Music
Fado Beyond Lisbon: Tracing Portugal’s Melancholy Song
Fado means fate. The word itself — from the Latin fatum — carries the weight of inevitability that defines the…
Region: Southern Europe
Music
Rebetiko Revival: How Athens Rediscovered Its Underground Sound
Walk through the Psyrri neighborhood of Athens on any given Thursday night and you will hear it: the sharp twang…
Film
La Fune — Zahra Mackaoui (2007)
A rope stretched between two buildings. A child learning to walk it. An Italian village that watches, half in admiration,…
Music
Camarón Revisited: Kefta Brother’s Flamenco Tribute
Camarón de la Isla died in 1992 at the age of forty-one, and flamenco has spent the decades since trying…
Film
Aligato — Maka Sidibé (2007)
Aligato takes its title from a mispronunciation — or perhaps a reinvention — of the Japanese word for gratitude, filtered…
Interview
Predrag Matvejevic on the Mediterranean as Metaphor
Predrag Matvejević spent his life arguing that the Mediterranean is not a geography but a civilization — and that this…
Film
Hiyab — Xavi Sala (2008)
Xavi Sala’s Hiyab begins with a conversation and ends with a question — one that seven minutes and fifty-six seconds…
Interview
Yamina Benguigui: “Culture Opens the Speech”
Before she became France’s Minister Delegate for Francophonie in 2012, Yamina Benguigui was known for something more subversive: making French…
Interview
Amin Maalouf on Identity, Language, and the Arab-European Divide
Amin Maalouf writes about identity the way a cartographer draws coastlines — aware that every border is an approximation, that…