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.
Payadora Tango Ensemble: Silent Tears – The Last Yiddish Tango

Payadora Tango Ensemble: Silent Tears – The Last Yiddish Tango

Unbursting the Bubble Listening Post 371. Art that evokes the Holocaust works best not when it shocks but when it enlightens. The melancholy music of Silent Tears may sound familiar—and its setting might be recognizable if the stage hadn’t gone dark in 1939. In the...

Isabel Frey: Millenial Bundist

Isabel Frey: Millenial Bundist

Labor of Love Listening Post 319. In May 2019, Isabel Frey, a singer of Yiddish revolutionary songs, landed her biggest gig yet, not in a concert hall but atop a van in central Vienna at the regular Thursday demonstration protesting the presence of the far-right...

Frank London: Ghetto Songs

Frank London: Ghetto Songs

The Sound of Walls Listening Post 311. It’s not news that great music emerges from dire circumstances, but bravissimo to Frank London, composer, trumpeter and co-founder of the Klezmatics (among myriad exploits) for his new album, a breathtaking journey through the...

Louisa Lyne & di Yiddishe Kapelye: Lust

Louisa Lyne & di Yiddishe Kapelye: Lust

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;...

Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of World War II

Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of World War II

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...

Andrea Pancur: Alpen Klezmer – Zum Meer

Andrea Pancur: Alpen Klezmer – Zum Meer

From Yin-Yang to Oy-Oompah Listening Post 118. Scholars debate whether Yiddish, the German-based language of Ashkenazi Jews, emerged in the Rhineland or Bavaria. Few have studied Bavarian-Yiddish links more than Andrea Pancur, who focuses less on debating linguistic...

Lenka Lichtenberg: Yiddish Journey

Lenka Lichtenberg: Yiddish Journey

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...

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