World Listening Post publishes album reviews that showcase music from around the globe. The site encompasses a wide range of contemporary and traditional music styles and encourages readers and listeners to go beyond their own comfort zones by crossing national and linguistic frontiers. You can access reviews, starting with the most recent, by scrolling down the left-hand column of this page; with the index (alphabetical by artist); or by country and language in the right-hand column.
Alex Cuba: Mendó

Alex Cuba: Mendó

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...

Héctor Valentín: Me Quité

Héctor Valentín: Me Quité

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....

José Alberto (El Ruiseñor): Mi Tumbao

José Alberto (El Ruiseñor): Mi Tumbao

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...

Alex Cuba: Sublime

Alex Cuba: Sublime

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...

Tony Ávila: Timbiriche

Tony Ávila: Timbiriche

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...

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