Imagined Villages

Bamako-based producer/educator Paul Chandler has been documenting the sonic and cultural complexities of Malian traditional music for more than a decade and “Every Song Has Its End” is an out-of-time, visceral collection of sounds from Chandler’s unparalleled archive.

Only few cellists are as inspiring as Raphaela Gromes: her cello playing is virtuosic and vibrant, full of passion and technically brilliant, versatile and charming at the same time. She fascinates her audience as soloist as well as duo-partner or member of a wind-quartet, her performance being fantastically challenging and extraordinarily light-footed.

Since the early 18th century, music has been encouraged in all children in the Czech lands and so it is not surprising to find, by the end of the eighteenth century, Bohemian and Moravian musicians holding leading positions in courts and orchestras all over Europe. When looking at the beginnings of these men, especially the composers who were significant figures in Dresden, Mannheim, Vienna, London and Paris, many of them came from humble families in remote towns and villages. Most of them had to find employment abroad, as there was not sufficient at home.

You might see it in the stars or the root of a tree. It can be the flickering fluorescent light in the corner of a room or dew settling on a leaf in the early morning hours. It is overwhelming, yet barely there. Terminalia Amazonia, the new, subdued and momentous instalment of Zu, is the sound of a long, slow journey in pursuit of a moment. For the past four years the band’s members have regularly visited an undisclosed indigenous village on the Ucayali River close to the border between Peru and Brazil. They’ve immersed themselves in the local Shipibo-Conibo culture’s ancient knowledge, teachings and rituals, some of which stretch back millennia.