Hey, live music lovers! It’s summertime, and the concert season is upon us. Here’s a round-up of music festivals happening in 2009.

Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, June 11-14, 2009
Manchester, Tennessee
100+ bands perform on 10 stages on 700 acres of rural Tennessee farmland.
Visit the website.

CMA Music Festival, June 11-14, 2009
Nashville, TN
“Country Music’s Biggest Party” is hosted for the 38th time by the Country Music Association.
Visit the website.

Caribana, June 2009
Toronto, Canada
North America’s largest Caribbean festival.
Visit the website.

Sierra Nevada World Music Festival, June 19-21, 2009
Boonville, CA
A world music festival with a reggae focus.
Visit the website.

KCRW’s World Festival, Summer 2009 (first concert is June 21, 2009)
Los Angeles, CA
World music concert series at the famous Hollywood Bowl.
Visit the website.

Waltons Guitar Festival of Ireland, July 1-5, 2009
Dublin, Ireland
Ireland’s largest guitar festival.
Visit the website.

Festival International de Jazz de Montreal, July 1-12, 2009
Montréal, Canada
This is the world’s largest jazz festival with 3000+ artists from 30 countries. Visit the website.

Roskilde Festival, July 2-5, 2009
Denmark
Northern Europe’s largest music festival.
Visit the website.

Country Music Festival of Mirande, July 9-14, 2009
Mirande, France
Europe’s largest country music festival.
Visit the website.

Rainforest World Music Festival, July 10-12, 2009
Sarawak, Indonesia
Visit the website.

The Royal Windsor Beer & Jazz Festival, August 12-16 2009
Windsor, England
Visit the website.

World Music Festival: Chicago 2009, September 2009
Chicago, IL
This one-week festival is in its 12th year and is celebrated at venues throughout the city. Some events are free.
Visit the website.

It’s wedding season, and that got TravelTracks thinking about how cultures around the world celebrate their nuptuals—particularly the music and dance that’s involved.  Here are several videos that provide a glimpse of the world’s diverse marital customs.

New from UK publisher Freestyle Records is Mighty Righteous by The Fantastics! If you’re having a backyard party this summer, this album should be the soundtrack. It’s hot and funky with cool in all the right places. Put it on a great sound system and you’ll think they’re live in concert.

Kick off the celebration with “Don’t Follow Leaders.” It’s upbeat, with big sound and big heart. This vibe carries through subsequent tracks—“Nine Lives,” “The Doctor Is In,” “Kinshasa Five,” and “Soul Sucka.” Track 6, “The White Out,” is ultra cool, like a Steven Soderberg film. It’ll make you want to rob a casino and then fly off somewhere fabulous.

Most of the album is strictly instrumental, but two tracks do feature the flamboyant vocals of Noel McKoy: “Soul Child” and “I Can’t Dance with You.” Of these two, TravelTracks prefers the latter.

“Blue Sunday” offers a mellow finish to the album and borrows from one of the empires of cool, snagging a little riff from the Mission Impossible theme song.

To hear samples of their music, check out The Fantastics! MySpace page. If you like what you hear, you can buy the whole album at Amazon.com.

The film Rachel Getting Married was recently released on DVD, and it is chock full of interesting music from a wide variety of artists.  Check out YouTube videos of a few of these performers.  These aren’t clips from the movie, just videos of the musicians doing what they do best.  If you like what you hear, pick up the soundtrack at Amazon.com.

And lastly, click here to hear a rockin’ reggae tune from Sister Carol East.

Just in case you haven’t heard Susan Boyle’s magical voice yet, check out this video.  She recently performed on the British TV show Britain’s Got Talent, and her dowdy appearance belies her astonishing vocals talents.  If you can watch this without getting goose bumps (and tearing up), you’re better than TravelTracks!

Travel guide publisher Rough Guides has partnered with World Music Network to offer music collections, and they’re a great way to preview the sounds of your next destination or recall your last adventure. Currently on deck is Turkish Café, a compilation that offers an interesting mix of traditional and modern songs.

“Mesk Havasi” features Selim Sesler’s intoxicating gypsy clarinet. There’s excitement and a sense of adventure on this track—it will make you want to join up with the nearest caravan. Same goes for “Nihavent Oyun Havasi” from Ensemble Huseyin Turkmenler. It starts slow, sneaking up on the listener, and then bursts into sensuous strings and hip-shimmying tabla.

