World Circuit | |
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Parent company | BMG Rights Management |
Founded | 1986 |
Founder | Anne Hunt and Mary Farquharson |
Distributor(s) | Universal Music Group [1] (physical) BMG Rights Management (digital) |
Genre | World music |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Official website | www |
World Circuit is a British world-music record label, established in London in the mid-1980s, that specializes in Cuban and West African recording artists, among other international music stars. The label's founding principle was to be an artist-led company with all aspects of each release tailored to the artist. This continues to be the label's way of working. World Circuit celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2006 by releasing World Circuit Presents..., a 2-disc retrospective compilation album. In 2018, World Circuit was acquired by BMG Rights Management. [2]
In 1986, the label released its first albums, María Rodríguez's La Tremenda and Abd El Gadir Salim's Sounds of Sudan Volume One.
World Circuit's first taste of major success came in 1993 with the teaming of Ali Farka Touré and American guitarist Ry Cooder on the Grammy award-winning album, Talking Timbuktu . The album went on to sell over a million copies worldwide;[ citation needed ] a remarkable total for an album of its kind.
During the mid-nineties World Circuit began working with new artists, who would go on to become long-time label stalwarts. Moving away from their usual Latin and West African emphasis, World Circuit released the album Rumba Argelina by Spanish group Radio Tarifa. Rumba Argelina propelled them to cult fame, achieving great popularity across Europe. Another artist to make an immediate impact was Senegalese multi-instrumentalist and singer Cheikh Lô. The dreadlocked maverick's debut album Ne La Thiass was produced by Youssou N’Dour, and is underpinned by indigenous Mbalax and Flamenco rhythms.
In 1996, Cooder was invited to Havana, Cuba by British world-music producer Nick Gold of the World Circuit record label to record a session with two African High-life musicians from Mali in collaboration with Cuban musicians. [3] On Cooder's arrival (via Mexico to avoid the ongoing United States trade and travel embargo against Cuba), [4] the musicians from Africa had not turned up and it transpired later that they had been unable to secure their visas to travel to Cuba.
As a result, Gold and Cooder changed their plans and recorded three consecutive albums with Cuban musicians instead. [3] First, they recorded A Toda Cuba le Gusta by the Afro-Cuban All Stars, [5] : 8 an album of big band Son Cubano music produced by Juan de Marcos González. [6] They then recorded the multi-million selling Buena Vista Social Club album, [5] : 8 [7] produced by Cooder. The third album, Introducing...Rubén González , [5] : 9 was recorded in just two days, produced by Nick Gold and arranged once again by Juan de Marcos González. [8] : 1 All three albums were recorded at Egrem studios, Havana during March and April 1996 and mixed by Jerry Boys and Nick Gold at Livingston Studios, London, prior to their release on the World Circuit label in 1997. [9] In 2008 World Circuit released a 2-CD set of the Buena Vista Social Club live performance at Carnegie Hall recorded in 1998.
Nick Gold had met Jerry Boys after working together on an album with Oumou Sangaré during 1993 and they subsequently began their close collaboration on Cuban music projects in 1996. [10] In 2001 Gold bought the Livingston Recording Studios from Boys, which enabled most of World Circuit's artists to record and mix music at that site.
Nick Gold and World Circuit are also responsible for bringing the Senegalese band Orchestra Baobab to world fame after its 2001 re-release of the 1982 record Pirates Choice in Europe (originally compiled and released by World Circuit in 1987). [11] [12]
In the summer of 2004 the World Circuit team of Nick Gold and Jerry Boys travelled with a mobile studio to Mali to record a trilogy of albums at the Hotel Mandé, Bamako. The first album in the series, In the Heart of the Moon , released in June 2005, is a collaboration between Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté that went on to win a Grammy Award for Best Traditional World Music Album. Second in the series is Boulevard de l’Indépendance by Toumani Diabaté's pan-African Symmetric Orchestra, composed of musicians (mostly griots) [13] from across the old Mali Empire of west Africa, who play a mix of traditional instruments including the kora, djembe, balafon and bolombatto, as well as guitar and electronic keyboard.
