International Dance Party pt. 2 - England

My friends and I are putting together a dance party featuring ONLY international music - meaning, music created and produced in countries other than America. We've been spamming each other's walls on facebook with songs we've discovered. This one comes courtesy of my friend Enos, and though I normally wouldn't feature a song from a British band, I want to show you this song. (Question: can you really call British bands/ singers foreign from American bands? So many of them become big in America too - see the Beatles, U2, etc etc - that they're not really foreign to us. Right?)

This is such a RAD song. Please excuse the cheesy 90s word, but really. This song is WICKED AWESOME. I've been listening to it NONSTOP. Check it out!

International Dance Party pt. 1 - Egypt

So my friends and I are planning a huge dance party that will feature ONLY foreign music; as in, only music created and produced in countries other than America. And we literally have dozens dozens of songs- I think we have somewhere around 8 hours of music gathered up to play. We've been spamming each other's walls on Facebook every day with more songs that we found. Honestly, I can barely even keep up with everything we're finding!

Lately, though, I've been questing to find good music that's from Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, because I realized that nearly all of my music is European or Latin American in origin. My friends aren't helping, either, because most of the music they've shown me is European. Or Latin American. And don't get me wrong - I love it! I love that music! But this would hardly be an "International Music Blog" if it only delved into music from certain parts of the world and not others!

So as I was looking for cool dance music for our dance, a memory popped into my brain. Last year, while I lived in the Foreign Language Housing, the Arabic house was right next to ours. One month, during their cleaning checks, they threw open their windows and blasted Egyptian pop music while they cleaned. And it was SO FANTASTIC. I had meant to ask them about it, but I never did. And now I'm very upset with myself for that. That was stupid, Kelsey.

In any case, because of that memory I looked up Egyptian dance music, and I found a great mix of 2010 summer hits here. There's a lot of really good songs there, but I'd have to say that the band WAMA is definitely my favorite.

Here's the full version of Rahya Gaya, which is so far my favorite of theirs. They're definitely worth looking into, though.



Honestly, with such great music out there like this, how can our dance party NOT be rockin'?

Soothing Sounds from Brazil

I think I have a problem, at least whenever I get great new music. I tend to listen to things almost obsessively for about 3-5 days, and during that time I just can't get enough of the song. But suddenly I find I don't want to hear it anymore. And just like that, our relationship ends.

I mean, this can't really be healthy, right? Especially because a few months later I'll remember it, and feel bad for dropping it so soon and want to go back to it, but I just can never feel the same way about it again. That poor, poor song. I've dumped many that way.

But the song I'm introducing to you today is one of my few success stories (for another, see my post on Boy Lilikoi). It was free on itunes months and months ago, and I still can never get enough of this song! I listen to it when I'm sad, when I'm happy, when I'm stressed and need to calm down, when I'm tired and need to go to sleep, when I'm feeling contemplative, when I'm feeling mad..... it kind of puts me in a trance-like state, actually. But in a good way.

Today's song is called Lero-Lero by Luisa Malta, from Brazil, and it's sung in Portuguese. I promise, you'll like it.

A Slovenian Christina Aguilera

I didn't do Eurovision updates this year, I know. I had a whole blog post all ready to put up in May after the semi-finals, but then I didn't publish it. My opinions changed, and my disappointment in the how people voted just discouraged me. None of my favorites made it through, and Europe once again went with the entries with beautiful people instead of talent. I guess it's bound to happen that way. We do it in America, too, with our talent contests. Still leaves me disapponted, though.

My absolute favorite from this year, though, was Slovenia. I mean, I liked Denmark, and Serbia, and even Ireland was kind of fun, even though they were annoying. But Slovenia sent an INCREDIBLE singer this year, and I think she deserves more recognition. Her voice reminds me of Christina Aguilera, and the song is fantastic. Have a listen. (I think you can click on the English version "No One" from the video, if you want to hear that one instead.)



I hope you like this song as much as I do! I know I'm definitely watching Maja Keuc now. There will probably be great things coming from her in the future!

Intro to Tollywood

TELUGU is a language spoken in eastern India, and is the official language of Andhra Pradesh, a state in India. For your listening pleasure, here are two songs from two different Tollywood films (Bollywood is primarily Hindi, Tollywood is Telugu).

I've been meaning to post this one for a while. This one is titled "Manasa Nuvvunde Chotu", from the movie 'Munna'. I also adore the dancing. It's fantastic!



Just found this one, and it mostly caught my attention just because the male actor is actually good-looking, which is extremely rare in a B(T)ollywood film. But it's a good song, too. And my gosh, don't you wish you could dance like the people in Bollywood films? (The movie name is 'Current', and the song is called "Andala Chandamama").

Eurovision Results and African Russians

I should have known better than to say in the last post that I would post again in exactly 2 weeks.

Ha.

Anyway, the Eurovision finals were very exciting to watch, and the tension mounted exponentially with each country that announced their winners of their points.

Except not really.

Germany's Lena Meyer-Landrut won as the clear favorite with her song "Satellite", a song that should have been in another language just so we wouldn't have been so painfully aware of the nothingness of it.

Oi. Maybe I'm being harsh. It's a cute little teen love song, but the melody is very simple and the words are rather cheesy and the singing is... funny. Check it out.



See what I mean? (By the way, my favorite Eurovision entry that I mentioned in the last post, Manga (from Turkey, song: We Could Be the Same) got second place. JYESS. )

Speaking of good music, check out this one! Who would have ever thought that a marriage of African beats and Russian language could be so AWESOME?

The title and singer is Lyubov' Spasyot Mir (Love Saves the World) by Vera Brezhneva. It's supercool. I've been listening to it like, nonstop.