Chocolate Tuba

The Devil's Anvil, Shisheler

My wife Laura is a belly dancer (not professionally, just for fun). Last year, she was preparing for a hafla, where belly dancers get together to perform for each other, and the theme of it was "rock music", so she was looking for rock music she could belly dance to. She found this band from the 1960s, The Devil's Anvil, that played traditional Arabic, Turkish, and Greek music with rock rhythms and instruments. There were four members. The lead singer was Palestinian, and his main foil was an Israeli Jew. The band released one album in 1967, "Hard Rock from the Middle East". Unfortunately the album came out right as the Six Day War was happening in Israel, and the album sank like a rock. They never released another record. "Shisheler" is a traditional Turkish song given a rock treatment.

Ot Vinta, Кохайтесь, чорноброві!

The title of this song translates to "Make Love, O Dark Browed Beauties". Which are also the first words of the song. Followed immediately by "But not with the Muscovites, For the Muscovites - are foreign people, They make trouble with you."

In case you hadn't guessed, Ot Vinta are Ukrainian. They love rockabilly. They love Ukrainian folk music. They combine the two into something they call Ukrabilly. They have a great visual sense; the band members all played in a children's theater group before Ot Vinta existed and use that theatrical talent when they perform. They also play with some of the top comedy groups in Ukraine, including one called Quarter 95, which was run by this guy named Volodomyr Zelenskyy; you may have heard of him in another context.

All of their videos are worth looking at. Even if you don't understand a word they're singing, they have an undeniable wackiness that comes through.

Systema Solar, Yo Voy Ganao

The Wikipedia page for Systema Solar says "[t]heir music combines elements of Caribbean Colombian music, champeta, bullerengue, and cumbia, among other genres". I think they missed hip-hop. The flute that has the repeating hook is clearly a local thing. Colombia is known for a distinctive local flute called a gaita, but the one shown in the video doesn't look like one. Which isn't to say that what appears in the music isn't one. Whatever. The song is infectiously catchy.

Attwenger, Kaklakariada

Attwenger sing in Austrian dialect that is barely intelligible to most other German speakers. Hans-Peter Falkner plays accordion and has a strong base in the local music based around that, basically what we would call "Oompah Music". Markus Binder plays drums like a madman. Put the two get together, you get Oomprock, I guess. I saw Attwenger play in a small courtyard in Manhattan several years ago in front of fewer than a hundred people. It was one of the most amazing musical experiences of my life. This live video gives an idea of what they're like. Kaklakariada is about how nationalism is a poison that infects idiots and makes them stupider and is probably my favorite song of theirs.

Hardly Subtle, Stop Me Like This

Mashups amaze me. This one for example, combines one of the worst indie rock bands in the world with a Jamaican reggae backing. My biggest complaint about The Smiths is that Morrissey's tuneless warbling has only a tenuous connection to the underlying music, which was mostly Johnny Marr's doing and was pretty decent. Hardly Subtle proves me right by taking the vocal from "Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before" and dropping in a very different backing track. And damned if it doesn't work.