Pop and Circumstance

Thriving scenes in India, dying scenes in Mali, and multiple dispatches from Cuba

This week’s mix feels extra radio-ready, although obviously that depends what country your radio is tuned to. Esquire makes the case that the Middle East and North Africa are ready to rule the airwaves. The Hindustan Times covers pop but calls it indie. There’s some great features on Cuban music that’s hella melodic but probably too raunchy for any radio station whose primary audience understands Spanish, plus deep dives into Sufic folk, Armenian club, and the trials of being a musician in Mali today.

Album Spotlight:

Wampi, El Rey de la Habana (Cuba): Reparto royalty delivers for Latin music fans who like reggaeton but love variety.

Scene Report Report:

This section features a round-up of articles on regional music scenes from the last month (give or take a week), as well as a curated playlist with one song from each of those scenes. The playlist is now a paid add-on for those interested in getting straight into the music. Songs are arranged in the same order as the articles, so it’s easy to go from a song you like to the corresponding scene that the artist came from.

If that convenience sounds worthwhile, you’re welcome to subscribe. Substack literally won’t let me charge less than $5/month, but it does allow me to set a pretty large discount on the annual plan, so the monthly rate is quite a bit lower if you’re willing to pay for the year. For paid subscribers, your playlist is available at the bottom of the page.

1. Following up on last month’s MENA-heavy coverage, Esquire weighed in on how that area’s pop scene is poised to take over the world.

2. What the Hindustan Times calls an Indian “indie” scene seems like it could be better described as non-Bollywood pop music, but whatever you want to call it, Christalle Fernandes claims it’s currently thriving.

3. Meanwhile in Mali, the outlook is less rosy. Rachel Chason reports for the Washington Post on how the country’s globally fêted music scene is struggling to survive since Islamic militants took power in 2020.

4. New York contains multitudes, and Vrinda Jagota reports for Bandcamp on how the city is now home to a flourishing community of South Asian musicians that are reinventing Sufic music in the Big Apple.

5. Bandcamp again, this time with April Clare Welsh covering the anti-colonial roots of funaná in Cape Verde, appropriately timed for the 50th anniversary of the African archipelago’s independence from Portugal.

6. It’s Hispanic Appreciation Month, and Rolling Stone is celebrating with a new series of features on Latin music, including ground-level reporting by Ana González Vilá on Cuba’s homegrown reparto genre that’s making waves within and beyond the island.

7. Andrew Rodríguez also mentions reparto in his AP article on Cuba’s music scene, going into detail on how a new class of young musicians are starting to revitalize the island after many of the older generations’ artists were lost to emigration.

8. DJ Mag is back with some stellar reporting, with Martin Guttridge-Hewitt writing about Armenia’s club scene through the story of the Cyber Folk, a local DJ school that’s democratizing electronic music production and churning out some great artists in the process.

9. Turns out Spotify has a newsroom, and it recently looked into the well-traveled crossover points between Latin America and West Africa’s respective pop scenes. The article is a bit light on original reporting and editorial oversight, but it does benefit from access to Spotify’s substantial user streaming datasets. Whether reggaeton and Afrobeats “blended seamlessly” or “seamlessly blend,” it’s clear from the data that the connection between the two scenes is strong.

BONUS: Not a scene report, but I recently had the chance to cover an impressive debut by a the Irish krautrock band pôt-pot for Bandcamp’s Album Of The Day feature. Give it a read if that’s your thing.