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!

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.