Around the World - Preview
13 February 2026
LISTEN TO AROUND THE WORLD ON MIXCLOUD
Music From: Brazil, Cape Verde, Czech Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Gambia, Ireland, Japan, Mali, Netherlands, Reunion, Senegal, Slovakia, Sweden, and Taiwan.
Music by: Altın Gün, BaianaSystem, Brendan Monaghan, Ceuzany, Crossing (Diabaté/Martella/Schiavone), Dorota Barová, Elephant Gym, Gabba, Ichiko Aoba, Júlia Kozáková, Mariama & Vieux, Marius Billgobenson, Maryam Saleh, Nancy Vieira & Fred Martins, Neba Solo & Benogo Diakite, SADU, Saodaj’, Souad Massi, Suntou Susso, Temenik Electric, Tuuletar, and Yeko_Music
This week’s Featured Album: Il Mito by Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino
Pizzica Indiavolata - Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino
La Notte della Taranta 2025
Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino: Myth, Memory, and the Pulse of a Living Tradition
For half a century, Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino (CGS) has stood at the centre of a cultural revival that reaches far beyond the heel of Italy. Formed in 1975 by writer and cultural activist Rina Durante, the ensemble has become the most internationally recognised voice of Salento, the peninsula at the southern tip of Puglia where ancient languages, ritual music, and modern experimentation coexist in a rare equilibrium. Their new album, Il Mito, arrives as both a continuation and a re‑imagining of that legacy: a meditation on origins, identity, and the enduring power of collective rhythm.
A Band Rooted in an Ancient Landscape
Salento is a region where a Greek‑derived language, Griko, is still spoken. Griko is more than a linguistic curiosity; it is a living emblem of cultural continuity, a reminder that the Mediterranean has always been a crossroads rather than a border. CGS has long embraced this linguistic heritage, weaving Griko phrases, cadences, and imagery into their repertoire. In doing so, they have helped preserve a language.
The band’s music is inseparable from the pizzica, the hypnotic, percussive folk tradition historically associated with the ritual of tarantismo—a healing dance once believed to cure the bite of the tarantula. While the ritual itself has faded, its musical vocabulary remains potent: the insistent frame drum, the violin’s spiralling lines, and the call‑and‑response. CGS has carried this tradition into the present allowing it to evolve and continue to live.
A New Generation, A Renewed Vision
Since 2007, the ensemble has been led by Mauro Durante, son of long‑time band member Daniele Durante. Mauro’s leadership has marked a period of bold expansion. Trained both in traditional music and contemporary composition, he has opened CGS to collaborations that stretch the boundaries of what Salentine music can be. Under his direction, the group has toured globally, performed at major festivals, and worked with artists as diverse as Ballaké Sissoko, Justin Adams, and Stewart Copeland.
This openness has never diluted their identity. Instead, it has sharpened it. CGS’s sound today is unmistakably rooted in Salento, yet it speaks fluently to audiences far beyond Italy.
La Notte della Taranta: A Cultural Earthquake
No account of CGS’s impact is complete without acknowledging their central role in La Notte della Taranta, the annual festival that has become one of Europe’s largest celebrations of traditional music. What began in the late 1990s as a local gathering has grown into a cultural phenomenon, drawing hundreds of thousands of people to the Salentine night.
For two consecutive years, 2010 and 2011, Ludovico Einaudi was appointed Maestro Concertatore of the festival in. He s an Italian pianist and composer renowned for his meditative, minimalist soundscapes. Einaudi’s involvement marked a turning point. His minimalist sensibility—patient, spacious, emotionally direct—brought a new dimension to the pizzica, revealing its capacity for introspection as well as ecstasy. The collaboration between Durante and Einaudi helped shape a modern aesthetic for the festival, one that respected tradition while inviting innovation.
Einaudi’s work with the festival—and with Mauro Durante in particular—helped bring pizzica to audiences who might never have encountered it otherwise. His arrangements highlighted the music’s emotional depth, its capacity for both communal release and private reflection. Einaudi helped the world hear what had always been there.
A Legacy Still in Motion
Today, Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino stands as one of the most important folk ensembles in Europe. Their work has preserved endangered languages, revitalised ancient rituals, and carried the sound of Salento to global audiences. Yet they remain grounded in the community that shaped them. Their concerts feel less like performances and more like gatherings—moments when the boundary between artist and audience dissolves into shared rhythm.
With Il Mito, the band continues its long journey through memory, identity, and collective imagination. It is an album that honours the past while refusing nostalgia, a work that insists tradition is not something to be protected behind glass but something to be lived, questioned, and renewed.
