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...
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...
Transcending the Trends Listening Post 327. The elements of contemporary music—performers, instruments, genres, modes of consumption—are at the mercy of changeable tastes and racing technology. But consider the extraordinary endurance of West Africa’s griots, musical...
Destined to Dare Listening Post 256. Louisa Lyne’s art is inserting Yiddish songs into unexpected contexts. On her third album she and her band put the traditional language of Ashkenazi Jews into creative dialogue with Spanish, English, Hebrew and her native Swedish;...
Sirens You Can Trust Listening Post 206. The title track of Kom (Come), Kongero’s fourth album, is a siren song—traditional, to be sure, but meant to beguile listeners in real time: “Come, come…/You young, enticed, dazzled, wounded…/You cannot escape/Hear the...
The Sound of Light Listening Post 124. Step away from the urgent world and into the dazzling universe of Gryningsland (Daybreak), by the Swedish-Finnish trio Folk’Avant. Anna Wikenius, Maija Kauhanen and Anna Rubinsztein—who met at Stockholm’s Royal College of...
Underground Pilot Listening Post 68. For a moment, time stands still… A song begins, seemingly in mid-conversation, drawing you in… Suddenly, you are above the landscape, flying on a melody. This is the effect of CajsaStina Åkerström, a Swedish singer-songwriter who...
Sighs and Wonders Listening Post 59. The musical seeds are familiar: Childhood violin lessons, a preference for Dylan and Joan Baez; first lyrics penned in English, first performance folk, dreams of starting a punk band. But this story belongs to Baghdad-born Nadin Al...
