Venturing Out Into the World

I have many cd's that fall into the record company marketing category of world music and this is the first one to take its' turn off the shelf. And a little gem it is too that I was pleased to be reminded of. The title is Kambara Music in Native Tongues and I guess you would call it a fusion project incorporating English folk, blues, Mexican and Indian influences. The musicians are the English slide guitarist Martin Simpson, David Hidalgo from the Californian Mexican band Los Lobos on bajo sexto and accordian, Viji Krishnan on Indian violin and Puvalur Srinivasan on a double headed Indian drum. It's a fairly short cd of six tracks, the Richard Thompson song Waltzing's for Dreamers is played more or less straight but the old Jim Reeves hit He'll Have To Go gets a Tex Mex feel that follows in Ry Cooder's footsteps and a Merle Haggard song gets an Indian style makeover. The meat of the cd lies in the three instrumental tracks though, all of which combine the influences but from different starting points. One is is predominantly Indian, one starts from a blues base and the final one is latin flavoured.