Do Romance ao Galope Nordestino by Quinteto Armorial is one of those more-or-less unclassifiable albums that seemed to pop up so often in the seventies - it's some kind of Brazilian folk filtered through a Medieval prism and it's just smashing. It's even danceable in places, without using any kind of percussion! And, again, there's a playlist for the album on YouTube, if'n you wanna' partake.

Vesku Loiri & Rag Paananen's Merirosvokapteeni Ynjevi Lavankopoksahdus is one of those concept albums where something is lost if you don't speak the language - it's a competent and enjoyable blend of jazz-rock and Finnish folk but even without any spoken word, it's apparently so narrative driven that it just doesn't gel when you can't understand the story. It doesn't help that it's graced with a truly deeply goofy cover.

Arik Einstein's מזל גדי is some fluffy light psych - it's the sort of thing that gets touted as breaking down boundaries in conservative countries that now just sounds like fairly conservative take on Western pop themes and you wonder if the folk traditions that they were rebelling against didn't actually make for better music, anyway - I love a lot of global psychedelia, and this is hardly worthless, but, I dunno', it definitely doesn't stack up next to what was going on in Brazil and Turkey at the same time. Maybe I'm being harsh on  it - there are a couple of corkers just past half-way through. Eh, though.

With the next album, though, I'm out of my territory - I've heard salsa, yeah, a fair amount, but it's one of the genres I don't even pretend to know shit about because it's just so deep and rich than no white RYMer could ever hope to penetrate its history unless you speak the language - stick to prog, yanqui, y'know? But I googled "greatest salsa albums" 'cuz I'm just a noob like that, and perpetually curious, and one list focusing just on New York's "Golden Era" listed Ernie's Conspiracy by Ernie Agosto as the second greatest album falling under its perimeters - and, uh, it's perfectly very nice, indeed, but if that aforementioned Finnish album didn't reveal all of its wonders due to the language barrier, at least I know what makes prog good or not - maybe I'm overthinking this, but I'm torn between really trying to GET salsa as much as someone entirely removed from its various cultures can be and just admitting that that would be futile as well as maybe (at least) a bit appropriative and face the fact that my ears haven't been calibrated to appreciate salsa the way they have been avant-jazz or twee pop. And maybe that's okay? I really do like the genre! I just can't pretend that it doesn't... sound a lot... alike. The only part of the album that really made my ears prick up and get excited was the Jorge Ben quote on "Se Acaba El Mundo"  - samba, now that I know about! Well, a little. I have the taste I do because I'm a bourgie cracker and yet I try to change my taste to something more "global" as a way of changing my status as as middle-class as they get when, uh, that's just stupid as heck, especially since only middle-class white North American people have the time to delve into hundreds of genres just a little bit and make a coat of purloined clashing colors and view it as their identity. Phew. Still, I mean, even I can tell it's obviously a very good album, despite all that.