The third and final part of the Mandé Sessions trilogy, Savane (released July 2006), was also the first posthumous Ali Farka Touré release. It was received with wide acclaim by professionals and fans alike and was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category "Best Contemporary World Music Album". The panel of experts from the World Music Chart Europe (WMCE), a chart voted by the leading World Music specialists around Europe, chose Savane as their Album of the Year 2006, with the album topping the chart for three consecutive months (September to November 2006). [14] The album has also been listed as No. 1 in the influential Metacritic's "Best Albums of 2006" poll, [15] and No. 5 in its all-time best reviewed albums. [16]
In February 2010, World Circuit released the successor to Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté's, In The Heart of the Moon (2005), Ali and Toumani . Recorded over three afternoons at Livington Studios, London, in 2005, with contributions from Orlando "Cachaíto" López on bass, and produced by Nick Gold, it was Touré's final studio album, and lasting legacy.
In October 2010, World Circuit released Afrocubism's self-titled debut, a long-awaited collaboration between some of Cuba's and Mali's most esteemed musicians, including Eliades Ochoa, Bassekou Kouyate, Toumani Diabaté, Lassana Diabaté and Kasse Mandy Diabaté. It was a collaboration which was initially intended to take place some 15 years earlier, but never arose as a result of visa complications. In December 2011 the album Afrocubism was nominated for a Grammy award in the category of Best Traditional World Music Album.
Following Ali Farka Toure's death from cancer in 2006, Toumani Diabaté continued to record for World Circuit as a solo artist, releasing The Mandé Variations , a classical-sounding album of solo kora in 2008, and duetting with his kora playing son Sidiki Diabate on 2014's Toumani & Sidike .
As time ran out for many of the veteran musicians World Circuit had recorded in its early years, the label brought young and previously unknown talent to the fore. Fatoumata Diawara's 2011 debut Fatou introduced a new female voice to rival her fellow Malian singer Oumou Sangare, whom she had once backed.
Mbongwana Star, a new seven piece band from the Democratic Republic of Congo released their debut album, From Kinshasa on World Circuit in 2015 and in 2017 the label released Ladilikan , a ground-breaking collaboration between Trio da Kali, comprising there young Malian musicians, and the Kronos Quartet. Produced by Nick Gold, the project was sponsored by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.
The veterans of Orchestra Baobab also released a new album in 2017, Tribute To Ndiouga Dieng , and celebrated its release with a world tour in 2018.
Ryland Peter Cooder is an American musician, songwriter, film score composer, record producer, and writer. He is a multi-instrumentalist but is best known for his slide guitar work, his interest in traditional music, and his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.
The music of Mali is, like that of most African nations, ethnically diverse, but one influence predominates: that of the ancient Mali Empire of the Mandinka. Mande people make up around 50% of Mali's population; other ethnic groups include the Fula (17%), Gur-speakers 12%, Songhai people (6%), Tuareg and Moors (10%).
Rubén González Fontanills was a Cuban pianist. Together with Lilí Martínez and Peruchín he is said to have "forged the style of modern Cuban piano playing in the 1940s".
Buena Vista Social Club was a musical ensemble primarily made up of Cuban musicians, formed in 1996. The project was organized by World Circuit executive Nick Gold, produced by American guitarist Ry Cooder and directed by Juan de Marcos González. They named the group after the members' club of the same name in the Buenavista quarter of Havana, a popular music venue in the 1940s. To showcase the popular styles of the time, such as son, bolero and danzón, they recruited a dozen veteran musicians, some of whom had been retired for many years.
Afro-Cuban All Stars is a Cuban band led by Juan de Marcos González. Their music is a mix of all the styles of Cuban music, including bolero, chachachá, salsa, son montuno, timba, guajira, danzón, rumba and abakua.
Buena Vista Social Club is a studio album by Buena Vista Social Club, an ensemble of Cuban musicians directed by Juan de Marcos González and American guitarist Ry Cooder. Produced by Cooder, it was recorded at Havana's EGREM studios in March 1996 and released on September 16, 1997, through World Circuit internationally and Nonesuch Records in the United States. It is the only standard studio album exclusively credited to the Buena Vista Social Club.
Orchestra Baobab is a Senegalese band established in 1970 as the house band of the Baobab Club in Dakar. Many of the band's original members had previously played with Star Band de Dakar in the 1960s. Directed by timbalero and vocalist Balla Sidibé, the group featured saxophonists Issa Cissoko and Thierno Koité, two singers, two guitarists and a rhythm section with drums, congas and bass guitar. Since their formation, the band has predominantly played a mix of son cubano, Wolof music, and to a lesser extent Mande musical traditions. Following the deaths of Cissoko in 2019 and Sidibé in 2020, Thierno Koité has become the leader of the band.
