Press release
Putumayo Discovery’s upcoming album, Lotus Lounge (Friday, May 15th), blends global acoustic traditions, cross-cultural fusions, and subtle electronic textures into a beautifully entrancing soundtrack for the spa, sauna, or simply switching off. In recent years, the appetite for music that transports, soothes, and connects has grown alongside a broader embrace of wellness culture worldwide, and this collection speaks directly to that moment.
The featured artists include a Senegalese griot, a Welsh folk poet, a Pakistani sitarist, and a Papua New Guinean troubadour whose voice carries decades of living oral tradition. Together they create something that is more than a compilation. Lotus Lounge offers a soothing sanctuary that invites you to slow down, relax, and take a journey beyond borders and boundaries.
The artist track list includes:
- Flash Sitar (Pakistan):Flash Sitar is a Pakistani-born, Los Angeles–based sitarist and producer blending South Asian classical traditions with electronic music, global grooves, and meditative soundscapes.
- Tiganá Santana (Brazil): Tiganá Santana is a Salvador, Bahia–based Brazilian composer, singer, professor, researcher, and multi-instrumentalist whose work connects Afro-Brazilian traditions, African languages, and contemporary songwriting.
- Joss Jaffe & Jim “Kimo” West with Kazu Matsui (Hawaii / Japan):Multi-instrumentalist Joss Jaffe and slack-key player Jim “Kimo” West are joined by Japanese shakuhachi master Kazu Matsui on this cross-cultural global fusion.
- Maher Cissoko (Senegal):Maher Cissoko is a Senegalese kora player, singer, and songwriter based in Sweden whose music combines griot traditions with Afrobeat, reggae, and Mande fusion styles.
- Paz Shanti (Argentina):Paz Shanti is an Argentine singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist based in Ibiza whose music draws from folk traditions, devotional singing, and meditative ceremonial practices.
- Eliyahu Sills, Evan Fraser & Surya Prakasha (USA):Eliyahu Sills, Evan Fraser, and Surya Prakasha are Bay Area musicians blending jazz with West African, North African, and Indian traditions through their ensemble of bansuri flute, kamale n’goni, and percussion.
- Ão (Belgium / Portugal / Mozambique):Ão is a Belgian quartet blending fado, alternative pop, Afropop, and electronica, led by vocalist Brenda Corijn, who draws from her Mozambican-Portuguese roots.
- Migra (Chile):Migra is the Chilean collaborative project of Sebastian Pangal, Vicente Narbona, and Klaus Brantmayer, blending South American folk traditions with global influences through acoustic and electronic instrumentation and experimentation.
- Cynefin (Wales / UK):Welsh historian and songwriter Owen Shiers channels folk song, oral history, and the Welsh folk poet tradition into Cynefin, a musical project rooted in the landscapes and disappearing stories of rural Wales.
- George Telek & David Bridie (Papua New Guinea / Australia):George Telek and David Bridie are Papua New Guinean and Australian collaborators blending Melanesian rhythms, contemporary arrangements, and Tolai cultural traditions through cross-cultural songwriting.
