Hama - Houmeissa - VINYL LP

Issam Hajali is most known as the singer and composer of the Lebanese band Ferkat Al Ard. While they recorded 3 albums only their classic InchOghneyaInch saw a vinyl and is highly sought after in the Lebanese record collector scene (A copy changed hands in Beirut this year for 5000 USD). Before the band came together, he recorded this debut album in Paris in 1977. This rare album fuses jazz and folk with Arabic and Iranian influences into unique beauty. It was only released in a limited run of 75 cassette tapes and is now officially licensed and reissued by Berlin based Habibi Funk Records.

AYA Records presents Humazapas' debut with 'Sara Mama', homage to the land and Kichwa tradition. The concept of Inchgetting back to your rootsInch rarely has such a literal meaning, or at the same time such an ancestral meaning, as in the case of the Ecuadorian group Humazapas. Usually in the music industry this concept is used when an artist returns to a past sound, going back to that moment of newness, exploration and ingenuity, perhaps. But not Humazapas. These natives of the Kichwa communities of the Ecuadorian Andes, who have been working on this project for a decade, see Inchgetting back to your rootsInch as a profound connection with their cultures, language, dance, the rituals that connect them to their deities and, of course, music.

Toshiro Mayuzumi was one of Japan's foremost 20th-century composers, enjoying a distinguished international reputation on a par with that of Toru Takemitsu, as well as that of an enfant terrible of the post-war Japanese music world. Versatile and prolific, he contributed music for films, the theatre, the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and broadcasts. His enthusiasm for avant-garde Western music led him to study in Paris, and the Phonologie Symphonique is a synthesis of Varese-like acoustical experiment and serial techniques. The jazz-tinted Bacchanale is Mayuzumi's attempt to produce 'a cosmos of sounds reflecting the vital energies of the origin of music,' and the symphonic poem Samsara is a musical expression of Buddhist teaching, an attempt to escape the seemingly endless cycle of birth and rebirth. This recording first appeared in 1984 on the Marco Polo tag. The relationship between the tag and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra has been one of the most fruitful from the early days of Naxos to the present, right up to their irreplaceable contribution to the brand new Wagner Ring cycle conducted by Jaap van Zweden.