Los Texmaniacs |
Music
festivals are one of my favorite things in the entire world, 'world'
music especially, music originating outside the dominant
Anglo-American English-language pop juggernaut that gets exported
everywhere. It's nice when it even trickles down to the provinces,
further proof that good things can happen outside large cities.
Albuquerque, New Mexico, is good for that.
It's
nice to hear what traditional cultures can do on their own, and its
especially nice to not have to search so long and hard for it at the
source. You already know how hard it is to go to Cuba. And these
days you might find more Malian music outside the country than
within. That's convenient, considering that the country itself is
largely destroyed, victim of Muslim fundamentalism. Mali is one of
world music's greatest success stories.