In our new podcast series, we’ve chosen to focus on who provide us with the precious “raw material” for our listenings and features: quality new music!
We are talking about those heroes who decided to launch, nurture and cultivate a record label (better if with an ‘independent’ in front of it). As the title suggests, Listen to the Label is our way to pay them a well-deserved tribute, disclosing and recognizing their invaluable work and letting them introduce it with words and tunes.
A couple of weeks ago, we figuratively crossed the Atlantic Ocean to visit a two-century old farmhouse in the small town of Charlotte in Vermont. There we met Jacob Edgar, an ethnomusicologist, music researcher, producer, lecturer and adventurer, A&R for Putumayo records, and founder of Cumbancha Music Publishing.
Since 2007, Jacob has extensively travelled the music world to support and help to develop the work of dozens of musicians. As a matter of fact, Cumbancha is not only a music publishing company, but a record label and booking agency as well, and in its far-reaching catalogue, it can boast musicians like Sierra Leone Refugee All-Stars, Bombino, Novalima, Idan Rachel and Andy Palacio & The Garifuna Collective.
With Jacob, we went through the genesis of the project and how much Cumbancha has always aimed to cherish diversity in music as well as creating connections through it.
Tracklist:
- Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars – Living Stone [from Rise & Shine; Cumbancha – 2010]
- Lakou Mizik + 79rs Gang feat. Régine Chassagne, Win Butler, and Preservation Hall Jazz Band – Iko Kreyòl [from HaitiaNola; Cumbancha – 2020]
- Bombino – Tar Hani [from Agadez; Cumbancha – 2011]
- Andy Palacio & the Garifuna Collective – Ámuñegü (In Times to Come) [from Wátina; Cumbancha – 2007]
- Sangit – Turn Your Head to the Light [from Turn Your Head to the Light; Cumbancha – 2020]