The Montreuz Jazz Festival kicks off in the Swiss city today, an international festival with a massive
reputation.
Since 1967 the event has attracted some of the world's top talent from the fields of jazz, blues and rock.
Always an international event, and with the widest possible definition of what constitutes 'jazz'. Lilly Wood and the Prick, Emelie Sandi and John Legend are among the acts playing today.
Between now and the 18th of July sees Lady Gaga performing with Tony Bennett, as well as shows by Mary J Blige, Sinead O'Connor, Paolo Nutini, Portishead and the Chemical Brothers.
More obviously jazz acts include Chick Corea & Herbie Hancock, Gilberto Gil and Santana.
Dozens of other shows take place, from international stars to school bands performing free in the park.
La Famille Chedid and Zaz are among the big name French acts, Thylacine and Fakear supplying the sounds from a new generation.
A video for the track Calypso triste by Mama Rosin and Moriarty, a collaboration featuring Switzerland's
favourtite practitioners of spicy cajun folk and the multinational music act that came out as a limited edition vinyl for this year's Record Store Day/Disquaire Day.
The two bands recorded five tracks together in February, and following the limited vinyl release made them available digitally in July.
They initially met up in 2009 at a festival in Lausanne in Switzerland and realised they shared tastes in music and philosophical outlooks, and played together at a number of festivals since.
This eventually led to the two acts recording their joint EP at the Studio Pigalle in Paris
Mama Rosin released their Bye Bye Bayou album in February, and have recently followed it up with a 'Director's Cut' version of the collection, featuring new songs
Moriarty, meanwhile, released their The Missing Room album in 2011.
The bands play together in October in Nancy and Paris.
A great piece of video of our favourite Swiss Cajun act Mama Rosin.
They were playing as a session for World Music magazine Songlines.
I featured them a while back when they played in Glasgow as part of the Celtic Connections festival, it's great to hear them doing so well.
They've just toured the UK and Ireland, and are currently playing in Poland and Germany.
their most recent album Bye Bye Bayou was released in October last year, bringing another chapter in their punk-informed take on French Southern American music via the shores of Lake Geneva.
the album was produced by John Spencer, from the band Blues Explosion, who first came across Mama Rosin when they supported him during some of his gigs in Europe.
Nice to see them getting some of the attention they deserve.
There are some more dates in the Netherlands and Paris next month, and shows in Texas and Louisiana following that.
I've long had a theory that metal is a modern take on a type of folk music that's been around for thousands of years.
There have probably always been songs about war, brave deeds, evil men and the supernatural sung round campfires by groups of men to a receptive audience of similar young men. I'm sure that these would have been sung to the tempo of a galloping horse, with as much thunder as a hand drum and a lute could muster.
However, modern heavy metal hurdy gurdy and mandolin are quite a proposition, but in the hands of Swiss band Eluveitie they're a natural mix.
The band release a new collection entitles The Early Years on Nuclear Blast records, essentially a re-mixing of their debut album Spirit and a re-recording of their debut EP Ven. Both items have been out of print for years, and had become collector's items as the band's career took off, and both certainly deserved to be heard by the wider audience the band now has.
A special edition also includes a newly recorded track.
The band released their most recent full studio album Helvetios earlier this year
Eluveite are currently touring with sweden's Sabaton, in what promises to be one of the best metal bills of the year. This video captures them playing at the Summer Breeze Open Air festival in 2008.
A new-ish track by Swiss band Mama Rosin, who take cajun music places its rarely been before.
The track comes from their forthcoming new album, which was produced and mixed in New York by Jon Spencer, from the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.
The album's expected out before the end of the year.
I featured them before in this blog, with their track Le pistolet, when they played the Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow in 2011.
The band, a trio from near Lake Geneva, play a brew of traditional music from the southern states of the USA, where it was developed by the French immigrants who moved from Canada to Louisiana.
The band have been playing live dates in Canada and are due to play in Switzerland and in the UK, along with playing the Interceltique festival in L'Orient.
Despite their music coming from an old source, and the band coming geographically from a country far from where it was developed, Mama Rosin are keeping certainly keeping a tradition branch of French music alive.
If you like your thrash old school, Swiss band Hotroad are playing something that you'll enjoy.
Thrash was a huge movement that re-invigorated the rock scene, and American acts like Metallica and Megadeth (as well as Slayer and Anthrax to list the full Big Four) are credited as the main innovators, but there were many European bands who were also at the front line of the revolution in the 80s, with Kreator and Sodom from Germany being among them.
So the fact that Hotroad are from Switzerland (Lausanne in Vaud, the French speaking part of the country of course!) shouldn't exclude them from the critical attention that new generation thrash acts are getting, with the likes of Municipal Waste and Gama Bomb getting the credit for re-inventing the scene.
Like metal in general, thrash has established a huge international following, with acts developing the genre in pretty much every country, and Hotroad's debut album Insanity holds up well against the international competition.
They claim influences from Pantera, Motorhead and Metallica, and these elements can certainly be heard throughout the album, which was released in late 2010.
The band is a four piece, Loïc Tapia on lead guitar, Florian Grobéty on bass, Coowar Thierry on rhythm guitar an vocals and Théophile Burnat on drums.
Sure, they can rock with the brutality that their genre demands, but they are capable of some serious stunt playing. Check out The Fear of the Unknown for a lesson in how to create a bit of atmosphere while keeping the foot down.
Highlight for me was probably the track The Last Redemption, a slow-building heavy instrumental that gives the band a full seven minutes plus to showcase their skills.
A Swiss band today, but one from the francophone part of the country, and one that makes a 