Sezen Aksu, the so-called Queen of Turkish Pop, lends her rich, throaty voice to several tracks. “Oh Oh” is playful pop, while “O Sensin” feels like a tango, with a dramatic but understated push-pull between the instrumentation and the vocals.

“Tulum Roman Havasi” from Ahmet Kusgov Ve Arkandaslari is a traditional piece that sounds like Eastern-flavored jazz. The horn on the track is reminiscent of a saxophone, and it moves freeform over the notes scale. For the bellydancers out there, Muslum Gurses’ “Kendimi Kaybettim” is a straight-up performance piece that sounds more Arabian than Turkish.

“Deniz Dalgasiz Olmaz” from Cengiz Ozkan is an undeniably happy tune—it’s light-heartedness calls the music of the Caribbean to mind. “Aynur Dogan” from Kece Kurdan is quick-stepping and builds on itself—the audio equivalent of an action film.

The last track, “Kusu Kalkmaz,” will stick with you. It’s Turkish rap from Sultana. Check out the video—a racy blend of Madonna and Salt-n-Pepa. Gotta love it.

Bonus: Pop this CD into your computer to read travel content from Rough Guides. Great music and help planning your next trip? Sounds like the perfect wanderluster combination.

If you enjoy this collection, check out Turkish Groove from Putumayo—tons of great tracks there, too.

TravelTracks keeps seeing promos for the TV show “Rescue Me,” and a clip of music in them has piqued this blog’s interest! The voice is deep and throaty, and lyrics are “yooo, yooo, yo, yo, yo.”  Perhaps you’ve heard it. Well, that voice is Michael Franti of the group Spearhead, the song is “Yell Fire,” and you can check out a video of a live performance of it right here. The politics of the tune are on the liberal fringe, but the groove is good—think reggae with an aggressive edge.

For something on the lighter side, watch “Say Hey.” It’s joyous and infectious—guaranteed to improve your mood.

Visit Spearhead’s website to learn more about the band and listen to more of their music.

Oh, how TravelTracks does love a compilation album. And what’s better than one CD?  Two, of course! That’s just what FolkeLarm: Oslo 2008 from the Etnisk Musikklubb label delivers, and it’s a gem of a collection. Folkelarm is Scandinavia’s premier world music festival, which is now in its fifth year. Here’s a quick sampling of what the artists offered at the 2008 celebration:

Picture a hippopotamus walking through the Left Bank of Paris, perhaps munching a croissant, and you’ve got the musical landscape of Johanna Juhola’s “Hippo”. It’s equal parts tuba and accordion, marrying the comical and the sophisticated.

Gilgamesh, a TravelTracks favorite, offers the intoxicating “Tigris Nights,” and Tassili, lead by Moroccan-born singer Aissa Tobi, adds another fantastic Middle Eastern element with “Nenea”.

The saxophones on “Tuss Ola” from Den Fule are captivating, and quick-stepping fiddles and vocals on Valkyrien Allstars’ “Eg Vil Ha Deg” keep the album’s energy high.

“Krummi” from Valravn is intense. Anna Katrin Egilstroed’s Bjork-like voice is small but forceful, and she rolls her ‘r’s with abandon.

On the more tranquil side is “Dod Spelemann” from Camilla Granlien Band, “Gamlestev” from Kim Andre Rysstad, and “Birrat Birra—Round and Round” from Niko Valkeapaa.

Trying to mention all of the valuable tracks here by name would quickly turn this review into a list, so instead, a bottom line: If you enjoy fiddles, lovely voices singing in languages both strange and familiar, judicious usage of electronica, and above all, the surprises that wait around every bend of a compilation album, buy this.

TravelTracks recently ran across a fantastic San Francisco street band—Mostro. Front man Justin Ancheta has a captivating voice, and the music pulls influences from around the world. Take note of the didgeridoo, a large Aboriginal Australian wind instrument—at 6+ feet long, you won’t see many street musicians playing one of these.

Lebanese singer Nancy Ajram is a sensation throughout the Middle East.  At the 2008 World Music Awards, she won the award for best-selling Arab/Middle Eastern artist, selling more than 30 million records by the end of 2007.  That makes her one of the most popular female performers in Lebanese history—and she’s only 25!

Check out these videos of the young superstar: