(Image from "Sarki" by Kirani Ayat, listen below)

Because my greatest passion is helping people understand each other and I feel like as a species, we pay far too much attention to a single spotlot (usually pointed at American pop, occasional on Korea or Japan), I thought it'd be cool if I could share some of my favorite music with you all. My music comes from every corner of the world and spans just about every style.

There will be something for everyone but I urge you to check out all of these, just to expand your horizons and all that shit. Know what's out there! Realize that culture isn't just this static thing that we inherit, we create culture with our creativity and our connections, and with what we support.

In each post I'll share my own relationship with the music, how I discovered it, what is stands out about it and whatever information I know about the artist.

This is part of my effort to revive Cross Culture Collective which I've been pretty lazy with the past few months. Expect a contest in the community relating to music in the coming days.

Here are some awesome tracks from around the world. I will try to change up the countries and styles every time I do this. Expect some Mongolia and Japan in the next one 😉

Bongeziwe Mabandla (South Africa) 🇿🇦

I spent most of my 2018 listening to South African music. Most of what I listened to was GQOM, a kind of blend between house music and hip hop with a marching-like beat (I'll share some good GQOM at some point in this series).

Bongeziwe Mabandla was one of the few artists I got into outside of GQOM, he is quite different from all that. He's a folk singer with an incredibly soothing voice. I think of him as a young South African Sting. I feel like he could end up being a very prolific artist in the future.

He recently put out a few remixes of his sounds which are more electronic which is really different from his previous acoustic sound. You can find all that on spotify ;-)

福禄寿 FloruitShow （China） 🇨🇳

This is from my favorite album of the year. I will probably say this again, but I'm not a big fan of pop music.....Buuuuuuut....if it's creative enough and complex and inspired and powerful, well then I love it.

This album is really beautiful from start to finish. It is a perfect balance in so many ways. Traditional and Modern, Pop and Underground, Soft and Heavy.

The three members are actually sisters and many of their lyrics and imagery is based on Buddhism, sometimes modernized in a pretty incredible way. This is not something you see often, There is Buddhist influenced pop music out there, but you rarely see it done through the lens of a modern indie artist.

All that being said, I don't think this needs to be taken as religious music, it feels much more symbolic and honoring of tradition than anything else. This song is a bit difficult for me to understand, but another song I love is about her grandmother who passed away, and I can hear some lyrics that sound like a sad love song in between the heavy metaphors.

I honestly feel this band could change art in the Mandarin speaking world, inviting other young people to explore ancient traditions and redesigning them to fit the modern world and their own personal interpretations. I may be taking some things out of context, any native speaker of Mandarin feel free to let me know what you think!

Wardruna (Norway) 🇳🇴

I am not very familiar with Wadruna but this song really got me moving my head when it came up on random. I had been listening to "Viking" playlists after discovering another band in this genre.

Speaking of people reviving their traditional cultures, there seems to be more and more of that in the Nordic countries which is absolutely brilliant. I was surprised to hear just how similar it sounded to the Mongolian music I had been listening to right before it. Throat singing, long drones with repetitive beats that put you into a trance.

I love it.

This version has Aurora singing with the band, in case you don't know her, she's pretty famous internationally as an artsy pop singer.

Traxman (USA) 🇺🇸

I think I could have done more homework on this one but I think the music speaks for itself. I can tell you one thing...I love footwork beats and Traxman makes my favorite by far.

Footwork is a kind of electronic music that emerged as part of a hip hop dance scene in Chicago. The local Chicago footwork parties look sick. Now the style seems to have spread across America and Europe. I was actually exposed to it in Hong Kong where some local DJ's played it often at our parties.

Along with GQOM, Footwork has gotten me really curious about DJing, these are probably my two favorite styles of electronic to hear at a party. As with techno, house, psy-trance and other electronic music, I get a little lazy about doing my research because as soon as I hear it I'm too pumped to read up on it, I just want to dance. I will fix that before I start DJing, I promise.

Kirani Ayat (Ghana) 🇬🇭

A few months ago I spent a night exploring the music of Ghana. It all started when I was added by an established Ghanian music producer after some comment I made on Twitter.
I was pretty humbled that someone whose had such an important impact on the art scene of his country added me, even if it was just a very casual thing on his part.

I started checking him out and from there I looked at retweets and spotify to find Ghanian music. I was surprised by how easy it was to find talented, creative, and well produced music. Ghana really has a shot at going international with it's art and music, it's impressive.

The most exciting artist I came across was Kirani Ayat. I feel like he is still just dipping his toes in and he is going to blow everyone away with the music he puts out from here on out. He's already kicking ass, but I can tell he's just getting started.

I would be lying if I said I knew a ton about hip hop, but I have a few favorites and I really love the scene. I'm most curious about African hip-hop now, because a lot of African languages just sound incredible as raps and rhymes.

Kirana has a completely original sound, but when I hear him I'm reminded of the first time I heard Busta Rhymes or Andre 3000. He's got that magic with the microphone, I am quite certain he will be touring the world before long.

This song and video are honoring Dambe, traditional Huasa boxing which can be very violent. A handful of his songs are aggressive like this one, but then there are a lot of other elements too. I feel a real love for his country and his culture and a desire to show just how beautiful they are. There traditional elements in some of his songs and I love it.

I believe there are a few Huasa friends here who will be able to understand the lyrics. For everyone who doesn't, Sarki means King.

I hope he sees himself as a kind of ambassador, I became interested in Ghana overnight thanks to another one of his songs "Guda", I feel like songs and videos like these could do more than the average diplomat to build understanding of the country and it's people around the world.

Kirani organized a skating collective that has helped kids find a passion for skateboarding (I wonder if they might be interested in joining us at Hive in order to help fund their project and connect with our newly formed Ghana community). You can watch a short feature on the skating collective here: