cera

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 hai

woh 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.

Jambinai are Korean post-rock done with traditional instruments and they fucking slam.

I am not sure how my wife discovered the album Music from Saharan Cellphones but it absolutely rules.

also found this brief writeup on Medium about the music in the process of finding the album to share!

there are 3 of these comps and they're all PWYW