Search - Libana :: Borderland

Very ethnic, with strong chant like music, inspirational and

haregrog | 06/23/1998

(4 out of 5 stars)

"soothing. The instruments are unique and offer something different and interesting to the singing. Each song is unique. This is great back ground or medatative music that could have a variety of other uses. I have used it as background music for my biweekly massages. It is a nice break from Celtic or Mexican String guitar music. Though it is a little too much for music to study to. The music is from all over the world, but it has a very east indian, gypsy, quality to it. I think you will enjoy it very much."

Commendable song selection, but...

haregrog | Wilmington, NC United States | 05/28/2003

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I've never liked the NBA player's quote that the trouble with women's basketball is that, with very few exceptions, they can't/don't/won't "take it to the hoop and stick it." But listening to this disc gives me an eerily similar feeling about Libana, and in that respect I find it a most frustrating listen. While the arrangements of these well-chosen songs are often interesting--particularly some of the mildly dissonant a capella passages--the performance of the material comes across as limp. The first sign of trouble comes in the opening track, the Finnish "Oi Dai." Varttina's version is just percussive enough to give it the visceral strength it needs, but this nearly note-perfect transcription of the Varttina arrangement suffers in comparison, much more weakly projected. I get the sense that the singers of Libana are content to sing along with the music, rather than forcefully putting across their own feelings.Gentleness is a virtue too often overlooked in music, but certainly the Balkan songs presented here demand a quality of toughness that Libana doesn't demonstrate on this CD. Their instrumental and vocal skills, along with their choice of source material, speak fluently for themselves. But ultimately the limp projection makes even these expert musicians sound amateurish, and even the accurate traditional vocal flourishes only make the musicians of Libana sound like they're trying to show off--and almost but not quite delivering."