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With 2020 promising to be the most surreal year ever in U.S. history, consider this your introduction to the New Year. #psychedelic #worldmusic
Psychedelic music first came to prominence in the mid-1960’s as one of the leading music forms of the then-emerging counterculture scene in major cities the United States and England. This was the sound of the largest group of people in history celebrating their youth and lifestyle, which many times also celebrated illegal drug culture, as a huge nose-thumbing to the violence of war, systemic inequality, sexual liberation and specifically those people they called “straight”, which at that time was anyone outside of the culture.
The scene, of course, reached a milestone with the release of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper album in 1967, which was such a massive cultural shift it became the first rock album to be awarded the Grammy for Album of the Year. What is also linked to the music was the fact that it drew from a host of sounds from music forms globally, such as that of those in Asia, the Middle East, South America and Africa. In turn, musicians in those regions also picked up psychedelia, mingling the sound of the West that was already drawing its influence with their cultures.
“Nao estou te rejeitando, estou me protengendo.” (I’m not rejecting you, I’m holding on”) –
Rita Lee of Os Mutantes
As the genre died down after the Age of Aquarius became just another marketing gimmick, like that of “alternative rock” decades later, it lived on in various forms with musicians that didn’t even engage in the drug culture so associated with the music, but performed it for the vast array of possibilities it presented. In some cases, like in Iran and Cambodia, however, the sound would be associated with corrupting Western influences, was banned, and in one instance, the suspected death of one of its most famous practitioners in her homeland.
Our tracks this week: Title, Artist, Country of Origin
First Part
- Send Me A Postcard, Shocking Blue, The Netherlands
- Sao Ban Pok Pab, Panom Nopporn, Thailand (formerly Siam)
- Komlos Sey Chaom (Love God), Ros Serey Sothea, Cambodia
- Cannabis, Los Pambele, Peru
- Deus Irae Psychedelico, Ennio Morricone, Italy
- Tomorrow’s Child, Apryl Fool, Japan
- Allah Wakbarr, Ofo The Black Company, Nigeria
Second Part
- 125, The Haunted, Canada
- 7 Heures Du Matin, Jacqueline Taïeb, French Tunisia
- Bat Macumba, Os Mutantes, Brazil
- Kadia Blues, Orchestre De La Paillotte, Guinea
- Ghazal, Kourosh Yaghmaei, Iran
- It All Depends, Scorpions, Germany
Finale
- Pyar Zindagi Hai, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle & Mahendra Kapoor, India
Love to you all.
Ben “Daddy Ben Bear” Brown Jr.
Host, Producer, Audio Engineer, Researcher, Webmaster and Writer
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