David Byrne Creates a Playlist of Eclectic Music for the Holidays: Stream It Free Online

Whose music do you put on when the hol­i­day sea­son comes around? Per­haps musi­cians like Lon­nie Hol­ley, Gur­ru­mul, Erkin Koray, and Juan Luis Guer­ra? Maybe you’ve just thrilled with recog­ni­tion at one or more of those names, or maybe you’ve nev­er heard of any of them — but in either case, you should get ready for a high­ly uncon­ven­tion­al hol­i­day expe­ri­ence fea­tur­ing their songs and those of many oth­ers, all of them curat­ed by David Byrne. Each month the peri­patet­ic, oft-col­lab­o­rat­ing musi­cian and for­mer Talk­ing Heads front­man posts a new playlist on Radio David Byrne, and the lat­est, “Eclec­tic for the Hol­i­days,” will get us into a kind of sea­son­al spir­it into which we’ve nev­er got before.

“So… who rec­om­mends this stuff to me?” Byrne asks. “I’ve known Lon­nie Hol­ley as an artist for quite some time. I saw him do a show at Nation­al Saw­dust not too long ago with trom­bon­ist Dave Nel­son, who toured with St. Vin­cent and I a few years ago.”

“I heard an orches­tral inter­pre­ta­tion of this song by Gur­ru­mul when I was wait­ing to do an inter­view at the radio sta­tion in Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia. I asked, ‘Whose music is that?’ ” “Erkin Koray I heard after first hear­ing Barış Manço, who may have been rec­om­mend­ed by some friends in Istan­bul when I was there years ago… Turkey had a seri­ous psy­che­del­ic peri­od.” “Juan Luis Guer­ra may have been rec­om­mend­ed many years ago by music jour­nal­ist Daisann McLane at a music fes­ti­val in Carta­ge­na, Colom­bia.”

The 41-song jour­ney that is “Eclec­tic for the Hol­i­days,” which you can stream below or on Byrne’s offi­cial site, offers not just a chance to hap­pen upon intrigu­ing artists you’d nev­er come across before — as hap­pened to Byrne in all those chance encoun­ters that went into its con­struc­tion — but a break from the same fif­teen or twen­ty songs that have long dom­i­nat­ed the hol­i­day-sea­son rota­tion in homes and pub­lic spaces around the world. The hol­i­days them­selves teach us that tra­di­tion has its place, but Byrne, whose com­pul­sion to dis­cov­er new music from an ever far­ther-flung range of soci­eties and sub­cul­tures, shows us that you can’t let them get you com­fort­able enough to close your ears.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Radio David Byrne: Stream Free Music Playlists Cre­at­ed Every Month by the Front­man of Talk­ing Heads

David Byrne Cre­ates a Playlist of Cre­ative Music From Africa & the Caribbean—or What One Name­less Pres­i­dent Has Called “Shit­hole Coun­tries”

Hear Paul McCartney’s Exper­i­men­tal Christ­mas Mix­tape: A Rare & For­got­ten Record­ing from 1965

Stream 22 Hours of Funky, Rock­ing & Swing­ing Christ­mas Albums: From James Brown and John­ny Cash to Christo­pher Lee & The Ven­tures

Hear the Christ­mas Car­ols Made by Alan Turing’s Com­put­er: Cut­ting-Edge Ver­sions of “Jin­gle Bells” and “Good King Wences­las” (1951)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.