Your Daily Song Fix

Your Daily Song Fix has some big news today. In the past week or so you may have noticed some slow loading and sometimes our site may not have loaded at all. Tonight we are migrating our website to a new server and expect very high performance gains. I want to apologize for any previous inconvenience and any slowness you experience today. Bear with us for just one more day as we make this important change.

On the music front, we have some more Portuguese music coming at you. Sara Tavares (born 1978) is a Portuguese singer, composer and guitarist of Cape Verdean descent. She’s known (but still relatively unknown) for singing the European-Portuguese version of “God Help the Outcasts” for the Disney movie “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” Special thanks to Emmanuel Olaleye for the song recommendation.

Bobby Womack started his career as lead singer of his family musical group The Valentinos and as Sam Cooke’s backing guitarist. Film director Quentin Tarantino used “Across 110th Street” in the opening and closing sequences of his 1997 film Jackie Brown.

Here’s a nice song from a relatively unknown indie rock singer songwriter. I always thought this song had what it takes to become popular. What do you think?

Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad ( @giantpandadub ) play an eclectic blend of roots reggae, dub, and afrobeat. Back in May I posted “Seasons Change” and I have to bring another one of their songs to my audience. I hope you enjoy “Missing You More”, an unknown song to most of the world but a gem in my music library.

The Alem-Girma band was formed in Ethiopia by Alèmayehu Eshété and Girma Bèyènè in 1972. It only lasted until 1974 when Mengistu Haile Mariam, the most influential member of a Communist military junta, led a coup against Emperor Haile Selassie. Addis Ababa’s nightlife died off under the rule of this military junta known as the Derg. I actually got a chance to meet Alèmayehu Eshété about a year ago when he played a local Ethiopian restaurant in the DC/VA area (see picture below).

Alèmayehu Eshété and I

“Cut Chemist Suite” is off of Ozomatli’s first album released in 1998. I feel a little out of the hip-hop loop for not hearing of these guys before considering MC Chali 2na and turntablist Cut Chemist were part of the group before focusing their efforts on Jurassic 5.

Caetano Veloso is a composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist. He is sometimes considered to be the Bob Dylan of Brazil.

If I haven’t said it already, I’ll say it now – Getz/Gilberto is one of my favorite albums of all time and I will probably post every song on the album at some point. “Pra Machucar Meu Coração” is my favorite song on the album but I am a little biased because I translated it and learned it on guitar a couple years ago before I traveled to Brazil. Let me know what you think!