PRI: Arts and Entertainment: Recent Episodes
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This podcast features pieces on music, books, film, television, and other arts from some of PRI's most popular programs. It will take you to all corners of the world, and to the undiscovered corners of your own community, highlighting all of the arts along the way.
A unique collection made up of artwork and other objects that escaped Nazi Germany in 1938 is being shown in Prague.
The Würtz Collection is an extraordinary visual record of disability in Europe. It spans thousands of paintings, photographs, engravings and objects that form a visual archive of how disabled people have been portrayed in Europe.
From our partners at Deutsche Welle, DW, Rob Cameron reports.
Click on the player to hear the full story.
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Making art is one of the most fundamental parts of being human.
Exhibit A: The fact that the oldest artworks in the world — cave paintings — were made tens of thousands of years before the creation of writing.
Mahmood Alfageer interprets rock art in the north of Wadi Rum, Jordan.Paul Salopek/National Geographic, Out of Eden WalkThat’s why when National Geographic explorer Paul Salopek set off on his Out of Eden Walk, a journey on foot around the globe, he made sure to walk with artists along the way, looking at the connection between art and human migration.
“Well, there were several. I walked with a bunch of artists in China. And just to provide context, I decided to include art in the walk. I’m a journalist, I’m a reporter … but as I get older, maybe it’s a factor of age, that journalism has limits in terms of understanding societies, understanding human restlessness,” Salopek told The World.
Host Marco Werman continued to speak with Salopek about his time in China, when the first art exhibition on the Out of Eden Walk was introduced.
Marco Werman: Tell us about artist Han Qian, who joined you on your walk. She’s a visual artist and writer. What was the outcome of that collaboration?Paul Salopek: Well, she was doing a kind of introspective work into migration within her own family. She was investigating these kinds of personal issues and then asking bigger questions about the economy, about society, about what happens when you leave home. Can you ever find home again?What did she learn about her family’s history through this project and walking with you? What can you share?She basically looked back at her family. They, themselves, came from northeastern China, migrated to a big industrial city in central China and, in the process, kind of had to leave part of their identities behind. So, she was kind of grappling with issues of her family’s identity. Are they from what is currently called Manchuria, or are they from central China? It’s a very artistic question: “Who are we?”Visual artist Han Qian (right) and walking partner Luke Luo trek through Dongbei. Han joined the Out of Eden Walk to investigate her family’s roots in the chilly region, formerly known as Manchuria, for a conceptual art project about the ideas of home and migration.Paul Salopek/National Geographic, Out of Eden WalkBefore we get back to the artists and walking with artists, I was struck by how Han Qian joined you for a walk after she understood your intent behind the Out of Eden Walk. Have you found, along the route you’re creating, that you’re generating interest and excitement around the idea of long, slow walking, with others really dialing in for the first time to what it can impart?I think this project is kind of a magnet for people who are somewhat uncomfortable with the status quo, whatever that may be. It might be culturally, ideologically, society-wise. And so, artists are a natural segment of people. You know, artists generally tend to kind of be a bit uncomfortable with life, otherwise they wouldn’t ask probing questions like where to locate their life within the cosmos. So, it’s been a fantastic privilege to be able to tap into that energy, Marco, and walk with people like poets, with people who paint in India, with amazing landscape photographers in Turkey, with cinematography artists, video artists in South Korea. This is part of the thrill of the walk.Yeah, I mean, you started to tell us a moment ago about how the Out of Eden Walk has hosted art exhibitions in recent years, two of them, one in Shanghai and one in Seoul. What was the goal of these exhibitions? What was the theme?Going back to my background as a foreign correspondent, when I walk into a new country or a new place, I do the usual homework. I talk to experts. I interview people on the phone. I read books, articles. But I guess as a factor of getting older, Marco, and maybe just slowing down through my project through the years, I think that journalism is limited in some ways. And so, I think I’m migrating more towards art myself. I kind of read the poetry of a country. I look at the country’s visual arts produced in the past and in the present. And this kind of unlocks whole kinds of vistas of investigation that might escape me if I were just focused on current events.A video piece by Alexander Ugay, a Kazakh-Korean artist concerned with issues of exile and remembering, is displayed at The WilloW Art Space in Seoul, South Korea.Paul Salopek/National Geographic, Out of Eden WalkNow, the exhibition in South Korea that was tied to the Out of Eden Walk actually coincided with a story we paid close attention to here on the show: the declaration of martial law by former President Yoon Suk-yeol, which was ultimately short-lived and resulted in his removal from office. How did that moment reframe what you were doing with this art show in Seoul?That was pretty wild, the timing of that. So, these exhibitions take, as you might imagine, a bit of time to set up — months, right? And so, we have to find a local gallery, a local partner who might be a curator to help us sift through artists who might come walk with me. That’s part of the deal. And that was all done, and then literally the day before the opening of our exhibition was this attempted coup by the president, and the streets started to fill with hundreds of thousands of protesters. And so, I had an emergency phone call. I was kind of rushing back to Seoul to attend to this, and I called Sooyoung Leam, the curator, and said, “Are we going to go ahead with this?” And she said, “Absolutely. It’s even more important now than ever in terms of art supporting democracy.” So, it was a really amazing, amazing time to be showing young Korean artists, at the same time that there were protests just outside on the streets.Exhibition curator Sooyoung Leam at a massive pro-democracy rally in Seoul. The Out of Eden Walk exhibition coincided with a failed attempt by South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol to impose martial law on the country.Paul Salopek/National Geographic, Out of Eden WalkWhat about more exhibitions in the future? Are there plans?There are. I mean, they take a lot of work, I have got to be honest. I was thinking of having them in every country and getting artists from each country to walk with me for a little while, then do an exhibition before I walk out of the next country. I’m not sure I’ve got the kind of bandwidth for that, so we’ll be picking and choosing on our walk through North America, down into South America and to the tip of Tierra del Fuego. Looking forward to that.Yeah, it’s a great goal. When you think about human migration and art making, Paul, how do you make sense of it? Like, what is the connection? What’s the point?Yeah, think about this, Marco. I think, you know, art, the impulse to be creative, is one of the fundamental attributes of being human. It’s as old as movement, right? We’re a walking species. We’re restless. We move around. We vote with our feet, usually to fill our bellies, right? Something very pragmatic. But we also ask ourselves, as a species, where we are and why we are here. These big, deep questions. So, art has paired with walking, going way back. There were the griots of Western Africa, the traveling storytellers who would pluck a thumb harp, walking between villages. There are ancient Greek poets, Chinese poets. Movement, travel was part of their methodology. So, I think I’m kind of not inventing anything new by including artists in this global walk. I think I’m actually harkening back to the original bedrock of what it means to be human.Parts of this interview have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Writer and National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek has embarked on a 24,000-mile storytelling trek across the world called the “Out of Eden Walk.” The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonders of our world, has funded Salopek’s project since 2013. Explore the project here. Follow the journey on X at @PaulSalopek, @outofedenwalk.
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Jaime Silva started to collect World Cup sticker albums in 1982, when he was 11-years-old.
Now at 55, he’s filling up his 12th sticker album and is almost done with it, just days before the 2026 FIFA World Cup begins.
Silva, a historian in Colombia, collects all sorts of World Cup memorabilia, such as the official balls and posters from each edition of the tournament. But he says that the sticker album, printed by the Italian company Panini every four years, holds a special place in his heart.
“This booklet allows you to see all of the players in the world cup — in one place,” Silva explained. “It shows you information about each player, like when they were born, how tall they are, or what club they play for.”
Panini has been partnering with FIFA since the 1970 World Cup, printing the official sticker albums for every edition of the tournament. Manuel Rueda/The WorldThe Panini stickers feature the photos of almost all the players who will be in the World Cup. They come in glossy packets that contain seven palm-sized stickers and cost $1.25 to $2, depending on the country you’re in. To complete the sticker album, you need to get 980 different stickers.
For many soccer fans around the world, completing the comprehensive sticker book is an obsession that tests their patience — and their wallets — in the days leading up to the tournament.
The sticker album for the 2026 World Cup has 100 pages. There is a two-page spread for every team participating in the tournament. Manuel Rueda/The WorldIn Chile, more than 8,000 fans gathered in a stadium last week to trade duplicate stickers.
And in Argentina, there is currently a shortage of stickers that has created a black market, with glossy Panini packets selling for two to three times their regular price — echoing a 2022 sticker crisis that led to government intervention.
Like baseball trading cards or jigsaw puzzles, the Panini album is an old-fashioned hobby that has survived the digital era. And in many countries, it has become a quintessential part of the World Cup experience.
Hundreds of fans gather at a shopping mall in Bogotá to trade duplicate World Cup stickers. Cooperation is essential to completing the sticker album. Manuel Rueda/The World“People like it because it’s a concrete memento, something they can hold on to,” Silva said.
But filling the album requires persistence — and cooperation. The more stickers you have in your album, the more likely you are to get duplicates when you open a new packet. So, trading duplicates is the only way most people can complete the album without spending a small fortune.
“Your chances of getting a new sticker get exponentially smaller as you reach the end,” Silva said.
A fan displays an unusual Lionel Messi gold sticker, which can sell for hundreds of dollars.Manuel Rueda/The WorldIn fact, once you have 800 stickers in the album (out of the total of 980), only 1 out of 5 stickers you draw from each packet is likely to be new to you. Once you are missing one sticker in the album, your chances of getting it drop to 1 in 980.
Those kinds of odds inevitably push collectors towards cooperation and have turned filling Panini albums into a social phenomenon.
Maria Claudia Cruz, a collector in Bogota, regularly goes to a shopping mall in the north of the city, where dozens of people show up every night at the parking lot to exchange their duplicates.
Every night, dozens of fans meet outside the Unicentro shopping mall in Bogotá to trade World Cup stickers. Manuel Rueda/The World“I don’t follow football that much,” she said. “But I love helping my son fill out the album — you get to know people and get the kids away from technology.”
Cruz’s 11-year-old son Matias says he’s a big fan of Colombia’s national team. He added that the sticker album has helped him develop social skills and learn about new places, like Jordan or Curaçao.
“The last World Cup we were trying to fill the album, but we couldn’t,” he said. “That’s why I’m trying to trade a lot this time.”
Matias said that it takes time to get the final stickers, but with so many people at the mall, trading for the stickers he needs is doable.
“If you have a good player like [Kylian] Mbappe or [Lionel] Messi, you can even trade it for more cards,” he said.
Some collectors also go to street vendors, who sell individual stickers that have already been taken out of their packets.
“It’s cheaper to do it like this when you’re in the final stretch,” said Andres Valencia, who is filling out the 2026 album with his two kids.
Street vendors sell individual stickers that have already been removed from their packets. Some fans buy these individual stickers as their albums reach their final stages. Manuel Rueda/The WorldJaime Silva, the historian, says that to fill his album, he bought two boxes containing 1,456 stickers, which cost him about $270.
But 630 of those stickers were duplicates, so he could complete only about 85% of the album with the two boxes he bought.
To fill in the rest of the album, he has resorted to trading his duplicates — in parks and shopping malls.
“It’s part of the fun,” he said. “It’s better to do it like this than by relying only on your bank account.”
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At the start of the 20th century, Haiti was in upheaval. A bit like today. There was a string of coups, and the one in 1915 was particularly bloody, ending with a murdered president being dragged through the streets.
That’s when the United States went in and took over for 19 years.
Alain Martin’s grandfather was born and raised during that occupation, but never spoke about it with his grandson.
Martin came to the US as an adolescent, and after learning about the US occupation of Haiti in college, he decided to make a documentary about it.
“The Forgotten Occupation” was screened at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum at an event hosted by Haiti Cultural Exchange.Amy Bracken/The WorldMartin called it “The Forgotten Occupation: Jim Crow goes to Haiti,” and framed it as a letter to his grandfather, Brunel.
“Dear Papi,” the narration began, “I’m writing to let you know that I spent the last 10 years of my life making a movie about the US occupation of Haiti.”
Martin describes his“Papi” as being part of a better-off class in Haiti, who had a certain disdain for the poorer majority.
As an adult, Brunel wasn’t alone in thinking Haiti would be better off if it came under US control again.
Martin said he feels a little guilty about making the film.
“This is a movie that’s going to be critical of the ideas you had about Haiti, about Haitians, about race, about class,” he said. “It’s going to be critical of the love affair that you had with the United States.”
Reporter Amy Bracken interviews Alain Martin, director of “The Forgotten Occupation.”Courtesy of Alex Bershaw/@alexbershawThe film actually took more than a decade to make. Martin spent much of it interviewing historians, writers and activists, reading their books and poring over papers and film in archives.
He learned about how, after the 1915 coup, the US moved into Haiti and stayed until 1934.
The ostensible reason was stabilization, but the film shows there was much more to it.
“The Monroe Doctrine claimed that the United States can intervene anywhere to maintain its own interests,” Simmons University’s Patrick Sylvain said.
That was President Theodore Roosevelt’s aggressive interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. It was adopted by his successors and used to justify military intervention in Haiti and other neighboring countries in the early 1900s.
Some Haitians — especially those who were better-off — welcomed the Americans at first, thinking they would bring stability and protect Haitian business interests. But Martin said there was a history behind the unrest that the Americans couldn’t solve. Instead, they took advantage of it.
“After slaves defeated Napoleon’s army in 1804, for France to acknowledge Haiti as a nation, it demanded that Haitians pay the slave masters they had defeated reparations,” he said. In short: “We fight; I kick your a–. I’ve got to give you money for losing.”
To pay France, Haiti had to take out loans. By 1915, some 80% of the Haitian government’s budget was still going to foreign banks.
As a result, Martin said, “there was very little money to develop the country, uplift the country, to invest in social programs, to invest in infrastructure. So, people were always upset, always rising up against the government.”
Audience members watch the film, “The Forgotten Occupation,” which was screened at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum at an event hosted by Haiti Cultural Exchange.Amy Bracken/The WorldThe US brought a form of stability, but in some ways, it also picked up where the French had left off. It took over Haiti’s finances, and National City Bank of New York — Citigroup’s predecessor — profited from its debt.
In the film, Hans Schmidt, a historian who wrote a book on the US occupation of Haiti, described how the US controlled and depleted Haiti’s finances.
“The US took over the customs receivership,” he explained. “They would collect all the revenues, and then hand them over, not to the government, but to pay off the debts first of the foreign investors, and if there was anything left over, then the government could have that.”
The Marines even restored a form of slavery, in which poor Haitians were forced to work for free on infrastructure projects.
Opportunities for exploitation kept growing.
“[You] have more and more American companies who are interested in Haiti to invest in, especially in agriculture,” said University of Virginia Professor Laurent Dubois. “From these guys’ perspective, Haiti was essentially a place that was just waiting to be kind of taken over and turned to profit.”
And that’s what happened when obstacles were removed.
“What is inherently radical about the Haitian Constitution, about a Constitution made by formerly enslaved people?” Haitian journalist Nathalie Cerin asked in an interview with Martin. “Of course there will be things in there that go against imperialist interests.”
Oberlin College Professor Yveline Alexis speaks in the film about the Cacos resistance fighters during the US occupation of Haiti.Courtesy of Alain Martin/The Forgotten OccupationThe US forced changes to the Constitution, including its ban on foreign ownership of land.
Americans were now able to take over large swaths of the country, setting up plantations served by cheap local labor, and displacing thousands.
Martin wanted to know — given the US’ history in Haiti — whether Haitians today would welcome the American military’s return, to stop the gangs.
He called his friends and asked, with the violence gripping the country today, if the US should occupy Haiti again.
He posed the question in various ways, pointing out to one friend that he wasn’t even able to attend his grandfather’s funeral.
A couple of them said no to a US invasion or occupation. Then one after another said yes, some emphatically.
Professor Sylvain explained that desperation erases memories of past wrongs. He used a Haitian expression, “Yo pran ou nan vant (They’ve got you by the belly)” to express how the one in power isn’t held accountable. “That’s what poverty does,” he said. “It erases dignity. You can’t stand up and say, ‘No.’”
That is why, he said, the past US occupation of Haiti is now largely “forgotten.”
Roxane Gay, a best-selling author, is the documentary’s executive producer. She said she knew nothing about this occupation before seeing a rough cut of the film — despite having Haitian parents and having written books about Haiti. Now, she thinks it’s out at the right time.
“It feels prescient, and it feels in many ways like history could and might repeat itself,” she said. “And that’s always unfortunate when we recognize that not much has been learned.”
The question of whether or not the US should invade Haiti again is abstract, given that the Trump administration has announced no such plans.
The US presence is felt, however, in the deployment of gunboats to the bay of Port-au-Prince, as part of Operation Southern Spear, the US military buildup in the Caribbean.
When asked if he has any ideas of how the current crisis in Haiti could be resolved, Martin said he doesn’t, but there’s one thing he’s sure of: The United States will have to be involved in some way.
The recent New York screening of his documentary was hosted by the nonprofit group Haiti Cultural Exchange at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum.
The film will continue to be screened in the US, Canada and Haiti, and it’s now also available on streaming.
The post At a time of crisis for Haiti, a filmmaker reflects on past US intervention appeared first on The World from PRX.
Live classical music is usually a formal affair.
But one family in Prague, in the Czech Republic, is changing things up with relaxed concerts right in their living room.
From our partners at Deutsche Welle, DW, Reporter Rob Cameron brings us the story.
Click on the player to hear the full story.
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“Daughters of Donbas: Songs of Stolen Children” is a Ukrainian musical group that seeks to give voice to the roughly 20,000 children that Russia has abducted from occupied Ukrainian territories.
The project is led by a Ukrainian-Canadian singer and a young flutist who was rescued from abduction.
From our partners at Deutsche Welle, DW, Arts Journalist Breandáin O’Shea reports.
Click on the player to hear the full story.
The post Daughters of the Donbas group creates music remembering abducted Ukrainian children appeared first on The World from PRX.
Acelino Huni Kuin lives in a small wooden house in Jordão — a municipality in the western Brazilian state of Acre — with his wife, kids and grandkids. It’s a remote area of Brazil that one can only reach by boat or a small plane.
The flight from Rio Branco, the capital of the state, to Jordão, a town with fewer than 10,000 people, takes almost two hours. By boat, it can take up to three days.
Jordão is a town with less than 10,000 people in the state of Acre, in the Brazilian Amazon.Gisele Regatão/The WorldThe journey to Italy is obviously much longer. But that’s where Acelino was two years ago, painting a huge mural that covered the façade of the last Venice Biennial with colorful parrots, crocodiles and fish.
He is one of the original members of an Indigenous art group from the Brazilian Amazon called MAHKU, which stands for Movement of the Artists Huni Kuin. It has eight members today, most of them from the same family.
Acelino Huni Kuin is one of the original members of MAHKU, or Movement of the Artists Huni Kuin. (Gisele Regatão/The World)Gisele Regatão/The WorldHuni Kuin are native to this area of Brazil, and the group is not only using art to share their Indigenous culture with the rest of the world, but also to gain recognition in their own state in Brazil.
Acelino goes back and forth between Jordão and their village, Chico Curumin, which is three hours away by fast boat. He bought his house with money from his art, and that’s also been one of the goals of MAHKU: to sell art to buy real estate.
“This canvas means we are calling for strength,” he said, showing a painting filled with fish, birds and Indigenous people in bright yellow, pink, orange, blue and green. A snake forms three long waves in the middle.
Acelino Huni Kuin bought this house in Jordão with money from his art, following one of MAHKU’s goals: selling art to buy land.Gisele Regatão/The WorldArt made with ayahuascaAll of MAHKU’s drawings and paintings represent their traditional songs. They create the art after drinking ayahuasca, an infusion prepared with plants from the Amazon. It has hallucinogenic properties, and the Huni Kuin people also use it for rituals and healing.
“My father was a storyteller and musician and I fell in love with the songs, I’m still enchanted with them today,” said Ibã Sales Huni Kuin, Acelino’s uncle and the founder of the group. “We don’t have writing, just memory. The [COVID-19] pandemic took so many of us, we have been killed since the first rubber cycle.”
He was referring to the boom of rubber production in the area in the late 1800s that killed many native people.
Today, there are about 1.7 million Indigenous people in Brazil — less than 1% of the country’s population. Since 1996, their land has been demarcated, but they don’t own it — the federal government does.
Ibã Huni Kuin, Bane Huni Kuin, Movimento dos Artistas Huni Kuin (MAHKU), “Untitled,” 2017 Collection MASP.Courtesy of Eduardo OrtegaIbã is 62 years old and he started researching the songs of the Huni Kuin people in the 1980s.
“Ibã was very worried about the loss of their language,” said Kássia Borges, Ibã’s wife. “He thought that with the songs he would recover the language, and he has succeeded.”
Borges is Karajá, another Indigenous group, but she’s been part of MAHKU for the past eight years. Since 2018, Borges and Ibã have lived mostly in Uberlândia, in the state of Minas Gerais, where she is an art professor at the federal university.
YouTube videosIba’s songs and drawings first grabbed international attention thanks to his work with anthropologist Amilton de Mattos.
Mattos, who is a professor at the Federal University of Acre, met Ibã in a training program for Indigenous educators in the late 2000s, and he started filming him.
“They were little videos, Ibã would sing and explain the song showing his drawings,” Mattos said.
Mattos ended up organizing a drawing workshop and then an exhibition with those illustrations in 2011. That was their first show.
Mattos posted images of the exhibit on his blog, and it got the attention of the Cartier Foundation, a contemporary art museum in Paris.
They came to Jordão and bought around 15 drawings for less than $5,000, according to Mattos. Today, each of MAHKU’s paintings sells for anywhere between $10,000 and $30,000.
“As you can imagine, it was a revolution in our lives,” Mattos said.
After the drawings were shown in Paris, Ibã, Acelino and others formalized MAHKU as a group in 2013.
Despite MAHKU’s success at museums in Brazil and abroad, they are not very well-known in their own state of Acre and its capital, Rio Branco.Gisele Regatão/The WorldMarc Pottier, an independent art curator who works in Brazil, saw MAHKU’s drawings at the Cartier Foundation. “I thought it was absolutely superb. I loved it,” he said.
In 2014, Pottier commissioned the group to paint the walls of an old hospital in the city of São Paulo. They made huge snakes walking through the room in their very first mural.
Pottier believes that, despite MAHKU’s success, Indigenous culture is still under-valued in Brazil.
“They don’t realize how important it is to preserve such a culture, to preserve people who are taking care of nature,” he said.
This painting by MAHKU was commissioned by Pinacoteca de São Paulo in 2020.Gisele Regatão/The WorldPottier explained that the art world can also bring a lot of pressure for native people as they are exposed to greedy collectors and an opaque market.
“It’s very frightening, because you enter the worst of civilization. It’s something you feel like you’re trapped in. It’s another sort of prison,” he said.
Inside museums in São Paulo and alongside cattle in AcreThe Museum of Art of São Paulo has brought the members of MAHKU to the institution around 10 times over the past years, and today, it owns around 70 of their pieces.
Guilherme Giufrida, a MASP curator, said that, at first glance, people might see MAHKU’s work as simple: They draw and paint colorful figures. But he explained that it is just an entry-point.
“It’s like the tip of the iceberg. But there’s a whole iceberg for you to discover. And then you’ll dive into a philosophical, mythical and very fascinating universe,” he said.
The Museum of Art of São Paulo owns around 70 of MAHKU’s pieces, including this one, “Kapenawe pukenibu,” 2022.Gisele Regatão/The WorldGiufrida said the art market can be greedy and exploitative, and he believes a museum needs to think in a different way.
“The museum is dealing with what we expect to be a collection that will last for centuries — even longer. So, we have a responsibility that goes beyond the immediate demands of the market,” he said.
Despite MAHKU’s success inside museums in Brazil and abroad, they are not very well-known in their own state.
“There’s a denial of Indigenous culture as the basis for local traditions,” said Fabiana Chaves, a culture producer at the Federal University of Acre. “On the other hand, there’s a lot of appreciation for country culture from the cattle industry that was brought here.”
Cattle were brought to Acre in the 1970s during the military dictatorship years and it’s now the largest industry there.
Art as advocacy, at home and abroadIn the past few years, two of Ibã’s daughters have been more active with MAHKU: Rita Huni Kuin and Yaka Huni Kuin. They both see a strong connection between their art and advocacy.
“My voice is not only to speak about my culture, but it’s a form of protest, because we Indigenous people are seen as invisible,” said Rita, who is also a leader for Indigenous women.
“We want our work to get as far as possible, to bring respect for Indigenous people, so that we can hold on to our native land with our art,” Yaka said.
Rita Huki Kuin and Yaka Huni Kuin are both Ibã Sales Huni Kuin’s daughters and among four of his children who are part of MAHKU.Gisele Regatão/The WorldTheir father, Ibã, shares their sentiment. He’s currently looking for a bigger gallery that can represent them abroad.
“Lately we are not selling a lot of work, our canvases are gathering dust and our members need the money,” he said.
MAHKU will paint a mural at a museum in Denver in November — it will be their first in the US.
Ibã said he hopes international collectors will understand that what they do is not just art, it’s much more than that.
Support for this project was provided by a PSC-CUNY Award, jointly funded by The Professional Staff Congress and The City University of New York.
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The northern Finnish port city of Oulu is one of two European Capitals of Culture in 2026. It is located nearly 380 miles north of the capital Helsinki.
The city plans to host more than 3,000 cultural events throughout the year. Parts of the 2026 culture program will also reflect Oulu’s industrial past.
From our partners at Deutsche Welle, DW, Lars Bevanger takes a look at what visitors to the northernmost shores of the Bothnian Sea can hope to see.
Click on the player to hear the full story.
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Emiko Nakagawa is a tap dancer from Japan who lives in New York. And she has an Instagram following that’s in the tens of thousands. There is a reason for that. Nakagawa’s exuberant, athletic videos show her dancing in front of major New York City landmarks, like the Brooklyn Bridge to music by Daft Punk, or in Times Square to music by Masego.
Emiko Nakagawa, 28, from Tokyo has been tap dancing almost her entire life, starting from the age of six when she says she was immediately hooked.Courtesy of Sayaka MasumotoIn a midtown Manhattan studio with mirrors and ballet barres, it took no time to get Nakagawa up and dancing.
“Tap dance is my life,” Nakagawa said, laughing. The slim, energetic dancer sported a black turtleneck and gray cargo pants, and her feet created complex rhythms, in a way that seemed effortless.
The 28-year-old from Tokyo has been tap dancing almost her entire life, starting when she was 6 years old. She said she was immediately hooked.
