Singer/songwriter Sara Tavares belongs to a second generation of Africans on the rise in the Portuguese and international musical panorama. Her new album, Balance’s artistic sophistication transforms this Cape Verdean star into one of the most distinctive representatives of musical hybrids as expressed in Lisbon. Stripped of the superfluous, these songs are expressly organic and emotionally pure. Special guests are Júlio Pereira, Melo D, Boy Gê Mendes, André Cabaço, and Ana Moura.

Saregama holds a catalogue in excess of 300,000 songs in 12 languages which span every conceivable form of music from classical to bhangra. The major names of Indian music have all recorded for the label and include Ravi Shankar, Zakir Hussain, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Asha Bhosle. Add to that, their unsurpassed collection of Bollywood music which began in 1931 with India’s first film song, Saregama’s awesome archives extend across eight musical categories and has ownership of 50% of nearly all the music ever recorded in India.

BOLLYWOOD – AN ANTHOLOGY OF SONGS FROM POPULAR INDIAN CINEMA is a definitive collection of music which succinctly captures chronologically some of the biggest Bollywood music hits of all time from the early 1950’s to today, recorded by the greatest Indian artists and music directors/producers.

The band, at the leadership of its founder – bass player and musical director Gary Nunez has been updating the traditional Afro-Rican plena genre for the past 10 years, adding a swinging horn section, timbales, piano, conga and dancefloor arrangements to the panderos (hand drums) of plena. Evolucion pushes the envelope further; the record adds new rhythms, and especially the bomba -- another Afro-Rican genre typically played on barrel like drums – to the Plena Libre repertoire. The plena rhythms are sometimes offset by surprising twists into salsa, Latin jazz, or a Brazilian samba. Instrumental colors are drawn from both the traditional and the new – The sinfonia (traditional accordion) and the Puerto Rican cuatro (small guitar-like instrument) as well as the electric and classical guitar.