Happy Holidays! Enjoy some music from us!

Season's greetings! This is our favorite time of year, not because we get presents (though that's nice too), but because we get to share our Holiday Mix with all of you! As many of you know, every year we've sent out these mixes to our friends, and every year it's become a bigger production. In fact, this here blog started solely to distribute the one from last year.

So that brings us to this year, and I have to say, it's probably the best one yet:

Everybody's Saying Music Is Love.

Every mix has a theme, and the theme of this one is Classic Pop Music from South America. It sounds obscure doesn't it? Well, trust me, if you love the Beatles, the Kinks, Pink Floyd, Santana, Jethro Tull, Badfinger, Simon & Garfunkel, Carole King (that is, all that classic pop and rock music from the late 60s and early 70s), then you'll definitely want to hear this.

Just as the British Invasion swept the U.S.A. and revolutionized music on this continent (as Corbett has been discussing this past week), so it did in South America. Particularly in places like Lima and Montevideo, local musicians picked up guitars and tried their best to sound like their British idols. (Groups from the latter city even formed their own "Uruguayan Invasion" of Argentina, with Los Shakers as The Beatles and Los Mockers as The Stones.) Over time, just as in America, bands married local and foreign musical idioms with ever more sophistication and style. For those willing to look, there's a universe of great music all of these acts have left behind.

Long-time readers will already be familiar with groups like We All Together and Almendra, but we've gone scouring the internet for music from all over South America. Everybody's Saying Music Is Love mixes twenty of our favorites.

Each day this week we'll be previewing five of our very favorites. The full mix, including all of the artwork, will be available for you to download beginning on Friday. And the week after, we'll be sharing some great traditional Christmas songs (traditional? well, you'll see), so you should stick around for that too!