Shirley & Spinoza Radio Archive

Music Furthest From the Sea

Posted on January 7th, 2007 by s&S.
Categories: .

MFFTS – Volume 1

(from Fausto of s&S): Hi All! here’s a very special CD-kit download I’ve just cooked up for you right from my Urumqi lair! With a few easy clicks you can send yourself and/or a loved one on a 74 minute trip to my side of the planet with this compilation of some of the very yummy local Uyghur pop music that assaults the neighborhood day to day.
Come on, do it! you know you wanna!
1. Download,
2. Burn,
3. Print,
4. Assemble….

Easy as pie! And best of all, it’s FREE! One zipped file containing all you need: all tracks, plus printable cover art can be
downloaded by clicking HERE

(OR if you’re inside of mainland China, download from a Shanghai mirror HERE (thanks to Lawrence))

But you say you want to sample the goods before commiting to the 105MB download? Yeesh!…. but okay…fair enough, and it’ll save me some bandwidth if you’re actually just snooping around for freebie top-40 mush .
click on the little music players below for song samples:

Dutarim

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Yarbagi

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Yakhsan

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LOW-RES version of the full cover art is here: FRONT and BACK

from the cover info:
—————————————————->
“Nim Bolde!
Officially labeled Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, this northwestern expanse of the P. R. C. contains some of the most disorienting cultural terrain that any visitor expecting “China” will experience, as the Uyghur are distinct ethnically, culturally, linguistically and historically from the land that governs.

Among modern regional cultivations is a prolific, fantastically vibrant popular music scene sadly little known outside this territory. A stroll down my street for example, past the side by side VCD shops and through swarming street bazaars, charms you with an ear splitting, walking collage of the most deliciously infectious local pop sounds. Traditional instruments, heavy drums, local flavor Casiotone and powerful, ornamented vocals deliver an unequivocally unique fruit of these lands – a land that at once processes it’s place within these borders while maintaining a fixed grip on a continually challenged cultural identity.

For this collection, I simply went out into the street…into tiny, booth sized shops and to carts selling pirated discs; listened to and bought the ones that I,
A: thought well represented part of the recent local soundscape;
B: just really dug; or
C: took a chance on because they were cheap.

There’s a mixture of production value here, but I felt it fair to represent from the spectrum one hears, which ranges from polished, studio recordings to a notch barely above karaoke machine productions. Most of these songs are Uyghur, with the few exceptions of the occasional Uzbek artists within who are also very popular here. So there you go, in the spirit of sharing, a gift from your man in the city furthest from the sea!
I hope you enjoy!
-FC

brought to you by:
the Royal Oculus & Gramophone Company – Ãœrümqi, PRC. 2007

original cover photograph “Kashgar Girls w/ Shades” by Miradel Hassan.
compilation & design by Fausto Caceres.
thanks to Kalbinur and Nisagul for translation help.”
—————————————————->

so, if you haven’t yet,
click HERE to begin your download. 105 MB (zipped file)
(OR China mainlanders, go HERE (thanks again to Lawrence))

and hey, if you like this one, and would like to see more (say,a series!), have requests, etc, please leave a comment, will ya!

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