Jesse Cook

One of my more recent Internet discoveries (thanks, Laura!) is the awesomeness that is Pandora. This is one of those applications that really shows the power of what the Internet can be. You tell it a song or artist you like, and it goes out and finds music that sounds similar. Not just stuff from the same genre; most any online music streamer can do that. Every song in the Pandora database has been tagged with certain musical elements (based on the Music Genome Project), and the application draws from that database to play music that sounds like the input you made. I tire quickly of hearing the same music over and over, so being able to define a certain style and hear multiple artists is great. It’s the perfect place to discover new music that you would’ve never found otherwise. And it’s totally free.

Also, Pandora works through my Squeezebox, which is one of the coolest things ever. More about that in a later post.

One of the artists I found on Pandora was Jesse Cook. His music is described as rumba-Nuevo Flamenco with percussion and afro-latin influences. (And get this, he's a Canadian born in Paris. I KNOW!) His music is absolutely some of the coolest stuff I’ve ever heard. You can get a taste of it on Amazon, or just load up Pandora yourself and type in his name. Devout Baptists should probably avoid it, as you WILL want to dance.