Firas Abou Fakher | Mashrou' Leila

This Wednesday, June 1, from 7-10 PM EDT, guitarist Firas Abou Fakher, of Lebanon's legendary Mashrou' Leila, will join us in the studio to talk about the evolution of the band's music since they started playing in 2008, the Lebanese alt music scene they came out of and helped to define, and their first ever North American tour.

Much of the band's press has focused on their openly gay frontman Hamed Sinno, their frank lyrics, often satirizing the attitudes and oppressive tendencies of conservative politics and social mores in the middle east, and the controversies, bannings, and huge popularity that have been the result.

We may touch on these issues, but will focus mostly on the music, listening to tracks from their first, eponymous 2009 album, the 2011 EP El Hal Romancy, their breakout 2013 album Raasük, and their latest, last year's Ibn El Leil. 

Bookmark the page and see you Weds night!

PETER DOOLAN | MONRAKPLENGTHAI

For eight glorious years, since he first opened his doors to the public on October 8, 2008, our friend and colleague Peter Doolan has been sharing some of the most amazing Thai pop, soul & folk music we've ever heard via the legendary Monrakplengthai.

TONIGHT, Wednesday, May 25, from 7 to 10 PM EDT, Peter will join us in our humble studio to share some his favorite Thai, Lao, Burmese, and Egyptian tracks from his personal collection. 

Bookmark the page and see you tonight!

NEUE DEUTSCHE WELLE

This Wednesday, May 18, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spins three hours of deep cuts, hits, and forgotten tracks from the German-speaking world ca. 1977-89. 

Bookmark the page and see you Wednesday night!

ALT.J-ROCK

TONIGHT, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spends some quality time with Boris, Guitar Vader, 54-71, Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, Guitar Wolf, and Melt-Banana. 

Listen to the show and join the conversation

LA SOUTERRAINE

On Wednesday, April 27, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio celebrates France's grooviest record label, La Souterraine, with a three-hour tour of their finest moments, from an extended Aquaserge freak-out to Laetitia Sadier's cover of Serge Gainsbourg's weirdest song of all time.

Bookmark the page and see you Wednesday night!

BALIGH HAMDI

Like Mohamed Abdel Wahab before him, Egyptian composer Baligh Hamdi helped to modernize Arabic music, pushing at its boundaries through popular songs and music for film and television that sampled from western and other eastern ideas and instrumentation (saxophone, electric guitar, sitar, electronic keyboards) while steeped in the folkloric tradition he studied as a young adult.

Born in Cairo in 1931, Hamdi reputedly dedicated his life to becoming a composer before he was even a teen. He got his first major break in 1957 when Oum Kalthoum tracked him down through friend and fellow composer Muhammad Fawzi; Hamdi and Kalthoum collaborated on "Inta Feen wi-'l-Hubb Feen?" recorded in 1960 for Misrophon -- Hamdi subsequently wrote a new song for the diva nearly every year after that until her death in 1975.

Hamdi's work with Kalthoum was considered "light" in comparison to standbys Riad al-Sunbati and Zakariyya Ahmed, but Kalthoum knew that the younger composer brought her image a fresh appeal -- this is the period, after all, when electric guitarist Omar Khorshid became a permanent fixture of her orchestra. 

Hamdi worked with all of the other major singers of the time, from Shadia and Faiza Ahmed to Abdel Halim Hafez, for whom he wrote the enduring "Mahwood" and "Khosara Khosara," which was sampled decades later by Timbaland for Jay-Z's "Big Pimpin'" -- the subject of a highly publicized copyright battle with Hamdi's family. (His work has been sampled by artists across at least three continents.)

Hamdi continued to write for up and coming singers -- Najat al-Saghira, Sabah, Hani Shaker, Warda (to whom he was married for nearly a decade), Mayada el-Hennawy, and Latifa, supporting and in some cases launching their careers.

This Wednesday night, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio pays tribute to this towering figure of Arabic music, with a three-hour retrospective including rare live solo tracks, out of print collaborations and experimentation, and some of the hits that made him famous throughout the Arabic-speaking world.

Bookmark the page and see you Wednesday night!

RAW POWER

On Wednesday, April 13, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio loads up three hours of mind-blowing rare cassette tracks from Rwanda, living room recordings from Mauritania, folk, punk and post-punk from the former Yugoslavia, and 1980s hits from Indonesia.

Bookmark the page and see you Wednesday night!

I WANNA BE YOUR BEATLES!!!

This Wednesday, April 6, from 7 to 10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio celebrates the most popular skiffle band of all time with a three-hour trip through some of the thrill-craziest covers, mashups, samples, forgeries, and flat-out ripoffs by would-be fifth Beatles from Buenos Aires, São Paulo, and Warsaw through Bangkok, Manila, and Tokyo. 

Bookmark the page and see you Wednesday night!

THE THINNEST OF THREADS

Join me TONIGHT from 7-10 PM ET on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio for a three-hour sonic adventure you can unravel ... with your ears.

Listen to the show and join the conversation (starts at 7 PM sharp!)

Kraftwerk | YMO | Stereolab

On Wednesday, March 23, from 7 to 10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio will celebrate three of the most innovative electropop groups of all time -- Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, and Stereolab -- with an hour-long, career-spanning survey of each band's über-genki oeuvre. 

Bookmark the page and see you on Wednesday!