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Dhafer Youssef

A small seaside town in Tunisia in the 1970s. A boy walks along a deserted shoreline picking up the odds and ends he finds lying around: A broken fishing net; a few discarded sardine cans; spokes from an old bicycle. His heart and mind are full of music and he wants to play. It's as much as his father can do to put food on the table for Dhafer and his seven brothers and sisters. There certainly isn't spare money for music lessons, let alone for an instrument. So Dhafer makes his own oud, the traditional middle-Eastern lute, using whatever he can find.

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Faiz Ali Faiz

Faiz Ali Faiz (born 1962 in Sharaqpur, Pakistan) is one of the main singers of qawwali, a devotional musical expression of the Sufis, a mystical offshoot of Islam. Faiz Ali Faiz comes from a family of qawwals from seven generations in Pakistan. He started his professional career in 1978, at age 16, creating at the same time his own qawwali ensemble. Though Faiz is from Lahore, he practices the doaba style from eastern Pakistan. He stated in recent interviews he has been influenced by Sham-Chaurasi, a famous Khayal singing school where Ustad Salamat Ali Khan belongs to.

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Femi Kuti

Femi Kuti is an award winning Nigerian musician, and the oldest son of legendary Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti. Femi was born in London on 16 June 1962 and grew up in the former Nigerian capital Lagos. Like his father, Femi has shown a strong commitment to social and political causes throughout his career, but he differs in his religious views. In 2001, Femi collaborated with a number of US musicians such as Common, Mos Def, and Jaguar Wright, on his Fight to Win album. This album was widely regarded as the most influential Neo-Afrobeat album of the early 21st century.

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Taraf de Haïdouks

taraful haiducilor (a.k.a. Taraf de Haïdouks) are a troupe of Romanian Gypsy musicians, from the town of Clejani, the most prominent such group in Romania in the post-Communist Era. "Haiduc" or "haiduk" is a word of Balkan origin which means something like "outlaw"; in Romanian it has a rustic or archaic connotation. Most of those who know the band in the Western world know them by way of French-speaking areas, where they are known as "Taraf de Haïdouks", since French lacks a genitive case. They are known in their native Romania as "taraful haiducilor".

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