St. Petersberg, Russia: Valery Siver is a composer, the musician and producer who has recently produced a new album entitled The Resettlementer. The album of industrial electronic music reflects what is happening in Russia.

His first album Cleopatra transcends and outlines the evolution of Congolese music, with a focus on the guitars and drums. Cleopatra has a mixture of Congolese rumba, with salsa.

After studying music and notation with Hvan Anatoly Vladimirovich and at the Rimsky-Korsakov Music School, Valery participated in Christian musical group and debuted his first album in 2000. He is working on music for orchestra and chorus, planning an album of his own music featuring the guitar and scoring music for films.

Pictures of Russian Life

London, England: Two artists from Congo who live in London have just released new albums. Charles Boyenga is among the new generation of Congolese singers. His dynamism and high energetic performances has made of him the number one Congolese artist in the UK and in Spain.

Robert Maseka, with his band "Congobeat", have just released his first album, La Cremeria. Featuring African rumba roots and electric dance floor rhythms, La Cremeria combines classic Congolese soukous guitars, reggae and zouk propelled bass lines. Maseka's smooth alto voice simply adds to the album's versatility.

Stockholm, Sweden:Stephen John Svanholm is based in Stockholm. After playing lead guitar for thrash band Ignorance, Stephen began to study music formally at the Royal Northern College of Music, doing postgraduate work in opera and vocal studies.

In the summer of 1999, Stephen founded Sibelian to create unique and beautiful music. Sibelian feartures operatic singing, Buddhist mantras, samples from his travels in India and Nepal, and orthestral and electronic instrumentation. You can contact Stephen at: sibelian@wildmail.com

Bucharest, Romania: Romania for centuries has had a wide variety of local traditions to share with the world, and this is illustrated by its distinctive regions: Moldova in the north-east, Muntenia in the south, Dobrogea in the south-east, Transylvania, in the middle (the region of the well-known Dracula), and Tara Romaneasca in the west.

One of the most distinguishing features of our country is the oral traditions that have been loved and guarded over the last 2000 years, since the birth of the Romanian people. These oral traditions are based on the particular songs, costumes, and mentalities of each region and therefore, our art and culture, has different meanings from one person to another person. In addition to our oral traditions, Romanians have a united form of culture in the comprehension of God through Romanian Orthodox Church.

Romania, located in the Balkans, is a place where traditions, cultures and civilizations have combined. It's a place where the Bulgarians and Slavs have been sharing their songs, cultural influences, and spiritual traditions from the beginning of this part of east-central Europe. Maybe this is the interesting thing all around the globe, people from every corner have a cultures and tradition to keep and to share.

submitted by Iulian Scutaru

Moscow, Russia: Helen Malta and George Zubov have created a family duet called Zu-Malta. Helen and George began their musical careers in 1990 at the College of Culture in City Rostov-on-Don, Helen in the folk-songs branch and George in the orchestral branch