Diversify your music

Give your ears a tour of world music every month. Music Alliance Pact brings to you music from 36 countries, downloadable at a single click

Give your ears a tour of world music every month. Music Alliance Pact brings to you music from 36 countries, downloadable at a single click

All aboard the music express that takes local bands to a global platform. Fancy listening to 20 year olds from south Peru crooning about love and cocktails, then Music Allliance Pact (MAP) has a ticket for your musical tour. A monthly segment on UK-based music website PopCop.com, MAP is an initiative which has tied up with music blogs from various countries to give local music an international platform. Jason Pop, who founded MAP is also the editor of PopCop.com.


Mumbai-based band Goddess Gagged is made up of Siddharth Basrur
on vocals, Arman Menzies and Devesh Dayal on guitars, Krishna Jhaveri
playing bass and Jeremy D'souza on drums

Every month, each of these 36 music blogs provides a new song. This is then made available for download on MAP.u00a0 Pop says, "There's an intimidating volume of new music out there. Therefore, trying to discover which of it is good is becoming harder than ever." "We are looking to take local music to a global audience," adds Pop, who started MAP in 2008, tying up with a dozen music blogs.

Our first stop was South Korea to meet an indie band named Pigibit5. Theirs was a sweet rock 'n' roll number called Y.O.N.H.A, a cheerful ride of folk tunes and retro beats. Then came the Portuguese band Kubik that dazzled us with Shina-Kak. Victor Afonso, the man behind Shina-Kak, is a musician, teacher and cinephile all rolled into one. We guess he is heist film buff since the song could easily be the soundtrack of a bank heist film with a criminal saxophone rift.

Closer to home Mumbai-based garage rock band Goddess Gagged is up for grabs with their single Visionary that runs into six and a half minutes. It starts with grungy growling then slows down only to start all over again.
We couldn't help sing along to Canadian hip-hop band Socalled that has a song called Work With What You Got. It's got rap, trumpets and even some gospel notes that our 'sound dictionary' couldn't classify into a single genre.

"If you got one leg then shake it, if you don't wanna smile then fake it, if you got a potato then bake it," sings the track. Good advice, no matter where you live, we'd say.

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