Have You Heard?

The Northern Kentucky Brotherhood Singers -- an a capella gospel ensemble who you may remember from their Cityfolk Festival appearances -- were on Fox 19 in Cincinnati last month to promote an upcoming concert.

Nation Beat, who also performed at the 2008 Cityfolk Festival, recently had the honor of performing at Farm Aid with Willie Nelson. You can see two of the songs they performed together, "Cheguei Meu Povo" (below) and "Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain." Their performance was reviewed by Afropop Worldwide.


In 2002, NPR partnered with the Yiddish Radio Project to present a series of Yiddish recordings from the 1930s and '40s that were saved from dumpsters and dusty storeroom shelves by musician and historian Henry Sapoznik. Listen to the 10-part series that was broadcast on NPR, a 26-part series of Gems from the Archive on the Yiddish Radio Project website. The site comes complete with a 'Yid-O-Matic' translator to help all of us non-Yiddish speakers understand it all.

A more recent project tracks Jewish history through vinyl albums collected by Roger Bennett and Josh Kun, who wrote And You Shall Know Us By The Trail Of Our Vinyl, which details Jewish vinyl album covers they have collected over the years. Jewish, in these terms, includes everything from the prolific cantor Sol Zim to the Temptations' Fiddler on the Roof medley. Hear a recent NPR interview with the authors.


World Cafe introduces us to Esau Mwamwaya who plays reggae-pop From Malawi. This recent immigrant from Africa to London isn't well known yet, but his star is rising! (pictured here)

Gary Walker of WBGO lists his pick for the top 10 Jazz CDs released in 2008.