Mondo Melodia was a

world music "World music" is an English phrase for styles of music from non-English speaking countries, including quasi-traditional, Cross-cultural communication, intercultural, and traditional music. World music's broad nature and elasticity as a musical ...

-oriented imprint of

Ark 21 Records Ark 21 Records was a record label established by Miles Copeland III and Stewart Copeland in 1997. It was based in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles. Artists * Kathem Al-Saher * Ragheb Alamah * Aswad *The Badlees * The Beautiful South * John Berry * ...

, owned by

Miles Copeland III Miles Axe Copeland III (born May 2, 1944) is an American music and entertainment executive and former manager of The Police. Copeland later managed Sting's musical and acting career. In 1979, Copeland founded the I.R.S. Records label, producing ...

. The imprint's vice president was

Dawn Elder Dawn Elder (San Francisco, California) is an American composer, pianist, impresario, music producer, and promoter best known for her efforts to fuse Middle Eastern music with contemporary rock and roll, rock and pop music. In the 1980s she began ...

, who left the label in 2002. It released numerous albums by multiple well-known Middle Eastern musicians. In addition to studio albums by individual musicians, the label also released multiple collections of songs by multiple artists; the most notable of these was 2002's ''Bellydance Superstars'', which was the label's fastest selling album as of the following September. Another of the label's compilations, ''Mondo Platinum'' (2002), sold millions of copies.

Notable artists

Artists who released one or more album on the imprint included: *

Rachid Taha Rachid Taha (, Latn, ar, Rashīd Ṭāhā, ; 18 September 1958 – 12 September 2018) was an Algerian people, Algerian singer and activist based in France described as "sonically adventurous". His music was influenced by many different styles in ...

* Andy * Hakim * Shabaz

References

{{Authority control World music record labels