Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, popularly abbreviated as NFAK was a Pakistani singer, songwriter, and music director. He was primarily a singer of qawwali, a form of Sufi devotional music. Often called the "Shahenshah-e-Qawwali", he is considered by The New York Times to be the greatest Qawwali singer of all time. He was described as the fourth greatest singer of all time by LA Weekly in 2016. He was known for his vocal abilities and could perform at a high level of intensity for several hours. Khan is widely credited with introducing Qawwali music to international audiences. He was also a master of Hindustani classical music.
Zakir Hussain is an Indian tabla player, composer, percussionist, music producer and film actor. He is the eldest son of tabla player Alla Rakha. He is widely considered as one of the greatest tabla players of all time.
Real World Records is a British record label specializing in world music. It was founded in 1989 by English musician Peter Gabriel and original members of WOMAD. A majority of the works released on Real World Records feature music recorded at Real World Studios, in Box, Wiltshire, England.
Talvin Singh OBE is an English musician, producer, and composer. A tabla player, he is known for creating an innovative fusion of Indian classical music with drum and bass. Singh is generally considered involved with an electronica subgenre called Asian Underground, and more recently as Indian and/or Asian electronica.
Dominic James Miller is a British guitarist. With much of his career as a sideman and guitarist for singer Sting, he has also released several solo albums.
Ustad Bismillah Khan, often referred to by the title Ustad, was an Indian musician credited with popularizing the shehnai, a reeded woodwind instrument. He played it with such expressive virtuosity that he became a leading Hindustani classical music artist. His name was indelibly linked with the woodwind instrument. While the shehnai had importance as a folk instrument played primarily by musicians schooled in traditional ceremonies, Khan is credited with elevating its status and bringing it to the concert stage.
Ustad Amjad Ali Khan is an Indian classical sarod player, best known for his clear and fast ekhara taans. Khan was born into a classical musical family and has performed internationally since the 1960s. He was awarded India's second highest civilian honor Padma Vibhushan in 2001, India's third highest civilian honor Padma Bhushan in 1991 and Padma Shree in 1975.
Infinity is the third solo album by Canadian musician Devin Townsend, and the first released under his real name. The album was released in October 1998 on Townsend's label, HevyDevy Records.
Antonio Breschi, also known as Antóni O'Breskey is a composer, pianist and trumpet player, singer, writer, poet and music educator. Oliver Sweeney, in the Irish music magazine Hot Press, wrote of him: “He is a genius whose music is without frontiers, and whose originality makes him one of the most innovative artists in the varied musical genres of today.” As composer and pianist he is very original and eclectic, and he composed enormous varieties of music, creating a very personal style: “one of the most exciting sounds we have heard in years" . His compositions for cello and piano and for oboe and piano as well as his world music became soundtracks for films, television programs, theatre and ballets.
Italian folk music has a deep and complex history. National unification came quite late to the Italian peninsula, so its many hundreds of separate cultures remained un-homogenized until quite recently. Moreover, Italian folk music reflects Italy's geographic position at the south of Europe and in the center of the Mediterranean Sea: Celtic, Slavic, Arabic, Greek, Spanish and Byzantine influences are readily apparent in the musical styles of the Italian regions. Italy's rough geography and the historic dominance of small city states has allowed quite diverse musical styles to coexist in close proximity.
Six Degrees Records is an independent record label noted for its catalog of recordings from international musicians and vocalists.
Ustad Sultan Khan was an Indian sarangi player and classical vocalist belonging to Sikar Gharana. He was one of the founding members of the Indian fusion group Tabla Beat Science, with Zakir Hussain and Bill Laswell. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian honour, in 2010.
Al Gromer Khan is a German sitar player and composer whose music spans the multiple genres of ambient, new age, world and electronica. He is author of 4 novels and author of National-Radio documentaries and features about music for more than 25 years and works as a visual artist. Al Gromer Khan was awarded the Rabindranath Tagore Cultural Prize 2015 for his lifetime achievement as musician/performer on sitar and surbahar of the highest order, composer, writer and visual artist by the Indo-German Society.
Gabin Dabiré was a singer, guitarist, kora player, and composer from Burkina Faso who has lived in Italy since 1975.
Ustad Vilayat Khan was an Indian classical sitar player, considered by many to be the greatest sitarist of his age. Along with Imdad Khan, Enayat Khan, and Imrat Khan, he is credited with the creation and development of gayaki ang on the sitar.
Matteo Silva is a well known composer, music producer, ethnomusicologist and visual artist. He was born in Ulm, Germany from German mother and Italian father, grew up in Bologna, Italy and Lugano, Switzerland, studied composition at Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan with Niccolò Castiglioni and philosophy in Venice with Emanuele Severino; he is founder of the independent music record label Amiata Records; as radio editor he collaborated with Rete 2, a cultural channel of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation and produced the “Encyclopedia of World Music” in 76 volumes for the Italian RCS Rizzoli Group published by Fabbri; for the group “Espresso – La Repubblica” he produced, among other series, a very popular CD series of “World Music”, a work that for the first time in Italy let music of less known cultures be accessible to a larger audience. Another remarkable project produced for the "Espresso - La Repubblica" group has been " La grande musica della Sardegna" a CD series on all different music styles in Sardinia approached in a musicological way but published for the first time outside the academic circuits with great public success.
Michael Vetter was a German composer, novelist, poet, performer, calligrapher, artist, and teacher.
Faraualla is an Italian female vocal quartet from the region of Apulia, which explores vocal polyphony.
Francesco Benozzo is an Italian poet, musician and philologist. He works as a Research Fellow in Philology at the University of Bologna, Italy.
Matteo Mancuso is an Italian jazz and rock guitarist and composer from Palermo, Sicily. Mancuso is known for adapting a quasi-flamenco/classical right-hand technique to the electric guitar and improvised solos without the use of a pick. Steve Vai, Al Di Meola, Joe Bonamassa and others have publicly praised him, with Vai calling him "the future" of electric guitar.
