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In the High Middle Ages, Hildegard of Bingen said that "The truly holy person welcomes all that is earthly." William Blake declared in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790) that "Exuberance is beauty." In 1855, Walt Whitman published the poem "Song Of Myself, 51" in Leaves of Grass, which contains the famous line "I am large, I contain multitudes." Which brings us to Polish artist Maria Ka's latest album Di Mashin (The Machine). Ka found that her family had Jewish roots, a discovery that led her to an immersion in Jewish studies and the Yiddish language. She unreels original songs written in Yiddish, embracing a politically active feminism and a committed meta-universality. Her musical vision is fragrantly mystical and musically all encompassing.
Lee Blackstone visits hew new Yiddish cosmos
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Loss galvanizes, loss focuses, and musical artists turn loss into shared reflections. Emi Makabe has focused the passing of her father into a generous meditation on resilience and legacy with Echo. The title reminds us of the connections between generations. Here are ten musical memories that span time and culture, blending a modern jazz sensibility with a traditional Japanese soul.
Born in Japan, where she studied Japanese traditional music, Emi Makabe is an educator and contributor to the jazz scene, composing and performing her own music. Building from a foundation of soaring singing in Japanese, English, and wordless vocalizations, and accompanied by her flute and shamisen, she is joined by jazz-inspired piano, drums, and double bass. Using these materials, Makabe celebrates the legacy of her father.
John Alan Urquhart introduces us to a unique talent.
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Born in Montreal, Haitian-Canadian musician-composer Jowee Omicil plays a variety instruments. He came of age in the choral milieu of his father’s Montreal congregation, studied saxophone and music education at Berklee and has gone on to work with some of the century's masters. Over the course of 2025, Omicil released, one song per month, each accompanied by a philosophizing podcast. In less accomplished hands, the quirky sampling, instrumentation, the wide-ranging and scruffy sonic bricolage could make for a muddy mélange. But no danger lies here in his paradoxical, provocative, ever-changing same; a smoky, sound-shifting extended groove. The collection is called sMiLes. Michael Stone shows you where that groove can take you.
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The Visit isn’t an album built on compromises. Composer-musician Cris Derksen, a Canadian from the North TallCree Reserve on her father’s side, and with a Mennonite lineage from her mother, pushes and cajoles her visions, whether it is in full-throated improvisation or a haunting mood. She’s primarily a cellist, one who works across genres; one of the great joys of listening to The Visit is that it is impossible to attach any kind of handle to the music. Just as you think you have it nailed down, the next track is something different... leading you down strange lanes, or around brilliant corners that offer startling new views. Chris Nickson walks there with you.
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McDowell County West Virginia is nestled in the Appalachian Mountains, and is both stunning and isolated. But, since coal’s heyday has long past, it is also considered the poorest part of the state, if not the entire country. The House of Lord Jesus in Squire is the focus of this remarkable series of live recordings of the Pastor Chris Congregation West Virginia Snake Handler Revival. There are guitars and drums, ecstatic singing, praying and preaching, lots of snakes, and people seemingly possessed as they surrender to a form of Pentecostal practice that uses a quote from Mark 16:18 as their raison d'être. “They shall take up serpents…,” the verse claims and it lends the title to this album.
Read Bruce Miller's review and feel the spirit in the music.
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New sound bites.
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Pelengana Blo, is a member of the Donsoya, the Mandé hunters' brotherhood. He is a renowned master of the Bambara donso foli, an ancient and distinctive style of music from the Dô region in present-day Ségou, Mali. This album is a Tribute to Bantoma Sanogo, on of the historic masters of this music. We will have a full review soon.
December, 2025
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Tune in!
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