Have You Heard?

Cumbia is evolving, and exploding in popularity from Mexico to Argentina. Listen to this profile of Bomba Estereo on NPR to understand why.

Prepare to be impressed by some four-handed guitar playing. Yes, four hands on ONE guitar. At the 2009 Brazilian Music Institute in Gainesville, Florida CECILIA SIQUEIRA (Uruguay) and FERNANDO LIMA (Brasil) performed Tico Tico no Fuba (Zequinha de Abreu).

Music collected by the late Alan Lomax brings the sound of Haiti to life. Recordings that Lomax made decades ago are now being released as a 10-disc box set, along with a journal and other artifacts from his trip to Haiti. Listen as NPR host Michel Martin speaks with Gage Averill, an ethnomusicologist and a professor of at the University of Toronto, about the project.

The Lomax box set made the Los Angeles Times' Top 10 World Music Albums list this year. So did Oumou Sangare, Vieux Farka Toure and Le Vent du Nord!

Celtic music fans are probably familiar with Irish musician and folklorist Mick Moloney, who just released a CD which celebrates the musical collaboration of the Irish and Jewish populations in New York that peaked between 1880 and 1920. He returns to speak with Fresh Air host Terry Gross about the songs that stemmed from the work of those songwriters and performers of vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley, an area around 28th and Broadway where many music publishing houses were located.