“When I took the tap dance class for the first time I felt like ‘oh, it is very interesting,’” she recalled, “because I can create a rhythm by myself and I can introduce my own rhythm to the other people.”
Nakagawa moved to New York in 2021 to study in the international program at the Broadway Dance Center, which is when she began creating short videos set to hip-hop and contemporary pop music in streets and parks around the city.
“The speed and clarity of her footwork, of her choreography, is remarkable and fascinating. I mean, it draws you in,” said Ryan P. Casey, who profiled Emiko Nakagawa in Dance Magazine’s “25 Dancers to watch in 2026.” It’s a list of the 25 up and coming dancers to watch from the entire dance industry – including ballet, modern, Broadway – from all over the world.
Emiko Nakagawa moved to New York in 2021 to study in the international program at the Broadway Dance Center, which is when she began creating short videos set to hip-hop and contemporary pop music in streets and parks around New York City.Courtesy of Sayaka Masumoto“She consistently churns out these speedy, intricate, mesmerizing videos, oftentimes on a small tap board, which is also intriguing because the limitation of space is such an interesting factor,” Casey added.
Nakagawa creates this magic on a foldable wooden board, just a little bigger than a doormat. And the videos are shot from below, so viewers can see, not just her feet, but her whole body and her location.
“I really love to show my people who follow me on my Instagram both the beautiful New York view and my tap dance style,” Nakagawa explained.
She developed her style by studying traditional American tap dance techniques in Tokyo with a teacher who rigorously trained her. Her technique is unique because she knows old-style tap, but her choice of music and movement is contemporary.
“I just want to do the street style to move a little bigger, like widely, with my tap dancing,” she explained. “I just want to combine hip-hop, like, street style and tap dancing. This is my style.”
Her first Instagram hit was set to Eminem’s “Godzilla,” followed by dances to Kendrik Lamar, Michael Jackson and Diana Ross, among others.
“What I admire so much about Emiko at this point in her journey is she’s extremely technically capable, but she’s also very interested in style,” said Caleb Teicher, a Bessie Award-winning dancer. They first came across Emiko Nakagawa on Instagram — and have since become a mentor and collaborator.
“She doesn’t just make a lot of sounds and those sounds aren’t just clean,” Teicher explained,“ but she is formulating a personal expression, a personal perspective through tap dance. When I see Emiko dance, I know it is Emiko dancing, even if I didn’t see her face or the outline of her body, I would know it’s her way of dancing.”
She may be young, but Nakagawa has already danced with tap superstars like Michelle Dorrance, in places like the Joyce Theatre and Jacob’s Pillow. And she says she has big dreams: dancing on Broadway one day. But she doesn’t want to stop there.
“One of the biggest dreams for me is to be a bridge between other countries and Japan,” Nakagawa said, “because the Japanese tap dance community is very small, so it needs to be inspired by other countries’ artists. So, I really want to bring the tap dance spirit of New York.”
Spirit is a word Emiko Nakagawa uses a lot. And it’s something she finds hard to contain. When she speaks, she is soft-spoken and still. But when she dances, she is electric.
“She has a long journey ahead of her,” Teicher said. “She’s still quite young, and even though she’s done a lot and has amassed a great following and has some great credits to her name, she has a lot more she can do as a dancer and choreographer, a tap dance artist. So, I’m excited to see what she does.”
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Jan. 26 is Australia Day, a national holiday that commemorates the 1788 landing of England’s first fleet off Sydney Harbor, when they raised the Union flag. Over the years, Australia Day and its celebration of colonialism have been — to say the least — a complicated one, particularly for the Indigenous people who’ve lived on the continent for tens of thousands of years. A play by Jane Harrison, “The Visitors,”reimagines that day and is currently playing in New York.
The play is set on a rock by what is now called Sydney Cove, where six Aboriginal elders and one young man meet to decide whether to welcome people from the eleven ships in the harbor or tell them to go away. Playwright Jane Harrison, who is a descendant of the Muruwari people of New South Wales, said she got the idea to write an Australia Day play almost twenty years ago.
“There hadn’t been a play about the Aboriginal’s perspective on that event,” Harrison recalled, “and so, I thought it’s time for us to get our voice out there.”
The play premiered in 2013, was part of the Sydney Festival in 2020, and was revived in 2023, when it won a Sydney Theatre Award for best new work. Harrison has turned the play into both a novel and an opera.
Harrison imagines her characters debating how to handle the new arrivals off their shores. Some want to fight the intruders. Others want to welcome them. Harrison said she was very influenced by the Paddy Chayefsky play, “Twelve Angry Men,” about a jury debating to convict or acquit a murder suspect.
“The Visitors” play, featuring the 2025 cast.Courtesy of Redhanded ProductionsAlso, she added “I wanted to give my characters western names but kind of slightly old-fashioned names like Walter, et cetera.”
In fact, Wesley Enoch, who’s directed three plays by Harrison, said the playwright wrote a stage direction on how to costume these characters.
“What Jane wrote in the play was they, ‘must wear suits as if they’re at a board meeting,’” he explained, “because contemporary Australia, in this case, the contemporary world, must give status to these characters; that they are not infantilized natives sitting on a rock, you know, that you can say is in the history. The story is absolutely made contemporary.”
Harrison says she’s playing with time.
“There’s an Aboriginal concept of time which is the past, the present and the future co-existing together,” she said, “and that’s what I really wanted to bring to the fore. That idea that you know we live with the past; it’s in our bodies. The bodies hold the score of colonization.”
Enoch said Australia Day is quite contentious for the Aboriginal community.
“Because we go, yes, it’s the beginning of the colonial project in this country, but it also is the beginning of our oppression as Aboriginal people,” he explained. “Within two years of the colony being established, two-thirds of the Aboriginal population of the region died from smallpox, from frontier wars [or] even just the common cold. And what Jane does is just subtly bring a lot of those elements into the play. And what I’m interested in is, is this notion of how the retelling of history can tell us something new about ourselves today.”
Indeed, as the elders debate whether to let the visitors in, an ancient custom is invoked.
“The Visitors” play will run until Feb. 1 in NYC.Courtesy of Redhanded Productions“’Welcome to country’ is a ceremony that Aboriginal people participate in, to this day,” Harrison said. “And it involves an elder welcoming the people gathered there in the place and they often talk about ‘you’re welcome to this country from the tops of the trees to the roots of the trees.’ And I think it’s such an act of generosity.”
Even as the play demonstrates this Aboriginal generosity, Enoch said not all members of the cast were able to get visas to perform the play in New York.
“We had really big issues with visas getting into the United States,” he noted. “The kind of systemic criminalization of Aboriginal people over, you know, centuries has meant that there’s a lot of things in our communities that when we go to get a visa to come to the United States now — even if it’s something we did as kids — we can’t come, you know? And it’s one of those things that is a real shame.”
So, to perform the play in the US, Enoch had to bring in some new Aboriginal actors and leave others behind. Still, he added, “Our stories actually do resonate. We can teach each other how to be better human beings by listening to other people’s stories.”
“The Visitors” will be at the Perelman Performing Arts Center in New York City through February 1st.
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In the months leading up to Christmas, artisans in Indian-controlled Kashmir are generally busy making ornaments that end up on Christmas trees around the world.
They work in home-based workshops using a traditional papier-mâché technique.
Typically, they have to hustle to fill orders, but this year, because of US tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, demand has significantly dropped.
Syed Shahriyar visited some of these artisans in the city of Srinagar and gathered images of their work.
Click on the player to hear the story.
Once dried into round ornaments, traditional Kashmiri artists hand paint and decorate each piece.Syed Shahriyar/The WorldKashmiri artisans use a traditional papier-mâché technique to create their Christmas ornaments before they are painted by hand.Syed Shahriyar/The WorldWhile artisans in Kashmir used to create between 40,000 to 50,000 ornaments each Christmas season, US tariffs have caused demand to drop to about 4,000 to 5,000.Syed Shahriyar/The WorldChristmas ornaments, also called baubles, are created in many shapes, including stars, bells, hanging deer, elephants, cats and hearts.Syed Shahriyar/The WorldThe post Demand for Christmas ornaments hand-crafted in Kashmir drops amid US tariffs appeared first on The World from PRX.
Many fans of the Japanese comics genre manga consider the 1988 Japanese manga hit “Akira” — about a boy and a scientific experiment gone wrong — an all-time classic film. Akira helped bring the manga craze to the West. And it’s also the name of, and inspiration for, a comics store in Madrid, which has been recently named the best in the world.
“I love graphic novels,” said Nazaret Garcia, who shopped at the store recently with her 9-year-old son. “But I also like classic superhero comics. I go from one extreme to the other.”
And many can do precisely that at Akira Comics. It has everything from manga to the Marvel universe to fantasy literature.
Akira Comics in Madrid offers a variety of comics and literature.Gerry Hadden/The WorldGarcia said she only shops at Akira Comics, even though in Madrid there are several other comics stores. “It’s a fantasy-land. You become immersed in another world.”
Akira is like no other comic store on Earth — which is partly why it won Best on Earth at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, the biggest yearly comics industry gathering hosted in major cities around the globe.
If you walk around the 9,000 square foot Akira store — the largest in the world — you soon will find a life-size facade of a Hobbit house. It’s a replica of Bilbo Baggins’ place, from “The Lord of the Rings” fantasy series.
Shoppers to Akira Comics can revel in areas like the replica Hobbit house, inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” series.Gerry Hadden/The World“Instead of using all of our wall space for comic books, we decided to do something no business person in their right mind would do,” Akira co-owner Jesus Marugán told The World.
The store has a to-scale replica of R2D2, the beeping droid from the “Star Wars” franchise.Gerry Hadden/The WorldTo wit, wasting prime retail space on non-sale decorations.
“… But since we’re bona fide weirdos, we took the weird route,” Marugán said.
And when people saw the hobbit house, many were elated and intrigued. “And that’s how it all started,” he said.
But where will the fantasy end? Marugán has no idea.
On a quick tour of Akira, The World saw a to-scale replica of R2D2, the beeping droid from the “Star Wars” franchise.
Two columns are holding up the store’s second floor; one has been transformed into a magical, glowing tree. The other is the twisting green beanstalk that a certain Jack once climbed.
There’s an upper level to the store currently being remodeled to emulate a European cathedral.
“For those unfamiliar with comics, it’s to let them know they’re in the European section for sci-fi, fantasy and Steampunk literature,” Marugán said.
When done, the walls and ceiling will appear as vaulted, stone arches, replete with gargoyles in the form of Yoda, the “Star Wars” Jedi master, and Stitch, the Disney alien.
But, by far, Akira’s largest section is devoted to Japanese manga: a street sign at the start of the long corridor reads, “Neo-Tokyo District.” The area is adorned with red Japanese lanterns.
“Our clients really like our style, the way we think,” Marugán said proudly. “We put our soul into this place. We leave a trace of our essence in everything we do.”
Clients recognize that, and are drawn to the positive vibe, the helpful staff and a selection of over 60,000 comics and books to browse through. For serious collectors, like Madrid college student Alejandro Carasa, it’s a place where rare gems appear.
“We just saw an exclusive limited edition of The Wolverine, from Marvel’s X-Men,” Carasa said. “They’re always getting new and rare stuff in. You need to be on the ball and get here fast. Otherwise, things sell out.”
Shoppers to the Akira Comics store in Madrid are greeted by a “Neo-Tokyo District” sign, letting them know they’ve entered the beloved Japanese manga part of the store.Gerry Hadden/The WorldGetting there does take some effort. Akira Comics is located in Madrid’s far north, and during the week, it only opens from 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
While The World visited the store, a woman complained to a clerk that she and her kid had been coming by day after day, only to find the store closed. Those tight hours might explain why, before opening, the sidewalk outside is usually filled with comic lovers waiting to get in.
The store attracts customers seeking rare and limited comics, that some say, you can’t find anywhere else in town.Gerry Hadden/The WorldAmong them is a young office worker named Maria Serrano, who recently traveled an hour and a half on the subway from the far south of the city.
“We came all this way just for this,” she said. “It’s our third try. My boyfriend and I are creating a shelf at home to display all of our various Marvel comics editions. And we hope to find more.”
Once Akira’s doors open, Serrano and the others rush inside. Each into a world of their own choosing.
The post The world’s best comics store says immersive fantasy is key to its success appeared first on The World from PRX.
Every August, the Scottish capital turns into a stage. For three and a half weeks, Edinburgh hosts The Fringe, the world’s largest performing arts festival.
This year’s tally: nearly 4,000 shows, artists from more than 70 countries and genres spanning from improvised magic to Nora Ephron-inspired romcoms and even punk ballet.
Comedian Adam Greene leans into wordplay with “The Wizard of Ozempic” — a Fringe show that, he admits, has almost nothing to do with Dorothy, Toto or wizards.Rebecca Rosman/The WorldIt’s exhilarating. It’s also overwhelming.
The Pleasance Courtyard is the heart of the action, a makeshift watering hole buzzing with performers and festivalgoers. With so much going on, it’s a wonder how anyone gets noticed.
“Fame helps. Money helps,” London comic Adam Greene said. Without either, you’d better have a “striking title and a great poster.”
Greene’s own flyer features him dressed as Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz,” Toto in one hand, an Ozempic needle in the other. The title reads: Adam Greene and the Wizard of Ozempic.
At the Fringe, puns go far. So does stamina. Many performers spend hours each day on the pavements, handing out flyers to strangers — sometimes in chicken suits, sometimes while playing harp.
For performers, whether it’s their first festival, or they’re veterans, it’s all about getting noticed. And many go to great lengths to find creative ways to stand out from the rest of the crowd.
Australian clown Jeromaia Detto turned flyering into performance art. In a red-and-white cap and black unitard, he danced, twirled and distributed flyers in mid-spin.
His Fringe show “When I Grow Up” is fast, playful and mirrors his rules for successful flyering: “always be moving, always be smiling, notice everything and, above all — play,” he said.
Australian clown Jeromaia Detto, 33, hands out flyers for his show “When I Grow Up” outside Bristo Square. Detto says flyering can bring in half the audience for his shows.Rebecca Rosman/The WorldThe critics and the hype machineBut charm and paper alone won’t fill theaters. Critics can help if performers can catch their eye.
Tim Bano, a theater critic filing this year for the Financial Times, said, starting in April, his inbox fills with hundreds of press releases a day. But once on the ground, even the spreadsheets collapse under the weight of so many shows. “Very quickly, you start relying on word of mouth,” he explained. “What’s the best thing you’ve seen?”
That question circulates across the city, forming a real-time recommendation engine. It’s how small shows snowball into sellouts.
Producer Francesca Moody, who helped launch the drama series “Fleabag” and “Baby Reindeer,” said there’s no formula. The so-called “secret sauce” is pure commitment. “You have to give 1,000% of yourself to a show,” she said. “That belief is often bound up in its success.”
Producer Francesca Moody, who helped launch the drama series “Fleabag” and “Baby Reindeer,” has guided several hits at this year’s Fringe, including “Ohio” and “Garry Starr’s Classic Penguins.”Rebecca Rosman/The WorldThis year, several of Moody’s projects rose to the top of the Fringe buzz. “Ohio,” an intimate drama performed partly in song by real-life married folk duo The Bengsons, drew raves. Another repeat hit was “Garry Starr’s Classic Penguins” — a bawdy mash-up of the publisher Penguin Classics, clowning, complete with nudity, that once again sold out.
And Moody’s 2024 Fringe hit, “Weather Girl,” a sharp satire about the climate apocalypse as seen through the eyes of a California TV forecaster, is set to make its New York debut in September.
A veteran’s perspectiveFew people know the stakes of a debut better than Natalie Palamides. In 2017, she arrived at the Fringe with “Laid,” a surreal one-woman clown show where she literally lays an egg onstage, haunted by a question: Should she eat it or raise it?
“To flyer, I’d wear this enormous stuffed egg costume,” she recalled. “I’d give people little lap dances in the Pleasance Courtyard to coax them into the show. And it worked pretty well.”
She left Edinburgh with the award for Best Newcomer.
This year, she’s back in a different role: writer and director of “Lady Magic,” a biting satire about magicians’ assistants finally taking revenge on their spotlight-hogging bosses.
Natalie Palamides, who won Best Newcomer at the 2017 Fringe for her debut “Laid,” returned this year as writer and director of “Lady Magic,” an exposé on the world of magicians’ assistants.Rebecca Rosman/The WorldThe art of clowning, she said, thrives on failure. Magic, however, cannot. “In [clowning], if you make a mistake you exacerbate it until it becomes the joke,” she explained. “But in magic, if you fail, the trick is kaput. Balancing the two has been challenging, but when it works, it’s super satisfying.”
Palamides’ career is proof of what’s possible. But the Fringe is still mostly a place for first-timers betting big on the chance to break through.
The newcomersMichelle Toth has produced several shows this year, including “That’s Why Mums Go to Switzerland.” It’s a one-woman drama about a mother and daughter’s journey to Dignitas — a nonprofit organization providing physician-assisted suicide supported by independent Swiss doctors — after an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Dark, funny and devastating, it wrestles with ordinary family dynamics against the backdrop of life-and-death choices.
The reviews have been strong, but seats were hard to fill in the festival’s early weeks.
For Toth, the real measure of success is patience. “Breaking even is a pretty exciting accomplishment,” she said. “I think of coming to the Fringe as betting on the show finding its path, … the right connections, the right audiences. It’s not about becoming the next ‘Fleabag’ overnight.”
Born on the “fringe” of the Edinburgh International Festival in 1947, the Fringe has grown into the world’s biggest stage.Rebecca Rosman/The WorldThen there’s Izzy Radford, writer and star of “Seating Plan,” a romantic comedy about two people stuck beside each other at the same dinner party year after year. “It’s like a ‘When Harry Met Sally,’ Nora Ephron kind of romcom,” she said.
Her show exploded after a five-star review in The Times of London. A four-star nod from The Telegraph followed. Soon, word of mouth turned her play into a sellout.
“It’s actually funny, it’s actually sweet,” Radford laughed. “I think it’s luck, good producing and us working really hard.”
And finally, there was Anastasiya Ador. Just 31, she debuted “Foreign Girl,” a one-woman show about starting over again and again — from Belarus to India to the UK. Packed with physical comedy and personal storytelling, it’s as much about visa struggles as it is about identity and belonging.
Ador went out flyering, but she also sold stickers — with her bum on them.
“If they scan this beautiful bum,” she grinned, “they’ll see the link to my play.”
Anastasiya Ador balances more than a teacup for her Fringe debut “Foreign Girl,” a one-woman show about belonging, visas and starting over, again and again.Rebecca Rosman/The WorldAdor said she invested in mentors, workshops and direction, all out of pocket. She applied for grants but didn’t get any. Still, she sees her first Fringe as less a gamble than a rite of passage. “It’s a trial year,” she said. “The first year will always be memorable.”
The Fringe remains the world’s biggest artistic lottery. Some shows sell out. Some vanish without a trace. A handful — like “Fleabag” or “Baby Reindeer” — become cultural phenomena.
But most hover somewhere in between: betting on buzz, leaning on flyers, hoping for critics and trusting in word of mouth.
For the newcomers, breaking through is about more than fame or money. It’s about learning the ropes, finding an audience and, above all, being memorable.
And at Edinburgh Fringe, that’s no small trick.
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One of the first things that jumps out about Fima Chupakhin is that he loves to laugh. He has the kind of contagious, welcoming and easygoing attitude that rubs off on other people. His generally positive disposition flows into his passion for music. That passion, he says, started at an early age.
“There was a tiny toy piano in our apartment. I just remember banging on the keys, I’m like, ‘Oh it produces sound, great!’” Chupakhin said. “Maybe I was so annoying that my mom would be like, ‘Oh my God, kiddo, all right let’s get him to a music school so he’ll be out of the house and do this not on a toy piano but maybe on the real thing.’”
Chupakhin doesn’t come from a musical family — but his mother, Larisa, liked listening to music at home. Sometimes she would listen to the Beatles, but she mostly listened to pop songs like those by the most famous Soviet pop star Alla Pugacheva.
“She would sing often, sing two of the songs,” Chupakhin said. “One was [Millions Of Scarlet Roses] another was, “Call Me [with You],” something like that. At the time that was common for almost every household.”
But Chupakhin didn’t just grow up with Soviet pop songs. His mom listened to Ukrainian music, as well. That informed his musical journey and plays out in his music today.
Fima Chupakhin is a jazz pianist based in New York. His band released its debut album in May called, “Hymn for the Fallen,” as a reflection on the war in Ukraine.Daniel Ofman/The World“She just loved the idea of Ukraine. She always loved Ukrainian music. She would sing [Chervona Ruta],” he said of his mother. “It’s like one of those songs, aside from Alla Pugacheva, that she would sing rather often.”
When he was in music school, Chupakhin listened to any music he could get his hands on. From the early ‘90s, when Ukraine became independent, all the way to the early 2000s, he gravitated towards rock. He listened to Nirvana, but also to Ukrainian bands like Vopli Vidopliassova.
Music wasn’t just a hobby; it also became a tool to get out of Kryvyi Rih, the city in central Ukraine where he grew up.
“It’s an industrial town, you know, people work at a factory, [there are] a couple of mines that are still working,” Chupakhin said. “It’s dirty — you know we had rains that are dusty, some kind of sparkling dust, that was our rain, because of steel factories.”
But there were some opportunities to break out of that industrial jungle. Famously, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is also from Kryvyi Rih, and that’s where he got his start as a comedian well before going into politics. Around that time, when Chupakhin was a teenager, his piano skills began to rapidly improve.
“When I practiced, I would open the doors. So, we had a little balcony. We had sort of a backyard, well the entire courtyard would listen to the music, and they would scream, ‘Yo Fima, c’mon, give us some Queen man!’”
Chupakhin said he liked the attention and the idea of people enjoying his music. At the time, he said his piano skills improved rapidly, so he felt more confident. That development as a musician opened opportunities. It took him to a music conservatory in Kharkiv. And later, in 2012, it brought him to the United States when he was granted a Fulbright scholarship. By that time, Chupakhin’s main musical obsession was jazz.
“Jazz became the music that I felt wow, I can be so free,” Chupakhin said. “And somehow it had this aura of hipness to me. I wanted to be hip, I guess, and what was the hip thing, playing jazz, yes.”
Fima Chupakhin came to the US in 2012 on a Fullbright scholarship. By that time his main musical obsession was jazz.Daniel Ofman/The WorldChupakhin soon became immersed in the New York jazz scene, while also maintaining a strong connection to Ukraine — he’d often travel back and forth between the two. He was always working, teaching music, playing live, composing soundtracks and producing albums.
By 2022, Chupakhin had been living in New York for nearly a decade — that was also the year when Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“We just started calling all our friends, asking what’s happening. And ever since that, I’m living this kind of double life,” Chupakhin said. “I feel like, on the outside, I’m friendly and smiley and whatever but sometimes deep down, it’s like, it’s getting hard because I feel like I’m in this kind of limbo in between.”
Living in between the US and Ukraine had been the norm for Chupakhin, but soon he realized that his life was most centered in New York. For about a year, beginning with the full-scale invasion, he said on many levels it was hard for him to function in the US, because his mind was always on Ukraine.
“Because I physically and geographically live here, it doesn’t mean that I’m intending to lose any kinds of connections, it actually even grew stronger,” Chupakhin said.
In May, Chupakhin’s band, the Fima Trio, came out with its debut album, “Hymn for the Fallen.”
“It’s my own reflection on what’s been happening in my country, in the world, with me,” Chupakhin said. “Maybe some of the dreams have fallen, maybe some of the plants did not [bloom], but also, so many people died. But not getting too dark, though, this track to me is more uplifting, because I believe that whatever dies, then grows.”
According to Chupakhin, at this point, many Ukrainians have learned to live with the reality of Ukraine still being at war. Sometimes it drifts into the background, and yet it’s always there.
With the release of the new album, Chupakhin said he’s trying to slow down and acknowledge his sense of accomplishment and think about how far his music has taken him.
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Geometric patterns on cloth. Symbols etched into sacred masks.
Experts believe it’s all part of an ancient, largely forgotten writing system that was used by women in Zambia.
Recently, the curators at the National Museum of World Culture in Stockholm, Sweden, invited a group of Zambian women to help understand the meanings of some artifacts and the communities that used them. The idea is that many of the objects in Sweden will eventually be brought back to the African continent.
Experts believe that geometric patterns and etched symbols on some ancient artifacts are part of a largely forgotten writing system used by women in Zambia.Courtesy of Raphael Sennin TemboThe hope is for many of the ancient artifacts on display in Sweden to eventually be returned to the African continent.Courtesy of Raphael Sennin TemboSamba Yonga, the co-founder of the virtual Women’s History Museum of Zambia, was a part of the project. While she and her crew wait for the items to be returned, they plan to continue studying and deciphering the artifacts.
Yonga spoke to The World’s Carolyn Beeler about her work.
Carolyn Beeler: These writing systems were used mostly in the centuries before the colonial era in Africa. What have you and others been able to decipher about what the messages on the artifacts that you found actually are saying?Samba Yonga: The communities lived very close to the earth and had knowledge and information about cosmology, their environment and the community. And they understood that you had to be in communication with these elements in order to have continuity of life. And in a lot of these communities, they were matrilineal, which means women were at the center of the communities. There were female kings, there were female leaders of communities, nation builders, custodians of the land, custodians of the food, as well.Samba Yonga holds an image of the wooden hunter’s toolbox.Courtesy of Raphael Sennin TemboI’d love to have you describe some of the artifacts that we’re talking about here. The hunter’s toolbox. It’s so intricate-looking.Yes, the hunter’s box was used when one of the elders or the community members or hunters would go hunting, and those symbols would be evoked before the hunter went hunting in order to protect them, in order for them to understand the process they’d have to go through.
Earlier I mentioned that there was a very close connection with the environment, and they understood that the trees and the animals were all part of the cycle of life. And they had to give respect and honor to the animals, to the trees, even if that’s where they got their source of food from.
So, that was a practice that was very embedded in the communities, and it was something that had to be practiced every single time a hunter went to hunt for food.How did these items and photographs that are included in this collection end up in Sweden in the first place?That’s one of the things that surprised me because when you think of Sweden and Scandinavia, you don’t think of them as colonizers, because they officially never colonized any country in Africa. So, when I got there and I was with the African curator, Michael Barrett, he then said to me, “Oh, you’re Zambian. You know, you should probably come and see the Zambia collection.” And I asked him, “Why do you have a Zambian collection?”
