Great World Music Website: NoNaMe from Russia

NoNaMe - World Music

The name may not be the clearest and the Russian may be a little daunting to non-cyrillic speakers, but NoNaMe and its world music website has some of the most eclectic world music I've seen on the Internet. The site seems to have a special love for Balkan music while still having selections from around the world.

You have to register which is just a simple login, email, password and password confirmation. To non-cyrillic speakers, you have to click the " регистрация" in order to get the registration page. Or you can just click here to register.  I know, its daunting at first but all the posts are in english and its pretty easy to navigate

Here is just a quick list of the quality Balkan Music I've found on the website:

• Ferus is Cooking - Macedonian Wedding Music
• Rembetiko - Greek Folk Music
• Guca Festival - Live recordings from the Guca Festival in Serbia
• Sevdah Selection - Bosnian folk music (with Roma influences)
• !DelapDap - Fusion Roma Music (Featured on Balkan Beats)
• Gogol Bordello - Live Bootleg at Bonnaroo
• And many more!

There are 92 pages of music, at roughly 15 posts each. . . makes almost 1400 entries of fully downloadable music with reviews, commentary and history of each artist. This is definitely a great resource for those wanting to learn more about Balkan Music and World Music in general.

Enjoy!

Dimitris Mitropanos | Daily Dose | Greek Laiko Music!

Dimitris Mitropanos | Roza

Today's Daily Dose comes from Ido Atlasian from Turkey. Thanks for the comments!

Dimitris Mitropanos is a classic figure from Greek "folk" music called Laiko but one should remember that this style isn't necessarily played by all the farmers in their spare time. He is older but was famous in the 1960s, 70s and obviously today. Here is a music video of Roza. I hope to spend more time and flesh out a full post Greek folk music in the near future.

Chalga | Balkan Culture Vocabulary Clarification

Chalga is a Bulgarian word for a Balkan Phenomenon:

I just wanted to quickly clarify that Chalga is the Bulgarian term for similar pop music throughout the Balkans. Chalga can sometimes be called

• Manele (Romania),
• Pop-Folk (Bulgaria),
• Laïka (Greece),
• Turbo-Folk (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian)
• And other names in other countries but I don't want to spread my definition too thin.

Generally, the genres are very similar: Women in minimal amounts of clothes, simple lyrics at appeal to a large mass and music influences all over the world. So when referring to Chalga one must make a distinction between popular "Chalga" or Pop Folk and more traditional Chalga music from the past (wedding music, roma music).

I hope to give some more examples of Chalga or Pop Folk later on this month in the Daily Dose . I just don't want to confuse the music too much.