In Irish music today, tradition ain't what it used to be.

While the casual listener might think any group of musicians playing "Irish sounding" music on acoustic instruments is traditional, even those venerable veterans The Chieftains were considered revolutionaries when they first performed. Since then, there have been several generations...

While Ireland can be damp and chilly, it's always sunny and warm when you are with Sharon Shannon.

The ever-smiling accordion player burst onto the music scene 21 years ago with her eponymous debut album, which still holds the record as the largest-selling Irish traditional music album. Her...

It seems like it can be pretty hard to get away from samba in Brazil, but then again, why would you want to?

Like reggae in Jamaica, samba is the heartbeat rhythm of Brazil. But there isn't one type of samba: there is the samba enredo, the theme songs sung...

The Italian explorer Christopher Columbus came to America and discovered a new world; the Italian rock star Jovanotti came to New York to discover himself.

After 25 years at the top of the Italian charts, the stadium-filling singer-songwriter Lorenzo "Jovanotti" Cherubini has moved to New York City to try on...

Martin Hayes is a traditional Irish fiddler and the son of a traditional Irish fiddler, so he is well aware that traditional music is a constantly evolving form.

Hayes is a masterful fiddler who is known for his soulful playing as well as his ability to fly through a brisk...

Listening to the sophisticated interplay of the two acoustic guitars of Rodrigo y Gabriela, it is hard to believe that they began their musical partnership in a Mexican heavy metal band.

The two musicians with their dazzling, original technique, have become international stars via an improbable story line. After their...

Through pure determination, Paco de Lucía has become that rarity among artists: both icon and iconoclast.

It's been more than fifty years since Paco de Lucía taught himself guitar and stunned the world of flamenco as a child prodigy, then went on to develop peerless technique and controversially reshape the...

I guess it could happen. Some Brazilian music fan had such a Mad Wednesday of a Mardi Gras Tuesday that he or she felt the compulsion to give up something big for Lent -- samba. Fortune, however, would have been helping this Brazilnut since two of Brazil's top stars have...

It was hard times for black musicians in the decades following the Civil War, but that didn't stop them from shouting out some soulful and joyous music.

Today, the young musicians of the Carolina Chocolate Drops are reviving interest in these old tunes -- not by re-creating them as precious...

While music styles from the U.S. and Mexico have flirted, rubbed up and exchanged some, uh, seminal elements across their shared border, few artists have the unique perspective of Lila Downs, who was raised amid the heartlands of both countries.

The daughter of a Mexican singer from Oaxaca...

The early brainwashing of my son seems to have finally paid off. Each night, as I laid him down in his crib, I used to play Putumayo's Samba Bossa Nova collection to softly swing him off to sleepy-bye land. It worked like nothing else and consequently, we played...

Whatever else Dominique Strauss-Kahn did, he certainly screwed the American stereotype of sophisticated and suave French romance. Really, Dominique, on the wall?

But for those who want to bask in the idealized France where l'amour permeates the air like a soupçon of impossibly expensive perfume, there has been a small...

I was once told that at the offices of David Byrne's Luaka Bop label, the word "quirky" was banned - apparently they had heard it way too much as a descriptor for their artists, but it's sure to pop up if you are releasing the records of Tom Zé.

With...

Ironically, just before Bob Dylan killed folk music, he tried to revive it.

His debut album in 1962 featured only two original songs; Dylan was causing a buzz in small clubs singing old American folk songs -- a stark contrast to the rising tide of electrified rock 'n' roll (though,...

Here in the New York City area, we had been rooting for a few more wilting summer days so we could break the record for the hottest July on record. After all, why suffer and not be able to claim you lived through the hottest July on record. Alas, there's...