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  • Crawled Out of the Sea

    Show notes for the 216th Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast featuring music by performers in or from Malta:

    Airport Impressions – Walk With Me
    Errol Sammut and the rest of his band have slowly but surely established themselves as one of the foremost alternative rock acts in Malta over the past couple of years. Their new single showcases them in full force and as you would imagine it’s also managed to acquire a fair amount of radio airplay in the Maltese islands. The band is now planning to release their debut album later this year.

    Tea – Surfer
    When Marc Storace left the Malta in search of a rock career some 40 years ago, the main band he worked with before making it big with Krokus was Tea. They performed a memorable concert at the Plaza Cinema in Sliema sometime before they broke up in the late 1970s. Last year they started planning a reunion and produced a compilation CD with some of the best tracks from the albums they originally released over 30 years ago. And now Marc and his old Swiss pals return to Malta for a gig at Sky in Paceville on Friday 25 June. Marc is also appearing at a couple of other gigs in Malta before and after this date, but the show with Tea will undoubtedly be a highlight for both old and new fans.

    Various Artists – Festa ta’ Kuluri
    Music and sport and strange bedfellows but from time to time they combine to produce a memorable moment of popular entertainment. Such is the case with the official 2010 FIFA World Cup anthem, which is making the rounds in a large number of languages right now. The Maltese version is produced by the Xarabank team under the direction of Joe Brown. The singers include Freddie Portelli, Thea Garrett, Mary Rose Mallia, Wayne Micallef, Glen Vella, Claudia Faniello, Tiziana, Ludwig Galea and Mike Spiteri. The video is very colourful and has a subtle message pro-diversity. However, the whole thing masks the distressing reality that Malta will most probably never play in the FIFA World Cup, so Maltese football fans can only really support a foreign team, perpetuating the cultural subservience that plagues post-colonial nations unable to embrace their own unique national identity. Then again, it seems that hybridity has been an element of Maltese culture since pre-historic times.

    Mike Spiteri – 20,000 Leagues
    It would be a shame if subsequent generations of Maltese music fans only remembered Mike Spiteri for singing Malta’s entry at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1995. Along with Marc Storace, he was one of the first heavy rock singers the country produced and sang with some of the best underground bands in the 70s and early 80s. He has always dared to be different and, to my mind, has probably never really been appreciated for his true worth. The song I’ve picked as the final track for this week’s podcast was written for him by Ray Agius and Alfred C. Sant for the 2010 Malta EuroSong festival but it didn’t make it to the final 20. Although it’s not an outstanding song, it certainly deserved to be heard from the stage in Ta’ Qali much more than at least half a dozen songs that actually made it to the EuroSong final.
    
    The RSS feed for the Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast is available here or you can simply click here to subscribe directly with iTunes. You can also follow each new episode through the MMI Podcast: Facebook Fan Page or on MySpace. If you have no idea what any of this means, just click here or listen to the podcast on the player right below this text.

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  • To The Sea

    Show notes for the 215th Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast featuring music by performers in or from Malta:

    Eve Ransom – Escaped
    Brendan Jackson returns along with the rest of the band with this new single. It’s the sounds exactly like the sort of thing you’d expect from Eve Ransom if you’ve heard them before.

    Heartbeat – Reach
    Dorienne Cachia’s voice is one of the most appealing on the Maltese music scene. This new song from Heartbeat sees them going from strength to strength. Although this is one of the most non-assuming bands in Malta, I they really deserve a second (and a third) listen.

    Cygna – Wooden Little People
    Mario Sammut is on of the most listener friendly electronica artists to ever emerge from the Maltese Islands. Gig goers in Malta may have spotted him at the recent Earth Garden weekend in Ta’ Qali. Other can look out from him at Glastonbury towards the end of this month.

    Jo Micali feat. U-Bahn – Beautiful Eyes (remix)
    Jo Micali is not someone I’d heard of before but he comes highly recommended. I doubt U-Bahn would have been as pleased as they are with his remix of their hit song from last year if he wasn’t as good as they say he is. Apparently bigwigs like Paul van Dyk and Armin Van Buren seem to think so too. Who am I to disagree? What’s more: I really like the U-Bahn song because it makes me feel positive about life in general, even though it’s not really as deep as all that.

    The RSS feed for the Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast is available here or you can simply click here to subscribe directly with iTunes. You can also follow each new episode through the MMI Podcast: Facebook Fan Page or on MySpace. If you have no idea what any of this means, just click here or listen to the podcast on the player right below this text.

    Mużika Mod Ieħor podcasts are brought to you by Vodafone.