Sources: End of a Century - World Music Central - Blogfoolk
Neba Solo & Benego Diakité - Djinê Mogo Tiki (Live)
For more than three decades, Neba Solo has been one of Mali’s most quietly revolutionary musicians — a balafon innovator who expanded the instrument’s range and re‑tuned its harmonic language while keeping it rooted in the Sikasso region’s village traditions . His partnership with Benogo Diakité, a master percussionist, has become one of the most intuitive dialogues in contemporary Mandé music.
Their new album, A Djinn and a Hunter Went Walking, is a folktale told in sound. The title hints at the record’s narrative arc: music as a path through the bush, where spirits, ancestors and travellers cross without warning.
Solo’s balafon lines move with a dancer’s precision, rippling between cyclical grooves and sudden melodic turns. Diakité’s percussion grounds the music in the pulse of Sikasso, yet he leaves space for breath, suspense, and the sense that something unseen is moving just outside the frame.
What makes the album interesting is its balance of refinement and rawness. The production is clean, but the performances retain the warmth of courtyard music — communal, unhurried, deeply human. A Djinn and a Hunter Went Walking is less a departure than a deepening: two artists returning to the well of tradition and finding it still full, still flowing, still capable of.
Sourses: Smithsonian Folkways - Festival sur le Niger - L’Essor - ORTM Culture
With “Habibi,” Temenik Electric sharpen their reputation as one of Marseille’s most restlessly inventive bands, fusing North African pulse with rock‑electro urgency. Led by singer‑guitarist Mehdi Haddjeri, the group has spent more than a decade carving out a sound that refuses easy labels: raï and chaâbi phrasing woven through deep bass, serrated guitars, and the atmospheric electronics that have become their signature.
The new single arrives as a statement of intent ahead of their forthcoming fourth album. It’s lean, propulsive, and emotionally direct — a love song, yes, but also a declaration of cultural confidence. Haddjeri sings almost entirely in Arabic, his voice riding a groove built from guellal‑driven loops, mandole colours, and a rhythm section that feels both anchored and airborne.
Temenik Electric have always thrived on confrontation — between languages, between identities, between the rock canon and Maghrebi memory. “Habibi” distils that tension into three minutes of tightly coiled energy. It’s music built for movement: a track that nods to the band’s Algerian roots while embracing the cosmopolitan grit of Marseille.
Sources: YouTube - Africultures - lenomad.com
Where and when to hear Around the World
Friday:
Akaroa World Radio New Zealand - 2:00 pm local time
NAR-GROUP Germany – 2:00 pm local time
Mosel Radio Germany – 2:00 pm local time
NAR-Alf Germany – 2:00 pm local time
Waterwaves Radio England - 9:00 pm local time
Saturday:
Best City Radio (Belfast, Northern Ireland) - 6:00 am local time
Power 101FM Malawi - 11:00 local time
Flirt FM (Galway’s Community of Interest & Student Station) 101.3 - 10:45 am local time Ireland
Stirling Community Radio - 2:00 pm local time Scotland
RCFM (Radio City FM) Duisburg, Germany - 3:00 local time
U Radio - Sri Lanka 8:00pm - 10:00 pm local time
World FM New Zealand - 10:00 pm local New Zealand Time
Essential Radio Scotland - 12:00 midnight
Sunday:
West Coast FM Namibia - 10:00 am Central Africa Time
Power 101FM Malawi - 12:00 local time
NFRS Osaka Japan - 12:00 noon local time
973FM in Singapore - 11:00 pm local time
Circl8 Chester England - 12:00 noon local time
MoonFM, Montana - 6:00 pm (Mountain Standard Time)
DCRFM (Dover Community Radio England - 7:00pm local time
Websound Radio (Larne Northern Ireland) - 8:00 pm local time
Prodigal Sun Radio - 8:00 pm local time
Slice Audio Northern Ireland - 10:00 pm local time
Holywood Radio - Northern Ireland - Various times
Monday:
Armagh City Radio - 12:00 midnight local time (01:00 pm CET)
SparkFlame Radio - 00:00 am GMT (01:00 CET)
Circl8 Chester England - 12:00 noon local time
Stirling Community Radio Scotland - 10:00 pm local time
Waterwaves Radio England - 9:00 pm local time
BR2 Pure Gold Radio – Costa Blanca, Spain - 10:00 pm local time
Akaroa World Radio New Zealand - 10:00 pm local time
World FM New Zealand - 10:00 pm local time
Tuesday:
Shire Extra Lanarkshire, Scotland - 8:00 pm local time
Waterwaves Radio England - 9:00 pm local time
Wednesday:
World FM New Zealand - 4:00 am local time
Slice Audio Northern Ireland - 4:00 am local time
Life Right Radio London - 7:00 pm local time
Best City Radio Northern Ireland - 10:00 pm local time
Radio Skye Scotland - 10:00 pm local time
Thursday:
Waterwaves Radio England - 9:00 pm local time