Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, Shahzad Ismaily
Tiny Desk Concert
disorder that produces abnormalities at the body’s surface, including fingernails and teeth. Five decades later, Ismaily has become one of music’s most in-demand collaborators, flitting like a mischievous butterfly through genres as diverse as honeyed folk, rambunctious free jazz and spectral meditations sung in Urdu. He does not think these facts are unrelated.» (Grayson Haver Currin in The New York Times)
NPR Music
Arooj Aftab
Tiny Desk Concert
Pakistani singer Arooj Aftab is the first female artist of her country to win a Grammy Award, in 2022, for the ghazal Mohabbad. Born 1985 in Saudi Arabia, she was ten when her parents moved back to their native Lahore. He family moved to the United States in 2005, where Arooj attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston. She works in various musical styles and has won a number of prizes for her increcible music and extraordinary voice. (Wikipedia)
NPR Music
King Krule
Flimsier
Archy Ivan Marshall (1994), known by various names, Zoo Kid being one of them. He is an English singer, composer, and musician who writes poetic texts and lyrical music. He has mental issues he openly writes about and struggled with discipline from an early age, before learning to adapt go at least some of the time. No doubt he is highly talented, and very special. He takes his name from the Elvis Presley film ‘King Creole’.
Matador Records
Mdou Moctar
Full Performance (Live on KEXP)
I fit weren’t so trite, one might call this Tuareg guitarist the new Jimi Hendrix, though you can hear his African Roots in everything he plays. Mdou Moctar’s home is Agadez, a desert village in rural Niger. Inspired by YouTube videos of Eddie van Halen’s six string techniques and traditional Tuareg melodies, he mastered the guitar which he himself bult and created his own burning style.
Sahel Sounds
Olivia Rodrigo
Vampire
Olivia Rodrigo (2003) is from California and is half Filipina, half German. She started playing the piano at the age of seven and began writing song lyrics at 12. Her debut single, “Drivers License,” broke records. “When I wrote ‘Drivers License,’ I had heartbreak that was so confusing and so varied for me, combining all those feelings into one song made everything seem so much simpler and clearer, and at the end of the day, I think that’s really the whole purpose of songwriting.” (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia)
Geffen Records