Typical Girls

Wednesday, May 23, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spins a mix of 80s pós-punk Brasileiro, Kabyle queens, US/UK no wave priestesses, Khmer cassettes from the 90s, identical twin pop artists from Nigera, plus riot grrrls from Beijing to Singapore

Bookmark the page and see you Wednesday night

Unrelated | Laos, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, Lee "Scratch" Perry

Join us this Wednesday, May 16, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio for 3 hour-long sets featuring:

1. Ear-bending traditional and ethnic minority recordings from the Lao People's Democratic Republic

2. Our favorite tracks from Bollywood's strangest music director duo, Laxmikant-Pyarelal

3. Rare cuts and hits from Lee "Scratch" Perry's half-a-century-and-counting career

Bookmark the page and see you Wednesday night!

Field & Flow

This Wednesday, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spins urban and rural sounds from Colombia, Italy, Kenya, Lebanon, Spain, and Vietnam.

Bookmark the page and see you Wednesday night!

Minor Legends

On Wednesday, May 2, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spins six sets by minor legends from the six corners of the world: Abranis (Algeria), Little Fujiko (Japan), El Polen  (Peru), Siekiera (Poland), The Triffids (Australia), and Wells Fargo (Zimbabwe)

Bookmark the page and see you Wednesday night at 7!

Le Punk Français!

This Wednesday, April 25, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spins three hours of punk rock, proto-punk, new wave, no wave, and post-punk from l'Hexagone.

Bookmark the page and see you Wednesday night!

MALI

TONIGHT, Wednesday April 18, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spins three solid hours of scorchers from Mali. From classics and contemporaries to field recordings and unfairly forgottens ...

Bookmark the page and see you at 7!

Astoria Stories

TONIGHT, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spins music found in the bodegas of our neighborhood, from Albanian, Algerian, and Bosnian, to Egyptian, Greek, Lebanese, Panamanian, and beyond!

Listen to the show and join the conversation

Blessing Udeagu

With the exception of King Sunny Ade's 1984 Aura, I came to Nigerian music late -- embarrassingly so. And it wasn't through Fela. It wasn't through Now-Again or Soul Jazz. And it wasn't through any of the amazing African music blogs of the last decade or two. 

It was all because I stopped for water at a bodega on the corner of 99th Street and Lewis Avenue in Corona on a hotter-than-usual early June day in 2012, two years after I'd moved to Queens. After quenching my thirst, I took a look around my surroundings, spotting the words "AFRICAN MOVIES" in red on a yellow awning two doors down. I walked over and stepped inside.

Blessing Udeagu moved to the U.S. in 1986 and opened her eponymous tax preparation / Nigerian video and CD shop on Lewis Avenue in Corona, Queens, two days before September 11, 2001. 

On Wednesday, April 4, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio played some of the most incredible pop and folk we've ever heard, all plucked from the shelves of Blessing's remarkable store.

Listen to the show now in the archives

Νοσταλγία | Nostalgia

On Wednesday, March 28, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spun favorite tracks from the Pathé 100 Hong Kong + Shanghai series, early Jamaican mento and R&B, Greek garage and laïka, Krautrock from Brain Records, 70s mor lam from Soi 48, and nascent hip-hop from the U.S.A.

Listen to the show now in the archives

Ould Mbarek & Milouda Ouhada | Great Concert in the City of Khouribga

Thanks once again to Tim Abdellah Fuson of Moroccan Tape Stash for translation and a bit of context. Take a listen, read a bit, download (link in comments).



A terrific Moroccan cassette with superfine playing, frenetic energy, and expressive vocals. Likely from the late 1980s or early 90s. Tim has posted other rocking examples of Zaêri on MTS; if you like this one, there's a lot more of this kind of thing there. (Though I should admit that I'm altogether unclear what, exactly, Zaêri means.)  

Another incredible gem from last year's massive haul at Naseem Meat Market & Grocery right in in Astoria, Queens.