Toumani Diabaté was a Malian kora player. In addition to performing the traditional music of Mali, he was involved in cross-cultural collaborations with flamenco, blues, jazz, and other international styles of music. In 2006, the London-based newspaper The Independent named him one of the fifty best African artists. In its obituary, The Times described him as "a bold and innovative musical visionary".
fRoots was a specialist music magazine published in the UK between 1979 and 2019. It specialised in folk and world music, and featured regular compilation downloadable albums, with occasional specials. In 2006, the circulation of the magazine was 12,000 worldwide.
Boureima "Vieux" Farka Touré is a Malian singer, composer and guitarist. He is the son of Malian musician Ali Farka Touré.
Moussa Kouyate is a kora player from Bamako, Mali. His father, Batourou Sekou Kouyate, was also a prominent kora player.
In the Heart of the Moon is a 2005 record by Malian musicians Ali Farka Touré on the guitar and providing vocals and Toumani Diabaté on the kora. The album was recorded in the "Toit de Bamako" conference room on the top floor of the Hotel Mandé overlooking the Niger River in Bamako, Mali. It is the first in a three-part series released on World Circuit Records entitled "The Hotel Mandé Sessions" followed by Savane and Boulevard de l'Independence. The album's title is derived from Touré's own more lengthy descriptive title for the recording session; "A very important meeting in the realm at the heart of the moon."
Savane is the final solo album by Malian musician Ali Farka Touré. It is the third and final part of the Hôtel Mandé Sessions, featuring Touré and Toumani Diabaté, recorded by World Circuit head Nick Gold. The album was released posthumously by World Circuit on 17 July 2006, more than four months after Touré's death.
Lucy Durán is a British ethnomusicologist, record producer and radio presenter. In the 1980s, Durán worked as a curator at the British Library National Sound Archive. She joined SOAS University of London in 1993, and is Professor of Music with special reference to Africa and Cuba, in the School of Arts. She is the daughter of Spanish composer and civil war veteran Gustavo Durán and the sister of poet Jane Duran and author Cheli Duran.
The Mandé Variations is a 2008 studio album by Toumani Diabaté, produced by Nick Gold for World Circuit. Unlike many of his recordings which feature large ensembles, it consists of solo Kora throughout. The influences range from traditional Kora pieces to modern Western music.
Ali Ibrahim "Ali Farka" Touré was a Malian singer and multi-instrumentalist, and one of the African continent's most internationally renowned musicians. His music blends traditional Malian music and its derivative, African American blues and is considered a pioneer of African desert blues. Touré was ranked number 76 on Rolling Stone's list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and number 37 on Spin magazine's "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".
Ali and Toumani is a 2010 record by Malian musicians Ali Farka Touré on the guitar and providing vocals and Toumani Diabaté on the kora. It is the second album featuring the two musicians; it is a follow-up to In the Heart of the Moon which was released in 2005. The album was recorded in 2005 in London prior to concert dates in Europe following the release of In the Heart of the Moon. The album was released after Touré's death in 2006.
AfroCubism is a Grammy-nominated album featuring musical collaborations between musicians from Mali and Cuba. It was released in 2010.
Jerry Boys is a classically trained British record producer, and engineer, noted for his works with The Beatles, Omara Portuondo, Pink Floyd, Ibrahim Ferrer, The Kronos Quartet, Everything but the Girl, The Shadows, John Lee Hooker, Richard Thompson, The Rolling Stones, Ali Farka Touré, Steeleye Span, Shakira, R.E.M, Buena Vista Social Club, Sandy Denny, Olivia Chaney, Toumani Diabaté, Shirley Collins, Yehudi Menuhin, Orchestra Baobab, Manfred Mann, Level 42, and Ry Cooder.
Nick Gold is a British record producer, multi-instrumentalist and music executive. He is the former CEO of World Circuit Records and the organiser of Buena Vista Social Club, a Cuban musical ensemble which he established in 1996. Gold is a two time Grammy Award winner. In 2006, The New York Times described him as a "Musical Matchmaker".