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  • Fire with Fire

    Show notes for the 214th Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast featuring music by performers in or from Malta:

    Bitterside – Left Alone
    I don’t think if seen as much Twitter saturation as I’ve seen for this new single from Bitterside. It comes with an accompanying video produced by A Butterfly Effect Productions. When the time for nominations on the 2010 MMI Listeners’ Picks poll comes around at the end of this summer, I’m sure this will be one of the ones that will attract some attention in the video category.

    Victoria Osborne – Counting Butterflies
    Regular listeners of the MMI podcast will have heard me play other songs by this wonderful Maltese singer-songwriter with a strong London connection. I’m very fond of her sophisticated yet simple songs. I’d love to hear her play live one of these days, but I’m not sure if she is really interested in that sort of thing. If that’s the case I should really start working on a way to help her change her mind.

    Andre Camilleri – Southern Star Travelling Music Band
    Moving to Australia has proved to be a good move for Andre Camilleri’s music output. He has recently released his third album. This one is called Heaven & Hell and features a bunch of seemingly more thoughtful songs than the ones he has released in recent years with the Broken Hearts Band. I really like how consistant Camilleri manages to be without repeating himself too much. If he keeps it up (and I have no reason to think otherwise) he’ll most certainly be remembered for many years to come.

    Għanafest 2010 – Żaqq u Tambur
    When folklorist Ġorġ Mifsud-Chircop passed away a couple of years ago, many wondered if anyone could really pick up where he left off with the successful Għana Festival he established. With the more recently established GħanaFest, composer and musicologist Ruben Zahra has managed to reinvent this annual celebration of traditional Maltese folk music, augmenting it with a contemporary twist featuring bands like Brikkuni and No Bling Show, not to mention some remarkable performers from around the Mediterranean basin. Zahra has managed to demonstrate with some ease what Mifsud-Chircop had always maintained: folk music is alive and pertinent to modern lifestyles. If you read this in time and happen to be in Malta this week, see if you can catch one of the many performances on this year’s bill.

    Fredu Abela il-Bamboċċu + George Azzopardi l-Makk – Maxi u Mini-Skirt
    To follow up on plugging GħanaFest, I thought it would be a good idea to play you one of my favourite Maltese folk singers of all time. Taxi Mary was the big hit from il-Bamboċċu way back in 1970/71, but there are other songs that deserve equal attention even though they never received the same amount of airtime. I think it’s time that a new generation discovers il-Bamboċċcu and some of his contemporaries, especially as there now seems to be a new wave of improvised rhymed folk song, championed by the likes of Jon Mallia (aka Pan Demonium). I’d love to hear some of this old stuff sampled in new work that a younger generation can appreciate.

    The RSS feed for the Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast is available here or you can simply click here to subscribe directly with iTunes. You can also follow each new episode through the MMI Podcast: Facebook Fan Page or on MySpace. If you have no idea what any of this means, just click here or listen to the podcast on the player right below this text.

    Mużika Mod Ieħor podcasts are brought to you by Vodafone.

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download (13.8MB) | Embed

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  • Goodbye Blue Sky

    Love it or loathe it, the Eurovision Song Contest cannot be ignored. Many who followed the first semifinal for this year’s edition saw Malta fail to make it to the the final round. Finger pointing is inevitable at this point, but I think that talk of neighbourly voting is misguided. Otherwise how is it that Belgium and Iceland find themselves in the final?

    PBS must radically rethink the way it selects the songs it sends to Eurovision as well as how the selected performers are presented on the international stage. The long-standing way of doing things clearly doesn’t work and is indeed a waste of money. Worse still, it’s a wasted opportunity to promote some of the excellent musical talent emanating from the Maltese islands. To really get its value for money from the Eurovision Song Contest, Malta must spend more than €400,000 a year, not less.

    The real problem right now is that there is no ROI (return on investment) analysis on the process. No strategic plan. No accountability. And no continuity or development on long-term experience gained from entering acts in the contest year after year. Then again, PBS has a remit to do public broadcasting and the Eurovision Song Contest is strictly a public broadcasting service, rather than a commercial concern. Done right, there is plenty of milage to be had from the Eurovision Song Contest, even for acts/countries that don’t win the contest.

    The alternative is to spend a lot less and still take part just to be there. After all, there’s a great game element in the whole thing anyway. Regardless of placing, the Eurovision Song Contest is an incredibly interesting event for performance scholars like me to study.

    Now that Malta no longer offers a distraction at this year’s contest, I can fully focus on the upcoming activities of the Eurovision Research Network. My next blog entry will most likely be a personal reflection on one of both events we’ve planned for the next two days.