A Star Is Reborn Listening Post 155. Shakira’s eleventh studio album, launched in 2017, showed her in peak form—bearing in mind that with Grammys galore, career record sales over 60 million and YouTube views topping 12 billion, her “peak” has an altitude mere...
Bluegrass on the Baltic Listening Post 154. All societies revere music, but surely Estonia ranks first among equals when it comes to the power of song. The 1987-91 Singing Revolution, involving mass-scale performances of patriotic anthems, was a pivotal step in ending...
Places in the Heart Listening Post 153. The difference between Namvula Rennie’s 2014 debut album and her new release Quiet Revolutions mirrors the distinction between a short story anthology and a novel—on one hand a lovely collection in which each song reflects a...
Natural Light Listening Post 152. Rather than linger over beautiful sunsets, our ancestors ran home at dusk, so fraught with danger and superstition was the night. Advanced societies tend to take light for granted. On her fourth album, Cuca Roseta shows a...
Who Needs Bright Lights? Listening Post 151. You can’t take the country out of the boy. And with 2Frères—Erik and Sonny Caouette—you can’t really take the boys out the country, either. When the retro folk-rockers dreamed big, they moved from Chapais, population 1,600...
All the Breaks Listening Post 150. “Whatever women do,” observed the feminist pioneer Charlotte Whitton, “they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.” No surprise that when Flor de Toloache became the first...
The Lioness Doesn’t Sleep Listening Post 149. A common symbol of Zulu culture is the cowhide shield, ever present in images of the warrior-king Shaka and also the centerpiece on the official crest of KwaZulu-Natal, the South African province that is the heartland of...
To Life! Listening Post 148. The song Shpatsir in Vald (A Walk in the Forest) has everything—poignant dialogue between lovers about to be separated by war, a dulcet Russian waltz melody and the spellbinding voice of Sophie Milman (video 1). The lyrics were penned in...
Angel and Siren Listening Post 147. The starting point is harmony between Scottish Gaelic—“spoken for over a thousand years,” Julie Fowlis observes, “yet considered otherworldly on its own shores”—and her enchanting, heaven-to-earth voice. On Alterum, she approaches...
The Best of Times Listening Post 146. Sigrid Moldestad’s stature as a composer rests on more than her exquisite melodies. On Vere Her (Being Here) she aligns elements of nature and imagination—love and mortality, stress and relief; rain and sun; memory and hope;...
Echoes of Time Listening Post 145. If Early Music transports us to medieval times, then Georgian polyphony, stretching back more than 1,600 years, is communal song in primeval form. UNESCO declared this tradition an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and, like...
Nuance in Paradise Listening Post 144. A Google search of literature featuring Tahiti turns up novels by 46 authors, only one of whom is Tahitian: Most of what the world knows about the fabled island is filtered through foreign eyes. The singer-songwriter Vaiteani...
Good Vibrations Listening Post 143. Bondeko, the work of three prodigiously gifted artists who mix voices and compositions to produce a dreamy, multi-layered sound, is a transcendent microcosm of the musical diversity of Africa and its Diaspora. The...
From Isfahan to Jerusalem Listening Post 142. Her voice has an exquisite purity that commands without overwhelming. The facets of her life and music—liturgical poems and love songs—add to the aptness her name: Nehedar means “splendid” in Hebrew. Maureen Nehedar was...
On the Street Where You Sing Listening Post 141. There’s a vein of Pygmalion to Eskelina Svanstein’s career in French chanson—just substitute divergent nationalities for social classes and allot more harmony to the goals of student and teachers. The story opens with a...
It Takes a Village Listening Post 140. The concept of Bab El West’s first full-length album was born in Brittany when Habib Farroukh spotted a road sign for the town of Douarnenez. The Moroccan-born singer-composer and two French-born band mates compared notes and...
Turn, Turn, Turn Listening Post 139. Gwyneth Glyn’s elegant songs have more layers than a mille-feuille. Her images and subtexts rotate clear and dreamlike, overlaid with lyric tones of light and shadow. She touches on homecoming, remembrance, insomnia, protection and...
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...
Samba from Head to Toe Listening Post 137. The samba artist Diogo Nogueira has reached new heights and greater depth with his fifth solo studio album: It’s the first collection for which he wrote or co-wrote all the songs (with A-list partners, including Hamilton de...
Angels & Demons Listening Post 136. The voices of the women’s quintet are celestial and the album was recorded in a church dating from 1250, but the words embedded in Kata’s enchanting harmonies tell mostly cautionary tales. Tívils døtur (Tivil’s Daughters)...
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...
Out of This World and Home for Dinner Listening Post 134. As consistently as she releases sparkling albums, Claudia Koreck reaches new heights. Her 2007 debut ignited a revival of Bavarian-dialect song, a movement that now counts her as its Grande Dame. In short order...
Eternal Flame Listening Post 133. Like campers kindling a fire with logs, twigs and dry leaves, the women of Zenobia stoke their music with every-life elements—joy and folly, love and sorrow, pride and prejudice. For their fourth album, Louise Støjberg (lead vocals),...
Rivers & Blues Listening Post 132. Unlike Robert Frost, obliged to choose between diverging roads in a yellow wood, the singer-songwriter Moh! Kouyaté was able to take two routes at once. On his geographic journey he retraced the course of the blues from the Niger...
The Sacred Garden Listening Post 131. For an age of battered facts, closing doors and short attention spans, the folksinger-songwriter Carrie Newcomer is blessed with a superpower: Many talented singers can engage us and touch our heartstrings, but she has the...
Teach, Play, Walk Listening Post 130. Seneca was the first to observe that the best way to master a subject is to teach it, so perhaps it’s no coincidence that the members of Gatehouse are all music teachers. John Wynne and John McEvoy are Irish trad veterans who have...
Art Dancing With Life Listening Post 129. Elida Almeida describes her second album as an x-ray of Cape Verde, stories that look beneath the surface of hope and disillusion. At 24, she is a consummate singer-songwriter, blending her island homeland’s hallmark...
Living With Critics Listening Post 128. The Kurdish-Turkish singer-songwriter Ferhat Tunç has achieved artistic success, but he has also provoked criticism that goes well beyond negative reviews. Over the course of his 30-year career, he has been harassed, censored,...
Back to the Sources Listening Post 127. Poland’s first Muslim residents came by invitation when medieval rulers saw wisdom in welcoming Tatars, known for their military skills. A thriving community took root and there were Tatar units in the Polish army as late as...
All the Right Notes for Building Listening Post 126. Just as construction cranes on a city landscape signal renewal, so do new songs indicate the vitality of a language. Mary Ann Kennedy, an architect of the Scottish Gaelic Renaissance, builds toward the heavens not...
