During Lockdown I got thoroughly bored. Without live music and travel in my life I found solace in my record collection…

Hello there!

My name is Dave Berry and this is ‘Global Grooves’.

Like many of you 2020 for me has been a surreal year full of, well.. very little to be fair.

Whilst many of you have filled the void by mastering emergency childcare, learning a new skill or using the spare time to get in shape I did none of these things.

Lockdown life saw me procrastinate to the max and spend all my spare time making vaguely topical pun-based musical playlists from my record collection. Whilst Tiger King or Donald Trump based songbooks were fun while it lasted it wasn’t until I hit upon the idea of doing a world music playlist that it began to get serious.

Then the idea hit me. Why don’t I devote this cavernous cultural vacuum of a year, a year where I was stuck steadfast in this little embattled island, to travelling vicariously through my record collection and collecting a record from every nation in this world.

So there it is. I set out on this journey with 20 or so records under my belt and with a long way to go. I only had 3 rules:

⁃ the album needed to be on vinyl

⁃ the band or artist needed to be born in the country for it to count

⁃ And I had to like the music

And now, as I continue this journey I have decided to share it with you my dear followers and listeners.

Now, a word of warning, whilst I’m often described as having ‘niche’ musical taste by some of my friends this is not by any stretch, an expert’s site and I certainly do not pretend to know it all. In fact, whilst I may not go as far as logging ‘The Best of the Beatles’ as my U.K. entry for this podcast (to quote Partridge), don’t be surprised to hear obvious choices for a given country or indeed something that isn’t necessarily the best a proud nation has to offer.

What you will find however is some real passion and love for records I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, fascinating insights into how they came about and most importantly a guest each week who will be giving their reactions to my globetrotting musical discoveries.

So whether it is Mongolian throat music, Somalian disco or Colombian Cumbia hopefully you will enjoy this journey with me too…