you must post music that is EITHER:
- by an artist who does not reside primarily in the US, the UK, or canada
- not sung in english
you can do anime openings and kpop if you really want but given the degree of promotion they receive in the west as-is, i encourage you to go elsewhere (i am aware that kpop groups significantly outperform japanese bands that do anime openings, but hopefully the spirit of this caveat is clear.) if you have a contribution to make, you can post in the "#worldwide music wednesday" tag yourself or rechost this with your own additions! whatever works.
i will start:
there's a form of old arabic poetry called a ghazal, which is a kind of love poem consisting of couplets wherein the first couplet establishes the rhyming end, and every couplet must rhyme with that end in the first half and repeat it in the second:
hamari saanson men aaj tak woh hina ki khushbhoo mehak rahi hai
labon pe naghme machal rahe hain, nazar se masti chhalak rahi haiwoh mere nazdeek aate aate hayaa se ek din simat gaye the
mere khayalon mein aaj tak woh badan ki daali lachak rahi hai
there's a rich library of ghazals that've formed the basis for a lot of song recordings in india and pakistan—some of the regularity of the form gets lost by repetition of certain lines, but the essential rhyme scheme is preserved, and they can be really beautiful. i will not claim to know very many ghazals, but i like this one by noor jehan a lot. if you'd like an english translation of the lyrics, here's a decent one.
Yeah so it turns out Ukrainians are fucking amazing at absolutely batshit insane bops and bangers. Obviously there's the song that won Eurovision 2022 but I wanna highlight the Eurovision 2021 entry which was just absolutely astoundingly good and pretty much everything else by go_a rules too. I don't even really know how to describe the genre. Hard Slavic Electrofolk with Anti-Russian Imperial Bent?
I have to respect the Ukrainians for making music like this. The Belarusians could never top this.
i literally cant even describe it. just watch
(ALSO misophonia warning for the music video. 0:27 should be safe, but it returns right after the song ends)
not very niche by any means, but ever since my highschool french teacher had us translate lyrics from a bunch of stromae songs i've been a pretty big fan of all of his stuff!
like a majority of what I listen to falls into these categories ohohoho. Firstly as a freebie I'll say that if you like the Go_A song posted above definitely check out Onuka who operate in a very similar Ukrainian electro-folk space.
But I think my main recommendation this week is gonna be Rokia Koné's album BAMANAN, which is just gorgeous top to bottom!