Because in my mind, it never connected that Sweden would ever have a collection. The UK, that makes sense. France, it makes sense. Belgium makes sense. Not Sweden. And he was like, “Oh, actually, what used to happen in those days is the Swedish and Scandinavians would book space in British voyagers’ ships going to the continent because they couldn’t afford ships themselves.” And that’s how they ended up on the continent.
So, I was like, “Oh, okay, we didn’t know that.”
So, that’s how these particular artifacts that we examined, like the cloak, like some of the Makishi masks, ended up in the museum.European ethnographers collected copper artifacts over a century and a half ago, providing a trail of evidence into how Indigenous mining processes were managed and the objects were used.Courtesy of Raphael Sennin TemboSamba, I wonder if this has been emotional work for you?Since we started the journey, it has been emotional, because we’ve been having these conversations around how, as Africans or as Zambians, we’ve had to shape-shift without even realizing that that’s what you’re doing. And the memory is not that far off. In order for my father to access education, he had to shape-shift and conform to a Eurocentric model of education, religion and living in order to be allowed into a school system, in order for him to get an education, so that he can earn a livelihood.
And that process actually resulted into a shape-shifting and a duality that a lot of Zambians and Africans still live, where you’re crossing in and out of this identity. So, part of the work that we are doing is trying to connect those two parts and trying to center our own Indigenous knowledge so it doesn’t feel like we have to discard it or shape-shift in order to conform. And that has been very emotional.Mulenga Kapwepwe, author and co-founder of the Zambian Women’s History Museum, looks at one of 20 pristine leather cloaks in the Swedish archive collected during an expedition between 1911 and 1912.Courtesy of Raphael Sennin TemboSo, this language that you have helped to document and decipher and teach people about, is an example of something that might have been forgotten because of forces, you know, making people adopt a more Western language learning style in order to advance.Absolutely, the intention was to control, to obscure, remove and dominate. And the hegemony of this domination has continued on without an effort to restructure and reposition. And I think we have the responsibility to do that now, especially understanding what’s at stake for even the generations to come.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
The post Deciphering ancient artifacts with a lost language used by women in Zambia appeared first on The World from PRX.
On a Wednesday evening in Iztapalapa, a working-class neighborhood in Mexico City, a block party began to form at sunset near the metro station. It was a typical sonidero event: no stage, no food vendors, no headliner — just two towering speakers, a microphone and a sonidero DJ whose voice echoed down the street.
As commuters emerged from the subway, heading home after work, some heard the music — and stopped to join. Some danced, while others rested on plastic chairs, saving their energy for the next track.
Francisco Chávez, a regular at these events, said he dropped by “just to unwind.”
“You get home relaxed, danced-out, sweaty and tired,” he said. “It’s good therapy — physical and mental.”
Sonidero parties have become a part of Mexico City’s cultural identity, after long being dismissed as working-class “noise.”
The people behind the mic are street DJs who don’t just play music, but narrate the party in real time. They announce who’s arriving, call out dedications to friends and send greetings to entire families.
Sonidero parties have become a part of Mexico City’s cultural identity.Tibisay Zea/The World“The mic becomes a tool of connection,” said Ramón Rojo Villa, a DJ known across the city as Sonido La Changa. “People love being acknowledged in front of the crowd. We’re from the barrio. We represent the people.”
Sonidero culture began in the 1950s, when residents in neighborhoods like Tepito and Iztapalapa began hosting outdoor parties with homemade sound systems. They played salsa and cumbia records imported from Colombia, Puerto Rico, Cuba or New York that were popular in Mexico at that time.
By the 1970s, Sonidero DJs had their own name, following and signature style.
But as the parties grew louder, so did the pushback.
Sonideros were often seen as disruptive and low-class — gatherings for “nacos,” a derogatory term aimed at working-class communities.
Marisol Mendoza is the founder of Musas Sonideras, a collective of female DJs.Tibisay Zea/The World“These parties had a stigma of being loud, too public and probably too working-class,” said Arlett Charlot, a sonidero DJ in Mexico City.
Police routinely shut events down, confiscated equipment and fined organizers.
Cultural workers started advocating for sonideros as part of Mexico’s cultural heritage. Among them was Mariana Delgado, who helped connect the scene with public institutions and art spaces that had long ignored it.
“We came from the arts world and started bridging that gap,” she said. “Eventually, we multiplied.” After years of activism, sonideros began performing in museums, city festivals and even on international stages.
But the stigma remained. In 2023, a long-standing sonidero gathering in the central neighborhood of Santa María la Ribera faced an abrupt shutdown by local authorities, reportedly due to noise complaints.
But this time attendees, many of whom were elderly dancers who had been attending these weekly events for over a decade, resisted. They continued to occupy the plaza, asserting their right to public space and cultural expression. The standoff drew citywide attention, highlighting tensions between grassroots cultural traditions and urban regulations.
A year after that incident, the Mexico City government recognized sonideros as part of the city’s Intangible Cultural Heritage, marking a significant victory for the community.
Women take the micMore recently, women have begun to reclaim space on the sonidero scene — challenging the long-held image of the DJ as a man with a deep voice, a crate full of vinyl and a command of the mic.
The world of sonideros has historically been dominated by men, not just as performers, but as the ones who owned the gear, controlled the spaces and set the rules.
Members of the collective of female DJs Musas Sonideras.Tibisay Zea/The World“That is starting to change,” said Marisol Mendoza, the daughter of a sonidero and the founder of Musas Sonideras, a collective of female DJs.
When the collective launched in 2017, it brought together around 30 women. Today, it includes over a hundred females from Mexico and the United States, performing everywhere from street parties to cultural festivals and art spaces.
“We’re not just showing that we can do this too, we’re bringing our own perspective,” Mendoza said. “We add emotion, we tell stories, we connect differently with the crowd.”
Some of the women use minimal equipment — just a mic, a small mixer and their presence. The approach contrasts with the traditionally masculine image of the DJ behind massive equipment, shouting over thunderous bass.
“It’s not about who has the biggest sound system,” Mendoza explained. “It’s about who connects with the people.”
But some barriers remain — not only social, but economic.
“We often get paid less than male sonideros for doing the exact same job,” said Arlette Charlot, Mendoza’s daughter who is also a sonidera DJ. On top of that, some event organizers still hesitate to book women at all, she said, assuming they won’t draw the same crowds.
At 65, Elfega Gomez, known as Mama Duende, is the oldest DJ in the collective “Musas Sonideras.” She poses with her granddaughter Arlett Charlot, also a female sonidera.Tibisay Zea/The World“People ask if your husband gave you permission to be here,” she said. “They tell you to go home and wash dishes, take care of your kids.”
Still, Mendoza and other sonideras see these moments as chances to reshape the scene and push it forward.
“We’re not just playing music,” said Marisol Mendoza of Musas Sonideras. “We’re creating a space and opening doors for others who come behind us.”
The sonidera DJ insists that the street belongs to the people — and that the people deserve to dance, no matter who’s behind the mic.
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Photographer Alaa Hassan was 25 years old when the uprisings against Bashar al-Assad began in Syria in March of 2011.
He was part of the movement that grew quickly against the former president and turned into a civil war.
In 2013, facing mandatory military conscription and the death of some of his closest friends at the hands of security forces, Hassan decided to leave the country.
It wasn’t until last December, when the Assad government fell after 14 years of fighting, that he was able to return. Now, Hassan has a new mission: to document both the loss and the rebirth of his country through his camera lens.
Hassan said that he hopes to eventually publish his project, “Vital Signs.” He shared a selection of his photos below. (To learn more about Hassan, check out The World’s profile here).
The sunset over Jobar, a village on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria, in 2024. Alaa HassanRubble processing in Jobar, in Damascus, Syria, 2025. Alaa HassanA tree in Jobar, in Damascus, Syria, in 2025.Alaa HassanPigeons in Qaboon, in Damascus, Syria, in 2024. Alaa HassanA future football star at Yarmouk camp in Damascus, Syria, in 2024. Alaa HassanThe post Photos: Syrian photographer documents loss and rebirth in the country following the fall of Assad appeared first on The World from PRX.
Brazilian rapper Brisa Flow made history as the first Indigenous artist on the lineup of Lollapalooza Brazil in 2023.
But she said that her success has come at a price.
“Being a pioneer brings wounds; there’s no way you can have a machete opening a path and not get some branches on your face,” she said, adding, “I got many, and I believe I learned a lot.”
Her music mixes hip-hop with ancestral singing, jazz, electronic and neo-soul. She’s also an activist and educator. Many of her songs are influenced by her own background — and the struggle of Indigenous people in Brazil, where less than 1% of the population is Indigenous.
Flow said that she and her partner experience a lot of racism on the street. It’s one reason that her Indigenous identity figures so prominently in her work — both as a way to channel her feelings and to educate people.
Flow’s latest album, “Janequeo,” is about a tough Indigenous woman.
Brisa Flow and her partner Ian Wapichana have a daughter together. Gisele Regatão/The World“Janequeo was a female Mapuche warrior who had to negotiate several deals in the war to liberate her people,” she said. “I bring that to the contemporary, which is the reality of Indigenous brown women, mothers and independent artists in Brazil.”
“Brisa Flow is one of the biggest artists in Brazil,” said Bruno Barros, an independent culture producer who writes about music.
Even though Flow’s Indigenous roots are key to her work and identity, he said, she achieved her place in music not because of her race.
“She is an artist who happens to be Indigenous and delivered one of the great albums of 2022,” he said.
Brisa Flow, born Brisa de la Cordillera Collio Inzunza, is 37 years old. Gisele Regatão/The WorldThe 37-year-old Flow, whose birth name is Brisa de la Cordillera Collio Inzunza, was born in Sabará, on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state of Minas Gerais. Her parents are Indigenous artisans from Chile who moved to Brazil during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.
Flow said she got into hip-hop as a teenager and started to participate in rhyme battles when she was around 17 years old, often as the only female.
“I got into hip-hop especially because of its body movement, that idea of being at ease, being who you are,” she said.
It took her a long time to build a career as an artist. She lived in different cities in Brazil and worked odd jobs in telemarketing, and at a T-shirt factory before she moved to São Paulo. She said her song, “Fique Viva,” or “stay alive”, talks a bit about that journey.
Brisa Flow’s partner Ian Wapichana and their merged family of three kids. Gisele Regatão/The World“I had to learn to love myself and stand on my own two feet,” she said, paraphrasing the beginning of the song. “The opening is like, ‘boom, this girl has been through a lot, let’s see what she has to tell me.’”
She was influenced by a range of female artists, including Chilean composer Violeta Parra, who she names in the song, “Violeta Se Fué,” and Argentine singer Mercedes Sosa, American soul singer Erykah Badu and rapper Lauryn Hill.
Her partner, Ian Wapichana, a multi-instrumentalist and producer from an Indigenous community in Roraima, in the north of Brazil, often performs with Flow, and they wrote the song, “Etnocídio,” meaning “ethnocide” together.
It took Flow a long time to build a career as an artist. She lived in different cities in Brazil and worked odd jobs before she moved to São Paulo.Gisele Regatão/The WorldWapichana said he wrote his part and when they got to the studio; Flow confessed she had not written hers, so she did so on the spot, improvising.
“Her essence is still freestyling; it’s very emotional,” he said.
Together, the couple has three kids. Wapichana said that he supports Flow on the stage and at home.
“Brisa is at a really cool moment in her career; she’s flying a lot,” he said. “She’s in high demand, so I stay home more with the baby; I pick up a lot of the household responsibilities, so she can flow.”
It took Brisa Flow a long time to build a career as an artist. She lived in different cities in Brazil and worked odd jobs before she moved to São Paulo. Gisele Regatão/The WorldThe post Brazilian hip-hop artist Brisa Flow brings Indigenous issues to the fore appeared first on The World from PRX.
As the curtain rises on the musical “Mar i Cel,” it begins with an introductory history lesson.
It’s the year 1609, and the king of Spain, in Madrid, issues a royal decree to deport the so-called Moriscos, the Spanish Muslims forcibly baptized and converted to Christianity.
For centuries, medieval Spain had large Muslim and Jewish populations. But during the Inquisition, these religious minorities were aggressively persecuted. An estimated 300,000 Moriscos were expelled, and tens of thousands were executed.
“Mar i Cel” begins in the context of Inquisition-era Spain.Courtesy of David RuanoThat sets the stage for the actual story of “Mar i Cel,” which means “sea and sky” in Catalan, and begins 20 years later somewhere on the Mediterranean Sea.
Today in Barcelona, Spain, the beloved musical that’s had a few runs over the past three decades is back in stages for a fourth, and perhaps final, time. The current production has been running since September 2024 and will end this July.
The tale is about a Muslim pirate and a Christian woman who fall in love during Inquisition-era Spain. But the story also tackles the darker issues of bigotry, deportation and cycles of violence — something that some say may be more relevant than ever today.
The characters of Saïd and Blanca in the current performance of “Mar i Cel”.Courtesy of David RuanoAs a huge ship enters the stage at the beginning of the musical, the expelled Moriscos have now become pirates. They climb ropes and swing from mast to mast, in a whirlwind of acrobatics.
Their captain, Saïd, is vigorous, mercurial and reckless. He scolds one of his subordinates for dreaming of a better life, one with money and a family.
“We’re not sweethearts, but warriors,” he tells him.
A scene from the popular Catalan musical “Mar i Cel”.Courtesy of David RuanoMeanwhile, below deck, prisoners beg for water and pray to their Christian God.
Devout Blanca is the heroine of the love story, with Saïd as its hero.
The name of the performance, “Mar i Cel”, is a metaphor for their forbidden love at the center of the story.
“Mar i Cel” is a love story that also tackles the darker issues of bigotry, deportation and cycles of violence.Courtesy of David RuanoThe original play was written in the 1800s by Angel Guimerà, a key figure in the renaissance of Catalan culture. The popular musical came along a century later, in 1988, put on by the theatre company Dagoll Dagom, with music by composer Albert Guinovart.
“I put all my soul and all my energy, my passion [into it],” Guinovart said.
The cast of “Mar i Cel” in 1988.Courtesy of Dagoll DagomHe was only 25 years old then and said he didn’t even like musicals much.
But he enjoyed “The Phantom of the Opera”, which became an inspiration for him.
“I identify my soul and my sensibility about music with that kind of music — very lyrical, very melodic, with a classical touch also,” he explained. “But the spirit of the melody, I think, is what is more important for me.”
He never could have imagined how popular “Mar i Cel” would become.
Over the years, more than 1 million people have seen it, with versions in Spanish and German.
In Catalonia, generations have grown up with its songs — even some of the actors in the latest revival, like soprano Clara Renom.
She said she first went to see “Mar i Cel” 10 years ago on a high school field trip. And it was a turning point that made her want to become a singer.
Renom plays Saïd’s mother, who he recalls when telling Blanca about his childhood.
During this emotional scene, Blanca learns about the suffering of the Moriscos who were expelled from Spain.
“During rehearsals, we would all cry a lot, singing was hard,” she said. “We couldn’t fathom the injustice [that had happened].”
“Mar i Cel” tackles Inquisition-era Spain, during which time the country’s large populations of Muslim and Jewish religious minorities were aggressively persecuted.Courtesy of David RuanoIn the musical, Saïd’s story awakens Blanca to a harsh truth: She’d been taught to fear the Moriscos, but her own people were guilty of heinous crimes against them.
Renom said that things haven’t changed all that much in the world today. Tragedies continue, like in Gaza, children are being separated from their mothers and are dying.
Right now, the future of “Mar i Cel” remains uncertain, because after 50 years, the Dagoll Dagom theatre company is shutting down.
But Renom said she’s hopeful.
“I believe we’ll see ‘Mar i Cel’ again,” she said. “‘Mar i Cel’ is a legend, it’s the history of Catalonia.”
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Most actors would cross Siberia barefoot to audition for “The White Lotus.”
Patravadi Mejudhon didn’t even want to go across town.
“One day, somebody called and said, ‘Please come audition for “The White Lotus,”’” the veteran actress told The World.
“I said, ‘No, I don’t think I have time.’”
Patravadi could’ve made time. But in her mid-70s, she’d long since abandoned any Hollywood ambitions, having tried and failed to catch a break in Los Angeles when she was young. She’d instead devoted her life to becoming the godmother of Thai theater, performing for smaller, discerning audiences.
Also, Patravadi didn’t know a thing about “The White Lotus,” nor cared that the HBO series (about Americans behaving badly in tropical locales) would set its third season in Thailand. Her children, however, couldn’t believe their mom had just snubbed one of the most-prestigious shows on television.
Fortunately, Patravadi’s phone rang. Again.
“They said Khun Mike White wanted to meet me. At the Oriental Hotel.”
Khun is Thai for “mister” and Mike White is the triple-Emmy-winning creator of “The White Lotus.” Apparently, the director had come to Bangkok. He seemed determined to meet her.
She still didn’t understand why. Patravadi had tasted stardom in Thailand, as a TV and film actress, but that was decades ago. She’d since retired from the screen, living quietly as a theater maven, helping younger Thai actors perfect their craft.
She agreed to meet White, just to hear him out. But she already knew her answer.
Thanks. But no thanks.
In a lengthy interview, Patravadi explained how he ultimately won her over — and why the acclaimed director was so intent on casting her in the first place. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
On her aristocratic childhood Patravadi’s mother once served Thailand’s royal family.
“She was kind of a lady-in-waiting for the king. But in the evening, she’d read for the queen.”
Those connections paid off. After leaving the palace, her mother landed a lucrative concession running ferries on the Chao Phraya, Bangkok’s iconic river, plied with rice barges and lined with glittering temple spires.
Patravadi was groomed to take over the business, but her interests lied elsewhere. She was spellbound by traveling theater troupes that performed at a Buddhist temple by the river for boatmen and other common folks.
“I snuck out with my nanny to watch. Because my mother didn’t want me going out at night.”
Thai high society, back then, held a dim view of entertainers dancing for their supper.
“They called it a low profession. It’s not suitable for our family. But I liked it.”
On her early swipe at Hollywood Her parents indulged Patravadi when she was a girl, allowing her to study acting, singing and dancing. But they expected her, as a young woman, to buckle down and focus on the family business. It didn’t take. Patravadi ended up in California, honing her acting chops at the Pasadena Playhouse, just 15 miles outside Hollywood.
“I went to auditions, and I got extra parts here and there. No big parts, nothing interesting … very low-grade movies. I didn’t think it was proper. I thought, you know, I better go back to my country. It’s more dignified.”
Stardom, at lastIn 1973, Patravadi scored her first major role. She played a lovesick woman in a Thai film called, “There is No Heaven for You,” the story of a romance gone wrong. She won Thailand’s equivalent to the Oscar and, to her delight, received a golden trophy from none other than Thailand’s king. Even her mother had to admit it: Patravadi had arrived.
“She became a big fan. Secretly.”
But Thai cinema didn’t deliver the dignity for which she longed. Thai TV and film parts rolled her way, but “when I said, ‘I’d love to read the script,’ they’d say, “Well, we make them up along the way.””
Hollywood used to do this too: concoct dialogue on the fly to save time and crank out films cheaply.
“Nobody learned their lines. Somebody would tell you what to say. And I told them, ‘I can’t do that, because I have to know what I’m doing.’ That’s why I’d say no.”
A theater of her ownIn 1992, she set up her own theater, along the riverbanks, not far from where she’d watch ragtag theater troupes in her youth. It started off in the parking lot.
“People said, ‘This is impossible. No one’s going to come.’”
But the Patravadi Theater grew into one of the country’s top-performing arts centers. This is where she cemented her legacy as the grand dame of Thai drama, exacting high standards from actors (and herself) while nurturing other Thai performers to pursue their dreams. Over the years, Patravadi still took film and TV roles but, having built her own sanctuary, she had the luxury to say no.
“I don’t like to be in the limelight. I don’t like red carpets. I want to be quiet. And perform. And be a normal human being.”
That is more or less what she told White when they met at the Oriental Hotel, just a few years back. Patravadi had quit taking outside jobs to focus entirely on yet another arts academy she’d created: Vic Hua Hin, in a coastal area several hours’ drive from Bangkok. She was content with her life and didn’t need the headache.
Thanks. But no thanks.
Lek Patravadi arrives at the season three premiere of “The White Lotus” at Paramount Theater in Los Angeles, Feb. 10, 2025.Chris Pizzello/AP/File photoWhy she joined ‘The White Lotus’ after allPatravadi recalled White telling her, “I’m going to bring you back.” To stardom, he meant. But stardom didn’t mean much to her. She’d tasted it before and moved on.
That made her even more perfect for his role. For the third season, he’d invented a well-heeled, silver-haired woman named Sritala, the owner of The White Lotus spa on a Thai island. This character was once a flashy singer in her youth, but had since lost her luster — and now resorted to performing for Western hotel guests, just to bask in the spotlight glow once again.
Patravadi finally understood.
“She was a star, which… I know how it feels. A star when they get old? They get forgotten.”
She had to concede that — given her aristocratic upbringing and her bumpy adventures in show business — few could execute this role quite like her.
She took the job. Once Patravadi was on set, something clicked. Maybe this experience would satiate a long-buried desire to work on a crème de la créme program. Fifty years ago, LA casting agents weren’t too keen on casting a Southeast Asian woman, “so I wanted to learn how Western people do movies, because I never learned that. How they do sets, how they design. The stuntmen, the soundmen. It was exciting.”
On working with Asia’s No. 1 pop starThe third season of “The White Lotus” is stacked with renowned American and British talent — and perhaps the most-famous pop star in Asia, let alone Thailand. That would be 27-year-old Lalisa Manobal, who was born in a rural Thai province and later joined the K-pop group BlackPink. An acting novice, she plays a resort worker.
“The first time she met me, she kneeled on the floor like Thai girls do,” Patravadi recalled. “And she said, ‘Oh hello, teacher!’”
For a Thai person, this is no less extraordinary than Rihanna supplicating at your toes. Lalisa wanted Patravadi’s advice.
“And I thought to myself, wow, she’s a famous star, yet with the manners of a Thai girl who has enormous respect for her elders.”
The two developed a cozy rapport on set.
“I was like that when I was young. Singing and dancing and creating a lot of crazy things. And I was thin like her, too. I told Lisa, ‘When you’re 77 like me, light some incense and tell me your weight.’”
On her unfinished careerPatravadi is enjoying a second wind, thanks to “The White Lotus.” A Thai television channel is suddenly interested in hiring her to produce a 12-part series.
“I’ll be acting, writing, directing and producing, because Thailand doesn’t have that much budget. Compared to ‘The White Lotus’, I think it’s 1%. But I told my people, ‘We can do it. Thai people can do anything, you know?’”
Patravadi has also become a fan of the show she once spurned.
“Yes, yes, I finally got HBO. I could ask to see the whole thing in advance” — the entire third season of “The White Lotus” — “but I’m just going to watch it week by week like everyone else.”
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Sophie Javadi-Babreh grew up surrounded by carpets. They were so much a part of her life that she even refers to them as her brothers and sisters.
“It’s like … they’re colorful, the patterns and the touch of them. They were really enjoyable to be around,” she said.
Sophie and her brother, Hugo Javadi-Babreh, spent hours playing on them. The piles of rolled-up carpets made great jumping pads.
“We lived, danced and sometimes even slept on rugs,” Sophie recalled of her childhood.
Sophie Javadi-Babreh says she grew up surrounded by carpets from her family’s business.Courtesy of Thames CarpetsSophie’s father has owned Thames Carpets since 2001. Today, she’s using social media to spread the word about the business and the stories behind the carpets.
“In this business, you travel to source rugs quite often, and as a kid, that was cool because I got to constantly be around all these beautiful antiques and auction houses,” she said.
When she finished her studies in London, she decided to return to Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, where her family lives, to help grow her father’s business.
Before social media, her father learned about auctions and clients through printed catalogues and word-of-mouth. But Sophie saw an opportunity to expand the business to a wider, global audience.
Bahram Javadi-Babreh and his daughter, Sophie, work together to promote their business, Thames Carpets, to to a wider, global audience.Courtesy of Nilu ZarghamFive years ago, she began posting about the carpets on Instagram, including information about their origin and designs.
In one video, she described how the rug was made by the Qashqai tribe in southwestern Iran. In another one, she told viewers about the handwoven rug made by the Kurdish Sanjabi tribe. It has “very sharp, diagonal designs, which they achieve with a unique weaving technique,” she pointed out.
“Whenever I talk about a rug now, I can look at where it was made and then it leads me down this rabbit hole of finding out about the culture of where it was made, what the symbols mean. They’re not just rugs. They carry huge references to cultural history,” she explained.
Bahram Javadi-Babreh inherited Thames Carpets from Joseph Bernadout, who had founded the business in 1956, after he helped fix one of Bernadout’s damaged rugs.Courtesy of Nilu ZarghamSophie’s father, Bahram Javadi-Babreh, was born in a stable in a small village in northwestern Iran. He started weaving carpets when he was around 5 years old because his family needed the extra income, he said, and he hated it at the time.
“It was [a lot] of pressure,” Bahram explained, “because I was so small. I was one of the fastest weavers. The yarn used to cut through our hands.”
He used to weave very quickly, 60 knots per minute, he recalled, because if he didn’t finish the job in time, the people running the factory would sometimes punish the weavers.
Bahram, however, didn’t let the experience limit him. He learned to read and write on the side, during breaks and at night.
Thames Carpets’ Instagram posts tell the history and the art of handmade carpets.Courtesy of Nilu ZarghamOnce, a client commissioned him to weave a carpet with the design of the ancient Persian city of Persepolis. It was tough, but he was able to do it.
And the client was so impressed that he paid him handsomely. The money then helped him go to school full-time. Bahram eventually went to the UK to study engineering in the 1970s.
But his mind was still absorbed in the world of carpets. He would often try to get his hands on auction catalogues.
“I loved them,” he said, “absolutely loved them. I used to look at the pictures of them on the train and I used to miss my stop. Then I used to go back, and again miss it.”
Bahram Javadi-Babreh went to study engineering in the UK in the 1970s, but his mind was still absorbed in the world of carpets.Courtesy of Nilu ZarghamBahram was a weaver, but he also knew how to repair carpets. At one point, the original owner of Thames Carpets, Joseph Bernadout, who had founded the business in 1956, was desperately searching for someone to help fix a damaged rug during a cleaning process.
The cleaner had cut off the signature of the weaver and the owner was suing the business.
Luckily, they found Bahram, who was able to fix the problem. Bernadout brought Bahram into the business as a sign of appreciation and later handed over Thames Carpets to him.
Bahram’s talent in fixing carpets has taken him to some interesting places, like Princess Diana’s bedroom, where he fixed the Turkish rugs that needed repair — and the Duke of Wellington’s home.
