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Xi.me.na
The vocal artist Xi.me.na wore paper at Joe’s Pub, which was only so surprising since, when I first saw her, at DROM, she was be-hooped in plastic. The clothes do not, of course, make the singer – the voice does – but they carry an attitude. Hers is fiercely self-assertive and unafraid of ornamentation so…
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Yasmine Hamdan
It can be a special gift to listen to a song in a language that you neither speak nor understand. A language has its own rhythms and tonalities, just as musical forms and genres do, and when there is singing, the musicality of language merges directly with that of the instruments. The deepest engagement with…
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Nellie McKay
Let us now praise Nellie McKay, the walking definition of one-of-a-kind, defier of genres and categories, contemporizer of the old-fashioned, nostalgizer of the new, wittifier of the tragic, and profundizer of the trivial. There is no one cleverer, or more likable, words like “talented” were invented in the vain hope that they might describe her.…
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Lara Bello
The Spanish singer Lara Bello is one of the more inventive artists I have encountered in New York. Her album Niña Pez was an amalgam of jazz, singer-songwriter folk, flamenco, alternative rock and Middle Eastern vocals. In the title figure she created a sort of alter ego for her own persona. Bello is a storyteller,…