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...
Spanish Steps Listening Post 347. Walk from Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego singing in Spanish and everyone along the route will understand the lyrics, the 10,800 km (6,700 miles) between the two points constituting the longest more-or-less straight line in the world you...
Harmonic Legacies Listening Post 346. The Lord of the Rings film trilogy flaunted New Zealand’s spectacular landscapes, but over the past generation there has also been, as one critic recently described it, a quiet revolution on the nation’s soundscape. Turn on a news...
From the Top Listening Post 345. Like a mountain wind or a force of nature, Yungchen Lhamo’s voice gracefully and powerfully opens Awakening, her sixth album, demonstrating that beauty exists to direct our attention. In a rare convergence of planetary decay and...
Mutual Conquest Listening Post 344. In the Age of Discovery Portugal was the starting point for explorers, but for Maja Milinković it’s the destination. Like adventurers of old, the Bosnian singer-songwriter thrives in parallel worlds, from the church where she sang...
Tradition, Renaissance & Maple Syrup Listening Post 343. Though their high-latitude homeland is more than twice the size of France, the Québécois know they’re surrounded by North America’s immense Anglophone universe and their geographic awareness has helped shape...
Into the Wood Listening Post 342. From their formation as Dúa de Pel in 2014, Eva Guillamón and Sonia Megías lived the rarefied life of itinerant artists, flying to Buenos Aires and Beijing, to New York and Tokyo, to London and back to Madrid, performing, lecturing...
Zither and Yon Listening Post 341. Like a grand journey to distant lands, Barbora Xu’s debut album Olin Ennen (I Was) explores affinities and contrasts: In her delicate-resonant voice, the Czech-born artist sings ancient Finnish and Chinese poems, for which she...
Handle Music With Care Listening Post 340. The classic music genres emerged in seaside melting pots during the nineteenth century: In Lisbon it was fado, imbued with longing but often the kind that hurts so good; in Rio de Janeiro it was choro, commonly exuding joy...
Variations on a Name Listening Post 339. Isabelle Geffroy grew up as Isa but went on stage as Zaz, the larger-than-life avatar of a shy extrovert who came to personify twenty-first century French chanson. Success didn’t spoil her but after her fourth album in 2018 she...
Songs With a Purpose Listening Post 338. There’s no progress without struggle, and maybe that’s one reason music developed—to make the hard work less onerous, even joyful. Kandy Guira’s first full-length album captures this spirit. Nagtaba (Together) is an ebullient,...
All the Right Signs Listening Post 337. At the junction of multiple roads you often see signs pointing in many directions, and Batila’s debut solo album is a crossroads of sorts. Son of Congolese and Angolan parents, he was raised in Germany and England and now lives...
Time in a Bubble Listening Post 336. Art often consists of freezing moments and reassembling them in words, music, digital images or on canvas, and frozen reality is something we’ve all experienced over the past two years. The Estonian band Curly Strings took full...