After finishing her studies in London, Sophie Javadi-Babreh decided to return to Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire to help grow her father’s business.Courtesy of Nilu ZarghamHe also restored the carpets at Windsor Castle after a fire in 1992 destroyed parts of the estate.
“I always say that I am the luckiest man in the world. Because the work I am doing takes me to different levels of people,” Bahram said.
Thames Carpets’ Instagram page now has about 84,000 followers. Sophie’s posts tell the history and the art of handmade carpets, but they also capture the bond between a father and daughter as they run a business together.
The 27-year-old said people from around the world have reached out to her after seeing her Instagram posts.
“I’ve had quite a lot of people that are a similar age to me saying that it’s helping them connect with their [own cultures] … [especially] if they have a Middle Eastern background but they were raised in a Western society, they’ve enjoyed learning more about that side of their heritage,” she said.
Social media has helped her turn a somewhat niche craft into one that is more accessible to people.
Each carpet tells a story of patience, culture and craftsmanship, she added, and she wants to share that with the world.
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Richard Chen, 24, a website and application developer living in Paris, remembers the exact episode of the animated television series “Dragon Ball Z” that made him want to be an artist.
He was 4 years old, and it was a fight between the characters Goku and Cell. After that, he said, he was hooked on Japanese anime and manga, and he was always drawing himself, emulating their style.
Late last year, Chen was able to meet some of the artists behind the art form at Tokyo’s Comiket, the world’s largest comic festival, where he also peddled his own work.
Even in the cramped confines of the Tokyo subway, the love of comics and anime can be found, as one passenger dons a hat with the face of Kon, a character from the hit series, “Bleach.”Kai Dambach/The World “I got to talk with artists that I admire a lot for a few years now, and it’s like a dream to be able to talk to them face-to-face and not only through social media,” he said.
Twice a year, more than 300,000 comic enthusiasts from around the world travel to Tokyo to support their favorite artists who market their self-published books, known as dojinshi. While most of the artists are Japanese, some foreigners like Chen are able to get table space through a lottery.
In the end, Chen, a.k.a. Fude, sold half of the stock that he had on hand — a sizable volume devoted to virtual YouTuber Amane Kanata, a popular figure in Japan — which he said he was especially proud of since he’s only been drawing seriously since 2018, and it was his first Comiket.
Comiket attendees wait outside the Tokyo Big Sight convention center for the 105th edition.Kai Dambach/The World“In the past, I had a low-esteem of myself,” he said. “So, I thought that I wouldn’t make it [at the festival] like the artists that I respect. So, yeah, I’m really happy.”
For both established and emerging artists, Comiket, which began in 1975, is an opportunity for plenty of exposure and networking — with well over a quarter of a million people still coming to the festival even after the pandemic slashed its numbers in half. The summer Comiket is scheduled for mid-August.
The crowd starts to converge on Comiket. About 250,000 people attended the most recent Comiket, the 105th edition, in Tokyo.Kai Dambach/The WorldProfessor Patrick Galbraith of Senshu University in Tokyo said that Comiket displays the changing trends in Japanese comics, which has led to big breaks for several popular artists, including Takahashi Rumiko.
Her widespread success started in 1978 with her series, “Urusei Yatsura,” which was one of the first to go under the popular “magical girl” genre of comics.
A Comiket attendee wears a mask while looking at what a seller has to offer.Kai Dambach/The World“She created something that was much more pop, much more sort of cute, that kind of thing,” he said, adding that she tried out some of her characters and story ideas at Comiket.
Takahashi went on to make several popular manga series, including “Ranma ½” and “Inuyasha,” which sold well over 100 million copies in Japan alone, and are now household names worldwide.
They were also translated into English and turned into TV series broadcast in the US on the Cartoon Network for many years.
Cosplayers dress up and pose as characters from “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure” at the 105th Comiket in Tokyo.Kai Dambach/The WorldGalbraith said that Comiket is one of the ultimate places for freedom of expression. There’s everything from storylines about teens enjoying a quiet life to fighters who combat bad guys with their nose hair.
“It’s a really open market, and anything goes. I think the only limitations are you can’t copy someone else’s work, like directly copy, photocopy, or trace” others’ work, or break any obscenity laws, he said.
A Comiket attendee checks his phone while holding a map of the convention hall. Fans need to come up with a plan to determine which artists they see at what time, otherwise they may miss out on the comic they were looking for.Kai Dambach/The WorldThe comics are also accessible — most books can be had with a quick 500 yen coin, or just over $3, and an arigato, Japanese for “thank you.”
Though, some fans show up just to share their appreciation for an artist.
Cosplayer June Lovejoy, from the US, who was dressed up as Alastor from the American animated series, “Hazbin Hotel,” said that some of her fans brought her gifts.
Comiket attendees browse the alleyways looking for the next comic they want to buy.Kai Dambach/The World“They don’t buy anything, and they just give you presents and walk away. Someone just showed up and said, ‘I bought this at Costco for you,’ and it’s a giant plush of a monster eating Reese’s. But he didn’t buy anything. He just said, here you go, and he left,” Lovejoy said.
She and others said that it’s all part of the joy, serendipity and success that is Comiket.
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Broadway musicals often try out in cities like Boston and Philadelphia before debuting in New York. But a new show has traveled a much farther distance. “Maybe Happy Ending” has been produced six times in South Korea over the past decade.
The performance opened on Broadway last fall and has established itself as a stealth hit. That means, unlike many current shows, it’s not based on well-known intellectual property, and it doesn’t feature big Hollywood stars.
“Maybe Happy Ending” is an intimate science fiction story about two retired robots who fall in love. Their situation is an attempt to shed light on the human condition in this digital age.
“Maybe Happy Ending” debuted on Broadway last fall after being performed in Seoul, South Korea, for years.Courtesy of Polk & Co.When director and choreographer Michael Arden was approached to work on the production, he said the basic premise of the idea didn’t appeal to him.
“It’s not a great elevator pitch,” he recalled. “When I first received the script and read the tagline, I thought, ‘Oh no.’ And then, by the time I finished reading and listening to it, I was completely devastated and overcome with emotion.”
The show’s authors, South Korean-born Hue Park and American Will Aronson, began working on the script over a decade ago. Park, who has written lyrics for Top 20 K-Pop hits, said he was inspired by Damon Albarn’s song “Everyday Robots” while sitting in a Brooklyn coffee shop.
The song started with, “We are everyday robots on our phone in the process of getting home,” Park explained. “And I was like, ‘Oh, I want to see a little quiet, intimate show about who we are becoming in this digital era.’ But the protagonists are human-like robots.”
“Maybe Happy Ending” attempts to shed light on the human condition in the digital age.Courtesy of Polk & Co.He texted his writing partner, Will Aronson, and they got to work. The pair has premiered several musicals together in South Korea, and Aronson also speaks Korean fluently.
“Maybe Happy Ending” is set in Seoul, where the show had a tryout production in 2015, with several subsequent productions since.
“Shows in Korea don’t do open runs generally,” Aronson explained. “They’re usually two- to three-month runs. And then, if it’s going well, it’ll come back a year or two years later. We’ve been very fortunate that the audience did respond and it’s come back consistently.”
Even as the show became a hit in South Korea, Aronson said the team had plans to perform in the United States. There was a reading of the English language script in 2016. “And at that point, we paired with our current producers,” Aronson said. “And there are several new songs. We took some Korean songs out and put some new songs into this version.”
The Korean version is about 15 minutes longer, but the story is basically the same: A pair of retired Helperbots — humanoid servants Oliver and Claire — embark on a surprising romantic relationship.
“Maybe Happy Ending” has established itself as a stealth hit. Unlike many current shows, it’s not based on well-known intellectual property and doesn’t feature big Hollywood stars.Courtesy of Polk & Co.Darren Criss, who starred in the “Glee” series, plays Oliver in the Broadway production. He draws on everything from Commedia dell’arte to Kabuki styles and even silent film stars like Buster Keaton to create his mechanical man.
“In order for me to make it seem like this person is clearly not a human being, it has to be over-expressive,” he explained. “Overexaggeration, like you would with a child: This is happy; this is sad; this is scared.”
Helen J. Shen made her Broadway debut as Claire. “I have found since opening, since previews, my portrayal of Claire has really evolved,” Shen said, “and gotten more ‘roboty’ [or] less ‘roboty’, kind of seeing how going through that spectrum can help tell the story better.”
The two robots discover they really need each other. Claire has to borrow Oliver’s charger since hers is on the fritz. They eventually go on a road trip to an island off the coast of South Korea.
Helen J. Shen holds up an electronic chip during her performance in “Maybe Happy Ending” on Broadway.Courtesy of Polk & Co.Composer Will Aronson added that sometimes the characters’ emotions come out in the music that’s not actually sung.
“We knew that because they were robots, they couldn’t really sing, say, power ballads because it just would not be in character,” he said. “It would break the world of the show. But of course, we want big moments in theater, right? The show has several big musical sequences that have no dialog that are purely staging and music.”
Darren Criss performing in “Maybe Happy Ending” on Broadway.Courtesy of Polk & Co.One example is a magical moment where Claire and Oliver see fireflies — which they call tiny robots. And despite themselves, they fall in love. Co-author Hue Park said writing “Maybe Happy Ending” was a “self-meditative journey.” He started it after breaking up from a long-term relationship, losing a close friend to cancer and turning 30.
“It was around the time of my life, I was sort of like growing up or coming out of a certain age,” Park recalled. “And I got to thinking … ‘Why am I putting myself in that situation, depending on my significant other or sharing my life with a friend?’ Because it’s really painful when they inevitably have to end.”
In “Maybe Happy Ending”, a pair of retired Helperbots embark on a surprising romantic relationship.Courtesy of Polk & Co.But robots, like humans, have a shelf life — their batteries run out, their components wear out. And, after having a romantic, goofy love affair, Oliver and Claire decide to wipe their memories. Or do they?
“There’s nothing cynical about this piece, and I think that’s key to it,” said director Michael Arden. “That actually, I think we’re desperate to go to the theater to feel things that, hopefully, when we leave, cause us to kind of make the more loving, more hopeful, more generous choice. And I think I have to believe that that’s what’s happened here.”
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Shaman Gino Raúl Grünewald Condori stands on the street corner of a working-class neighborhood. His hands are in the air. He’s making an offering to Pachamama, also known as Mother Earth.
Herbs and coca leaves are laid out on a colorful blanket on the ground. Condori throws incense on the flames of a small fire and pours alcohol and wine on the four cardinal points, each time asking for Mother Earth’s blessing and guidance.
This is a ceremony to mark the beginning of carnival season for the Tobas Andino Sajama Guerreros folk dance troupe. Thirty-three-year-old Diego Maldonado is one of the leaders. He’s been dancing since he was 10.
Diego Maldonado performs at the Dino ceremony. This is a ceremony to mark the beginning of carnival, a festive season that celebrates Indigenous traditions, for the Tobas Andino Sajama Guerreros folk dance troupe. Michael Fox/The World“For those of us who are Aymara, who have been dancing for a long time, and who learned this from our grandparents and ancestors, this is really important,” he said. “We learned this from the cradle. We watched our parents and our grandparents practicing these traditions before us. It’s necessary, and it’s important.”
The Aymara are the second-largest Indigenous group in Chile. Their central homeland is in the highlands of Bolivia, but they’ve lived in what is now Chile and Southern Peru since pre-Columbian times. As of 2015, they made up almost a third of the population of the province of Arica.
Carnival in Arica is largely a celebration of Aymara Indigenous identity.
“This carnival is like a revival of Bolivian heritage,” said Paulo Noya Matos. His family is from Bolivia, but he grew up in Arica. “It celebrates and validates Andean Culture. It transcends borders and makes you feel part of Andean territory.”
Paulo Noya Matos, an Arica resident, performs in a Tarqueada dance group, celebrating Aymara Indigenous identity.Michael Fox/The WorldNoya Matos performs in a Tarqueada dance group. They march with thick, long wooden flutes. They say their song calls for the rains this time of the year — planting time in the region.
Nearly 80 different dance troops will perform over the next three days. They’re performing one of more than a dozen different traditional dances. Each has a different style, look, music and significance. But they’re all tied to Mother Earth and celebrate people’s connection to their Indigenous roots.
Tarqueada musicians perform with thick, long wooden flutes. They say the songs they perform calls for the rains this time of the year — planting time in the regionMichael Fox/The WorldThat is no small feat in a country that pushed Chilean nationalism and assimilation throughout the 20th century.
Noya Matos said that there was a lot of discrimination against Peruvian, Bolivian and Aymara cultures. He said he faced discrimination growing up for being of Bolivian descent.
But times are changing.
Lilibeth Diaz and Judith Mamani dance the Morenada, a typical folk dance originally from the Bolivian cities of La Paz and Oruro. They typically wear huge smiles and extravagant yellow Cholita dresses.
Lilibeth Diaz and Judith Mamani dance the Morenada, a typical folk dance originally from the Bolivian cities of La Paz and Oruro. Michael Fox/The World“We dance with our hearts. We sing with everything we have, because these are our roots,” Mamani said. “We sing. We dance and give everything we have in this carnival, because we carry it in our blood.”
Afro-Chilean dance and culture have also taken center stage in the carnival. Black communities have a long history in Arica. Spanish colonizers forced African descendants to work the land here for hundreds of years.
All of these groups are standing up for their identities and celebrating their ancestry.
“This carnival is a mixture of cultures where we all embrace with one healthy objective. To maintain our culture viva — alive,” Fredy Amaneces said. He’s originally from Peru, but he’s lived here in Chile for 25 years. “We will continue to show future generations that this will not die. That this will continue.”
Fredy Amaneces is one of the leaders of the Tinkus Ruphay Masis Cultural dance group. They’ve been dancing Tinku, a powerful and lively dance from the Bolivian city of Potosi, and are known to wear purple, with large, colorful headdresses.Michael Fox/The WorldAmaneces is one of the leaders of the Tinkus Ruphay Masis Cultural dance group. They’ve been dancing Tinku, a powerful and lively dance from the Bolivian city of Potosi. They wear purple, with large, colorful headdresses.
“This is how we thank Pachamama for everything she has done for us,” said Condori, who has overseen carnival dance groups and spiritual ceremonies for years. “Ritual. Dance, Music. Song. Sharing with the community. Giving freely to others.”
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At first glance, the artwork looks like a classic Ottoman miniature. But up close, scenes pulled from present-day movies, internet memes and pop culture come alive.
Thirty-five-year-old Murat Palta has made a splash in the Turkish art world by imagining how a 16th-century Ottoman miniaturist would depict the world today.
Artists in the Persian, Ottoman and Mughal empires hundreds of years ago perfected what is known as miniature art: highly detailed illustrations that depicted moments in history, sumptuous palace life and scenes from folklore and mythology.
“Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” from Turkish artist Murat Palta’s miniature artwork collection.Courtesy of Murat PaltaToday, Palta blends traditional miniature techniques with modern themes, creating detailed scenes that juxtapose historical and contemporary elements. By embracing the technology of his time, just as the original miniaturists did, Palta has found a way to keep this centuries-old art form alive and relevant for a new generation. He constructs each element individually on paper and then pulls them together on an iPad like a collage, before reproducing them on canvas.
“No 20-year-old would just sit and think, ‘Let’s inspect miniature art from the 16th century!’ Nobody would do that!” Palta said. “But with my art or style, they have a special interest growing in this field, and it’s a good thing.”
Turkish artist Murat Palta blends traditional miniature techniques with modern themes.Courtesy of Murat PaltaIn “The Ides of March,” a 2023 work depicting the year in pop culture, he featured Taylor Swift in her Eras Tour regalia, riding an emissions-spewing mythical creature to symbolize controversy over the carbon emissions of her private jet. In an early 2012 piece, storm troopers dressed as Ottoman janissaries surround a stylized Darth Vader, as he sits to smell a damask rose. This classic pose was often commissioned by Ottoman rulers, in an effort to symbolize their intellectual refinement and appreciation of both moral and physical beauty.
The World’s Durrie Bouscaren spoke to Palta and discussed the revival of miniature art in Istanbul.
Listen to the full story by clicking on the blue player above.
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Iztapalapa feels like a city within a city. With close to 2 million residents, it is the most populous borough of Mexico City, Mexico, and also the poorest. Residents often experience water shortages and are exposed to high levels of pollution and crime. But walking down the streets of Iztapalapa feels like visiting a street art exhibition.
Pedro Peña, or Mickrone as he likes to be called, is one of 150 artists recruited by the local government to create the murals.
“I can’t even remember how many walls I’ve painted here, but it’s for sure in the hundreds,” he said while giving a walking tour.
Pedro Peña, or “Mickrone,” is one of dozens of artists recruited by Iztapalapa local authorities to paint close to 11,000 murals.Tibisay Zea/The WorldIn total, close to 11,000 murals have been created by local artists over five years in Iztapalapa. That’s the largest mural project in the world, according to the local government.
The murals are on public buildings, private businesses and homes, even on rooftops — visible from cable cars — and they depict local stories, traditions, characters and neighbors from the area.
Mickrone is especially proud of one of his murals, which went viral on social media.It shows two elderly residents and long-time lovers who were frequently seen in the area. The man is guiding his wife in a wheelchair. He explained that many murals portray locals and everyday scenes — like the man who collects the neighborhood’s garbage or the woman who kneads the dough at the bakery.
Many murals in Iztapalapa portray local residents and everyday scenes, such as the man collecting garbage for the neighborhood.Courtesy of Iztapalapa Mural ProjectThe Iztapalapa mural project started as a push to improve the lives of women, in an area where femicides remain a big issue.
María Antonieta Pérez Orozco, former executive director of the City of Iztapalapa, said the municipal security strategy involved installing hundreds of street lights and deploying police officers, but it also involved embellishing the streets with murals.
Many of the murals also convey messages, such as “stop violence” or “If he hits you, he doesn’t love you.”
A mural sending a message to women in abusive relationships that reads, “If he hits you, he doesn’t love you.”Courtesy of Iztapalapa Mural Project“At first, people didn’t want murals because they didn’t trust the street artists to do a good job,” Orozco said. But now, people are requesting murals — just like 8-year-old Luciana Daniel recently did.
After her parents agreed, Mikrone painted the child wearing an astronaut suit because, as she explained, one of her dreams is to go to the moon.
“I can’t believe that’s me in front of my house,” Daniel said, referring to her mural.
Eight-year-old Luciana Daniel requested artist Mickrone to paint her in front of her house wearing an astronaut suit, since one of her dreams is to go to the moon.Tibisay Zea/The WorldMickrone said that the mural also sends an aspirational message to other girls in the barrio, or neighborhood.
Daniel’s mom, Carmen Solís, said the murals have changed the face of the place.
“Everything was gray and dull, and now it’s colorful and bright,” Solís said. And also, as a woman, she said she feels safer walking the streets of Iztapalapa.
Residents of Iztapalapa say the murals have made the neighborhood colorful and bright.Tibisay Zea/The WorldMickrone and his colleagues have now moved to San Juan Tlihuaca, another Mexico City neighborhood, where they hope to conduct a similar intervention.
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On the first day of rehearsal for “Ainadamar” at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Brazilian director and choreographer Deborah Colker led the singers, dancers and soloists in an exercise in movement.
Although opera stagings are sometimes static, with singers standing, facing forward and singing, Colker said that she wanted a more kinetic, fluid staging to complement the musical rhythms and the story that “Ainadamar”tells.
lena Villalón as Nuria and Angel Blue as Margarita Xirgu in a scene from Golijov’s “Ainadamar.” Marty Sohl/Met Opera“It’s about passion,” Colker said. “It’s about love. It’s about poetry. It’s about what’s happened in the streets. It’s about friendship. And we need to move. We need to dance. We need to sing.”
That is something each opera house’s cast members learn anew, with each staging. The production, which opened at the Scottish Opera before going to Wales and Detroit, plays through Nov. 9 at the Metropolitan Opera. In the spring, it will move on to the LA Opera.
A scene from Golijov’s “Ainadamar” with Angel Blue as Margarita Xirgu. Marty Sohl/Met Opera“Ainadamar” delves into the relationship between the famous Spanish playwright and poet Federico García Lorca and Maria Xirgu, the actress who was his muse. Xirgu was performing in one of Lorca’s plays in Cuba when the fascists jailed and murdered him in Spain in 1936. The opera is told from her perspective in the final moments of her life, 40 years later.
This is Colker’s first time directing an opera. She runs a dance company in Brazil and has directed Cirque du Soleil’s popular show, “Ovo.”
“Ainadamar” has been done a lot since it premiered at Tanglewood in western Massachusetts 21 years ago, but Colker’s interpretation leans into the music’s flamenco rhythms and flamenco dancing, according to Argentinian-born composer Osvaldo Golijov who created the music (the libretto is by David Henry Hwang).
Angel Blue as Margarita Xirgu and Elena Villalón as Nuria in Golijov’s “Ainadamar.” Marty Sohl/Met OperaGolijov said that he was surprised and delighted by the results.
“It’s a real revelation for me,” Golijov said. “Because I never imagined that the opera could be danced from top to bottom.”
When the curtain rises on “Ainadamar,” a man does a Spanish dance surrounded by a circular, beaded curtain. A video of a bull is projected behind him as the sound of hoofbeats melds into flamenco rhythms.
A scene from Golijov’s “Ainadamar.” Marty Sohl/Met OperaThat kind of physicality runs throughout the performance — something that soprano Angel Blue, who plays Xirgu, stressed as well.
She said that at one point during the show, “I’m doing a very deep squat, and the dancers are actually assisting me and pulling me up.”
Angel Blue as Margarita Xirgu and Elena Villalón as Nuria in Golijov’s “Ainadamar.” Marty Sohl/Met OperaIt took a lot of rehearsal: “We had, I don’t know, how many hours a day of training to be able to do that — there’s those two specific moves in that scene that are very hard to do.”
Blue, who’s sung Puccini and Gershwin at the Met, but calls herself a “theater kid” at heart, said it was a liberating process.
“Deborah created a space that was safe to rehearse in,” the singer said.
Angel Blue as Margarita Xirgu in Golijov’s “Ainadamar.” Marty Sohl/Met OperaThe rehearsals were so creative and open, she added, “maybe that’s why this is my favorite opera that I’ve been in, in my professional career, as an opera singer.”
Mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack plays the passionate, doomed playwright in what is called in opera a “trouser role.” She said when she was offered the part, “They were very clear that it was a very physical production, and that I was going to have to move on the stage, not just sing.”
Flamenco dancer Isaac Tovar in a scene from Golijov’s “Ainadamar.” Marty Sohl/Met OperaMack, born in Argentina and raised in the United States, danced as a little girl, but not since. When she joined the production, it took a lot of practice, the singer recalled: “I remember in Detroit taking the fans home to work on my little choreography in my hotel room. But it’s been a real, wonderful environment, too, because Antonio, the flamenco choreographer, is the most patient and wonderful man. And so, he really made the process a happy one.”
Elena Villalón as Nuria and Angel Blue as Margarita Xirgu in Golijov’s “Ainadamar.” Marty Sohl/Met OperaAntonio Najarro, who ran the Spanish National Ballet, was brought in to work on the flamenco moments in the opera, but also add contemporary flourishes.
“Deborah [Colker], she wanted everybody singing, everybody dancing, everybody acting,” Najarro said. “The goal, it was that you don’t have to know who is the singer, who is the dancer. I think this is amazing in this opera.”
Elena Villalón as Nuria in a scene from Golijov’s “Ainadamar.” Marty Sohl/Met OperaThe post New York’s Met Opera debuts ‘Ainadamar’ about Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca and his muse appeared first on The World from PRX.
South Korea’s influence on global popular culture is hard to miss. In fact, we are living in an era known to some as the Korean Wave, or Hallyu.
At the forefront of this wave is BTS, the iconic K-pop sensation with a worldwide ARMY (that’s the fandom name) of supporters.
Stunning films such as Bong Joon-ho’s 2019 dark comedy thriller “Parasite” and the Netflix streaming phenomenon “Squid Game” have broken into Western culture as cult classics and have influenced everything from Halloween costumes to demanding college waitlists for entry into Korean-language learning courses.
Props used for the TV series “Squid Game” are seen on display at the “Hallyu! The Korean Wave” exhibition at the Victoria and Albert museum in London Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022.Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP/FileThe Gangnam district of Seoul is the heart of it all.
Most of the world became familiar with the cultural hub in the summer of 2012, when South Korean performer Park Jae-sang, whose stage name is Psy (pronounced “sigh”), released the global smash hit “Gangnam Style.”
That was the first time many people had heard of Gangnam.
National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek recently walked the streets of Gangnam. It’s the latest leg of his more than 11-year journey on foot, tracing the paths of our earliest ancestors from East Africa to the southernmost tip of the Americas, that’s being documented in a project called Out of Eden Walk.
He joined The World’s Host Carolyn Beeler to discuss his Hallyu experience.
