Sounds Natural and Human Listening Post 377. The Shona name for Victoria Falls, the great cataracts of the Zambezi, is “Mosi-oa-Tunya”—Smoke that Thunders—and the water’s misty roar can be heard as far as 40 km (25 mi) away. But there’s a sound from the adjacent city...
An Irish Feast Listening Post 376. Daoirí Farrell’s fourth solo album is a banquet of songs highlighting humanity, history and folklore, served up by the artist’s peerless voice and the small but elite army of talented musicians around him. As Farrell has perfected...
The Fado Path Listening Post 375. In the fado universe Carminho is a bright star, so it’s natural that people pay attention not only when she sings but also when she speaks about her country’s iconic music genre. “For me,” she said in a recent magazine interview,...
Recipe for Survival Listening Post 374. The keyword from Andrea Menard’s fifth album is “rubaboo,” a stew typically made of meat, vegetables, flour, pemmican and sometimes maple syrup. The mixture is also an apt emblem for the artist and her people: Menard is a...
Dig Deep, Fly High Listening Post 373. Every nation’s history has joyful and mournful chapters, and the Welsh folk/chamber music trio VRï—Patrick Rimes, Jordan Price Williams and Aneirin Jones—uses artistic flair and research rigor to spin their homeland’s ups and...
Shining Star Listening Post 372. Many of West Africa’s leading musicians are from griot families, the celebrated hereditary caste of poet-musician-storytellers that has been a fixture of the region’s culture for centuries. But behind the griot mystique are the...
Unbursting the Bubble Listening Post 371. Art that evokes the Holocaust works best not when it shocks but when it enlightens. The melancholy music of Silent Tears may sound familiar—and its setting might be recognizable if the stage hadn’t gone dark in 1939. In the...
Exile Amplifies Insight Listening Post 370. Art takes us deeper into headlines and history: We wouldn’t have the same understanding of the Spanish Civil War without Guernica; Les Misérables is a lens on the trials of nineteenth-century Parisians. Like Picasso and...
Down Home & Epic Listening Post 369. Strikingly fresh and warmly familiar, George Telek’s music offers a study in contrasts. One of the few singer-songwriters from Papua New Guinea to achieve international renown, he cloaks his touching voice in a stylistic range...
Evergreen Listening Post 368. Darwin believed love songs began as a primeval mating ritual and Byron heard melody in the roar of the deep sea. Romance and nature are the oldest tropes in music and also the newest; every song on these themes we hear today connects us...
A Most Lyrical Syllabus Listening Post 367. Maya Angelou observed that some people can’t recognize opportunity right before their eyes, “while others can sense a good thing coming when it is days, months or miles away.” No wonder that, in the liner notes of her second...
Teach Your Children Listening Post 366. It’s easy to observe that Lossan, a collaboration between Manx singer Ruth Keggin and Scottish harpist Rachel Hair, is an exquisite collection of ballads, lullabies and jigs from the Isle of Man—and difficult to overstate the...
Windows and Mirrors Listening Post 365. Lucibela’s soft and lovely voice calms as it penetrates the din of club, street or civilization. On her second album she presents stories that illuminate Cape Verde, her archipelago homeland, and distant shores as well. Amdjer...
All Answers in Music Listening Post 364. The year 2020 brought a global pandemic, but for Minyeshu Kifle Tedla it also inspired Netsa (Free), her fifth album. The Ethiopian singer-songwriter (who lives in Amsterdam) viewed the unexpected hiatus from touring and the...
Angels and Depots Listening Post 363. Forget the billionaires’ rockets: Commonfolk have probed the heavens for millennia through the power of music. Case in point—Stand Together, Fall Apart by Palms Station (aka Hillel Tigay), a nine-track exploration of despair and...
High Tide Listening Post 362. Like water, music flows; like music, water heals. Souad Massi may not be the first artist to link these two essential life forces, but on her seventh studio album she combines them in spectacular and oracular fashion. Sequana takes its...
Freshly Beaten Tracks Listening Post 361. Like Appalachian dew at sunrise, Lily Henley’s voice sparkles on her second full-length album, but beneath the surface of her songs run forces that have rearranged landscapes for more than 500 years. The pillars of Oras...
Bengal on the Thames Listening Post 360. Khiyo emerged when Sohini Alam, a singer born in London to Bangladeshi parents, met Oliver Weeks, a Gloucester-born musician-composer steeped in Bengali culture. Their work together reflects nothing less than the laws of...
Song of the Centuries Listening Post 359. High ground is supposed to be secure, but Georgia’s perch in the Caucasus Mountains hasn’t kept out invaders—from Romans to Russians, with other empires in between. Still, time seems to be on the country’s side. Georgians have...
It’s the Journey Listening Post 358. Art and life merge in the luscious voice of Elif Sanchez, and her second album offers the privileged listener an international voyage, no passport required. Her music rests on a traditional foundation of family and schooling: Born...
Shelter from the Storm Listening Post 357. Imarhan’s third album takes its name from the dwellings the Tuareg band’s forebears built in their first permanent settlements—and it derives added meaning from the modern shelter they erected in Tamanrasset, in southern...
Cry the Beloved Country Listening Post 356. Once a center of trade and learning graced by canals and mango trees, Timbuktu languishes today, a victim of poverty, desertification and war. As political decay spreads, Oumou Sangaré sees the legendary city as a symbol of...
A Vocal Afterlife Listening Post 355. If poetry is a lost art, Lenka Lichtenberg’s latest album is a welcome reminder that what is lost can also be found. In 2016, the Czech-Canadian Jewish singer-songwriter was in her native Prague, sorting through the belongings of...
The Persistence of Harmony Listening Post 354. Einstein, Dalí and Descartes walk into a bar… No, this isn’t the full story of Blaumut’s fifth album but it suggests the ambition, gravity and splendor of the 10 songs that peruse the relative positions of heavenly and...
Night & Day Listening Post 353. At the foundation of Our Garden Is Alone lies a rift between body and soul. Though Marjan Vahdat lives in California her heart is in her native Iran; whenever one part of her is in daylight the other part sees only the night sky....
A Missed Beat Restored Listening Post 352. Long story short: During a university semester break in 2002, Roberta Sá successfully auditioned for Fama, a talent show on Brazil’s TV Globo. A four-week stint in the national spotlight landed her a manager, leading to her...
Tangled Up in Blues Listening Post 351. The title of Divanhana’s sixth album is a Bosnian word meaning “knotted,” a refreshing departure from overused terms like “fusion” and “blending” to describe music that unites diverse elements. Based in sevdah (sometimes called...
Sweet Sorrow Listening Post 350. Are the words Nour refers to in the title of her fourth album elegant because they are raw, or because they are believed—or is it both? From the lyric ambiguity we can’t be sure, and that seems to be the elegant point. The album...
Small World Listening Post 349. The world has largely turned its attention away from Darfur, where war and genocide raged between 2003 and 2010, and where conflict still simmers. Ebo Krdum is one of many from the western Sudan region who have not forgotten the carnage...
Light of Many Colors Listening Post 348. Lúcia de Carvalho has a friend who coaches people in writing personal testimonies designed to increase self-esteem. At the end of a project in Angola the friend asked the women farmers she had worked with to pose for a photo...
