Customer Reviews

Narada World: Global Vision

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I played this 2-CD set last Sunday and my mate kept running into the room; "Hey, what's that song! It's fantastic." I agreed. This is one excellent selection of world music, and I reach for this CD set again and again.

In particular, the Celtic piece by Orion "Douce Mousitomanie" is hypnotic and soothing--Enya fans will definitely groove to this one. And my favorite, Jesse Cook leads off CD One with exotic "Baghdad" (no meaning here, this CD dates before 9-11 and the invasion.) Cook has a second cut on the second CD "Gravity" and it's as good. He's a wonderful guitarist.

There's so much here that's just SO good that it's hard to point out one track over the others. This is one of the best introductory CD's to world music I know of, along with Narada's annual world anthology World 2002. You can't go far wrong with this CD set.

Narada has done listeners a great service by producing this compilation of various artists. The global scope and variety enable the listener to experience many kinds of music on one CD. The mellow vocals of Samite; the guitar virtuosity of Jesse Cook; the soaring, beautiful voices of Scartaglen; the composing acumen of Hans Zimmer; all these and more add up to one superb sampling of global music. A very enjoyable listening experience.

Alternately foot-stomping on the one hand, and spiritual and serene on the other--this Narada offering is several cuts above the later Best of Narada New Age (2002) which for my ears was painful. This collection (Narada World) is uniformly superior and recommended except for the Brazilian cuts which I found irritating. The music is authentic and well-performed. Because it is excerpted from earlier Narada releases, many of which I own, there is a good deal of repetition. But this is carping and petty. These CD's are superb traveling music--because of the consistency of sound between cuts it plays well in a car CD player, without fooling with volume or equalizer.

With this CD, a lot of new styles came into my life, like Astrae from Sunyata and Kothbiro from African Voices (both CD soon to be bought, I assure you), shoulder to shoulder with old friends like Celtic Treasure. Is pure delight to listen to this compilation. The world is so vast and deep, that we better start to listen.