Carolyn Beeler: Paul, I have heard and sung along to “Gangnam Style” so many times, but I do not know what Gangnam is like. You describe it as the “Beverly Hills of Seoul.” Can you tell me more about that neighborhood? Paul Salopek: So, as you know, I’m walking through South Korea, and Seoul, of course, the capital, is obviously an important stop along my walking route. And Gangnam, within the capital, is legendary. It’s a district of the city that’s, like, the most exclusive neighborhood. It’s where elites hang out. It’s where the rich play, that’s full of clubs. It’s got exclusive shops. It’s glitzy, to say the least. And what drew you to this neighborhood? Why did you choose that path through Seoul? My project started in Africa years ago. I’ve walked with farmers, shepherds, factory hands and refugees. I thought I’d dip into a little bit of the stardust of K-culture, if you will, which, as you noted in your intro, is global now. It’s been hugely successful. I’m a writer. I’m a storyteller. I was curious to see firsthand this most popular global product of the 21st century coming out of South Korea. So, you always walk with walking partners. And while walking through Gangnam, someone who you walked with was a South Korean film and TV actress, Lizzy Cho. Tell me about her.Well, when I knew I was walking through South Korea, and because I’m interested in popular culture, I actually approached Psy, the [“Gangnam Style”] guy, to see if he’d be walking me through his home turf of Gangnam. He actually replied and said, “You know, I’d love to, but I’m on summer tour.” So, I tried to find another artist. And Lizzy was perfect, actually, better even than, I’d say, a superstar from the K-Pop world because she was more an embodiment of an everywoman. A young woman who’s trying to make a breakthrough in film. In her case, she’s an actress, as you noted. And I was able to talk to her about the struggles that young Korean artists face in a very, very difficult, bruising, competitive entertainment industry in South Korea.South Korean singer Psy performs during his concert “Summer Swag 2023” at Jamsil Olympic Stadium in Seoul, South Korea, June 30, 2023.Ahn Young-joon/AP/File photoYou wrote about the schedule of voice, dance and acting classes she took as a kid and as a teenager, stretching until midnight, you said. Now that she is well into her career, how does she feel about what it took to get her to this place? And as you said, she’s still trying to make it big. Yeah, she’s still knocking on doors, right. So Lizzy‘s in her 30s, which, by cultural standards, as a youth-orientated culture, is quite mature. She’s an amazing, energetic, attractive, smart young woman. But the way she explained it, Carolyn, is that there’s such a kind of conventional standard of beauty that’s required both young men and young women going into the industry that if you’re not in her words, “perfect”, you don’t get the best roles. And so, she was struggling with that after spending her entire life [preparing] since she was in elementary school. So, she was conflicted. It was an interesting walk, kind of a sobering walk, actually, about the cost of fame. Actress Jiseung “Lizzy” Cho walks past a plastic surgery clinic in Seoul’s affluent Gangnam district, the heart of South Korea’s entertainment industry. Paul Salopek/National Geographic, Out of Eden WalkSo, K-Pop stars, as you have mentioned, have to look perfect based on a fairly narrow standard of beauty. Does Lizzy feel like that is what has been holding her back from big breakout roles that might launch her into the next level of her career? Yeah, indeed. I mean, she has, as I mentioned, spent her entire life studying the craft of acting. She’s done sophisticated roles, but she feels that she doesn’t fit this precise kind of crystal picture of what feminine beauty should be in the entertainment industry. And she feels that directors praise her work but say, “You know, your face doesn’t fit the role of a leading lady.” So, she’s often typecast into a secondary role, supporting roles. She said even roles where she ends up being a villain, right, a feminine villain. Actress Jiseung “Lizzy” Cho and walking partner Lee Junseok pass a building filled with plastic surgery clinics in the Gangnam district of Seoul, South Korea. Paul Salopek/National Geographic, Out of Eden WalkSo, we’ve discussed the challenging beauty standards that K-pop stars have to live up to. There’s also very controlling management that controls the lives of their K-Pop stars and fans. Fans are very enthusiastic but can also turn against stars if they do something they don’t like. Are those things that Lizzy has come up against? Quite sobering, her stories. One of the things that you see walking through Gangnam, apart from these exclusive cafes and these Instagrammable 5-star restaurants where you sit in the garden, is a lot of plastic surgery clinics. In fact, entire buildings, multistory buildings. I counted one seven stories tall that was given over entirely to plastic surgery clinics. That tells you something about the pressures that these artists are under. To be absolutely perfect, right. In every way. And people forget that South Korea, at some level, remains kind of a conservative, Confucian society. So [what] Lizzy told me, is that in Hollywood, an actor, actress can have an affair, can get arrested for drunk driving, and still survive. In fact, it’s considered kind of like ordinary. In South Korea, one kind of mistake like that could actually kill your career. Not only do they kind of force these really inhumane levels of human beauty on you, but you’re supposed to be a saint at the same time. Tough. She said that in the past year, two of her actor friends had committed suicide. So, that tells you the kind of pressures they’re under.Wow. So, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes that looks different from the glitz and glamour we see when we consume K-Pop. Yeah, kind of, you know, an invisible cost. Although it’s getting more and more visible. A lot has been written about. These management agencies … just to give you one other example: If a young person comes in with stars in their eyes, these management agencies put them through two years of training, voice lessons, dance lessons. They police their diets, they police the way they cut their hair, they police their makeup. It is like a boot camp. Parts of this interview have been edited for length and clarity.
Writer and National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek has embarked on a 24,000-mile storytelling trek across the world called the “Out of Eden Walk.” The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonders of our world, has funded Salopek and the project since 2013. Explore the project here. Follow the journey on X at @PaulSalopek, @outofedenwalk and also at @InsideNatGeo.
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Comedian Barry Ferns has performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe almost every year — coronavirus pandemic aside — since 1999.
The very first year, his show played to sellout audiences, but he still walked away $6,500 in debt.
The following year, he returned and ended up further in the red. Eight years after his first Fringe show, Ferns said, he was $45,000 in debt. By 2007, Ferns, who that year formally changed his name to Lionel Richie as a publicity stunt, was declared bankrupt.
“I had to put my hand on the Bible in the Royal Courts of Justice in London and say, I, Lionel Richie, do solemnly swear … Technically, I didn’t go bankrupt, Lionel Richie did,” he said.
Ferns added that he blames the festival for putting him in dire straits.
Barry Ferns changed his name by deed poll to Lionel Richie as a publicity stunt for one his shows. Courtesy of Barry FernsThe Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which runs through Aug. 26 this year, is the biggest performing arts festival in the world, and it has catapulted the work of some artists to the West End, Broadway and television. But the road to the festival is also littered with stories of career-ending performances, mental health distress and financial ruin.
Any artist can perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which is now in its 77th year, but they must cover their own accommodation costs and the price of hiring a venue.
Hotel and Airbnb prices in Edinburgh soar during the month of August as thousands descend on the city for the festival, practically doubling the capital’s population. Many artists say the festival is becoming prohibitively expensive for both performers and audiences.
Ferns, who later recovered from bankruptcy and cofounded his own comedy club in London, continues coming to the festival because he said it has long been seen as the only way for comedians to break through in the industry. But it’s never been profitable for him.
One year, he said, he worked as a cleaner at the Gilded Balloon, the same Edinburgh venue that he would perform in each night to try and make ends meet.
Barry Ferns’ poster from his performance titled “The Barry Experience.”Steve Ullathorne“I’d be waking up at 6 in the morning and cleaning up vomit and emptying cigarette ashtrays, and then show up on stage at the same place later that day.”
Comedians like Robin Williams, Stephen Fry and Bo Burnham are often said to have had their first big breaks at the Fringe. Others like Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby, one of the high-profile acts at this year’s event, have more traumatic memories of their early years in Edinburgh.
In 2006, Gadsby said they performed to fewer than 100 people during the entire festival run.
“I lost an obscene amount of money and cried in public three times,” they said.
Actor and writer Georgie Wyatt’s first show at the Edinburgh Fringe made it to London’s Soho Theatre, and she secured an agent as a result.
But one good year is no guarantee of continued success. The following year, Wyatt returned to the festival with a new act, but in hindsight, she said she never should have gone.
“It was a disaster, and I paid a big price for it financially and personally,” she reflected.
Actor and writer Georgie Wyatt saw her first show at the Edinburgh Fringe transfer to London’s Soho Theatre and subsequently secured an agent as a result. Kala GowlettThe festival can also be a lonely experience for comics. Most acts have to pay for their own publicity, often handing out flyers for their own shows. The Fringe is highly competitive, Wyatt said, so it falls on a performer’s shoulders if their show fails.
“If you don’t have a hold of your mental health or you’re feeling a bit fragile, just don’t go there — it will destroy you,” she said.
Especially if people don’t show up. In 2019, she performed to an audience of just three people.
The whole experience can be demoralizing, Wyatt said.
Still, Wyatt said few festivals like Edinburgh’s allow artists to perfect their craft to such an extent that they can perform night after night for up to a month in front of a live audience.
One theater company this year has devised an almost foolproof way to stage sellout shows: performing to an audience of just one.
Georgie Wyatt said that few festivals like Edinburgh’s allow artists to perfect their craft to such an extent that they can perform night after night for up to a month in front of a live audience. Kala GowlettTaste in Your Mouth, an Irish theater group, stages the show “You’re Needy (Sounds Frustrating)” in the bathroom of a house the company has rented.
The venue also serves as the accommodation for the cast and crew during the festival. The single audience member sits on a chair as lead actress Laoise Murray performs the play in the bathtub.
Murray said she tries not to think about whether her audience will leave during the show, and if they do, she would probably tell herself it was because the content was too unsettling.
William Dunleavy, the company’s co-founder, said the play is an examination of the wellness industry and how it tries to control women’s bodies through capitalism.
There are few places where a show of this kind can work, the play’s director Grace Morgan said, and the Edinburgh Fringe has turned out to be the perfect stage.
The Irish theater group received a grant from Culture Ireland to bring the show to the Fringe, a benefit few of its British counterparts will have received, Morgan said.
Still, the trio said they do not expect to make any money out of their first Edinburgh Fringe experience.
Brian Logan, comedy reviewer with The Guardian, who is also artistic director of Glasgow theater group A Play, A Pie and A Pint, said he believes that the festival organizers and city government itself could do more to help the artists.
A lot of money pours into Edinburgh each August between ticket sales, hotel prices and bar bills.
“It feels to me that the city of Edinburgh needs to stop strangling its golden goose and say, you know, how can we stop taking this thing for granted? It may not be here forever if artists are increasingly alienated from it,” Logan said.
Brian Logan is a comedy reviewer with The Guardian.Courtesy of Brian LoganA spokesperson for the Fringe Society that organizes the festival said that “short-term accommodation costs have increased exponentially across the UK, and Edinburgh is no different.”
The festival lobbies local government, universities and student accommodation providers to set aside affordable rooms for artists. The spokesperson said the festival has also created a fund that offers grants of $3,250 to 180 artists to make the festival experience feasible.
But for all its troubles, Logan said, there is little that compares to the “carnival of creativity” at the Fringe.
This year, there are over 3,600 shows, with thousands of artists coming from 58 countries.
“Every year, there’s also at least a dozen new international acts that I’ll see that I haven’t seen or heard of before,” Logan said. “Yes, the festival has its problems — it’s also wonderful; both these things are true.”
And, a number of Fringe shows through the years have gone on to be global hits on platforms such as Netflix — like “Baby Reindeer,” which originated as a one-man show at the festival in 2019.
“I’m a Fringe idealist for all its problems. And I do find it a tremendously inspiring place to be,” he said, with “art and performance from every corner of the world here.”
Logan said he would like to bring his own show to the Fringe one day.
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A large painting of a three-armed girl was prominently featured at Hillside Gallery’s stand at the art fair Tokyo Gendai in early July. The girl was pointing at a red ball with the No. 2 on it.
The title of the painting is “Two O’Clock.”
“Two O’Clock,” by Masaru Shichinohe, is one of the paintings that Hillside Gallery was showing at Tokyo Gendai. Gisele Regatão/The World“I think he is trying to compress a period of time,” said Shengyu Tang, Hillside’s owner, explaining the piece by Masaru Shichinohe, one of three Japanese artists represented by the gallery he opened in Tokyo in 2017.
Tang was actually born in China and he believes his international experience gives him an advantage in the art market, because he doesn’t think he could only sell domestically.
“We realized, if we could try to find artists that we think could do well outside of Japan as well, we might have a chance,” he said.
Pace Gallery was making its debut at Tokyo Gendai showing the work of American artist Robert Longo. Gisele Regatão/The WorldA few feet away from him, a major American gallery was making its debut at Tokyo Gendai.
Pace Gallery, which has offices in several cities including Beijing, Seoul and Hong Kong, is just opening its Tokyo branch in September — something it has been planning for decades.
“We are really among a very few number of international galleries with a presence here in Tokyo, you might be able to count them on both your hands,” saidJoseph Baptista, a partner at Pace.
Pace’s arrival and the beginning of Tokyo Gendai last year — the country’s first major international art fair — are both happening as Japan has changed some tax laws, making it easier for international companies to operate, and allowing Japanese dealers to take a bigger bite of a market that moves $65 billion a year.
To be able to launch Tokyo Gendai, organizers negotiated a deal for exhibitors, allowing them to pay a 10% tax after their sales. Gisele Regatão/The WorldMany believe it’s about time. Even though it’s the third-largest economy in the world, Japan’s share of the global art market is just 1%, much smaller than China’s 19%.
“Japan is quite rapidly accelerating towards the position that it should hold, which is one of the major art hubs anywhere,” saidMagnus Renfrew, co-founder of Tokyo Gendai, which took place in Yokohama, about one hour by train from Tokyo.
To be able to launch the fair, organizers negotiated a tax incentive for exhibitors. Normally, international art galleries would have to pay a 10% tax up front.
“Which, of course, made it prohibitive,” Renfew said. “If they brought $10 million worth of art into the country, they would have to put down $1 million in cash.”
The increase of interest in Japanese art is also related to the popularity of anime and manga — Japanese cartoons and comics. Gisele Regatão/The WorldThe 38 international galleries that attended Tokyo Gendai this year — out of a total of 69 — were able to pay the tax after their sales.
Renfrew said that was a game changer, and it will help catapult art sales.
“The market in Asia is in the very early stage of development, and there is huge room to grow,” he said.
Japan’s art profile is rising as sales from other Asian countries are suffering.
The US government has increased tax imports on goods from China. And Hong Kong, a major arts hub, is dealing with stronger Chinese control that is limiting artistic expression.
Aside from billionaires in Japan who have several homes, most people do not have spaces for large canvases or sculptures. Gisele Regatão/The WorldThe increase of interest in Japanese art is also related to the popularity of anime and manga — Japanese cartoons and comics — and the success of artists like Yayoi Kusama, known for her pumpkins with polka dots, and Takashi Murakami, who did the art for Kanye West’s “Graduation” album.
Joan B. Mirviss, the owner of a namesake gallery in New York that specializes in Japanese art, particularly ceramics, said that, internationally, the interest in Japanese art has grown exponentially.
“I don’t think a week goes by where I don’t get a request from a serious person, who I don’t know, or a surprise museum that suddenly wants to get started,” she said.
Tokyo Gendai is Japan’s first major international art fair. Gisele Regatão/The WorldWhen Mirviss opened her gallery almost 50 years ago, she said, there were six museums in the US that were collecting Japanese ceramics.
“Now, I have over 60 institutions in the United States alone, and institutions in Europe, Australia and elsewhere,” she said.
She explained that Japanese ceramic is pretty affordable; sake cups by young artists sell for $300 — or $1,000 if they are done by a celebrated master.
But Mirviss believes the Japanese domestic art market has some challenges. Even though Japan is a rich country, she said the average person is more likely to save money than to spend on art.
“There isn’t that drive to collect, to build for status purposes,” she said.
Yayoi Kusama is one of the most-famous artists from Japan, and is particularly well-known for her polka-dot pumpkins like this one, located on Naoshima Island. Gisele Regatão/The WorldMirviss explained that aside from billionaires in Japan who have several homes, most people do not have spaces for large canvases or sculptures.
“Also, traditionally, in Japan, you don’t fill your house with art,” she said. “There’s specific spaces within the home where a work of art might be displayed. But it’s not like the West, where there’s, you know, paintings hanging in every room, and a sculpture on a corner. The Japanese don’t live like that.”
Baptista said Pace’s goal with the opening of a Tokyo branch is not only to sell to Japanese collectors, but to visitors who are flocking to the country, in part because they are interested in the culture and the art.
Tokyo Gendai took place in Yokohama, about one hour by train from the country’s capital. Gisele Regatão/The World“There is so much interest in visiting Japan,” he said. “Culturally, it’s such a place of respect.”
Attracted also by a weak yen, almost 18 million tourists visited Japan in the first six months of this year, a record. It’s still unclear how that will translate to art sales.
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French Chilean rapper Ana Tijoux paused during a recent performance in New York to acknowledge flags propped onstage — of the Palestinian territories, and of Wallmapu, the ancestral territory of the Indigenous people in what is now Chile.
“We believe in the liberation of any occupied territory,” she said during a concert that was part of Celebrate Brooklyn earlier this month. “I invite all the people in the crowd to not be afraid to talk about life and humanity.”
That message is in keeping with her music.
Tijoux is on a world tour featuring songs from her latest album titled, “Vida,” in Spanish (“Life” in English), which comes after a 10-year break and following the deaths of a handful of people close to her.
“Vida,” released earlier this year, deals with themes of conflict, death, motherhood, pollution and the end of the world. Though she doesn’t shy away from tough subjects, her album is filled with hope and meaning.
Selena Fragassi is a freelance music writer and critic based in Chicago who has followed Tijoux’s work.
“What a time in history to reintroduce herself,” she said. “She is such a rebellious force in music, and she brings a lot of history, politics and feminism.”
Fragassi explained that some artists have played it safe in recent years, either because of the criticism they get on social media, or because they are trying to tow the line between different audiences with opposing views.
Several people in the audience at Tijoux’s concert at Celebrate Brooklyn were wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh.Gisele Regatão/The World“But Ana has never done that, and I think we need really strong voices in music entertainment,” she said. “Her words are just really meaningful right now.”
Fragassi said she appreciates that the album mixes hip-hop with jazz, R&B and Afro Cuban beats.
And that it includes some ballads, showing Tijoux’s more sensitive side.
“A lot happened in her life, maybe she got kind of tender on a few songs that were more autobiographical,” Fragassi said.
A happy vibe Some of the songs in “Vida” are political. “Busco mi nombre,” or “I search for my name,” is a ballad about those who disappeared during the dictatorship in Chile.
A few of the tunes are personal.
“Vida” is Tijoux’s fifth solo album and it comes after a 10-year break.Gisele Regatão/The World“Tania” is about Tijoux’s sister who died in 2019. As she was mourning, she said that she needed an outlet to “put all the hope, and to live life and to understand what life really means.”
“Niñx,” or “Child,” is written for her daughter, who is 11, because Tijoux said she wanted to give her hope in a time of war.
“I’m sure I sing that song also to myself, and for the inside child we all got,” Tijoux said.
“To go back to that first emotion that we all had when we were kids when we were always assombrados, we were, ‘Wow, that’s amazing,’ and never lose that.”
Ana Tijoux
Even her apocalyptic song, “Fin del mundo” (“End of the world”) has a happy vibe. That’s because the record is also inspired by her passion for dancing, an activity that she said she finds therapeutic.
In June, Tijoux performed at Celebrate Brooklyn, a summer concert series in New York, for the third time in her career.Gisele Regatão/The World“Dancers sometimes cry,” she said. “I love that mood of the movement of the body and the movement of the soul.”
“Vida” features several guests, including American rapper Talib Kweli, Puerto Rican singer iLe, and Chilean rapper Pablo Chill-E.
‘The land of no-lands’Tijoux became famous internationally in 2010 with her second solo album, “1977,” named after the year she was born, in France, while her parents were in exile because of the military dictatorship in Chile.
Since then, the rapper has been nominated for three Grammys, won one Latin Grammy, and has become a role model as a Latina in hip-hop.
Tijoux fell in love with hip-hop when she was still living in Paris. She was exposed to the genre while visiting African immigrants with her mother, who worked as a social worker.Javiera GajardoTijoux said she fell in love with hip-hop when she was still living in Paris. She was exposed to the genre while visiting African immigrants with her mother who worked as a social worker.
“Hip-hop is the land of the no-lands. And that’s why I think it’s so popular around the world,” Tijoux said. “It’s a movement that was born with immigrants, with Boricua, with Haitians, Jamaicans, Afro Americans.”
The family moved back to Chile in the 1990s, and Tijoux started performing as a rapper when she was 18, first with the group Makiza.
For the past three years, Tijoux has been living in Barcelona, Spain, with her daughter, 11, and son, 19. She just turned 47 and said she’s not scared of aging.
“We change, and there is nothing wrong about that,” she said. “I understand that many people don’t want to say that they age, but in my case, I’m very proud of my age.”
Four months ago, Tijoux put a golden incrustation of the number 77, the year of her birth, on one of her tooth.Gisele Regatão/The WorldIn many ways, Tijoux maintains her rebellious, young spirit — as evidenced by her new tooth bling of the numeral 77.
Nelson Rodríguez Vega, a music professor at the University of Concepción in Chile who has written about the history of hip-hop in the country, said Tijoux’s new album consolidates her career.
“With this record, she is ratifying her position as one of the most-important female rappers of Latin America, if not the most important,” he said.
Rodríguez Vega said Tijoux’s success has opened the door for other female rappers, like Flor de Rap and Zita Zoe.
Tijoux became famous internationally in 2010 with her second solo album, “1977,” named after the year she was born, in France, while her parents were in exile because of the military dictatorship in Chile.Gisele Regatão/The WorldHe said about one particular festival in the southern city of Concepción, “You can really say that women are making rap because, during six hours, 90% of the artists performing are women.”
That’s because of her talent as a singer, songwriter and activist, Rodríguez Vega explained. “Her lyrics go beyond. They address political issues or social commentary. So, from that perspective, she transcends.”
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Rabea Gebbler touches a blade to a fast-spinning piece of wood on a lathe. Shavings fly off in ribbons. And the wood takes the shape of a bowl — the kind used for miso soup. Gebbler is German and came to Yamanaka Onsen about two years ago to study the town’s specific style of woodturning.
“Yamanaka means in the middle of the mountains. So there’s a lot of wood,” said Gebbler.
Rabea Gebbler turns a wooden bowl on a Yamanaka-style lathe.Hannah Kirshner/The WorldFor hundreds of years, Yamanaka artisans have been turning that wood into tableware and teaware. Sometimes, the woodturners apply a finish themselves. But often, their products become a canvas for artisans from Wajima, a northern city in the Ishikawa Prefecture on the Noto Peninsula that is famous for lacquering.
In Wajima, lacquer specialists apply urushi — lacquer made from the sap of urushi trees. Wajima lacquerware — called Wajima-nuri — is influenced by its proximity to the sea: it’s especially strong because the urushi is mixed with local diatomaceous earth.
Pigmented urushi on the Shirota’s work table.Hannah Kirshner/The WorldIn each of these towns, a specific craft is part of the identity of that place. And these places are part of the identity of their crafts.
On Jan. 1, a major earthquake rocked the Noto Peninsula, and Wajima was one of the hardest-hit areas. The earthquake shook the continuity of Wajima-nuri and upended the lives of its makers.
Producing one piece of Wajima-nuri can take five craftspeople and more than 100 steps.
“You’ll have someone making the base material. You’ll have someone doing the base coats, the middle coats, and the top coats, and then even the person for the sanding in between,” Gebbler explained.
The result is shiny opaque lacquer, usually black or red.
An assortment of Ayano Konishi’s maki-e works, displayed on her kitchen table.Hannah Kirshner/The WorldMoreover, sometimes another craftsperson applies maki-e. Maki-e is a painstaking process of painting detailed illustrations with urushi and sprinkling gold (or other precious mineral) powder onto the design. Tiny bits of pearlescent shell or iridescent insect wings are also used: imagine making a mosaic from individual pieces of glitter.
Ayano Konishi is a maki-e artist who had her studio in Wajima until the earthquake earlier this year.
In her Yamanaka kitchen, Ayano Konishi shows a lacquerware cup decorated with hydrangeas.Hannah Kirshner/The WorldHer studio was attached to a family lacquerware shop that had been in business for around 250 years, since the Edo period. The shop was on the same street as Wajima’s famous morning market, where vendors sell fish and produce. All along that street were lacquerware shops and studios.
The shop run by Ayano Konishi’s husband and father-in-law before the fire.Courtesy of Ayano Konishi“On Dec. 31, as usual, our shop was open,” said Konishi. “I took my children for a walk, and we went to the vegetable auntie to buy mandarin oranges and fruits. Everyone greeted us, and the children had a lot of fun.”
But on New Year’s Day, everything would change.
Konishi and her family were relaxing at their apartment just outside town.
“There was a tremendous shaking. I really thought the apartment was going to collapse. I really thought we would die,” she said.
Aftershocks kept coming, and in downtown Wajima, a fire broke out.
Fire consumed downtown Wajima on Jan 1.Courtesy of Ayano Konishi“The earthquake caused the ground to rise, so there was no water anywhere,” said Konishi.
Pipes broke and the river and fire cisterns drained, so firefighters couldn’t draw water. Wajima’s morning market and all the lacquerware shops and studios around it burned.
Ayano Konishi’s view of the Wajima morning market, before and after the fire.Courtesy of Ayano KonishiSix months later, much of Wajima is still uninhabitable. Craftspeople have scattered around the country, staying with relatives or in temporary housing. Some Wajima craftspeople have given up, especially the older ones.
But Kazuya and Kasumi Shirota, a couple who are both maki-e artisans in their 70s, are determined to continue. After the earthquake, their son urged them to come to live with him in Hyogo prefecture, far from Noto.
Kasumi Shirota at her work table in Yamanaka.Hannah Kirshner/The World“I thought, I’m already old, so if I go to my son’s place, I’ll become senile,” said Kazuya Shirota.
Within days of the earthquake, a lacquerware craftsman called the Shirotas from Yamanaka Onsen, the woodturning town. He invited them to come right away and promised to help them start working again.
Now, the Shirotas live and work in an apartment complex in Yamanaka. At the desk they share, Kazuya Shirota works on ornate designs decorating ceremonial objects used in Buddhist temples or during a tea ceremony. On an incense box decorated with a hen and rooster, each feather has been painted one by one, textured with tiny lines, and finished with seven different types of gold powder.
Kazuya Shirota’s works in progress.Hannah Kirshner/The WorldThe Shirotas say they wish they could return to Wajima. They can get money from the government to tear down their damaged house, but they would have to rebuild at their own expense. It could take years. At 70, they don’t think it’s realistic.
Ayano Konishi, who had her studio near Wajima’s morning market, also ended up in Yamanaka, just a few doors down in the same apartment complex. She explained that tools are often passed down from parent to child or teacher to student. Some types are no longer in production. And even when Konishi bought new tools, she modified them to suit her hands and way of working. She lost most of these in the Wajima fire.
Ayano Konish’s tools for sprinkling powdered gold and other precious metals.Hannah Kirshner/The WorldThere has been an outpouring of support for Wajima artisans. Craftspeople from all over Japan sent tools, and crowdfunding campaigns received donations from around the world. Because of all that attention, the Wajima artisans who can work are busier than ever. In turn, Yamanaka woodturners are busy making bases for them.
“We are aiming to return to Wajima eventually,” said Konishi.
But it will take years to clear the rubble and rebuild.
Wajima after the earthquake and fire.Courtesy of Ayano KonishiFor as long as she lives in Yamanaka, Konishi wants to get inspiration from her new environment. Her work draws from nature and is influenced by the people she collaborates with. She recently ordered some wooden bases from a craftsman she met in Yamanaka.
Earthquakes are part of life in Japan. The crafts seen as traditional now were shapedvents, natural resources, and people’s movement. If more Wajima artisans start working in Yamanaka, these two towns and their crafts may become even more interconnected. Some craftspeople are hopeful that this will strengthen them both and allow them to by historical e continue to evolve.
