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One of my favorite columns from my stint writing the print version of Post No Bills was a list of some of the local shops that sell ethnic music. Most of the places I covered weren’t record stores but rather neighborhood groceries, video stores, or gift shops that catered to specific communities, whether Arabic or Indian or Greek or African. Back then it wasn’t so hard to find international music in traditional record stores–in particular, the old Tower Records downtown, which inherited much of its initial stock from the Rose Records that had previously occupied its space–but things are very bleak these days in Chicago’s brick-and-mortar stores. Fortunately it’s never been so easy and affordable to buy recordings from every corner of the globe online. Soon I hope to update my decade-old list of local music shops, but for now I thought I’d run a brief series about some of my favorite mail-order sources for international sounds. I’ll offer a new list every week or so over the next month.
Ketab focuses on all kinds of stuff from Iran–books, gifts, DVDs, Farsi software–and offers various community services in Los Angeles, where the company is based. But it also stocks a wide array of Persian classical and Iranian folk and popular music at low prices. Navigating the site without reading Farsi can be taxing, but last month when I was trying to figure out if the Dastan Ensemble had any new material, Ketab came through for me.
