peaceful world in which diversity is celebrated and championed. And with love with a capital L as the driving force, music and fuel and sharing as the spark, the duo’s radiant power continues to shine on their final album.
Final mixes of the album’s material were completed last winter. They shared a deep excitement about the album’s release in October. But sadly, Amadou Bagayoko died back in April. It’s Mariam Doumbia’s wish, after the mourning period, to return to stages and perform the album she spent seven years working on with her beloved while celebrating the music and life her and beloved created.
L’amour à la folie‘s latest single, album title track “L’amour à la folie,” is a defiantly upbeat and urgent declaration of a swooning and ridiculously passionate love, featuring a propulsive and funky Afro pop-meets-dance floor groove, driving polyrhythm and Bagayako’s woozy guitar riff paired with the duo’s unerring knack for incredibly catchy hooks and their imitable harmonizing. And at its core, “L’amour á la folie,”is a much-needed joy bomb in bleak, desperate times that reminds all of us that life isn’t worth a damn without a love that drives you mad.
The accompanying video features footage of the pair performing on stages across the world, bursts of behind the scenes footage from video and album art shoots, small moments of families together, behind the scenes footage of the duo together and more.
New Video: Sessa Shares Swinging and Strutting “Nome de Deus”
São Paulo-based singer/songwriter and musician Sergio Sayeg, best known as Sessa will be releasing his third album Pequena Vertigo de Amor on November 7, 2025 through Mexican Summer.
The nine-song album is not just an evolution of the Brazilian artist’s sound; it’s a thorough transformation. Sayeg describes the album’s material as “a bit more nocturnal, open-ended, crooked funky,” while highlighting inspiration from soulful influences across both North and South America, including Shuggie Otis, Roy Ayers, Sly Stone, Erasmo Carlos, Tim Maia, Hyldon and more.
Recorded to tape at Cosmo, the studio that the Brazilian artist co-founded with Biel Basile, over five sessions between last April and March 2025, Pequena Vertigem de Amor sees Sessa expanding his sonic palette and stretching in multiple directions simultaneously. There’s a greater emphasis on rhythm and enhanced tempos, as he experiments with new vocal cadences and textures, and the addition of instrumentation not heard in his previously released work like piano, synthesizer, wah-wah pedaled guitar and even a primitive drum machine.
Sayeg describes the forthcoming album’s songs as “a mix of personal chronicles and quiet meditations about life in the face of personal change, of experiencing something so big that you realize your insignificant size in space and time.” That new perspective and reality wound up remaking his personal life and his connection to music. “For the first time I saw music move from the center to the side of my life.” The radical reordering of priorities presented fresh opportunities in his music. “In an interesting way, music became more mixed with my life,” Sessa explains as he found ways to conjure melodies, lyrics and inspiration from the daily rhythms of life.
His personal evolution has brought into sharp contrast “the ambiguities and contradictions in life, which is a place that has always inspired my writing.” Pequena Vertigem de Amor reminds the listener that experiencing vertigo can be simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating, sentiments expressed through the material’s lyrics and overall aesthetic, a fusion of novel and familiar sounds, styles and instrumentation.
In making Pequena Vertigem de Amor, a cosmic connection by way of his son’s pre-school managed to yield a missing musical ingredient—an “element on piano, which I had never put in my music, that fulfilled my search for a classic samba jazz sound,” Sessa says. A fellow musician and parent at his son’s pre-school suggested pianist Marcelo Maita, the younger brother of São Paulo samba legend Amado Maita. Sayeg invited the younger Maita to contribute to a few songs, including the album’s second and latest single “Nome de Deus” (“Name of God”).
Maita’s urgent, staccato piano attack paired with Biel Basile’s rolling percussion and a supple, throbbing bass line create a soulful, mischievously swinging and strutting samba-inspired bed for Sessa’s impassioned vocal defiantly asserting agency in bold defiance of deities and nonsensical laws and rules.
Directed by Rollinos, and shot in a cinematic black and white with illustrated burts of color exploding across the screen, the accompanying video features the Brazilian artist playing all of the song’s instrumentation and singing in a recording studio.
New Audio: Los Cenzontles Shares Defiantly Hopeful “Somos Semillas”
Deriving their name from the Nahuatl word for mockingbird, the Richmond, CA-based Los Cenzontles (pronounced senn-SONT-less) — is an acclaimed touring and recording band and a nonprofit cultural arts academy for kids. Over their three-plus decade history, the recording and touring outfit has dug deep into cultural traditions, creating a vibrant, contemporary sound infused with the gutsy soul of Mexico’s rural roots, recording and releasing over 30 albums.