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The sounds of the Amazon echo through an exhibition called “The Imaginary Amazon,” newly launched at the University Art Gallery on the campus of San Diego State University.
The exhibition features artwork by contemporary artists, many of whom are Indigenous inhabitants of the forest. Their intent is to address some of the stereotypical Western perspectives of the Amazon.
“Terrazo Vajo,” 2020, made by the artist Abel Rodríguez, from Colombia. Marco Werman/The WorldThe exhibition reminds viewers of the Amazon’s mass expanse — it’s roughly the size of the United States’ lower 48 states. And it has an equally large hold over many people’s imaginations.
“All different kinds of groups of people have different images of what the Amazon means,” curator Gillian Sneed said, adding that a lot of those images are based on stereotypes and unflattering perspectives trafficked for centures by the so-called Global North.
The exhibition hopes to be a counterweight to those inaccurate portrayals.
A poster displayed at “The Imaginary Amazon,” an exhibition at the University of San Diego featuring works by contemporary artists who hope to address some of the stereotypical Western perspectives of the Amazon.Marco Werman/The World
“There are other kinds of imaginaries, the imaginaries of the Indigenous people who live there, their cosmologies of how they see the world or their ritual belief systems.”
Gillian Sneed, curator, University Art Gallery, University of San Diego, California
“There are other kinds of imaginaries, the imaginaries of the Indigenous people who live there, their cosmologies of how they see the world or their ritual belief systems,” Sneed said.
Top: “Ushipi Fruits.” Bottom: “River’s Banks.” Both works are acrylic on paper, made by the artist Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, from Venezuela.The art exhibit offers social commentary on depictions of the Amazon throughout history.
In 1941, Walt Disney famously traveled to Brazil, where he met an accomplished illustrator named Jota Carlos, who had created a parrot character with human traits. Disney returned to Hollywood and introduced his character, José Carioca, a kind of “man about town” parrot from Brazil.
Brazilian artist Sergio Allevato deals with Disney’s plagiarism through his own portrayal of parrots, painted on earthy linen to stay true to the actual fauna of the Brazilian Amazon, he said.
His portraits are more Audubon than Disney, reversing some of the negative stereotypes that came with the Carioca character, who was portrayed as having a “bad personality,” and was “unfaithful,” Allevato explained.
“Papagaida,” from the series BraZil, 2019, oil on linen, by the artist Sergio Allevato, from Brazil. Marco Werman/The World
“Parrots are intrinsically connected to Brazilian history.”
Sergio Allevato, artist, Brazil
“Parrots are intrinsically connected to Brazilian history,” Allevato added. The Portugese called Brazil “the land of the parrots,” or — terra papa gali. Allevato said these parrots were taken by the thousands to Europe, and were exploited.
“That’s all folks!” from the series BraZil, oil on linen, 2021, by the artist Sergio Allevato, from Brazil. Marco Werman/The WorldAllevato said he wants to make clear that the “The Imaginary Amazon” show is not just about how people who live in the Amazon see their world. It’s really about the rest of us.
“It’s about being together, everybody together, fighting for the whole planet. That’s it,” he said.
Gillian Sneed and Sergio Allevato stand together at “Imaginary Amazon,” an exhibition at the University Art Gallery at San Diego State University.Marco Werman/The World“The Imaginary Amazon” will be on display at San Diego State University’s art gallery until May.
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The classical music world has lost a towering figure. Seiji Ozawa, who led the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) for nearly three decades, died this week at the age of 88, in his home country of Japan.
The World’s host Carolyn Beeler spoke to Brian McCreath, who broadcasts the Boston Symphony Orchestra on WCRB in Boston, to discuss Ozawa’s life and legacy.
Conductor Seiji Ozawa stops to greet a young child in the audience as he arrives for a reception for himself and the other Kennedy Center Honors honorees in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Dec. 6, 2015.Andrew Harnik/AP/File photoCarolyn Beeler: Seiji Ozawa was born in part of Japanese-occupied China in 1935, before the end of World War II, and I understand his career took off here in this country in the ’60s. Tell us how that all got started.Brian McCreath: It really kind of started in Europe. He won a competition in France which caught the notice of another legendary Boston Symphony music director. That’s Charles Munch, who invited Seiji to come to Boston, really to study at Tanglewood at what was known as the Berkshire Music Center at the time, now called the Tanglewood Music Center in western Massachusetts, where the Boston Symphony spends the summers along with its academy there. Seiji was one of the conductors there who studied with Munch and with others and won the Koussevitzky Prize, which is kind of a big deal, given to the best conducting student of the summer every year. And so, that brought him to the attention of a ton of people. And then, his career really took off through the 1960s.And when he joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra, in the early 1970s, how big of a deal was it to have a conductor from Japan in a role like that?It was, maybe not unprecedented, but extremely unconventional. So, Seiji was coming in at a time when the orchestra had gone through a few years of music directorship of William Steinberg, a German conductor, and previous to that, several years had been spent with Erich Leinsdorf, an Austrian conductor. So, there’s this very heavy Central European focus that the BSO had, both in its sound approach and in its, sort of, profile internationally. So, you bring in Seiji, who is extremely gifted, sort of supernaturally gifted almost, as a conductor. And he brought with him an audience in Japan and throughout Asia. And all of a sudden, there was a new group of people paying attention to the Boston Symphony. It launched the Boston Symphony, already an international orchestra, to a new level of renown around the world. And frankly, the audience connection to the Boston Symphony in Asia remains to this day.I gather that there was a sense among classical music critics that someone from Asia couldn’t really understand Western classical music back when he took the helm of the BSO. And I was struck by this quote in The Boston Globe back in 1999. Ozawa SAID: “I know I’m a test case. Everyone wonders how much I can learn, how much I can understand.” Can you put that into context for us?Well, there is a bias, especially back in the 1960s and early ’70s, such a prevalent bias of, sort of, tradition and heritage being part of classical music, that you must come from a certain part of the world to understand the soul of classical music. And frankly, a lot of Europeans felt that way about the United States, too. So, when Seiji comes along, not only does he disprove this comprehensively, what he brings as well is a brilliance of conducting that very few conductors have ever matched. He brought a physicality to his art that was almost, as I’ve heard it described, like a ballet dancer. Everything he did physically communicated what he wanted from the musicians in the nuance and the interpretation of the music they were playing.I think you said that his conducting was like watching a ballet dance. Can you tell me a little bit more about what it looked like to watch him conduct?Yeah, I mean, he wasn’t a large man physically. He was a little bit on the diminutive side, but he had this, for most of his career, he had this big hair, kind of a mop-top hair, right? And so, when you watched him, he was graceful. His body would bend in certain ways and move in certain ways in time with the music. Now, sometimes we in the audience watch conductors, and it’s almost as though they’re performing the music physically. That wasn’t the case so much with Seiji. It all had a meaning. In fact, one BSO executive at one point told me that he watched in a masterclass Seiji teach students to begin pieces of music like, say, Beethoven’s “5th Symphony,” actually one of the hardest pieces of music to conduct at the very beginning. He would teach his students to do that with no hands, no arms. They would have to do it basically with their eyes and facial expression. That’s the kind of thing that he could pull off. Now, of course, he did use his hands and arms when he conducted that music in a concert, but that was the the extent to which the physicality of the music moved through his body and communicated to the musicians in the orchestra.Wow, conducting just with a raised eyebrow or a glance sounds very powerful.Yeah, yeah, exactly.Seiji Ozawa of Japan, assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, leads the orchestra, March 29, 1965.Marty Lederhandler/AP/File photoYou mentioned that Ozawa revitalized the Boston Symphony Orchestra and really developed a big fan base in Asia and other parts of the world. Can you tell me more about that international legacy?Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Seiji, again, he had a huge following in Europe. The orchestras there, by and large, loved to have him come in and be a guest conductor. But along with the fan base or the audience that you might find in Japan and throughout Asia, he also had the backing of major corporations in Japan, which had its own benefits for the Boston Symphony, which wasn’t in terrible shape in 1973, but like a lot of the economy at that particular time, it was a bit rough. Seiji opened the door to corporations like Sony and TDK and Nippon Electric supporting the orchestra with their sponsorship. So again, the affection for Seiji in Japan and throughout Asia spread to the rest of the world everywhere classical music was heard.I know you didn’t know him personally, but were there any aspects of Ozawa’s personality that he was especially known for?He became very well-known around Boston for his enthusiasm for our sports teams. And you can find dozens of pictures of Seiji wearing a Red Sox hat or Red Sox jersey or coat. And he was constantly showing up at Fenway Park. Also a big fan of the Celtics and every other sport that was in Boston; the orchestra would make sure that he had access to the latest scores wherever he was. You know, how the Red Sox were doing in the standings, all of these.Oh, those kinds of scores?Yeah, of course, they supplied him with the scores he needed for his job, too. But yes, he was full of life. When you hear people talk about him, they speak of someone who was warm and generous. He was not uncontroversial, though. I mean, he made some moves during his time with the Boston Symphony that were hard-edged and almost ruthless. And so, there is that side of him as an organizational leader where he took difficult decisions, was not well-received at times, but that’s part of the game of being a major league music director of a major orchestra.This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
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The entrance of Miami’s Little Haiti is hard to miss. A bright and colorful mural by Haitian artist Serge Toussaint welcomes people into the neighborhood. Toussaint chose to highlight neighborhood icons, such as Ray Bell, the first Little Haitian female to receive a black belt in karate, or local dancer Ajhanou Uneek. Front and center are Maria and Viter Juste, considered to be the founders of Little Haiti.
The couple moved to Miami in the 1970s, after spending a decade in New York City. Their arrival marked a before-and-after for the neighborhood — which became known as Little Haiti, a name coined by Viter Juste. They helped thousands of Haitian newcomers settle and integrate into the city over the course of several decades and become part of a community.
Winnick Blaine poses in front of the mural that features his grandparents, Maria and Viter Juste, who are considered to be the founders of Little Haiti in Miami. Tibisay Zea/The WorldBut little remains of the neighborhood that the Justes founded, said Winnick Blaine, one of their grandsons. “It’s like our history here is vanishing,” he said.
The area has been redeveloped by new investors, who are attracted by the neighborhood’s proximity to the beach and new fancy restaurants and shops, as well as its elevation above sea level, which protects it from flooding.
Blaine said the new development has brought some good things to the neighborhood, including less crime, and a modern look for several buildings that were deteriorating. But he added that it’s also changing the essence of Little Haiti.
People gather at the Haitian Cultural Center in Miami.Tibisay Zea/The World“Investors also bring in their culture and style of living, which in many cases is different to that of Haitians,” Blaine explained.
Schiller Sanon-Jules, owner of the Haitian restaurant The Vegan Marie, said there aren’t as many Haitians in the area any longer.
“Before, you used to go to people’s houses, play dominoes, play soccer at the park, eat Haitian food. … You don’t find that here anymore.”
Schiller Sanon-Jules, owner of the Haitian restaurant The Vegan Marie
“Before, you used to go to people’s houses, play dominoes, play soccer at the park, eat Haitian food … You don’t find that here anymore,” Sanon-Jules said.
Schiller Sanon-Jules is the owner of The Vegan Marie, a Haitian restaurant in Miami.Tibisay Zea/The WorldHe and his wife had to downsize their restaurant and move it to a different part of the neighborhood after their rent more than doubled a few years ago.
Largest Haitian diaspora in the USFlorida is home to the largest Haitian community in the US. More than 300,000 people with Haitian ancestry reside in the Miami area, according to the US census, but many believe that number is an undercount.
Little Haiti’s population has remained unchanged since the beginning of the century, with about 30,000 people, but the neighborhood experienced a 13.5% decrease in family households in that period, according to a study by Florida International University.
Also, while Blacks still represent over 70% of Little Haiti’s inhabitants, there has been a significant shift in the growth of other racial and ethnic groups, including “white alone” (49.6% increase) and “some other race” (69.1% increase), according to the same study.
Gentrification didn’t happen overnight. In the late 1980s, some investors bought properties with the vision of selling them in the future at a higher price, when the area became valuable, and they did. Also, the descendants of Haitian immigrants who settled in Little Haiti left the neighborhood and never came back.
Solange Biem-Aime has been the owner of the Lakay Tropical Ice Cream bakery since the 1990s.Tibisay Zea/The World“They lost interest in this neighborhood,” Blaine explained, saying they perceived it as unsafe and underdeveloped.One of the most iconic symbols of gentrification in Little Haiti is a $1 billion redevelopment project called the Magic City Innovation District that passed in 2019.
There are still some Haitian-owned shops standing in the area.
Lakay Tropical Ice Cream is a bakery hosted and run by its owner, Solange Biem-Aime since the 1990s. Her business has survived in part because she owns the land. “I get phone calls, letters and visits from investors trying to convince me and my daughter to sell the property,” she said. “But we don’t want to.”
However, Biem-Aime worries about the future of her business, as many of her longtime customers have left.
Bringing people to Little Haiti has also been a struggle, said Abraham Metellus, one of the co-founders of Tap Tap Tours, the only tour company in Little Haiti. “We started this tour because no one was coming here,” he explained.
Abraham Metellus is one of the co-founders of Tap Tap Tours, the only tour company in Miami’s Little Haiti.Tibisay Zea/The WorldMetellus said more than 500 people have taken his tour since he started back in 2019. He offers tours every Saturday, twice a day, where he brings tourists to historical landmarks and traditional businesses in the area.
One of the stops is at the Haitian Cultural Center, which features galleries with exhibitions, classes for traditional dance and Caribbean percussion, and live music concerts.
The Haitian Cultural Center in Miami features galleries with exhibitions, classes for traditional dance and Caribbean percussion and live music concerts. Tibisay Zea/The WorldMetellius is also now requesting local government authorities to protect several buildings in Little Haiti by declaring them as cultural heritage of the city.
Related: ‘It’s an act of resistance’: Haiti’s jazz festival opens in Port-au-Prince despite security challenges
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International Guitar Night, a touring guitar festival in its 24th year, highlights a wide range of guitar sounds from across the globe, from classical to Australian blues slide.
As part of the festival, which highlights “the dexterity and diversity of the acoustic guitar,” according to IGN materials, guitarists perform solo and in duets and quartets.
This year’s lineup, curated by IGN founder Brian Gore, brings together several returning artists and a newcomer, including: Luca Stricagnoli, an acoustic rock interpreter from Italy who returns to IGN for the fourth time; Vietnamese classical guitarist Le Thu; Brazilian Marco Pereira, a master composer and performer who first toured with IGN in its early days; and Australia’s Minnie Marks, a blues slide guitarist and singer.
The North American tour runs through March. Here’s the tour schedule, below.
January31 W Gesa Power House Theater, Walla Walla WA
February1 TH Washington Center for the Performing Arts, Olympia WA
2 F KENTWA Performing Arts Center, Kent WA
3 S Whiteside Theater, Corvallis OR
6 T WYO Theatre, Sheridan WY
7 W The Ellen Theater, Bozeman MT
8 TH The Myrna Loy, Helena MT
9 F Wheeler Auditorium, Aspen CO
10 S Lone Tree Performing Arts Center, Lone Tree CO
13 T Tower Theater, Bend OR
14 W The Reser, Beaverton OR
15 TH Peery’s Egyptian Theater, Ogden UT
16 F Sheppard Auditorium, Pinedale WY
17 S Warren Miller Performing Arts Center, Big Sky MT
18 SU Wachholz College Center, Kalispell MT
20 T Musical Instrument Museum, Scottsdale, AZ
21 W Fox Theatre, Tucson AZ
22 TH Herbst Theatre, San Francisco CA
23 F Bankhead Theater, Livermore CA
24 S Montalvo Arts, Saratoga CA
27 T James Madison University, Harrisonburg VA
28 W Wolf Trap Barns, Vienna VA
29 TH Wolf Trap Barns, Vienna VA
March1 F Bloomsburg University, Bloomsburg PA
2 S The Gordon Center, Owings Mills MD
3 SU The Manship Theatre, Baton Rouge LA
6 W Butler University, Indianapolis IN
9 S Goshen College, Goshen IN
10 SU McAninch Arts Center, Du Page IL
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Anyone who has been to Haiti knows that Haitian culture is immensely rich — and despite serious economic and security challenges — the arts are still flourishing.
Take, for instance, Haiti’s annual PapJazz Festival.
Last year’s festival drew thousands of fans. This year marks the 17th edition of the annual international jazz festival that begins on Jan. 25 and goes for four full days. The popular event draws jazz fans from all over the world from Martinique to Miami. The festival includes 42 concerts, 29 of which are free.
The annual jazz festival draws huge crowds every year. Josué Azor/Courtesy of PapJazz FestivalFestival organizer Melina Sandler said they are very excited to see the festival return to Port-au-Prince after they held a festival in Cap-Haitien last year due to ongoing violence in the capital.
The festival is international in scope, but the gathering also serves as a form of mentorship for young Haitian musicians, who get to play alongside superstars during after-hours jam sessions.
Haitian vodou priest, dancer and singer Erol Josué and Cubain pianist Omar Sosa perform at Haiti’s PapJazz Festival.Josué Azor/Courtesy of PapJazz FestivalDespite heightened security concerns in Port-au-Prince, Sandler said the festival serves as an “act of resistance” for the people.
“The people of Port-au-Prince need that festival. They need food, they need security. They need everything. But they also need a space of conviviality, of hope. They need to breathe. And this festival brings that to the people.”
Milena Sandler, festival organizer, PapJazz Festival
“The people of Port-au-Prince need that festival. They need food, they need security. They need everything. But they also need a space of conviviality, of hope. They need to breathe. And this festival brings that to the people,” she said.
Grammy award winner Cécile Mc Lorin Salvant, Haitian French American, sings at the PapJazz Festival in Haiti. Josué Azor/Courtesy of PapJazz FestivalOver the 17-year period, the festival only got canceled twice.
Singer and guitar player Paul Beaubrun performs at the Haitian PapJazz Festival.Josué Azor/Courtesy of PapJazz FestivalThis year, Sandler said that they are taking additional security measures by holding the festival in a hotel rather than a public space.
“Social cohesion only happens in this country very rarely,” Sandler said, but she is confident that the public will show up for jazz.
“It’s a music that that elevates you. The festival is all about that.”
Click the player above to hear the full interview with festival organizer Milena Sandler.
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In Estonia’s capital, Tallinn, the vibrant industrial warehouse district of Telliskivi is a trendy musical hub once the site of a locomotive repair factory. Inside a venue called Must Saal, the harmonies of four Estonian women musicians brought the crowd to an instant hush during the Tallinn Music Week festival.
The quartet’s name, 6hunesseq, means “humidity” in the South Estonian language of Võro. During the concert, they sang old folk hymns in traditional Baltic-Finnish styles known as runo to a standing-room audience. The vocalists were accompanied by a keyboard and an instrument called Hiiu kannel in Estonian or Tagelharpa — a horsehair harp that’s also played in Sweden.
The small Baltic nation of Estonia is experiencing a folk music renaissance of sorts, with young musicians bringing traditional songs and instruments to the forefront. Much of it involves reasserting a unique Estonian identity and preserving the country’s ancient heritage.
From left to right, vocalist Marion Selgall, Greta Liisa Grünberg on horsehair harp (called a Hiiu kannel in Estonia) and Maria Mänd on fiddle.Courtesy of Maxim DubovikThe musical group’s keyboardist and organ player, Kaisa Kuslapuu, explained how the band formed.
“There was an event in Estonia that brought together all the folk music students from different music universities,” Kuslapuu said. “I met these two amazing singers. And I immediately fell in love with their voices. And I thought, I need to combine this and find a way to do something with them.”
The music group 6hunesseq formed because of their fascination with old Estonian folk hymns, and they are releasing a new album this year.Courtesy of EkvilibristVocalist Marion Selgall added, “What brought us together was also the material that we chose to do. It was the Estonian old folk chorales, or folk hymns, because we all find them really fascinating because just the melodies are so beautiful and ornamented.”In their music, the women of 6hunneseq also weave in the uniquely Estonian tradition of regilaul — a poetic rhythm based on the continuous repetition of eight-syllable verses in a style known as runo.
“It’s hard to say how old [runo music] is, but it’s more or less 2,000 years old,” Selgall explained. “So, it really has some old mythical elements in it. It’s also meditative, and the melody is usually quite simple. So, it’s something really nice, also to just go into and let it carry you away.”
Greta Liisa Grünberg sings and plays the horsehair harp for the band. “It was just a yearning for connecting with my culture, with my past, just connecting with my roots,” she said. “And I’ve always searched for something with a deeper meaning. So, I felt that folk music is the way to go.”
An independent cultureFor centuries, music brought communities together in Estonia. “Music has been a tool for being able to just forget all the hard field work and managing the farm,” Grünberg said. “In the olden days, it was crucial to have this thing to balance [life], and people would play so much music at home.”
After five decades of Soviet occupation — from 1940-1991 — Estonians became intensely proud of their heritage and tried to highlight how they represent a separate and independent country and culture. This led to a revival of music that is deeply rooted in Estonia, much of it going back generations.
On the far right, Kaisa Kuslapuu plays the keyboard on the “Folktronica” stage during Tallinn Music Week.Courtesy of Tanel TeroThe resurgence of folk music began in the late-1980’s, a few years before Estonia gained independence from the former Soviet Union. In recent years, it’s become popular among a younger generation that is adding newer sounds.
Oliver Berg, a young Estonian cultural expert, described the popularity of folk music today. He works for the Tartu 2024 Foundation in the southern Estonian city of Tartu, which has been chosen as the European capital of Culture for 2024.
Maria Mänd plays the horsehair harp (called a Hiiu kannel in Estonia), an instrument that’s regaining popularity among young folk musicians.Courtesy of Maxim DubovikWhile historic churches dot Tallinn, most Estonians do not practice Christianity. Berg explained, “Estonians really aren’t big on institutionalized religion. We’re pagans by heart. It’s this connection to these old pagan roots and this symbiosis with nature that is channeled in this folk music scene, and where you feel that we have this urging for these ancient roots.”He said that under Soviet rule, Estonians used music as an act of rebellion. For example, Estonians revived their forbidden national anthem in front of Soviet authorities as a form of protest.
“We are a singing nation,” Berg said, continuing, “some of the songs had a very strong, patriotic background that kept the spark of a collective identity alive. Through what we refer to as the singing revolution, we managed to sing ourselves free. Well, of course, it was [the] global political system that made the window of opportunity happen. People started gathering for songs at the song festival grounds.”
These days, Estonia’s University of Tartu Viljandi Culture Academy teaches the country’s next generation about musical heritage and folk music. The town of Viljandi is also home to the Viljandi Folk Music Festival, which draws tens of thousands of people annually.
In their recorded single, “küläkene väikokõnõ,” the women of 6hunesseq blend their voices into a richly textured melody as they sing folk verses accompanied by traditional instruments.
The song turns into a lively yet contemplative piece that slowly builds into a crescendo with the strings and then softens into a quiet hymn.
“Maybe our music makes people think or feel something that they haven’t felt for a long time,” Grünberg said, “like a connection with something very beautiful.”
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In 2017, Ellie Highwood was trying to think of what to gift a colleague who had a baby on the way.
“I thought it would be nice to make them something that was meaningful,” said Highwood, then a professor of climate physics at the University of Reading in England. “So, I thought, OK, well, what can I do with blankets?”
Though Ellie Highwood was not the first person to come up with the idea of a “global warming blanket,” her tweet about her design went viral. It inspired a former colleague to take it to the next level and create global data visualizations of average temperatures spanning 100 years.X social mediaHighwood, who enjoyed crocheting in her free time, came up with what she called the “global warming blanket” as a gift for the baby. She crocheted 100 rows — each representing the year’s global temperature, dating back 100 years, from 1916 to 2016.
“I did 100 years so, up until the baby was born. And I started with dark blues and purples to represent colder-than-average temperatures,” she said. “And over time, transitioning through some of the greens and yellows into oranges, and then, reds and [a] deep red, burgundy kind of color.”
Producing the temperature lines by hand, she said, is a way of internalizing the data. Highwood said she has since seen other scarves and blankets showing similar designs, including some that predated hers. But it was hers that went viral on X. Since then, the stripes, which have been reimagined and incorporated into everything from fashion to book covers, have become synonymous with raising awareness about climate change and global warming.
One of Highwood’s university colleagues found a way to take her crochet pattern to a whole new level.
In 2018, climate scientist Ed Hawkins created a data visualization site of the climate stripes as a series of vertical lines ranging from blue to red, and left to right.
Hawkins’ visualizations represent temperature changes measured in each country, region or city over the past 100 years, according to his site, ShowYourStripes.info. Users can also create a visualization for the temperatures in their specific locations.
A data visualization of global “warming stripes” from the years 1850 to 2022. The image is generated via the #ShowYourStripes website, created by climate scientist Ed Hawkins. using dating sourcing from the UK Met Office.showyourstripes.infoBut no matter which location’s data you look at, the general result is the same: As the years go by, the blues fade away, and orange, red and eventually, deep burgundy lines appear. This illustrates the rise in average temperatures in that location.
“These graphics are specifically designed to be as simple as possible,” Hawkins writes on his website. “And to start conversations about our warming world and the risks of climate change.”
The stripes are doing just that.
Sustainable designer Lucy Tammam featured the climate stripes in her couture collection at London Fashion Week, while the Envision Racing Formula E team has the stripes on their newest cars. The stripes have also graced the covers of major publications including The Economist and climate activist Greta Thunberg’s bestseller, “The Climate Book.”
High-level US, France and Chile politicians have even worn the stripes as pins and face masks while pushing climate policies.
Joost Brinkman, a co-founder of a Netherlands-based organization called Cycling4Climate, has also used the stripes in marketing materials and uniforms.
“The design is pretty beautiful, so it gets attention anyhow,” Brinkman told The World. “And then, when you talk and explain what it’s all about, people understand why we’re doing this and embrace it.”
No matter how far across the globe the climate stripes spread though, Highwood said the original blanket is still with its intended owner.
“The baby was given the blanket,” she said. “The baby is now 6-ish. And still has the blanket. It’s a little bit small. And I’m pretty sure her mom won’t ever let her get rid of it.”
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Najmieh Batmanglij, 75, has been cooking and trying recipes for the past four decades. In fact, the well-known Iranian American chef says she can come up with dishes in her dreams — by closing her eyes and picturing which ingredient would go well with others.
“Not so many people at 75 love what they are doing,” Batmanglij said. “I am very lucky.”
Her unique skills have made her the perfect person for a challenge.
Art curator Linda Komaroff from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) reached out to Batmanglij to see if she could modernize a few recipes that go all the way back to 10th-century Baghdad.
