the rix mix

I was searching for kroncong music from Indonesia & came across this. At its best, kroncong is an incredibly languid & exotic (to my ears) mix of Hawaiian & Indonesian music with ukelele & violin. Still popular & evolving, there are decades of recordings, but it's not a well-documented or easily available music. It gets the same disposable treatment as the bins of bootlegged CDs & tapes you often find in Indian grocery stores. I guess the Amboina Serenaders were a "roots" group, playing not kroncong but in a straight up popular Hawaiian style, & they were good. They probably had a lot of hotel & radio gigs.

Labels: music