This was published 8 years ago
Inspiring music: 10 albums that will inspire you to travel
By Ben Groundwater
Music can inspire you to get out there and travel.Credit: iStock
You can get your travel inspiration from some pretty strange sources. It might be from a poster on the side of a bus, or the smell of a croissant in the morning, or that first slurp of a bowl of pho. Or, it could be from music.
Music is one of those transportive mediums: with the right album playing, you're instantly on a beach in Rio, or in a car in Nevada, or at a bar in Sicily. Even if you've never actually been to those places. That's the great thing about it.
Some musicians' albums are inevitably more evocative than others. If you're lacking travel inspiration, give one of these a spin. You'll be booking flights in hours.
Live at Carnegie Hall, Buena Vista Social Club
This is a little obvious, but still, I challenge you to listen and not be instantly transported to a sweaty club in Havana, rum cocktail in your hand and Latino rhythms in your heart. Well, at the least you'll dream of attaining those things. There's something about Cuban music that makes you think you can dance when you clearly can't, makes you think you can speak Spanish when you clearly can't, and makes you think you can pull off wearing a fedora – when you clearly can't.
Carried to Dust, Calexico
The Parnell home inspired some of Neil Finn's most famous Crowded House tunes.
Calexico's mix of North American folk and Latin American soul is basically a dusty, aimless road trip distilled into musical form. It's romantic, it's sad and it's beautiful. It's Jack Kerouac racing south. It's Californian chancers fleeing to Tijuana. It's truck stops in the middle of nowhere, and smoky bars beyond the border. Carried to Dust is the album I want playing in my Chevy convertible as I roar across the continent. As soon as possible thanks.
Into the Wild, Eddie Vedder
This is an easy one, given the Pearl Jam frontman penned the album as a soundtrack for the movie Into The Wild, the story of an adventurer who gave up everything to wander the world. Vedder captures that rambling spirit perfectly, too, with songs like Setting Forth and Far Behind making you want to immediately quit your job, sell all of your furniture and head to Alaska. A dangerous album to listen to if you're already considering all of those things.
Water Is Life, Tinariwen
Tinariwen would have to be my favourite Malian band – and also my least favourite, because they're the only Malian band I've ever heard of. I don't even know any other bands from West Africa, which is what makes this album so great. Tinariwen play a fusion of blues, folk and world music, and it sounds unmistakably African, a blend of exoticism and rhythm that will bring to mind vast deserts and wild coastal towns, the likes of which you've never actually seen. I want to find those places, purely on the strength of listening to this.
Recurring Dream, Crowded House
I know why this album reminds me of travelling. It's because of those "Pure New Zealand" ads that ran a few years ago with the song Don't Dream It's Over as the soundtrack. Still, the rest of this album has a wandering quality to it, a dreamer's reverie, the type to inspire you to do whatever it is you've always wanted to do. If that thing is travel, then you're on your way.
The King is Dead, The Decemberists
This record isn't strictly travel-themed, and it probably won't bring to mind any particular destination. It does, however, have enough sea shanty-style songs like Rox In the Box to have any listener dreaming about those days when travelling meant adventures on the high seas under sail and scurvy, going to places that had never before been seen. I find that pretty romantic. Even with the scurvy.
Trans-Continental Shuffle, Gogol Bordello
This wandering, ramshackle album recorded by a bunch of wandering, ramshackle musicians is just the thing to have you pining for the life of a gypsy adventurer. Even if you're not ready to commit that far, you'll at least want to go to Europe to hear this stuff from its source. That's not so hard, either – there are travelling buskers playing gypsy folk in the town squares of almost every city.
Mariachi el Bronx, Mariachi el Bronx
When an LA hardcore punk band starts mucking around with Mexican music and realises they're good at it, this is the result: charro-suited mariachi tracks that anyone south of the border would be proud to call their own. Mariachi el Bronx sing in English though, which means you not only get all of those great Mexican horns and guitars, but you can understand the melodramatic heartbreak in the lyrics too. Mariachi is a tele-novela set to music. It'll make you pine for Mexico.
Graceland, Paul Simon
Take one folky American singer-songwriter, add Ladysmith Black Mambazo and a controversial trip to apartheid-era South Africa, and you have Graceland, the beginner's guide to the music of southern Africa. The classics are the likes of You Can Call Me Al and Graceland, but it's tracks such as Homeless and Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes, where the Ladysmith singers get their time to shine, that will have you eyeing up a trip to Johannesburg.
Chico de Oro, Chico Trujillo
I don't know that much about Latin American music, but I do know that this Chilean band's take on cumbia instantly sends me to a club in Valparaiso, or a bar in Sao Paulo, or a street in Cartagena. I mean, they're singing in Spanish! And there are horns! Those clichés aside, this is a fun, upbeat album that no one else I know particularly likes, but I always insist on playing because it's South America on a CD. And that's what I want.
Which albums inspire you to travel? Or remind you of a great trip away?
See also: Science proves that travel is the secret to happiness
Instagram: instagram.com/bengroundwater
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