Screenshot of video from Cooking with Chef Batmanglij.Courtesy of the Los Angeles County Museum of ArtAfter some experimentation, Batmanglij came up with six dishes: a full-course meal starting with an eggplant appetizer and ending with a pancake dessert. The menu is now part of a LACMA exhibition called, “Dining with the Sultan.”
The recipes that Batmanglij chose were derived from old manuscripts and cookbooks. Sometimes she only had two or three lines to work with.
“Cook eggplants in water,” she read. “The recipe did not tell you how many eggplants or how long to cook the eggplants,” or even what type of eggplants to use.
“And most important[ly],” she added, “some of the ingredients and condiments had to be replaced with what their equivalent might be today.”
For example, some of the recipes called for fermented sauces that are not available, at least not in the US.
Screenshot of video from Cooking with Chef Batmanglij.Courtesy of the Los Angeles County Museum of ArtBatmanglij says she wanted to simplify the recipes while still keeping true to their original descriptions.She sees cooking as a great way to broaden understanding of different cultures and hopes that everyone will try her recipes.
“It’s going to be good. It’s going to be delicious. I promise you,” she said.
Screenshot of video from Cooking with Chef Batmanglij.Courtesy of the Los Angeles County Museum of ArtDining in luxuryThe earliest cookbook in the exhibit comes from 10th-century Baghdad, but it was probably inspired by an even earlier version, explained Komaroff, the curator at LACMA.
At that time, the city was the capital of the Abbasid caliphate and an important center for learning.
“In most historical Islamic lands food and food culture [were] extremely important,” she said. “Not just the basic dining, because we all have to eat, but the idea of dining in luxury.”
A page from a manuscript of the “Shahnama” (Book of Kings) of Firdawsi, Iran, Shiraz, c. 1485-95, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Nasli M. Heeramaneck Collection, gift of Joan Palevsky.Courtesy of Los Angeles County Museum of ArtThe exhibition, which took several years to put together, also features 250 objects that span the 8th through 19th centuries, including porcelain dishes, trays and cups. There are also various themes, such as “Outdoor Feasting and Picnicking,” “Coffee Culture” and “Dressing for Dinner.”And the artifacts were influenced by places far beyond what we call the Middle East today.
“There’s a lot of Chinese porcelain in the exhibition because, even though they made beautiful ceramic objects and tableware and other materials for the courts — like for the Safavid court in Iran, the Mogul court in India, the Ottoman court in Turkey — they preferred to have Chinese porcelain,” she said.
And because they were expensive to import, only the elite could afford them, Komaroff explained. So, the Chinese, who saw a great market in the Middle East, started making products that appealed to the elite there.
The cultures influenced each other. There’s Chinese porcelain with Islamic designs, as well as dishes in the Middle East with Chinese elements.
Dish with Quails, Iran, late 17th-early 18th century, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, gift of Gerald Reitlinger, 1978.Courtesey of Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford“In Islamic lands, artists saw how important it was for their patrons to own and even to display their Chinese porcelains,” Komaroff said, “so they began copying some of the designs because they wanted to please the same patrons also. So, there’s this interesting back and forth that takes place and you can see it in the tableware.”The introduction of coffeeThe exhibit also has a special section for coffee fans.
Komaroff says historians have traced the origins of coffee to Ethiopia and Yemen. The Sufis — a group that focuses on the mystical aspects of Islam — in Yemen found in the 15th century that if you drink enough coffee you can stay up all night.
She thinks that it might have been Yemeni Sufis who brought coffee to Mecca, in present-day Saudi Arabia, as they made their Hajj pilgrimage. And that, it’s likely from there that it made its way to the Ottoman Empire.
“Certainly, the well-to-do in 16th-century Istanbul, for instance, were as coffee conscious as we are today,” Komaroff said. “They flavored their coffee, they could not function without coffee.”
She added that, in a part of the world that is often in the news, food opens the door for discussion and better understanding.
The “Dining with The Sultan” exhibition at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is scheduled to run until Aug. 4.
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Najannguac Dalgård Christensen, 35, pulled back her sleeve on one forearm to reveal a pair of tattoos shaped like train tracks across her wrists.
“I actually got these tattoos right after we got home from interrailing in Europe,” she said in 2022 from the kitchen of her then-home in Aalborg, Denmark. “So, my daughter was convinced that these were train tracks.”
These are traditional Inuit tattoo patterns that speak to her Indigenous Inuit heritage. The markings, she said, represent Sila, a word that carries many meanings, including “breath,” “sky,” “spirit” and “universe.”
Najannguac Dalgård Christensen’s traditional tattoos carry distinct spiritual meanings, Aalborg, Denmark, Dec. 6, 2022. The lines on her fingers honor Sassuma Arnaa, the Mother of the Ocean in the Inuit religious tradition while the tattoos across her wrists represent Sila.Shirsha Chakraborty/The WorldTo Christensen, who got the tattoo several years ago, it also means “the Greenlandic belief that we should be aware of who we are and what we can be, and that is attached to each other.”
In precolonial times, Inuit women of Greenland, and across much of the Arctic, would have tattoos on both their bodies and faces, holding important pre-Christian spiritual meaning. Today, some Greenlandic Inuit like Christensen are reclaiming their identity through this long-lost art.
She said that she didn’t always embrace her Greenlander identity — because it is often associated with negative stereotypes about the Inuit diaspora living in Denmark, who colonized the North American island three centuries ago.
“I felt empowered by getting the tattoos because it was like there was some kind of relief that I didn’t have to be embarrassed about being a Greenlander anymore,” Christensen said. “So in that way, I think it has helped me a lot with getting those tattoos because then I can’t hide it, and I can be proud.”
Najannguac Dalgård Christensen at her home in Aalborg, Denmark, Dec. 6, 2022.Shirsha Chakraborty/The World‘Seeking our own identity’Randi Sørensen Johansen, intangible cultural heritage curator at the Greenland National Museum and Archives, said that the recurrence of traditional Inuit tattoos is a relatively new phenomenon, with more Inuit starting to get them about 10 years ago.
“We are also in a period where we are seeking for our own identity,” she said.
The custom itself is far from new, but tattoos were some of the first traditions to be discouraged when Danish-Norwegian missionaries started colonizing the island at the beginning of the 18th century. The missionaries found tattooing incompatible with Christian faith, Johansen said.
The custom quickly disappeared in western Greenland where the colonization started, but it lasted longest in eastern Greenland, which was colonized much later. As the custom disappeared, so did much of the knowledge about the tattoos’ meaning.
“We didn’t have that tradition of writing down,” Johansen said — Inuit passed knowledge through oral storytelling.
Some of the oldest, preserved knowledge stems from the Qilakitsoq mummies, including six women and two children, dated to about 1475, featuring traditional tattoos across their faces. Several documents and paintings also testify to the practice of tattooing in Greenland.
Inuit would use amulets to protect them from “unwelcome spirits,” but also to help certain attributes or ensure a successful childbirth, among other things. It is likely, Johansen said, that Inuit tattoos were seen as a kind of amulet, giving strength, help or protection to the women or — in rarer cases — men who had gotten them.
In her tattoo studio in Svendborg, Denmark, artist Maya Sialuk Jacobsen unravels handmade thread made of animal sinew, Dec. 9, 2022. Traditionally, a needle and thread like this would be used by Inuit to pull an ink-like mixture under the skin to create tattoos in Greenland.Shirsha Chakraborty/The WorldThe tattoos were most often made as linear patterns across the brow and vertical lines on the chin made by using both a puncture or dot technique and a sewing technique. The latter technique consisted of pulling sinew dipped in soot under the skin with a needle made of animal bone, curator Johansen said.
A ‘third culture’ in DenmarkMaya Sialuk Jacobsen is one of about a dozen Inuit tattoo artists across the globe reviving this traditional art. To her knowledge, she’s the only artist of Inuit descent re-creating these tattoos in Denmark today — and it was she who created Christensen’s tattoos.
Tattoo artist Maya Sialuk Jacobsen sits in her studio in Svendborg, Denmark, Dec. 9, 2022.Shirsha Chakraborty/The WorldFor over six years, she’s been helping Inuit like Christensen who live in Denmark connect with their culture through ink. Like Christensen, she is of both Danish and Greenlandic Inuit descent — a group she describes as an emerging “third culture” in the Scandinavian country.The community is fairly small in Denmark and not well-defined demographically. According to StatBank Greenland, there are a little under 17,000 people born in Greenland currently living in Denmark. But community leaders, including from the Greenlandic House of Aalborg, aren’t even sure about the exact number of Inuit in Denmark. The number of self-identifying Inuit could be even higher, due to the presence of third-culture community members, who are partially Inuit.
“I basically only tattoo that third culture here,” Sialuk Jacobsen said. “It’s basically identity work all the time.”
Many come to her with a feeling of sadness, in search of a sense of belonging, she said.
“They need to talk about these things, and to learn about the culture, they just want to learn. They just want to know about the religion, they want to know about the patterns.”
While Sialuk Jacobsen said she uses inks and needles approved for tattooing on clients in Denmark, her research into the traditional techniques has included experimental tattooing on herself, and using her own right leg as her test area to reconstruct authentic methods of inking up.
But in Denmark, finger, hand and face tattoos are prohibited (though it’s not illegal in Greenland). So, Sialuk Jacobsen is limited to tattooing the rest of the body.
‘They’re about healing’Christensen said that she often felt like an outsider in Greenland, because, among Inuit peers, she was perceived to be more Danish because of her Danish father.
A traditional Inuit drum hangs on the wall of Maya Sialuk Jacobsen’s tattoo studio in Svendborg, Denmark, Dec. 9, 2022.Shirsha Chakraborty/The WorldThe legacies of colonialism hang heavy over the community living in Denmark.Greenlanders are overrepresented among Denmark’s homeless population — accounting for 7% of people experiencing homelessness, according to VIVE.
In recent years, Denmark’s colonial past came under public scrutiny.
For her master’s degree, Christensen looked into a form of “modern boarding schools.” She found that Inuit children in Denmark are more likely than Danish children to be taken away from their families and placed in foster homes, which are almost always Danish families.
“They learn to speak Danish, and there isn’t any focus on the Greenlandic language, so they lose their Greenlandic language. And when the parents only speak Greenlandic, they can’t talk to each other without an interpreter.”
Christensen, who has become an activist through her research, believes the government should make it at least mandatory for Inuit children living in foster care to have lessons on Greenlandic. Or, better yet, follow the example of Australia, where Aboriginal children in need of foster care are required by law to be placed in an Aboriginal family.
The problem in Denmark, she said, is that being raised by a Danish family means losing that Indigenous identity.
For her personally, it’s important for her children to keep that identity. Her tattoos help do that.
“They’re about healing,” she said. “I was thinking that I would like … my own people, my fellow Greenlanders, to heal because I know a lot of Greenlanders are struggling.”
Her daughter, Niviaana, 7, draws that same tattoo on herself with markers, she said. “She always draws on her hands, and makes the same patterns as on my hands.”
Her daughter often asks: “When can I get permanent drawings on my fingers?”
“She’s very proud to be a Greenlander,” Christensen said.
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When Palestinian American musician Clarissa Bitar first told their father that they wanted to learn how to play the oud, his first reaction was skepticism.
He told Bitar that learning how to play the classical string instrument would be difficult.
“He kinda put me down a little bit in a way that was a challenge to me. Because I was like, ‘OK, dad, I’m gonna show you. I’m gonna show you that I can do this,’” Bitar said.
Clarissa Bitar with their oud. Courtesy of Clarissa BitarWhen Bitar was in college, they said that one hour of practice turned into two or three hours at a time. Eventually, they were practicing up to five hours a day and didn’t even realize it.
Bitar found that learning to play the oud, an instrument unique to the Middle East, could bridge history and great distance.
Bitar grew up in Los Angeles, as part of a well-established Palestinian community. One side of the family was expelled from their home in 1948; the other side in 1967. They grew up with stories of home — and songs of home — but the oud helped them connect with their past in a whole new way.
One weekend, Bitar came home from college at UC Santa Barbara and brought the oud with them.
“I remember playing for my grandparents and they were so shocked and they were like, ‘How did you know this song and how are you playing so well?’ And it kind of brought the family together in a different way. We always had this love for music, but [the oud] almost, like, resurfaced it,” Bitar said.
Growing up, Bitar lived next door to their grandparents.
“My grandfather, he loved to sing a lot, so he exposed me to a lot of music. I would sit in his car and we would go for drives or go to the grocery store and he would just have all the classic stuff,” Bitar said.
These sounds were always a part of Bitar’s soundscape.
“But after I started learning oud and putting that to practice, I realized like, ‘wow, even though I grew up in [the] diaspora, I was still so surrounded by all of that music that it really helped me bridge that gap … to learn and to have this repertoire in my head…’” Bitar said.
This type of music was especially popular during Bitar’s grandfather’s youth and Bitar said it was part of the culture to actively listen and engage with the sounds. Fans would stand up and yell and scream at the artists, telling them in Arabic, “My God! This is so beautiful!”
Clarissa Bitar said learning the oud connected them with their family, culture and history.Courtesy of Clarissa BitarThis link between culture and music can be very meaningful to Palestinians in the diaspora.
“There’s just this constant grieving that happens as Palestinians where you are just, you wake up to depressing news all the time. And it can be emotionally really tough. And I think that music and art provide, not only a way to communicate your pain, but also to have spaces to heal,” Bitar said.
“I don’t live under occupation on a regular basis, and it’s taxing to have to see what your people go through. So, you can understand how important art and culture can be in these movements to help heal people and to give people a way to cope with their reality,” Bitar added.
And there are layers of complexity when it comes to culture and identity, Bitar said.
“It’s been layered too, as a queer person, because I can even be othered within my own community.”
Bitar said art has provided them the space “to help my queerness become more palatable to my community, in a way,” and to make their value more visible.
Bitar, who still lives next door to their grandmother, continues to share a love for the songs and scales that brought their family together.
“I think after my grandfather passed, it began to trigger a much more emotional response from [my grandmother.] But you can still see — between the tears — so much pride. Like, she’s so proud of me,” Bitar said.
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Puerto Rican rapper Villano Antillano is a leading voice in a new generation of LGBTQ artists subverting traditional gender norms in reggaeton and reclaiming the political roots of the genre.
Costa Rica sells its image as a “green paradise,” with ample nature reserves and no standing military. But many say this reputation is more myth than reality as violence, poverty and unemployment is on the rise.
Amie Ferris-Rotman, a global news editor for New Lines Magazine, wrote a personal essay about her experience being pregnant in Russia, where many citizens believe it is a woman’s patriotic duty to give birth and become a mother. She talked about it with The World's Marco Werman.
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The Nordic nation is the third-largest exporter of pop music in the world, after the US and the UK. But musicians in Sweden are worried that the country's changing political climate could endanger this great Swedish success story.
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It only took one listen for musician Sergei Grin (a.k.a. “Gringo”) to hear the blues and know that's what he was meant to play. Grin, who is originally from St. Petersburg, Russia, now travels around Serbia with his guitar, singing American country music and blues.
In many ways, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has become a war of identity and self-expression. Many Ukranians are turning to tattoos to show their patriotism.
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The investigative newspaper Etilaatroz opened a new newsroom in an office building in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC.
In recent months, a 16th-century epic religious poem has ignited a political storm in India, after several officials said it was offensive to women and those at the bottom of India’s religious caste hierarchy. As the country heads toward general elections next year, some say that different parties are using the poem to appeal to various voters.
As Ukrainian athletes train for the Summer Olympics next year in Paris, it is unclear whether or not Russian athletes will be allowed to compete in the Games.
Ji produces paintings using traditional Chinese methods, such as calligraphy and ink painting, to address serious contemporary topics such as migration, the environment and social issues.
With continued violations of women's rights in Afghanistan, US Special Envoy Rina Amiri tells The World's host Marco Werman that not normalizing the Taliban government is crucial to fighting hardline elements in the country, and for setting a precedent in other places.
By and large, many African countries have stayed on the sidelines of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. As major importers of wheat and fertilizers from the two warring nations, they are reluctant to jeopardize those vital supplies by taking sides, observed Olayinka Ajala, a lecturer at Leeds Beckett University in Britain.
“An Cailín Ciúin” (“The Quiet Girl”) is Ireland's first film to be nominated for best foreign language film in the Academy Awards. Language enthusiasts in Ireland are hoping that the new film will give their mother tongue a much-needed boost in a country where less than 2% of the population speak it on a daily basis.
Last month, the Cambodian government issued a warning to rapper Kea Sokun over his latest single, “Workers’ Blood,” about a garment workers’ strike, saying that it threatened national security and order.
Svyatoslav Vakarchuk is vocal about supporting Ukraine, visiting troops on the front lines and raising money for the country.
Poland has taken in more Ukrainian refugees than any other European nation. But from March 1, the Polish government has ruled that Ukrainians living in state-funded accommodation will have to start contributing toward their housing and food costs.
On Feb. 28, 1947, the Chinese Nationalist Party began killing thousands of people across the island of Taiwan, in a massacre that lasted for months. Today, Taiwan continues to debates the circumstances of that tragedy — and the legacy of Chiang Kai-Shek.
Ismail Mashal used to teach at two universities in Afghanistan. He ran his own education centers and was an outspoken critic of the Taliban’s ban on girls’ education. He was arrested earlier this month, along with another academic and a journalist.
During a rehearsal at the Odesa National Academic Opera and Ballet Theater in Odesa, it’s easy to forget that Ukraine is a country at war. Despite attacks on the busy port city and cultural hub, the opera house remains open.
As millions of Nigerians prepare for the presidential election on Feb. 25, the stinging economy and unemployment in the formal sector have the nation's youth particularly tuned in and ready to cast their vote.
In some small towns in northeast Spain, organizers for the Carnival holiday have told participants that they’ll risk losing public subsidies if they play songs with lyrics that denigrate women. Most people like the idea in theory, but in practice, the measure is proving tough to apply. Because with pop music, finding the line between sexist and sexy can be vexing.
Sculptor Myros Dedyshyn said the reality of war changed the subject of his once-hopeful artworks. Now, he’s focused on themes like militarization, grief and self-protection.
The political party Nuevo Peru has been heavily involved in anti-government protests that have recently swept across the South American country.
In the weeks leading up to Russia's full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, veteran Leonid Ostalsev anticipated a call to report for duty. Tens of thousands of Russian troops were already accumulating near Ukraine’s borders. He reflects on a year of wins and losses.
After nearly a full year of war with Russia, Ukrainian leaders say victory will come when the Russians make a full retreat out of Ukraine — including the Crimean Peninsula.
A humanitarian crisis looms in Brazil's Yanomami territory, where communities have been ravaged by malnutrition, malaria, COVID-19 and widespread illegal mining. Now, the central government is trying to crack down on illegal mining and support these communities after years of neglect.
Big, fast-fashion brands have traditionally ignored the second-hand market, but it’s grown too large not to get into the game. H&M and Spanish clothing giant Zara are leading a new trend, opening portals where customers can sell and buy their used, brand-specific shirts and skirts. The companies say they’re joining the circular economy but critics call it greenwashing.
Many kids' products on the market are not always inclusive or accommodate unique needs — including religious ones. Ontario mother Tina Singh decided to design sports helmets for her three boys that wouldn't compromise their Sikh faith — or their safety.
NASA is working with Senegalese astronomers to measure the dimensions of asteroids in outer space. Astronomer Maram Kaire speaks with The World's host Marco Werman about the work of "chasing after the shadow cast by the asteroids."
The Sagrada Familía church, designed 140 years ago by architect Antoni Gaudí, is still under construction. Now, plans to finally construct its front entrance have sparked controversy due to its potential impact on nearby residential neighborhoods.
Dani Larkin was too young to have lived through the troubles in Northern Ireland. But growing up along the Armagh-Monaghan border in Ireland, close to Northern Ireland, she knew all about the sectarian tension and conflict in the area. She also knew about kindness and a history that brings people together.
After civil war broke out in his country, singer-songwriter Bahjat and his family had to flee Libya. But that didn't stop him from pursuing his dreams. Bahjat now sings a blend of Arabic and English songs in a genre he calls "A-pop," or Arabic pop.
A new BBC documentary looking at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's role in the 2002 Gujarat riots has sparked controversy in India. The government is trying to ban it while students and activists are finding ways to watch it in defiance. Rana Ayyub, author of the book "Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover Up," discussed the situation with The World's host Marco Werman.
They’re tiny, they’re toxic, they’re everywhere. Cigarette butts are a huge source of pollution in Spain and lawmakers have said, enough. They're ordering cigarette makers to pay for the cleanup, but smokers worry they’ll end up footing the bill.
Many Syrian families in Turkey face school enrollment challenges due to a Turkish law that says no more than 30% of schoolchildren in a single class can be foreigners. Families in border cities like Gaziantep say their children are being turned away with few alternatives.
Yuxin Wu, a second-generation gehu player at the Berklee College of Music, is on a mission to revive the Chinese string instrument with its unique vibrational sound.
“Tár,” about a virtuoso female conductor, has shone a spotlight on the continuing dearth of women leading major orchestras worldwide.
The 1995 Bollywood film “Dilwale Duhania Le Jayenge,” or "DDLJ," is the longest-running film in India’s history, screening daily for 27 years. Now, the irresistible love story is heading to Broadway.
Shakira's release this week shot up to the top of the charts. It's a scathing breakup song with her ex: Spanish soccer star Gerard Piqué.
The “City of Faith” museum exhibit looks at the New York City's religious roots and immigrant experience, with a special focus on the South Asian community after 9/11. Curator Azra Dawood tells The World what inspired her and why such a discussion is important.
Motherly Love Orphanage was founded by Rev. John Azumah 14 years ago. The pastor, who also has HIV, founded the home to provide hope and fight against the stigma faced by HIV-positive orphans.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made a promise to roll back illegal mining in the Amazon. But he has a more complicated relationship with legal mining. Indigenous activists continue to battle over a new gold mine project managed by a Canadian firm.
Russian activist Anastasia Shevchenko spoke out against many injustices in her home country. In 2019, she was put under house arrest and was not even allowed to be with her sick daughter as she was dying. A new documentary, "Anastasia," follows Shevchenko as she sets out on a journey to scatter her daughter's ashes in the Black Sea.
In the Iranian diaspora community of Los Angeles, members of the heavy metal group TarantisT have added their artistic voices to the protests in Iran. Arash Rahbary is the band's singer and bassist. He speaks to host Marco Werman.
Bullfighting has become less popular as views about animal rights change in Colombia. But in some parts of the country, it is still a highly esteemed tradition.
Ana Montes, who worked for the US defense department, was simultaneously spying for Cuban authorities. She's now been released after her 25-year prison sentence. Jim Popkin, who's written about her, shares her story with The World's host Marco Werman.
Over the weekend, Orthodox Christians around the globe celebrated Christmas. In Russia and Ukraine, the holiday took place during a time of war between the two countries.
It’s relatively easy to get by in Finland's capital, Helsinki, without speaking Finnish. But meeting an American opera singer and a refugee from Iraq here taught reporter Kavita Pillay to embrace the vulnerability of learning a new language.
Across Spain's Barcelona province children are getting to school in organized convoys of bikes, dubbed "bicibus," or bicycle-bus. As with traditional bus lines, each bicibus route has stops where other cycling students can join along the way. Parents, teachers and other volunteer adults ride, too, to ensure the kids’ safety.
Paul Ninson joins The World's host Marco Werman to discuss the opening of the new photography library that he created, called the Dikan Center in Accra, Ghana, to showcase work by Africans and African Americans.
Since the time of former President Fidel Castro’s revolution, women have been banned from competitive boxing. Starting this month, though, women are now allowed to work and compete as professional boxers, ushering in a new era for the sport.
Morocco’s Atlas Lions have a lot to celebrate at this year's World Cup in Qatar. They became both the first Arab and the first African team to reach the semifinals, inspiring Arab unity around the world.
After more than 120 minutes of play, Argentina beat France in penalty kicks in an extraordinary match on Sunday at this year’s World Cup in Doha, Qatar.
Udi is a language with its own ancient alphabet and an unlikely grammatical feature that some linguists believe is unique. Now, researchers in Georgia are trying to preserve the language from possible extinction.
Abrham Meareg, an Ethiopian researcher, said his father was killed last year after being targeted on social media. The lawsuit comes amid growing criticism that Facebook and other social media giants are not doing enough to stop hate speech and insightful language from spreading online across Africa.
Ukraine didn't qualify for this year’s World Cup, and Russia was banned from the games. But soccer goes on in both countries, amid a war that could decide the future of the sport in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.
Former NASA astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison, who now directs the 100 Year Starship Project, talks about the power of the "big, blue marble" image of planet Earth, taken 50 years ago.
Ali Vaez, director of the International Crisis Group's Iran Project, talked with The World’s host Marco Werman about how sustained protests in Iran may be impacting the power of the so-called "morality police."
In 1922, a Ukrainian choir sang the song “Shchedryk” at New York’s Carnegie Hall. The tune became a Christmas sensation known as “Carol of the Bells.” This Sunday, a Ukrainian choir will once again perform the famous song at Carnegie Hall.
When Kherson was liberated from Russian occupation earlier this month, the song “Oi u luzi chervona kalyna,” or “Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow,” could be heard throughout the Ukrainian city as a song of resistance.
Happy Science is among the most enduring and far-reaching “new religious movement,” as they’re called in Japan.
Daredevil surfers hurtle down the face of waves as tall as 6-story apartment buildings.
The Brazilian soccer team's jersey colors have been co-opted by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. But some people say that the reelection of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in late October could change that.
Singer and songwriter Jorge Drexler, from Uruguay, took home the most trophies at the Latin Grammy Awards ceremony in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Thursday.
As full inquiries into clerical abuse swept Europe, Spain remained an outlier. Now, two separate investigations are underway.
As a young man, Purnendu Goswami was a proud Hindu nationalist who went to extremes to promote his beliefs. Now 49, he describes himself as a humanist who practices “radical love."
Journalist Mikhail Fishman, an anchor at the independent Russian news outlet TV Rain, joined The World's host Marco Werman to talk about how the Russian government is placing "a big bet" on US midterm elections outcomes that will favor Russian President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine.
“This was an amazing discovery on so many levels,” said Peter Der Manuelian, an Egyptology professor at Harvard University and author of the book “Walking Among Pharaohs.”
Miami progressives are trying to break the Republican grip on the state’s Latino voters by making cultural connections to Cubans in the US.
