Bridge Over Time Listening Post 97. Yiddish is often discussed in before-and-after terms. As a language of daily life it barely survived the Holocaust, and postwar Jewish migrations led to further decline. So when the Czech-born Canadian singer Lenka Lichtenberg...
Inner Flame Listening Post 96. Aurelio Martínez, the greatest living Garifuna singer-songwriter, has a powerful, velvety voice and infectious energy, but there is more fueling his inner flame than passion for music: He is trying to preserve his culture and language....
Precious Resources Listening Post 95. As Madagascar suffered severe environmental damage over the past generation, it also saw its music flourish. Hanitra Ranaivo has played a key role in the cultural renaissance. She was part of Lolo Sy Ny Tariny, an iconic Malagasy...
The Stuff of Dreams Listening Post 94. Cristina Branco is a fado virtuoso but her interpretation isn’t confined to a single genre, nor is her inspiration limited to the world of music. Menina (Girl), her fourteenth album, began with a dream in which the figures in...
A Monument of Songs Listening Post 93. World War I hostilities began in Europe on August 4, 1914—and 976 days later the United States joined the conflict. On August 4, 2014, the English a cappella trio Coope Boyes and Simpson released a sweeping 50-track homage to the...
Floating Village Listening Post 92. The Berlin-based world/folk group 17 Hippies emerged in an open-minded Europe that valued diversity. Operating less like a band than a village in which each resident carries instruments and tastes acquired on foreign adventures, the...
Souls of Their Street Listening Post 91. You won’t soon forget the three artists of Sous les Quais. Frédéric Flouret (deep vocals, guitar), Romain Jamard (an accordion he calls his “third lung”) and Benoît Grelier (sonorous cello) offer street corner French...
Bridge to Distant Islands Listening Post 90. We think of islands as isolated places, but Cape Verde, the archipelago off Africa’s west coast, has enough tourists and more than enough expatriates to ensure constant traffic and ample opportunity for its prodigiously...
Canto Ergo Sum Listening Post 89. In the modern world, a boundary separates stage from audience. But the Belgian band Surpluz performs charming traditional songs with bagpipe, hurdy-gurdy, dulcimer, accordion, guitar and clarinet, transporting listeners to a time when...
Angels and Alchemists Listening Post 88. When cognac ages, the elusive portion that evaporates is called the angels’ share (La part des anges). As François Léveillée—humorist, singer-songwriter, author, director and beloved fixture of Québec culture—has aged, he has...
Always in Steppe Listening Post 87. In the dim light of a New York night club, in a cavernous church in Oxford or in any secluded corner of the globe, the nine musicians of Anda Union recreate the open skies of the Central Asian grasslands. Through traditional vocals,...
Shadow and Stars Listening Post 86: The range of human emotion stays largely the same, even in physical landscapes that are poles apart. So perhaps the mystery of Finnish tango lies not in how it flourishes on subarctic ground but, rather, in the eternal shadows of...
Old Neighbors, New Friends Listening Post 85. Papua New Guinea may seem remote, but everyone eventually finds it. Prior to independence in 1975, it was colonized or invaded by Germany, Great Britain, Japan and neighboring Australia. Few among the intruders got to...
Mise-en-Seine Listening Post 84. Long one of France’s most popular bands, Karpatt—singer-songwriter Fred Rollat, guitarist Gaëtan Lerat and bassist Hervé Jegousso—paints scenes of life’s adventure and grind, using an intoxicating mix of Gypsy jazz and French chanson,...
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...
Bluegrass on Ice Listening Post 82. Among Claire Lynch’s many talents is an uncanny ability to embody a man’s song—her angelic voice not imitating the opposite sex but simply erasing the importance of gender. She memorably personified a Civil War soldier in Kennesaw...
Bringing It All Back Home Listening Post 81. The singer-songwriter Bonga Kuenda is as relevant to Angola’s culture today as he was when his country broke free from Portugal in 1975—remarkable considering he spent most of the intervening years in exile. A thorn in the...
The Divine Miss Z Listening Post 80. The last native German speaker to capture millions of hearts in France was Marlene Dietrich, but the Austrian singer-songwriter Zoë Straub (her voice crystalline to Dietrich’s smoky) just may have the artistry and attitude to do a...
Eclectic Echosystem Listening Post 79. In the Peruvian rainforest where Ciro Hurtado grew up, the sun peaked through the tree canopy and radio brought musical breezes from neighboring countries and around the world. Though he has lived in the United States since he...
Artist for All Seasons Listening Post 78. Poets and writers from Ecclesiastes to Aeschylus, from Shelley to Kahlil Gibran, have described the thin line between joy and sorrow, but peerless is the musician who can erase the line and capture both emotions in a single...
True Colors Listening Post 77. No one leaves a Holi Festival gathering looking the way they did on arrival. The highlight of the spring rite celebrating the triumph of good over evil is friends, family and strangers throwing colored powder and water on one another....
Belle Epoque Listening Post 76. Erik and Sonny Caouette sing songs of love and social awareness that evoke, in the words of one reviewer, “the belle époque of the chansonniers”—an age of activism that animated Québec culture in the 1960s and 70s. Nous Autres (We...
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...
No Degrees of Separation Listening Post 74. Just as the idea of human flight long predated the Wright Brothers (think da Vinci’s fifteenth-century airplane designs), so did the notion of a World Wide Web emerge millennia before the Internet. According to indigenous...
Magic Carpet Listening Post 73. Weaving is an apt metaphor for the disparate strands of Oum’s music—North African Gnawa, Hassani, Sufi, jazz, gospel, Afro-beat, R&B, bossa nova and Cuban trova—which converge like winds in a magical desert. The Moroccan...
Feel the Burns Listening Post 72. No single album can capture the entire arc of Scotland’s musical culture, but there is a breathtaking sweep to what Claire Hastings accomplishes in the 10 tracks of her debut effort. She gambols across time and space (from...
All Time Record Listening Post 71. When Ricardo Arjona was playing on Guatemala’s state basketball team in 1987, he scored 78 points in a single game, setting a national record that stood for decades. He also has impressive numbers as a singer-songwriter—filling...
All in the Family Listening Post 70. Marijosé Alie is a journalist, author and singer-songwriter. Her daughter Fred is a painter with a background in architecture—and a singer-songwriter; younger daughter Sohée is an actress, dancer—and singer-songwriter. After years...
Apple of My Eye Listening Post 69. The zukva is a sour Bosnian apple that can’t be transplanted but blends well in hybrids. On their third album, the members of Divanhana use the apple is an apt symbol of their music—sevdalinka—urban Bosnian folk woven from Balkan,...
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...
