Around the World - Show Notes
22 May 2026
This episode of Around the World was first broadcast in January 2026
You can listen to Around the World on Mixcloud
The first hour is here on Mixcloud
The second hour is here on Mixcloud
This week
Music from: Australia, Brazil, Canada, DR Congo, France, Gambia, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Réunion, Slovakia, Spain, Ukraine, and the USA.
Music by: Antibalas, Banning Eyre, Bonbon Vodou, Carminho, Cumbia Chicharra, Daughters of Donbas, Gabba, Hamouna Isewlan, João Leão, Júlia Kozáková, Katrina Connolly, Le Vent du Nord, Noura Mint Seymali, Nusantara Beat, Rosalía, Silvana Estrada, Strania, Suntou Susso, Syran Mbenza, The Selenites Band, The Tragically Hip, Veronika Varga, and Xabi Aburruzaga.
The Around the World Preview is published every Friday. You can subscribe here.
This week’s featured album - Gabba’s Smestániá:
Gabba - Iđit Goahkat
Gabba’s Smestániá: A Sámi Ensemble Charting New Paths Through Ancestral Sound
Gabba which translates to “Ivory-coated Reindeer” from Sámi language is a Sámi and Norwegian band that plays traditional joik, one of Europe’s oldest vocal traditions from the far north of Scandanavia.
Gabba are intent on pushing that heritage into new, resonant territory. Led by John André Eira, a master of the joik, the group has built its reputation on work that is both culturally grounded and creatively restless. Their latest album, Smestániá, is their most expansive exploration of that duality.
Joiking, often described as a way of evoking rather than describing a person, place or moment, sits at the heart of Gabba’s sound. Eira, raised in the northern village of Mázé, brings a vocal presence that is at once intimate and elemental. His original compositions blend seamlessly with traditional joiks, creating a musical language that feels ancient but never static. Gabba’s arrangements — drawing on Norwegian folk, Americana, and global influences— frame the joik not as an artefact but as a living, adaptive force.
Smestániá, loosely translated as “settlements,” extends that idea into a meditation on belonging. Across the album, the band treats movement, memory and cultural inheritance as intertwined threads. Bowed strings and modular synths drift around Eira’s voice; rhythms rise and recede like weather systems across the tundra. The result is immersive, often quietly dramatic, and always anchored by the emotional clarity of the joik.
What distinguishes Gabba is not fusion for its own sake but a sense of continuity. Their music carries the expected Sámi moods of beauty, bleakness and longing — qualities noted by critics— yet it also gestures outward, inviting listeners into a broader conversation about identity and place. Smestániá is less a departure than a widening of the path: a reminder that tradition, when held with care, can be both a compass and a horizon.
Sources: Gabba – Music Norway - Bandcamp
Bonbon Vodou - Gourmandises Amoureuses
Bonbon Vodou’s Épopée Métèque address themes like exile, and identity. The Franco-Reunionnais duo—Oriane Lacaille and Jérémie Boucris—expand into a quintet for their third album, weaving personal histories of displacement into a vibrant tapestry of global sound. The title itself juxtaposes the grandeur of “épopée” with the once-pejorative “métèque,” reclaiming it as a badge of shared experience and cultural resilience.
Drawing from their fathers’ migrations—René Lacaille from Réunion and Boucris’s father from Tunisia—the album explores the emotional terrain of chosen and forced exile. Songs shift between French, Creole, and Gascon, echoing the multilingual lives of those who straddle continents. The instrumentation is equally eclectic: kayambs, flûtes pygmées, cigar-box guitars, and even plastic bags repurposed as maracas. Each track is a sonic voyage, with guest appearances from Bernard Lavilliers, Rosemary Standley, and Maya Kamaty adding depth and texture.
Bonbon Vodou’s approach is both playful and poignant. Épopée Métèque doesn’t just tell stories—it conjures atmospheres, inviting listeners into a world where exile becomes a source of creativity rather than loss. It’s a celebration of hybridity, a musical cartography of memory and migration.
Sources: RFI - Radio France
Bobcaygeon - The Tragically Hip
Sometimes I get focused in on my music while other excellent music from outstanding bands passes me by. If it weren’t for Kevin Roberg-Perez in Minneapolis who posted this on Facebook over Christmas holidays, I would still be blissfully unaware of a band called The Tragically Hip.
The Tragically Hip emerged from Kingston, Ontario in the mid‑1980s and while they had a long and successful career, they rarely reached out beyond Canada. They grew into one of Canada’s most defining rock bands, shaped profoundly by the presence of their frontman, Gord Downie. A poet disguised as a rock singer, Downie brought a rare blend of curiosity, empathy and literary precision to the group’s work. Bobcaygeon, released in 1998, remains one of his most enduring pieces—a quiet, elliptical story about a police officer navigating the tensions of city life and the restorative pull of a lakeside town.
Downie’s performance gives the song its emotional centre, his voice carrying both weariness and wonder. That sensitivity became even more resonant in the final chapter of his life. Diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in 2016, he continued to perform and record with a sense of urgency that deepened the public’s connection to him. His death the following year was felt across the country, a moment of collective mourning for an artist who had long served as a kind of national conscience. Bobcaygeon endures as a reminder of his gift: the ability to turn intimate, idiosyncratic stories into something widely and deeply felt.
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
Essential Radio Scotland - 10:00 midnight
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
World FM New Zealand - 10:00 pm local New Zealand Time
Sunday:
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
DCRFM (Dover Community Radio England - 7:00pm 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
World FM New Zealand - 10:00 am local time
Akaroa World Radio New Zealand - 10:00 pm local time
Tuesday:
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
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