In Almaty's Green Bazaar, vendors sell a variety of foods that represent the culinary heritage of hundreds of thousands of Koreans who call Kazakhstan home.
Poet and author Javier Zamora recounts nearly every detail of his harrowing journey from El Salvador to the United States when he was 9 years old in a new memoir called "Solito."
Pastor Gábor Iványi is one of Hungary’s best-known religious leaders. He officiated over Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s wedding and baptized two of his children. Today, he is one of Orbán’s fiercest critics.
The Polish government has steadily been demolishing dozens of Soviet-era monuments ever since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But many Polish citizens believe preserving their country's complicated history is important.
This year's Pride in Taipei was a celebration of achievements and identities — but also a protest. Groups representing transgender people, sex workers and people living with HIV and AIDS all gave speeches calling for further social and political change.
Some 59,000 tons of unwanted clothing arrive in Chile each year from places like Europe, Asia and the United States. But because it is illegal to dump them in landfills, they often end up in places like the Atacama Desert in the north of the country, where they harm the environment.
The northern Indian hill towns — with their breathtaking views and lush cedar forests — became a favorite haunt of British high society. Reminders of that era still linger across the hill stations in the form of Gothic lodges, anglicized street names, churches — and ghosts.
Ethnic Russians have been living in Latvia for decades. But with public opinion turning sharply against Russia since the war in Ukraine began, some say they are increasingly worried about their place in Latvian society.
Evangelicals now make up a third of the population of Brazil. And their votes could be decisive in this weekend's tight presidential election. Michelle Bolsonaro, wife of the incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro, is doing her part to get out the vote — especially among women.
Refugees from Western Sahara host a film festival while in exile to attract attention to their plight nearly 50 years after Morocco invaded their land, forcing hundreds of thousands of them to flee.
The Cayuga Nation has ordered a series of demolitions and evictions over the last few years in western New York, which has stirred controversy within the community.
Parts of the Atacama Desert have turned into a blooming carpet of flowers — an incredible sight that only happens a couple of times every decade. To protect the phenomenon, Chile's president has announced the creation of a new national park.
Shehan Karunatilaka, author of "The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida," is winner of the 2022 Booker Prize. Karunatilaka talked with The World's host Marco Werman about the ways in which Sri Lanka's grim history of civil war — along with a bit of "gallows humor" — shaped the ideas in his award-winning novel.
Catalonia’s regional leader defends an uphill negotiation with Spain over an independence referendum as his long-time separatist allies walk away.
World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway withdrew from an online chess match against 19-year-old American player Hans Niemann at the $350,000 Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis, Missouri.
In the somber ballad, musician Shervin Hajipour sings of why Iranians are rising up in protest: “For dancing in the streets," he intones. “For my sister, for your sister, for our sisters.”
Two presidents are battling for power in Sunday’s elections. Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is hoping to unseat current far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
Two presidents are battling for power in Sunday’s elections. Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is hoping to unseat current far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
The mapping app Gershad, launched in 2016, allows people in Iran — primarily women — to mark the location of the country's morality police so that others can avoid them. Human rights activist and app co-founder Firuzeh Mahmoudi joined The World's host Marco Werman to talk about the app amid current protests.
The mapping app Gershad, launched in 2016, allows people in Iran — primarily women — to mark the location of the country's morality police so that others can avoid them. Human rights activist and app co-founder Firuzeh Mahmoudi joined The World's host Marco Werman to talk about the app amid current protests.
The five-day Durga Puja festival brings the city of Kolkata, India, to a standstill as throngs of people visit elaborate temples to the Goddess Durga that spring up everywhere.
The five-day Durga Puja festival brings the city of Kolkata, India, to a standstill as throngs of people visit elaborate temples to the Goddess Durga that spring up everywhere.
"Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands," a graphic novel by Kate Beaton, from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, tells the story of leaving home and joining thousands of others to work in the oil sands of Alberta, Canada. Beaton joined The World's host Marco Werman to talk about her experience.
"Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands," a graphic novel by Kate Beaton, from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, tells the story of leaving home and joining thousands of others to work in the oil sands of Alberta, Canada. Beaton joined The World's host Marco Werman to talk about her experience.
In Spain, some 20,000 unclaimed suitcases now sit in airport warehouses. Envera, a nonprofit group, has found a way to give the contents of this lost luggage a new home.
In Spain, some 20,000 unclaimed suitcases now sit in airport warehouses. Envera, a nonprofit group, has found a way to give the contents of this lost luggage a new home.
Spain’s socialist government recently passed a new law greatly expanding the rights and recognition of victims during the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco and the years that followed.
Spain’s socialist government recently passed a new law greatly expanding the rights and recognition of victims during the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco and the years that followed.
The Roma are Hungary’s largest ethnic minority, making up close to 10% of the population. Radio Dikh, a new radio station, aims to change perceptions of the Roma community in Hungary, where they have faced decades of stigma and discrimination.
The Roma are Hungary’s largest ethnic minority, making up close to 10% of the population. Radio Dikh, a new radio station, aims to change perceptions of the Roma community in Hungary, where they have faced decades of stigma and discrimination.
Bogotá's Care School for Men aims to battle centuries of living in a culture that teaches men to focus on breadwinning instead of caregiving.
Bogotá's Care School for Men aims to battle centuries of living in a culture that teaches men to focus on breadwinning instead of caregiving.
Taras Topolia is the lead singer of the Antytila band in Ukraine. When the war started, Topolia immediately joined Ukraine's military and served on the front lines, as did some of the other band members. At the same time, Topolia continues to advocate for Ukraine through his music.
Taras Topolia is the lead singer of the Antytila band in Ukraine. When the war started, Topolia immediately joined Ukraine's military and served on the front lines, as did some of the other band members. At the same time, Topolia continues to advocate for Ukraine through his music.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease specialist, joined The World's host Marco Werman to assess the current status of the COVID-19 pandemic and reflect briefly on five decades of service in public health.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease specialist, joined The World's host Marco Werman to assess the current status of the COVID-19 pandemic and reflect briefly on five decades of service in public health.
The queen’s funeral plans were decades in the making as part of what was codenamed “Operation London Bridge.”
The queen’s funeral plans were decades in the making as part of what was codenamed “Operation London Bridge.”
This week's General Debate at UN headquarters in New York will draw a room filled with big personalities, protagonists and politics.
This week's General Debate at UN headquarters in New York will draw a room filled with big personalities, protagonists and politics.
This past week, girls in the province of Paktia in eastern Afghanistan went to the streets to protest. The Taliban had reopened their schools but ordered them shut again. Girls’ education in Afghanistan has become a sensitive topic since the Taliban came to power last year. They have closed down nearly all secondary schools for girls in the country.
This past week, girls in the province of Paktia in eastern Afghanistan went to the streets to protest. The Taliban had reopened their schools but ordered them shut again. Girls’ education in Afghanistan has become a sensitive topic since the Taliban came to power last year. They have closed down nearly all secondary schools for girls in the country.
La Vie, a plant-based food startup in France, is on a mission to start a vegan bacon revolution and has tested products that taste almost like the real thing. Pork lobbyists are not too happy about it.
La Vie, a plant-based food startup in France, is on a mission to start a vegan bacon revolution and has tested products that taste almost like the real thing. Pork lobbyists are not too happy about it.
This 12th-century invention was a reliable form of air-conditioning in Iran for centuries. And as temperatures continue to rise around the world, this ancient way of staying cool has gained renewed attention for its emissions-free and cost-effective design.
This 12th-century invention was a reliable form of air-conditioning in Iran for centuries. And as temperatures continue to rise around the world, this ancient way of staying cool has gained renewed attention for its emissions-free and cost-effective design.
US schools suffer from a critical shortage of bilingual teachers. But the public schools in Hartford, Connecticut, had a novel idea: recruit bilingual teachers from Puerto Rico with diverse teaching experience.
US schools suffer from a critical shortage of bilingual teachers. But the public schools in Hartford, Connecticut, had a novel idea: recruit bilingual teachers from Puerto Rico with diverse teaching experience.
With Peru's current political upheaval as a backdrop, award-winning filmmaker Melina León is developing new projects. Her latest feature film will tell the difficult story of a young Indigenous woman living with epilepsy.
With Peru's current political upheaval as a backdrop, award-winning filmmaker Melina León is developing new projects. Her latest feature film will tell the difficult story of a young Indigenous woman living with epilepsy.
At least 1,500 Black Americans have moved to Ghana since 2019, when the government declared its "Year of Return" initiative, calling on Africans in the diaspora to return to Africa. As the US continues to confront its history of racism and police brutality against Black people, many are heeding Ghana's call.
At least 1,500 Black Americans have moved to Ghana since 2019, when the government declared its "Year of Return" initiative, calling on Africans in the diaspora to return to Africa. As the US continues to confront its history of racism and police brutality against Black people, many are heeding Ghana's call.
Afrobeats has soared in popularity, from Lagos to New York, and even Seoul, South Korea.
Afrobeats has soared in popularity, from Lagos to New York, and even Seoul, South Korea.
Darren Byler, a Uyghur scholar, joined The World's host Carol Hills from Vancouver to discuss the book, "The Backstreets: A Novel from Xinjiang."
Inclusive dance is an emerging art form that’s moving people all over the world. Dancers in wheelchairs, on crutches, or have no obvious challenges at all while professionals mix with amateurs.
“We have reason to suspect that a lot of the information about us, at least the information we know, is incorrect," said Peter Knudsen, who is one of 50 cosigners on an application filed to South Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission last week to clarify their origins.
Despite six months of grueling war with Russia, several acts from Ukraine were represented at the world’s largest arts festival, held early in Scotland. For the performers, it was a bittersweet experience.
Rising sea levels, erosion and storms in Louisiana's bayou country have flooded entire communities. For some French speakers, Hurricane Ida was the last straw — and many are now moving away.
After chief anchor Lisa LaFlamme was sacked, tons of speculation followed. Was it a budgetary decision? A personality clash with new management? Or maybe it had something to do with LaFlamme’s gray hair.
An estimated 40,000 Jews fled fighting in the western part of the Soviet Union during World War II and sought refuge in Central Asia. Today, only about 1,500 Jews still live in Kyrgyzstan, but the small community continues to thrive.
Mandopop megastar Jay Chou has released his first album in six years, with his new song, “The Greatest Works of Art," becoming an instant hit. The music video follows an antique piano on a journey to inspire famous artists of the past.
Every August, the neighborhood celebrates the Festa Major de Gràcia, or Gràcia Street Festival. The weeklong event running through Sunday, features a contest for the best-decorated street, with residents working hand in hand for months to produce the most impressive ornaments, often employing recycled materials.
The New York-based duo makes music about a wide variety of themes but often come back to songs about Peruvian shamanism.
Since the war in Ukraine started, there’s been a wave of interest in Ukrainian history, culture and writing. That means publishers are scrambling and Ukrainian literary translators are working in overdrive.
Ahead of Kenya's presidential election on Tuesday, Afropop stars Sauti Sol are using their music to encourage young Kenyans to vote. “A lot of the youth in Kenya feel like their voice doesn't really count,” said band member Bien-Aimè Alusa.
Temple-mosque disputes have been flooding Indian courts in recent years. The current Gyanvapi mosque dispute stokes fear that violence could once again erupt between Hindus and Muslims over claims to the contested site.
Sightings of the native magnolia flower had not been recorded since 1925. Expedition leader Eladio Fernandez said the search was like "an act of faith."
Using a keyboard, a saxophone, a bass guitar and percussion, Eblis Alvarez is recreating the classical salsa sound developed by Latino immigrants in New York in the 1970s and giving it somewhat of a psychedelic twist.
The song “PAF.no,” one of the biggest hits in Norway this year, features a chorus in Arabic that has everyone singing along — and also discussing what it means to be Norwegian.
Mexico’s Centla wetlands are part of an ecological reserve in the southeastern Tabasco state that has been impacted by deforestation, cattle grazing and man-made fires. In recent decades, conservationists with Casa del Agua have promoted reforestation and community education to save the wetlands.
As evangelicals grow in number and political influence in Brazil, members of other religious traditions are feeling uneasy. Some have even been attacked. Evangelical activists have targeted many Afro Brazilian religious centers and destroyed icons, and have even attacked clergy members.
Rosalía, who hails from a sleepy town near Barcelona, Spain, is often confused for a Latina artist. But her music does adopt some styles from Latin America. Before her latest song, “Despechá” had been officially released, a clip from it had already been viewed millions of times.
Soccer may be China’s national sport, but enthusiasm for frisbee — a quintessential American sport — is growing in China. Ultimate Frisbee is one of the few no-contact, mixed-gender sports in the country. And that may be one of the reasons that women, especially, are now flocking to it.
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act has been in effect one month. Human rights lawyer Rayhan Asat said that it's the first time that a US law imposes demanding standards on importers to disprove the use of forced labor in their goods coming into the US.
Jackie Chan, known for his action movies, martial arts and acrobatic fighting style, is producing a new film called “Home Operation.” This one though, is not set in Tokyo or LA, but in the leveled and destroyed town of Al-Hajar al-Aswad on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria. The news has outraged some Syrians who say their destroyed homes are not props for foreign film productions.
The former coal mining town and current Arctic research hub has developed a reputation for superb wines and Nordic fine dining.
A café manager in Tokyo has developed a particular method to help writers struggling with procrastination complete their work.
Australia and Sri Lanka are usually bitter rivals on the pitch during cricket matches. But Sri Lankans are welcoming the Australian team and its fans as a much-needed distraction from their country's recent political and economic turmoil.
Crystal Kwok is the director of "Blurring the Color Line," a new documentary about her family’s experience in Augusta, Georgia, and the relationships between Chinese Americans and Black people during the Jim Crow era.
Russian schools are revamping their curriculum and encouraging students to join a new patriotic youth movement in an attempt to steer them away from Western influence. To discuss how propaganda works, The World’s host Marco Werman speaks with Nina Khrushcheva, professor of international affairs at The New School in New York and great-granddaughter of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
Since its February release, the song “Pasoori,” which translates to “difficulty” or “conflict” in Punjabi, has racked up more than 250 million views on YouTube and on Instagram.
About to release her second album, Renata Flores is using rap and the Inca language to challenge discrimination.
Due to depleted money reserves and uncertainty on when Russia's war in Ukraine may end, zoo staffers at Zoo XII Months say they’re in worse shape than ever before. The animals remain distressed and, with virtually no visitors, the privately owned zoo isn’t making money.
Lebanon’s old-growth cedar forests have been decimated by centuries of logging. Now, rising temperatures from climate change are set to take the rest.
In southwest France, just about everyone seems to know someone who’s been jabbed by a syringe while out partying at a dance club.
Namewee is a singer-songwriter and filmmaker who is known for speaking his mind and composing songs that go viral on YouTube. He tells The World's Rebecca Kanthor why promoting his music is important.
Critics of the move say that the houseboats are an important part of Cairo’s cultural heritage that should be preserved.
Rapper Maykel Castillo “El Osorbo” and visual artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara were sentenced to prison by a Cuban court last week for his involvement with an opposition movement on the island.
Language learning app Duolingo will offer a new Haitian Creole course for English speakers. It’s an opportunity to explore how Haitian Creole can sound and feel: sweet and romantic — but also rebellious.
These trendy videos often feature African children who are prompted to parrot Chinese greetings and to act in inappropriate ways — for entertainment.
Nearly half of the country’s small businesses closed when the war began. Now, many Ukrainians are returning home, and businesses are reopening. But they’re faced with serious financial challenges, among other concerns.
Indigenous leaders have 10 demands including reducing gas prices, halting new mining and gas projects, providing funds for health care and education, and economic relief for millions of families in debt.
The remains of two men missing in the western Amazon were found on Wednesday night. And two fishermen have been arrested in connection to the case. Indigenous and environmental leaders are mourning the deaths and asking questions about the government's role in protecting the Amazon.
Shepherds in Spain are now training to start “fire flocks" that graze at the edge of forests to prevent wildfires from spreading to populated areas.
The Cuban government recently lifted a decadesold ban on professional boxing imposed by then-President Fidel Castro in 1962. This year, the Cuban boxing team “Los Domadores” made a triumphant professional debut on May 20 in Aguascalientes, Mexico.
Hundreds of years ago, women in China weren’t allowed an education and spent their days locked in rooms, embroidering and making crafts. They came up with a new language that men couldn't understand — Nüshu — and wrote it onto handmade fans to communicate with each other. A filmmaker is now trying to raise awareness to preserve it before it is lost.
History professor Charles Tshimanga-Kashama joined The World's host Marco Werman to discuss the historic visit and its implications for the future relations between the two countries.
Around 60 million adults in European cities are exposed to noise that's harmful to health.
Sex work is technically legal in India, but workers say they face stigma, harassment and violence — especially by the police. In recent years, sex worker collectives have formed to demand full decriminalization of sex work and recognition of their labor as worthy of protections and rights.
Musicians with the Afghanistan National Institute of Music arrived in Portugal in December 2021 with high hopes of working again in their profession. But six months later, the future remains uncertain for them.
An all-female orchestra was launched earlier this year as part of an effort to decrease gender disparities on Colombia’s classical music scene. It highlights the contributions of women and offers a place for younger generations to develop their talent.
Around the world, few treatments exist for the countless numbers of people who develop long COVID-19. In the UK, where more than a million people are estimated to be in this situation, a group of medical specialists and professional opera singers have been examining whether an age-old performance practice can help address one of the most common, debilitating symptoms: breathlessness.
There is concern that the Taliban may decide to ban female anchors altogether from the newsroom according to their interpretation of Islamic law.
A new exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art brings together about 400 pieces, including some objects by the luxury jewelry maker Cartier. It also tells the story of how the Cartier brothers were inspired by Islamic art.
Seagrass is on the decline in the world’s oceans, but the Indigenous Comcáac people of northern Mexico have managed to protect 96% of the eelgrass that grows in their waters.
The Irish teen comedy ended its run on UK television this week. But it has special significance for women who grew up in Northern Ireland in the 1990s, a period of conflict between Catholics and Protestants often known as the “troubles.”
The Ukrainian Classical Ballet has been on a charity tour in Italy and Romania. Last weekend, the company was in Bucharest, Romania’s capital, for a performance of “Giselle.”
Extremism expert Amarnath Amarasingam told The World's host Marco Werman that the shooter was deeply influenced by the white supremacist who killed 51 Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019.
“I Will Marry When I Want,” the once-banned play, is finally getting its national debut after more than 30 years.
The Taliban in Afghanistan have announced new rules requiring women to cover their faces when in public. The decree also says that women should only leave home when necessary. This is the latest in a series of restrictions imposed on women since the group came to power last summer.
Film director Robert Eggers spent $90 million to bring the Norse legend of Amleth to life on the screen, and he consulted a number of experts to do so.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense granted special permission for the male musicians to leave the country, calculating that the world will be more motivated to protect Ukraine if it sees its culture as something precious and worth saving.
Radio Haiti was shut down shortly after journalist Jean Dominique's assassination in 2000. Now, a trove of audio material has found new life with an archival collection at Duke University available in French, Haitian Creole and English.
In recent weeks, some Ukrainians in Warsaw have opened their own schools to let displaced children finish the school year in their own language and according to their own education system.
The letter Z has been used to glorify Russia's war in Ukraine. Now, countries like Lithuania and Latvia are moving to ban the letter as one step toward stemming Russia’s pro-war propaganda.
Through glittering costumes, provocative floats and bold song lyrics, several samba schools at this year’s Carnival — the first since the pandemic hit — are paying tribute to the country’s Black history while also lambasting the racism and violence that Black Brazilians continue to face.
India's first female comic superhero has previously tackled issues like masking up during COVID-19, surviving assault, trafficking and acid attacks. On Earth Day, Priya has returned — astride her faithful flying tiger — to show young children the power of collective action in tackling air pollution.
To an American audience, toddlers crossing the road to go to the supermarket unsupervised or helping with household chores would be considered alarming or negligent. But in Japan, children as young as 6 can be seen taking the train or walking to school. And it’s not viewed as something unusual.
Shchedryk Children’s Choir from Kyiv was poised to celebrate its 50th anniversary this year with a world tour. Then, Russia invaded Ukraine, canceling all plans. Conductor Saul Zaks is now on a mission to make sure the world hears the choir’s "magical" sounds.
Whether the state should be involved in telling individuals what they should and shouldn’t do on their days off has been hotly disputed in parts of the country.
At least 10 Berlin organizations are working together to provide new arrivals with information on where to access LGBTQ-friendly accommodation, legal advice and health care.
The World’s Patrick Winn spoke with Nigel Ng, "Uncle Roger," about foodies, cultural appropriation and the universality of the grumpy uncle.
When it comes to speaking out against Russian aggression in Ukraine, India has largely remained silent. Defense and energy needs are key factors, but a "heavy dose of nostalgia" is also playing a role.
As Russia's military shifts focus on the ground to Ukraine's east, an information war is being fought on social media and on the airwaves — including in American heartland cities like Liberty, Missouri.
Locals call Guissona “Little Ukraine,” because 1 out of 7 residents in the Catalan farm town hails from there. And that was before Vladimir Putin launched his most recent invasion. The Ukrainians came to Guissona years ago to work in the local meat plant. Now hundreds more are arriving, drawn by family and the town’s fame.
Interest in the Colombian indie-pop band Monsieur Periné skyrocketed after one of its songs from 2015 went viral on TikTok. A video on the platform inspired thousands of TikTok users to record themselves at home dancing to the chorus of “Nuestra Canción.”
Romania's local deaf community in Botoșani has welcomed at least 200 deaf people from Ukraine since the war began. They are focused on getting people to safety and ensuring that up-to-date information is available for sign language speakers.
Caste was outlawed decades ago across South Asia. But it still exists and has found its way to American campuses.
Last year, control over the holy city of Lalibela went back and forth between the warring parties until federal forces retook it in December. To date, the city still lacks electricity and running water as residents attempt to return to daily life.
More than 3 million people have fled Ukraine in the violence of the past three weeks. At the same time, a smaller, more privileged migration route is emerging in eastern cities like Istanbul.
When the pandemic hit his home city of Istanbul, Ahmet Faruk picked up an old passion: drawing. He wandered around the city, looking for forgotten, underappreciated buildings. Then, he brought them to life on the pages of his sketchbook. Lately, he has been focusing on Islamic architecture, specifically, mosque domes and minarets.
The library’s reopening on Feb. 19 represents a significant milestone in the return of arts and literature to a city whose culture became a target of the militants.
It's a situation that many Ukrainians with families watching Russian state media propaganda are finding themselves in — trying to share the painful reality of war in Ukraine with their loved ones in Russia, who may or may not believe them.
Many Russian expats are appalled by the war in Ukraine. Some are even speaking out. But many say they're also experiencing verbal abuse and hate speech as the war in Ukraine continues.
In the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and on the east of the country, museums and churches have already been targeted as Moscow escalates its bombardment of civilian areas. Meanwhile, the residents of Lviv race to ensure their city does not suffer the same fate.
In 2006, finding a live Fréderic Chopin concert in Warsaw was harder than expected. American pianist Pamela Howland made it her life’s mission to revive Chopin in Warsaw, Poland, the composer’s hometown.
While several European countries have welcomed Ukrainian refugees, the reception and treatment of refugees trying to reach Europe from the Middle East and Africa is quite different. H.A. Hellyer, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says implicit bias creates this double standard.
With the upcoming election in May, it can sometimes feel like a “circus” of huge, enthusiastic crowds, awe-inspiring performances and, of course, catchy, upbeat jingles.
In a rare case, an Ethiopian domestic worker in Lebanon is taking her former employer and the agency that hired her to court over accusations of slavery and slave trading. The woman, identified as M.H., alleges that she was underpaid, locked up and assaulted over several years. Activists are hoping it will help change the worker sponsorship program in Lebanon.
At first, sailors with the US 6th Fleet brought in a flair of modernity and freedom. Over time, public opinion toward their influence in Spain changed.
In Ghana, coffin makers have elevated death into an art form, building fantasy coffins despite some raised eyebrows at this uncommon profession.
Scientists say the massive Humboldt squid is a prime example of animal adaptation in the face of climate change. But it’s proven harder for local fishing communities who depended on the once-abundant squid to adjust.
Mehray Mezensof's husband was arrested by Chinese authorities in Xinjiang province just days before the newlywed couple planned to fly to Melbourne to begin their lives together. Many others share similar stories among China's minority Uyghur population.
The Bharatiya Janata Party — known for its strong Hindu nationalist policies — is fighting to keep the state of Uttar Pradesh. With more than 150 million voters, the state is a barometer for national politics.
There aren't very many traditional lantern makers left in Shanghai. They're being replaced by technology creating mass-produced versions. But some people are still trying to keep the culture alive.
Sital-Singh, now an atheist, has released a single, "Me & God," which gets up close and personal with his faith.
Many people who experience sexual assault from Ghana’s poorest communities cannot afford the $85 medical exam required to file a police report.
The bill proposes amending a crucial part of Kenya’s Forest Act of 2005, which strengthened protections for Kenya’s forests and helped stop illegal acquisition of public forest lands.
Witch hunts relied heavily on accusations from neighbors who were desperate for scapegoats whenever bad luck struck the town — such as crop failures, sudden diseases or natural disasters.
A growing number of Holocaust historians worry that Poland’s ruling far-right government is trying to cover up the darker side of the country’s past.
Mangeshkar, also known as the Queen of Melody, was cremated with full state honors in Mumbai on Sunday, a funeral attended by film and music luminaries as well as Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Dan Saladino, author of "Eating to Extinction: The World's Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them," talks with The World's host Marco Werman about dwindling diversity within the global food system and how we can change it toward a more sustainable future.
The new monument at the Treblinka railway station has raised concerns among Holocaust historians about how Poland's current far-right government is distorting history.
Go_A Band from Kyiv includes Kateryna Pavlenko (vocals) and Taras Shevchenko (founder/keyboard and percussion). They represented Ukraine last year at the Eurovision Song Contest. Hear what's on their minds right now — and a little of their music, too.
Far from simply entertaining troops, Dr. Hannah Ha learned, her mom had been a recording artist who worked with South Vietnam’s top composers in the scene’s 1960s heyday. She performed under the stage name Phương Tâm.
Ugandan poet Stella Nyanzi talks about her friend, the satirist Kakwenza Rukirabashaija, and his torture while recently under military detention. His crime? Calling Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's son "obese" in a series of tweets last December.
The Philippines is one of several countries that have kept students out of the classroom the longest since the start of the pandemic. Lacking critical resources to sustain virtual learning, the situation leaves teachers, students and parents across Metro Manila exhausted and frustrated.