Cafe International

On our program this week, our guest is Noam Vazana – or as she’s better known, Nani. She’s one of the very few artists in the world composing new songs in the nearly dead Ladino language – this is the language originally spoken by Sephardic Jews in Spain and Portugal before the time of the Spanish Inquisition in 1492 – and today, it’s spoken rarely, except for some communities in the Sephardic dia...

On today's program, we speak with Marko Halaneyvich and Iryna Gorban of the Ukrainian group DakhaBrakha. After Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, DakhaBrakha has performed over 200 concerts around the world in the past 500 days, including six concerts in Ukraine as its cities were being bombed. We recorded this interview at the Sunfest in London, Ontario – much more than a typica...

Our guest this week is Alfredo Caxaj, founder of the Sunfest in London, Ontario. We’ll learn how Afredo Caxaj came to Canada in 1985 as a refugee from Guatemala, and founded the Sunfest, Canada’s largest free world music festival. We’ll also hear music from some of the performers at the 2023 Sunfest, including Bejuco from Colombia, The Garifuna Collective from Belize, Sara Curruchich from Guatemal...

An interview and samba guitar workshop with Roge: He was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and now lives in Los Angeles. We'll hear music from his new album Curyman, learn how to play samba on guitar - and how he created "Samba Funk." with host Dan Rosenberg

On this week's episode of Cafe International, we will learn about preserving Garifuna history, culture and music from Emilio Thomas and Al Ovando – members of the Belizean group, The Garifuna Collective, and how until as recently as the 1990s, Garifuna children were discouraged from speaking their language in school. The Garifuna are descendants of escaped African slaves – in 1635, a slave shi...

An interview with qanun virtuoso Maya Youssef. She grew up in Syria and has become one of the world’s leading performers of this 78-stringed instrument. On the program, a special radio workshop on how to play the qanun. We will also learn what it has been like for Youssef living in London, England, separated from her family amidst a horrific war and the devastating recent earthquakes.

Host Dan Rosenberg interviews singer Lena Chamamyan about creating music in exile. She was born in Damascus, with Syrian and Armenian heritage. When Chamamyan arrived in Paris in 2011 after civil war broke out in Syria, she was already a star, having performed in many of the world’s top concert halls, her videos had millions of views on YouTube, but none of that mattered, as she, like so many Syri...

We look at the question of what is the harm of giving a megaphone to fascists? In the wake of Donald Trump’s dinner with a neo-nazi, with twitter welcoming back white supremacists to their platform, we revisit an interview with klezmer singer and composer Daniel Kahn that we recorded just after the Unite the Right march in Charlottesville Virginia. One of his most powerful songs, originally writte...

On this week's show, an interview with the legendary Senegalese singer, Baaba Maal. We will hear how he began his career in West African folk music. After completing his education in Senegal in 1981, Baaba Maal travelled across West Africa with his friend, blind guitarist Mansour Seck, going village to village to learn the region’s folk music. In 2 years, they visited to more that 300 pl...

On this week’s Cafe International : “Snorkeling in Belize!” We revisit a very fun show, when I first met Ivan Duran of Stonetree Records - and we went swimming with the sharks and talked about Garifuna music (they were small sharks)

We speak with Daniel Hamar of the group Muzsikás about what it was like performing Hungarian folk songs in Eastern Europe under communist rule when some politicians feared folk music could be subversive and lead to nationalist revolutions. And later, we’ll hear how Muzsikás travelled to Transylvania in the 1990s to research Jewish music – songs nearly lost to history after Transylva...

In this special episode of Cafe International , recorded in Vourvourou, in the Halkidiki region of Greece, we are joined by virtuoso guitarist, Dimitris Mystakidis A master of rebetiko guitar - D imitris Mystakidis grew up in Thessaloniki and is a professor of folk and traditional music at the University of Epirus, the author of two books, and numerous critically acclaimed CDs. With host Dan Rosen...

Our guest on today’s program is Jimmy Carter from the legendary gospel group, The Blind Boys of Alabama. Carter was born in 1932 in the segregated south. The group, which was founded at an Alabama school for the blind in the 1940s, has gone on to win five Grammy awards and has performed at the White House for three different presidents. But for decades, they couldn’t eat at white restaurants or st...

On today’s program, we look back at the remarkable but tragically short career of Lhasa de Sela. Her groundbreaking album, La Llorona – which went on to go platinum in Canada - turns 25 this year. Her music is haunting and captivating - and as fresh as when it was recorded in 1997. We’ll feature an interview with Lhasa from just after La Llorona was released, and hear how she grew up, living on th...

An interview with professor of anthropology and music, Maria Sonevytsky from Bard College. She is the author of the award winning book, Wild Music: Sound and Sovereignty in Ukraine. We will hear how Ukraine, a country whose culture and very existence have been under attack for centuries, has represented its diversity and musical traditions, often quite politically at the Eurovision Song Contest. L...

What can we learn from songs that describe crimes against humanity from prior times that Ukraine was invaded? On today’s show, we speak with University of Toronto professor, Anna Shternshis about her project, Yiddish Glory , resurrecting long lost songs written during World War II. She tells us how Holocaust victims and survivors used music to document Nazi atrocities with the goal that the perpet...

Cafe International's series on Ukrainian music continues with a look at one of one of the giants of Yiddish folk music, Arkady Gendler – who was considered a living Alexandrine library of Yiddish song from Ukraine and Moldova. Arkady Gendler was born in the town of Soroke in 1921 near the border of Moldova and Ukraine. During World War II, he served in the Red Army and helped liberate Ukraine from...

On this program the bandura master Julian Kytasty talks about the history of the bandura, shows how the instrument is played and discusses what we can learn from songs written in prior centuries when Ukraine was attacked. With host Dan Rosenberg

On today’s show, our guest is Yuriy Gurzhy, a DJ, music producer and writer who grew up in Kharkiv, Ukraine and now lives in Berlin, Germany. We’ll hear about what it was like recording his album, Foxtroty, in Kharkiv in the weeks before Russia started bombing the city – and much of Ukraine.  Foxtroty is based on poetry from the Executed Renaissance - a golden age of Ukrainian poetry in the 1...

Cafe International's Series on Ukrainian music continues: This episode features Dan Rosenberg's interview with Yuri Bukovynets from the Hudaki Village Band, speaking about the lives of musicians during wartime, and how they’re helping those who are internally displaced and have lost everything due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Mariana Sadovska: “If I’m asked to describe what my family and relatives are going through in Ukraine, I actually don’t have words. It’s hell. When I get a chance to have a video conversation and I see their eyes and their faces. They’re tired.”  In this moving interview, we will hear about her role as a cultural ambassador for Ukraine amidst Russia's horrific unprovoked war, how she is perfo...