Haydamaky from Ukraine, currently on a tour of Europe. I just listened to their album "Kobzar" and I'm impressed with their blend of traditional and modern sounds.
Here's some text from their myspace page, where you can hear a bunch of their tunes:
HAYDAMAKY – well known Ukrainian band through whose artwork you can hear and feel the great mixture of traditional motives and modern musical tendencies.
“Our destination is to make contemporary Ukrainian culture “cool”, trendy, fashioned, adopted into other world cultures and to gain for young Ukraine as widest as possible recognition throughout the world.” - O. Yarmola, Haydamaky
With the name HAYDAMAKY they are on stage since 2001. Starting from early ‘90ies till present HAYDAMAKY are touring Europe. Quite different from other popular Ukrainian musicians who are mostly working under cliché of soviet style or just copy/pasting western and American stars HAYDAMAKY are trying to show the elements of traditional Ukrainian music through mixture influenced and made of different cultures joint with modern musical styles.
Music of HAYDAMAKY is inspired by ethnic sounds from all around the world, especially from different regions of Ukraine such as Polissya, Bukovyna and Carpathian mountains so as the sounds of Jamaica, Ireland ethno-rock and hot sounds of Balkans and Moldova.
HAYDAMAKY are well known around Europe, so they are welcome guests in countries like Estonia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Slovenia, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and of course – Ukraine. Geography of HAYDAMAKY is growing on and on.
Bligg,
a Swiss hip-hop artist, also blends traditional sounds with modern styles. Hackbrett (a hammered dulcimer) and accordion meets hip-hop beat. He has expanded his repertoire, very catchy tunes, highly produced, sounds like a large band. Some songs are very funny, others have more serious themes, like the song "Secondos" about immigrants and how much they have done for Switzerland.
more coming...
