Mood Synthesizer Listening Post 190. Camus argued that travel is a spiritual testing, stripping us of habitual surroundings and taking us not away from but toward our essence. Zaz, one of the most popular French artists abroad, did three world tours in four years and...
They’re Playing Our Song Listening Post 189. Song can be a pathway to survival for threatened languages. Over the past generation the 10,000 speakers of Innu in Québec and Labrador have seen a creative surge in new music. The folk-rock duo Kashtin gained prominence in...
Fish Gotta Swim, Birds Gotta Fly Listening Post 188. In the enchanting voices of the Czech quartet BraAgas, the sovereigns of sky and water serve as messengers, bearing wise counsel, ill tidings, memory and witness to lovers young and old. On O ptácích a rybách (About...
Singing Words of Wisdom Listening Post 187. The Malian singer-songwriter Fatoumata Diawara is often described in terms of her voice—soulful, sensuous, poignant, passionate—but perhaps the foundational qualities she brings to her music are wisdom and independence. She...
On the Road Listening Post 186. As one of France’s leading recording artists, Kendji Girac knows the rigors of a marathon tour—indeed, before voice or instrument, his earliest training was for the road. He was born in the Dordogne to a family of Catalan-speaking...
An Ocean of a Neighborhood Listening Post 185. The subtitle of Catarina dos Santos’ second album is “Reflections on Portuguese Identity,” a subject as big as the ocean that touches Portugal, Africa and Brazil and as small as the working-class town where she grew up....
All Is Forbidden Listening Post 184. She stares from the album cover—stark, vulnerable, penetrating. From outside, Ann O’aro’s life may seem in search of a metaphor, a verbal contrivance to make it sound less horrifying, but she’s beyond that. As a child, she played...
Taking Pains Listening Post 183. Duarte is a fado purist, making no concession to other genres, just Portuguese and acoustic guitars, bass and his sensitive, expressive voice. Literally and figuratively, he takes pains to be authentic as he explores the nuances of...
The Incredible Lightness of Gravity Listening Post 182. The singer-songwriter Fulya Özlem spent years studying and performing abroad, tracing a path that includes English, Scottish and Irish folk, tango, Latin jazz, bossa nova, French and Spanish Renaissance...
Into the Woods Listening Post 181. One of Europe’s smallest nations, Estonia is also among the most heavily forested. “The woods are a sacred place for many of us,” observes folksinger-songwriter Mari Kalkun. “Many Estonians have a spiritual connection to the trees,...
Little Big World Listening Post 180. Think global, act local. The mantra applies to government planning, the environment and business, but it’s also a defining feature of music—and few artists active today have embodied the concept longer than the French-Spanish...
Magnificent Transgression Listening Post 179. Sex, death and rebellion are the stuff of tavern gossip and folk music, and they reach their fullest resonance when delivered with a healthy dose of irreverence. This is the payload of When All Is Still, a rollicking album...
The Poetry of Storms Listening Post 178. They can be meteorological or emotional, a vortex of personal, political or technological upheaval or even (nowadays) a whirlwind of Tweets. Storms typically require cleanup, but what about the flip side—the light that’s more...
Tenor of the Times Listening Post 177. In the popular imagination, time travel typically involves a fanciful machine. In real life, Jeremy Dutcher visited the past using the wax cylinders of an Edison-era phonograph and digital technology that preserved recordings...
Music From Heartstrings Listening Post 176. Denied education, she taught herself. Denied a voice, she just sang louder. Mizgin, born in the Kurdish heartland of eastern Turkey, contracted polio at two and spent her early years at home, unable to go to school....
Renaissance on Thin Ice Listening Post 175. Nothing is permanently frozen in time. In Sápmi—the Sami homeland that straddles northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia’s Kola Peninsula—this can be both blessing and curse. Ođđa áigodat (New Times) is a vivid record of...
Ordinary People Listening Post 174. Gavroche, Eleanor Rigby, Lili Marlene—evocative characters of literature and song are often everyday people in uncommon circumstances or described in illuminating context. When it comes to finely detailed portraits and scenes, the...
Spring’s Hope Eternal Listening Post 173. During the Arab Spring, when authorities in Cairo built walls to block demonstrators from entering Tahrir Square, Youssra El Hawary recalled a satirical poem she had read a few years earlier about a wall. Seeing the verse in...
Making Waves Listening Post 172. It’s easy to exaggerate a kindred connection between two people from the same city, even if they were born 150 years apart. But consider: Jules Verne, who grew up in Nantes, certainly knew that nature can send a wave thousands of miles...
Artist and Island, Uncovered Listening Post 171. The personal and the universal, the yin-yang of human connection. Artists strive for the formula—individual experience finding broad audience—and the Puerto Rican singer-songwriter Kany García has scored with her...
The Village in All of Us Listening Post 170. Eugenia Georgieva knits together instruments, cultures and generations with her graceful, soul-stirring voice. As a member of two ensembles she has performed Slavic and Japanese folk songs and also fused Bulgarian, Indian...
Fireside University Listening Post 169. There is wisdom in movement and movement in wisdom. That’s an essential takeaway—and a lyrical one it is—from Nsimbi, the album and partnership of Ugandan hip-hop pioneer GNL Zamba and American singer-songwriter Miriam Tamar....
Arc de Triomphe Listening Post 168. She has the look of today’s youth—pierced, tattooed, androgynous—and the soul of romantic poets through the ages. She blends her music but refuses to blend herself, or calibrate her career arc according to market forces. And therein...
Sea Changes Listening Post 167. Every sea is a timeless highway of hope and sorrow, and Dafné Kritharas has combed the Aegean for telltale echoes. Though focused on tides from the 1920s and 1930s, her crosscurrents run deeper: In 1492, the multicultural Ottoman Empire...
Street Smart Listening Post 166. They began in struggle, illegal immigrants from Colombia and Argentina playing their music on the streets of Barcelona. Fifteen years later, Che Sudaka has performed more than 1,500 shows in 45 countries, etching a profile as...
Subcontinental Jazz Listening Post 165. Wall Street, Broadway, Bollywood… Legions of aspirants would give anything to work in just one of the places Subhi Khanna passed through on her winding road—from India to America, through finance, journalism and music—pursuing...
A League of Their Own Listening Post 164. The five women and one man of Bonsoir, Catin do superbly everything you’d expect of a Cajun band, and they are always tossing something new into the gumbo. They set any feet within hollering distance two-stepping and waltzing...
Tel Aviv Bachata Listening Post 163. When it comes to synergistic contrasts, to matching moods and cultural elements that don’t typically appear together and then making them crackle, Rotem Cohen has few equals. He began his career writing for some of Israel’s leading...
Samba Showers Listening Post 162. Samba isn’t just Brazil’s most iconic cultural symbol, it’s also a useful lens. From its roots in Africa to its emergence in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, from attracting the most talented artists to inspiring pulsing love stories,...
Monarch & Butterfly Listening Post 161. Could the singing voice of Disney royals Mulan and Jasmine be that of a real princess? Vocal power aside, Lea Salonga is both regal and down to earth, the star who illuminates Broadway, the West End and the global concert...
