Tone's Ten Top of Ten - Part 4

Hey all! Wow, busy and sick (as in physically ill) first half of the week, but I'm back and never wack. And despite the raping the DMCA dickweeds gave my last post, I'm gonna continue on with my 2010 review with...

Part 4: International Men of Mystery



Now, I'm not gonna pretend to have anywhere near the kind of knowledge to give you any sort of meaningful overview of World music, but today we do have a couple of artists who are definitely World-y and worldly who threw down two of the really good albums of the year. The first are the masters of Tango-tronica, the always amazing Gotan Project. I'm pretty sure I remember this single first hitting my earholes on KCRW right before the World Cup started, and appropriately it has a great vocal sample from "the celebrated Argentine football commentator Victor Hugo Morales (who name-checks all the musicians featuring on the track before shouting GOOOOOOTAN instead of his trademark GOOOOOOOAL!!)" (quotes because I cut & pasted that shit, obviously)... I like how my boys are on da fuckin' nose like dat, yo...

Gotan Project - La Gloria (ysi)

Of course, that song did nothing to change the fact that soccer is gay and stupid and boring, but it's damn catchy, no?

A good way to tell if something is World-y and worldly is the use of wacky instruments, so now we move from accordions to vibramaphones and the legendary creator of Ethio-Jazz, Mr. Mulatu Astatke. The man has really come back strong in the last couple of years, culminating in his first original record since the '80s, and it's as if he never left...

Mulatu Astatke - The Way To Nice (ysi)

It sounds so much like his classic stuff... but in this case, that's a very good thing I think you'll agree. And if you don't, I will fight you...