Tilting at a New World Listening Post 323. When Alex Cuba imagined his eighth album his dream may have seemed unreachable: He wanted songs that reflect the struggle and emotion simultaneously separating and uniting all humanity but he didn’t want them forever...
Where Music Never Stops Listening Post 317. More than coffee or summer rain, Cuba is drenched in music. It emanates from bars and homes, along Havana’s Malécon, from the streets and squares of cities and towns, from the public buses that weave through the countryside....
Provincial Classic Listening Post 303. A freedom-fighting poet named Perucho Figueredo wrote La Bayamesa, Cuba’s national anthem, on horseback in 1867, after Spanish authorities surrendered to pro-independence forces in Bayamo. More than 150 years on, the city—located...
Tipping Toward Joy Listening Post 251. Dickens was right in concept but exaggerated the singularity of his age: It is always, in every era and every land, the best and worst of times. Great art often emerges from hard lessons, but sometimes songs written before a...
Shop Talk Listening Post 27. Nations rarely achieve higher living standards without losing some of their essence in the climb. The Cuban troubadour Tony Ávila sings and composes with wit, nostalgia and caution about the grinding wheels of change and progress. The...
