World Listening Post publishes album reviews that showcase music from around the globe. The site encompasses a wide range of contemporary and traditional music styles and encourages readers and listeners to go beyond their own comfort zones by crossing national and linguistic frontiers. You can access reviews, starting with the most recent, by scrolling down the left-hand column of this page; with the index (alphabetical by artist); or by country and language in the right-hand column.
Julie Fowlis, Éamon Doorley, Zoë Conway and John McIntyre: Allt

Julie Fowlis, Éamon Doorley, Zoë Conway and John McIntyre: Allt

Streaming Tradition Listening Post 216. Ireland and Scotland may be separated by the North Channel but they are also linked by a stream of inter-Celtic partnerships, leagues, festivals and initiatives. Allt, a collaborative album by two Celtic music power couples, is...

Mary Ann Kennedy: Glaschu – Home Town Love Song

Mary Ann Kennedy: Glaschu – Home Town Love Song

Gaelopolis Listening Post 200. When Mary Ann Kennedy was artist-in-residence at the Gaelic College on Skye, in the Inner Hebrides, it occurred to her that Gaels love to sing about home, which usually means Scotland’s Highlands and Islands—their mountain mists and...

Julie Fowlis: Alterum

Julie Fowlis: Alterum

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...

Mary Ann Kennedy: An Dàn – Gaelic Songs for a Modern World

Mary Ann Kennedy: An Dàn – Gaelic Songs for a Modern World

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...

Julie Fowlis: Gach Sgeul

Julie Fowlis: Gach Sgeul

Fresh Gael Listening Post 5. If you’ve heard that Scottish Gaelic is an endangered language, then listening to Julie Fowlis might cause some cognitive dissonance. Her voice is so angelic it seems more likely that people would be studying just to be able to understand...

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