Rough Guide To World Music Vol 2, The

Following up on the first compilation of The Rough Guide to World Music, which focused primarily on Europe and Africa, Vol. 2 covers the Americas, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. The range is still far too wide to cover in the space of a single album, but the compilers have done a fine job of keeping the beat roughly steady and the overall sound relatively coherent (a decent feat here). The album opens in the Caribbean and the nearest areas of South America, with songwriter extraordinaire Nava showing off his solo abilities, Colombian soap opera singer Yolanda Rayo performing some pop, and the venerable Ruben Gonzalez laying out his amazing piano work (with Cachaito on bass, no less). From Trinidad, rapso (a youth music) is chosen rather than the more ubiquitous soca, calypso, or steel band. No album containing Caribbean music would be complete without some reggae, so Yabby You is enlisted as the last performer before moving back to the mainland with Inti-Illimani in the Andes and a group of mariachis from the Jalisco region preceding a northward move to the American Southwest and Navajo songstress Sharon Burch. Here, the album makes its largest jump, to Asia with Uzbek star Mokhira leading the way to a subcontinent run involving three of the biggest genres in the area. Bollywood master Jolly Mukherjee, qawwali master Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (remixed a bit by Bally Sagoo), and Indian classical genius Ali Akbar Khan each take a turn showing his craft. From Japan, Takashi Hirayasu performs some Okinawan folk along with slide master Bob Brozman, and the unplugged version of the Soul Flower Union performs an interesting old revolutionary song. Heading back south, Detty Kurnia performs some pop-sunda, with its influences from both sides of the ocean making themselves quite clear. New Zealand's Te Vaka performs some ultra-peppy South Pacific music with a beat thrown in (decidedly non-Maori, you might note), and the album finishes up with Aussie Aborigine Archie Roach and a heartfelt bit of acoustic guitar. While there are certainly a good number of omissions (China is perhaps the most notable), the music here is all of high quality. It's not always traditional, but that isn't the point of it -- this is the contemporary song and folk of the world, and this album does a pretty good job of digging them out and presenting them in a nice sampler format. Pick it up for a quick listen, and use it as a stepping stone to deeper exploration. ~ Adam Greenberg