Speak My Language

It has been quite a week. It is indeed quite appropriate that this was also the week that Scarborough experienced the worse snow storm in all the years I've lived here. Meanwhile, the 2008 MMI Listeners' Picks poll (on Facebook) has already attracted about 250 music lovers within the first seven days. Voting remains open until the 3rd of January, when I'll be featuring the top vote recipients in a special edition of the Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast.

This week's edition of my weekly podcast includes three songs from this year's Għanja tal-Poplu, which took place at the Phoenecia Ballroom last Saturday. Before playing any of these songs, I wanted to share the Maltese-Australian sound of Miss Mary. I came across her page on MySpace just a few days ago and became intrigued by both the sound and the lack of detailed information about Mary. In any case, Up in the Clouds provides an excellent opening for this week's podcast.

Brikkuni are the winners of the 2008 Għanja tal-Poplu. Their song L-Uffiċċju is not on their recently released Kuntrabanda CD, so some of their (slighly less ardent) fans will not have had an opportunity to hear it yet since L-Għanja tal-Poplu does enjoy the same level of (over)exposure as some other song contests. Drummer Michael Galea informs me that the band will be re-recording this song "properly" and releasing that as a single of sorts very soon. Until then they're currently at the top of the 2008 MMI Listerners' Picks in the album category, where Kuntrabanda has been neck and neck with Ira Losco's Accident Prone throughout most of this past week.

I've been wanting to include one of Walter Micallef's songs on my podcast since day one. For some odd reason I never got around to it. So I'm overjoyed to finally include his music on this week's podcast. Bix-Xemx Warajja landed him in second place at this year's L-Għanja tal-Poplu. It shows Walter in top form, after about thirty years of participation in this annual song contest organized by the YTC.

Last year's winner of L-Għanja tal-Poplu was awarded for 'best interpretation' this year. Aside from the song that won her this accolade, Corazon Mizzi has also collaborated with Antonio Olivari at this year's contest and I've decided to include their song Se Ngħaddi 'l Hawn on my podcast. There are several other songs worth a listen from the same contest and perhaps I'll play some of them in future editions of Mużika Mod Ieħor.

To close up this week's podcast I've included a rough recording of a song called On the Other Side by newcomers The Freuds. I have no qualms with including low-fi recordings like this on my podcast when they give listeners a glimpse of what can come later from the same musicians. All ends being equal, we'll be hearing from The Freuds again in 2009, unless they take their band name too literally.

The RSS feed for the Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast is available here or you can simply click here to subscribe directly with iTunes. You can also follow each new episode through the MMI Podcast: Facebook Fan Page. If you have no idea what any of this means, just click here.