The collective have supported those albums with tours across the US, Europe, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Mexico. And they’ve collaborated with an eclectic array of acclaimed, internationally recognized artists including The Chieftains, Los Lobos, Los Tigres del Norte, Ry Cooder, David Hidalgo, Linda Ronstadt, Taj Mahal and a lengthy list of others.
Their core members of the recording and touring band also serve as the programming staff and teachers of Los Cenzontles Academy, where they have been passing on musical traditions to new generations and inviting their students to perform with them on stage and participate in production projects since 1994.
The acclaimed collective’s latest single “Somos Semillas,” is the first of five new singles that they’ll be sharing this month. Written in Spanish by longtime member of Los Cenzontles, Verenice Velázquez, the track is performed by a unique cross-generational ensemble of Los Cenzontles Academy’s students, teachers and alumni, including a spoken-word recitation by Raúl Rivera, a 15-year old student, accompanied by Verenice dancing zapateado; and a Hector Espinoza-written arrangement performed by 18-year old Camila Ortega on quijada, a percussion instrument made from the dried and hollowed-out jawbone of a donkey, horse, mule or a cow, in which the animal’s teeth act like a rattle; 19 year-old Daniel Ortega on tuba and saxophones; 19 year-old Cruz Torres on accordion; 16 year-old Natalie Caldera on bass; 16 year-old Joshua Cerecedo on tololoche, a Mexican version of a double bass that’s smaller than the European double bass that’s traditionally played with a percussive, slapping technique; 17 year-old Eric Garcia on 12-string guitar; Los Cenzontles alumni Fidel Lopez on trombone; and Los Cenzontles faculty members Silvestre Martinez on cajon, a box-shaped percussive instrument that the player sits on and plays by tapping and/or slapping the front and near-facing sides; and Eugene Rodríguez on guitar.
The arrangement fuses elements of son jarocho, corrido tumbado and banda to create a sound that lovingly and proudly bridges generations, heritage and traditions, while being remarkably contemporary. The song’s lyrics touch on themes of community, migration, resilience and hope in a way that’s desperately needed in such dark, uneasy times. It’s reminder that joy, hope and pride in your heritage can be defiant and revolutionary in the face of rampant racism and fascism.
“This song represents the heart of Los Cenzontles . . . young people rooted in deep tradition, expressing themselves in ways that feel current and alive,” Los Cenzontles founder and Eugune Rodríguez says. “’Somos Semillas’ reminds us that our culture continues to grow and thrive through each new generation.”
New Video: Québec City’s David Emme Shares a Melancholy Yet Breezy Bop
Québec City-based singer/songwriter and musician David Emme is a self-described “sensitive courtier of melancholy,” whose sound frequently sees him making a delicate balance between New Wave, coldwave and post punk. Rather than choosing between light and shadow, Emme weaves light and shadow together in a way that expresses a deep, lived-in vulnerability.
“Encore” marks a new chapter for the Québec City-based artist. Anchored around glistening, reverb-drenched, New Order-like guitars paired with a breakneck, motorik-like groove and Emme’s plaintive delivery, “Encore” is a deceptively upbeat, almost anthemic song that manages to evoke a swooning, lived-in melancholy and longing. The new single channels classic New Order and contemporary bedroom pop while showcasing an artist, who can craft an earnest song with remarkably catchy hooks. “I decided to return to my first loves in terms of sound. It feels like a song I should haver eleased 10 years ago, but I wanted to wait until I had the experience and maturity to do it justice,” Emme says.
Directed by Ara3, the accompanying video follows Emme as he enters in a Québécois cafe/bar with a handful of roses. Shot in one, languorous and extended take, we see the Québec City-based artist handing out roses to a bored bartender, a romantic couple on the brink and pals having a bitter argument. And for a moment, all of these folks had remembered the joy and caring of their connection to that other person — thanks to our intrepid, Cupid-like protagonist.
Throwback: Happy 86th Birthday, Ginger Baker!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 86th anniversary of the birth of Ginger Baker.
Live Concert Photography: Capital One City Parks Foundation SummerStage at Rumsey Playfield 8/2/25: Summer Dayes 2025 feat. Yussef Dayes Experience with FKJ, Venna and Salin
Live concert photography of Summer Dayes at SummerStage.
Live Concert Photography: Capital One City Parks Foundation SummerStage at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park 7/19/25: DJ Rekha’s Basement Bhangra Beyond feat. Rashmeet Kaur, DJ Rekha, Tara Lily and Sonny Singh and Guests
Live concert photography of DJ Rekha’s Basement Bhangra Beyond at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.