Customer Reviews

Traveler '02

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2 star:		(1)
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One can't go wrong with any of the Six Degrees' Traveler compilations. This one in particular is lush with house and latin grooves from all over the world and it can be used as a chillout or a party CD, which gives this CD much spin in the disc player.
I also have Traveler 01, which is super-duper, and the Arabic Traveler which is surreal chillout. I plan on getting all of the Six Degrees collection.
Go for it!

Like all of Six Degrees' compilations, this is one is insanely eclectic, in a beautiful way. Some of the best tracks on the label can be found right here, from "Tengo Sed" (includes the great piano of Chucho Valdes!) to Bob Holroyd's "Rafiki" which is addictive like a drug (those horns!). There's great Asian chillout with DJ Cheb i Sabbah and the great vocals on Karsh Kale's "Jah Has Kool Girl." However, none of those amazing tracks can hope to match the final track here, Michael Franti and Spearhead's "Stay Human." This track summarizes in 6 minutes all that is wonderful about music, especially on the Six Degrees label. It's uplifting lyrically, has a great beat for bobbing your head, and the piano absolutely grabs you by the heart. I can listen to this song over and over and be moved, which is the sure sign of a classic! If you don't have any of the Traveler's series, start here and you too my child can see the light!!!

Six Degrees does good on this world compilation...
From new latin beats to new asian beats - it cooks up an international stew of beats that's very tasty...
My favorite track is "Stay Human - Michael Franti & Spearhead" - a very deep track... So if you're a nu world dj, like I am, you need this cd, as well as nu world music fans in general...
...enjoy - DJ Dakini-NYC

I wasn't impressed listening to samples from the previous Traveler compilations several yrs ago (Traveler '99&Traveler '00).I've never been a big fan of techno/dance music,even when it DOES have beats from around the world.

However,I do make an exception for this album.It's a great blend of the new&old,of different world styles.

Highlights-
1)Yambu Rock-Rocking Cuban music.Bobi Cespedes has an amazing voice.It's no wonder she collaborated with former Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart.
2)Dama-The great Issa Bagayogo.This track introduced me to his powerful combination of traditional Malian music&techno beats.I was impressed.
3)Gulshan Paak-DJ Cheb I Sabbah masterfully combining Indian music with a techno beat.This breathes new life into the traditional Indian music that Ravi Shankar introduced to the West.
4)Jah Has Kool Girl-The original song,"Jah has cool boy" is on Lo'Jo's "Boheme de Cristal." I wasn't impressed with the original.However,Karsh Kale turns the otherwise so-so song into a dance with a Bollywood beat.It's a remix BETTER than the original!

This compilation whet my curiosity about techno world music.It's a great start.

World music is a funny thing. There are some really great world music groups that manage to take the particularity of different local music traditions and integrate them together to create something genuinely fresh. There are other groups, however, that take local music traditions and utterly destroy them by attempting to give them global "sensibility". The listener is left with something that is neither local nor sensitive; the listener ends up with a CD like this one.

It is worthy of intellectual engagement, really. At the very least, it reflects a tension that has long existed between the West - (self-proclaimed) enlightened (= secular), forward moving and universal - and the non-West - supersitious, primitive and particular. Why do African musicians need electronic samples, loops and/or techno beats? Because no one in the West will pay them any attention if they don't speak our language - or, in this case, play our music.

The commodification of the particular is, of course, going to lead to alienation - and those that listen to this music are largely bourgeious Westerners, fascinated by the exported, exotic "other". Of course, this "other" is largely the product of Western imagination: what is sampled is the most exotic and therefore the most accessible. This is not a contradiction in terms, either, as "the exotic becomes erotic" and fuels desire for more.

Some theologians claim that Modernity is an ontology of violence and death, and this may not be far from the truth. The particular is not lost but is, instead, *taken over* in the name of the universal. As Marx put it, "all that is solid [= particular] melts into air [= universal]"; capitalism must expand and spread throughout the global if it is to $ucceed.

This CD is such a mish-mash of "East meets West" and "Old meets New" that for the caring listener who is really interested in *global* music - and the "global" is nothing more than the totality of localities - there is nothing here worth listening to. It is packaged and sampled and remixed ad nauseum; the simulacra of the simulacrum is just plain ugly, cheap and cheapening.

Do local narratives matter? Do particular histories matter? Do particular persons matter? Surely, these are questions for ethicists, philosophers and theologians. But, these are now also questions for music buyers. "For those with ears to hear, let them hear." And, from one particular human being to another, stay away from bad global/local/glocal concoctions that erase the reality of particular cultures in favor "global dance culture."