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...
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...
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...
Roots & Wings Listening Post 301. Nakany Kanté’s third album evokes a place where disparate cultures and experiences harmonize, each home displays artifacts reflecting the owner’s origins and precious pieces acquired on journeys of discovery, and each soul is...
Rhythmic Pairs and Geophysics Listening Post 293. Continents separated by geological forces are knit together again by human movement. But the case of Brazilian singer-songwriter Jabu Morales is exceptional: When she landed in cosmopolitan Barcelona she entered an...
Amadeus Goes to Sea Listening Post 277. They are zany, surreal and buoyant, bathtub mariners and virtuosos who sweep through a composition like a storm, leaving behind a perfect mosaic of disparate elements. Five guys from Barcelona who have never gone to sea, El Pony...
Desert Dream Listening Post 250. On the poignant album cover a girl in ballet shoes and a tutu poses against the backdrop of a refugee camp. Aziza Brahim’s enchanting desert blues are yet to come but the singer-songwriter has already riveted our attention to the story...
Sense of Direction Listening Post 217. In an introductory prose-poem, Xabier Díaz identifies Noró as the north wind—with previous incarnations as stone and as woman—who fell in love with an Irishman peering at the cliffs of Galway. As wind, Noró dominates humankind...
Little Big World Listening Post 180. Think global, act local. The mantra applies to government planning, the environment and business, but it’s also a defining feature of music—and few artists active today have embodied the concept longer than the French-Spanish...
Street Smart Listening Post 166. They began in struggle, illegal immigrants from Colombia and Argentina playing their music on the streets of Barcelona. Fifteen years later, Che Sudaka has performed more than 1,500 shows in 45 countries, etching a profile as...
Rising to the Balcony Listening Post 138. If you had to choose one biography as a window to the splendor and diversity of Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), a good choice might be the scientist-philosopher-musician-poet Ibn Bâjja. Though much of his work was lost, his...
On Balance Listening Post 135. In principle, a picture may be worth a thousand words, but in artful hands the ratio can change. Take, for example, Jack Vettriano’s painting The Singing Butler—showing an elegant couple, under servant-held umbrellas, dancing on a...
Bride and Prejudice Listening Post 83. The Sephardic saga includes chapters of persecution and expulsion, but on her forth album the Israeli singer-songwriter Mor Karbasi (who has also lived in London and Seville) looks at her Jewish heritage from Spain and Morocco...
Feminine Fables Listening Post 75. Ana Alcaide has forged a musical Silk Route to distant lands and past epochs. Blending imported elements into her work, she has made the Swedish nyckelharpa part of her medieval Spanish repertoire; released two albums exploring the...
Call Him Ismael Listening Post 45. Few artists juggle as many elements as the Spanish cantautor Ismael Serrano. First, there is the potent and cohesive mix of social comment and protest alongside songs of love and heartbreak. Then, his soft baritone, clear even when...
Wave Runners Listening Post 17. Basque whalers, sailors and fisherman dominated the seas around the Grand Banks of Newfoundland in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Nearly 500 years after those intrepid seamen rode the waves and plied the fishing...
Here Comes the Sun Listening Post 14. While summer headlines about Greek debt and the refugee crisis made it seem like Europe was coming apart, a throbbing, Latin-beat song about erasing borders became a smash hit across the continent. The song, El Mismo Sol (The Same...
Into the Woods Listening Post 9. El Primer Arbre del Bosc (The First Tree of the Forest) is a five-star stew spiced with dollops of Dalí and a sprinkling of Sgt. Pepper. With floating images and surrealist flair, the Catalan band Blaumut takes listeners on a giddy...
