And the Indigenous World Beat Goes On

Three world music albums scheduled for release this month--”The Toure Kunda Collection” (from a Senegalese band that mixes African rhythms with reggae and Latin music), “The Dalom Kids/Splash Collection” (featuring two South African vocal groups) and “A World Instrumental Collection”--come from an unlikely source: Putomayo Records.

Putomayo is a name familiar to buyers of ethnic-style clothing and crafts. The New York-based company, which specializes in imports from traditional cultures as well as newly designed lines based on indigenous patterns, is now making Putomayo (named after a valley in Colombia) an important factor in the presentation of world music.

“Imagine a life without Chinese, Mexican, Thai cuisine,” says company founder Dan Storper. “Sure, there’s great American and English food, but if that’s all there was in your life, it would be very limited. Music is the same kind of thing. It’s an international spice that can offer all sorts of pleasures.”

The 13 critically praised albums Putomayo has released since 1992 range from compilations such as “World Vocal,” “World Instrumental,” “Women of the World: International” and “Women of the World: Celtic” to vocal recordings by singer-songwriters Laura Love and Dougie MacLean.

In typical Putomayo fashion, they have been distributed for the most part via alternative markets. “World Instrumental,” for example, which has sold nearly 100,000 albums, has moved 25% of that total through the Nature Company and more than 60% through gift, book and clothing stores. It is a niche-type approach that worked wonders for Windham Hill in the ‘80s, and is becoming an increasingly significant aspect of the record business.

“It is incomprehensible to me,” says Storper, “that some of this world music I’m hearing, and that we’re putting on our records, isn’t more popular. I think it’s just one of those classic cases in which the bigger labels, which have the money to market it, don’t have the awareness of how to attack the niche markets.”

Global Sounds on Record: The Norwegian Hardanger fiddle is one of the most unusual instruments in European folk music. Shaped like a violin and decorated with ornate carvings and mother of pearl inlays, the instrument has four sympathetic strings running in a channel beneath the four traditional strings. On “As Quick as Fire,” (Henry Street/Rounder Records) Hardanger master Knut Buen plays a set of pieces filled with shimmering, polyphonic passages and entrancing melodies.

Information: [617] 354-0700.)

Ellipsis Arts has come up with another winner in “Harvest Song,” an anthology of music “inspired by working on the land.” The selections include a ceremonial Andean rain dance, an Efe Pygmy gathering song and a Japanese shakuhachi field song. The CD is encased in a small, hardcover book filled with full-color illustrations, with several essays describing such food-related events as the Jewish Succoth, Barbados’ “Crop Over” and the Cherokee Itse Selu.

Information: (800) 788-6670.

Around Town: Plenty of Irish music is around for the taking in the month of St. Patrick’s Day. Among the best: Altan, with the extraordinary voice of singer Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh, performs at the Wadsworth Theater on March 9. . . . The same day, the Clancy Brothers will fill Pepperdine University’s Smothers Theatre with their traditional folk songs. . . . The venerable Irish Rovers appear at the Alex Theatre in Glendale on March 13, and on St. Patrick’s day itself, March 17, in a 2:30 matinee at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza followed by a 7 p.m. performance at the Long Beach Terrace Theatre.

Beyond the Irish celebrations, French-Algerian singer Enrico Macias brings his songs of war, peace and love to the Shrine Auditorium on March 16. . . . Marta Sebestyen, one of the world’s finest singers (she moves easily from her native Hungarian music to Greek, Indian and Irish songs), performs with the group Muszikas on March 22 at McCabe’s. . . . The House of Blues is featuring Qawwali music on March 20.