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This week's Cafe International show is a Chanukah special, featuring Chanukah music from around the world, including short interviews with Frank London and Elizabeth Schwartz. We start the show with what was one of the best Chanukah presents I ever received, when actor Leonard Nimoy was a guest on Cafe International in 1996, and he talked about how growing up in a Jewish family in Boston shaped the famous Spock character on Star Trek. With host Dan Rosenberg

On this week's episode of Cafe International, we feature an interview with the legendary Senegalese singer, Baaba Maal, and hear how he began his career in West African folk music. After completing his education in Senegal in 1981, he traveled across West Africa with his friend, blind guitarist Mansour Seck, going village to village to learn the region’s folk music. In 2 years, they visited more than 300 places in Mali, Senegal, Guinea, Mauritania and Ivory Coast.

Our guest on today’s program of Cafe International is Jimmy Carter, a founding member of the legendary gospel group, The Blind Boys of Alabama. Carter was born in 1932 in the segregated south. The group, which was founded at an Alabama school for the blind in the 1940s, has gone on to win 5 Grammy awards and has performed at the White House for 3 different presidents. But for decades, they couldn’t eat at white restaurants or stay in white-only hotels when touring. We look back at their amazing career that has spanned 8 decades, the progress Jimmy Carter has witnessed in America during his lifetime and the work that still needs to be done. With host Dan Rosenberg

This week on Cafe International, host Dan Rosenberg recounts The incredible story of Dengue Fever, and the revival of Cambodian Psychedelia of the late 60s and early 70s. During Cambodia’s killing fields, nearly every singer and musician who was involved in this blend of eastern and western music was murdered. Dengue Fever has not only resurrected these musical treasures, they have taken Cambodian music in brand new directions. Featuring interviews with Chhom Nimol, Zac Holtzman, Senon Williams, and more.

On this week’s episode of Cafe International, we look at a new project mixing Indian and Western Classical Music: The Resonance Between. The Resonance Between is the new collaborative album by artists Alam Khan, Arjun K. Verma, and Del Sol String Quartet

On this week’s Cafe International, we remember the remarkable career of bassist Gary Nuñez, founder of Plena Libre, the 4-time Grammy nominated ensemble that has been at the forefront of Puerto Rico’s plena revival. Nuñez died on October 14th, 2023 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. We will revisit an interview with Gary Nuñez from 2017 in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Maria, a category 5 storm that devastated Puerto Rico. We will hear about Plena Libre’s series of free concerts that Nuñez organized to help keep the spirits up for those who lost everything due to the hurricane’s destruction.

Our guest this week on Cafe International is Ukrainian singer Jamala. She has a new album called QIRIM – or Crimea, dedicated to the folk music of Crimea. In 2016, Jamala won the Eurovision Song Contest with her song, 1944, about the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Crimean Tatar population from that peninsula that year. One of those deported and sent to Central Asia was Jamala’s Great Grandmother. With host, Dan Rosenberg.

This week's episode of Cafe International - recorded in Prague with guest Milan Tesar of Radio Proglas, where he gives us a history of Czech folk music. We'll hear recordings by Marie Puttnerova, Helena Vedralova, Katerina Gottlichova and even some Czech Christmas music.

Cafe International - On September 16, 1973, Chilean poet, teacher, singer and songwriter Victor Jara was murdered shortly after a military coup. On today’s show, we look at 50 years of Chilean Protest music, featuring interviews with Nano Stern and Inti-Illimani’s Jorge Coulon

On this week’s episode of Cafe International with host Dan Rosenberg, we revisit an interview with klezmer singer and composer Daniel Kahn that we recorded just after the Unite the Right march in Charlottesville Virginia. One of his most powerful songs is based on a poem originally written 90 years ago is, “Embrace the Fascists” which deals with the debate over free speech when it’s actually hate speech.

Today on Cafe International, Dan Roseberg investigates vocal deconstruction sampling. For nearly three decades, they have shattered the barrier of what was considered physically possible with the voice. On today's show, we will learn how to create an a cappella Cuban orchestra with just six guys. With guests producer Rachel Faro, arranger/singer René Baños Pascual, and the rest of the members of Vocal Sampling.

This week on Cafe International with Dan Rosenberg, our guest is Noam Vazana – or as she’s better known, Nani. She’s one of the very few artists in the world composing new songs in the nearly dead Ladino language – this is the language originally spoken by Sephardic Jews in Spain and Portugal before the time of the Spanish Inquisition in 1492 – and today, it’s spoken rarely, except for some communities in the Sephardic diaspora. Nani’s grandmother was one of those speakers, but Nani’s father prohibited them from speaking the language during Nani’s childhood. We’ll hear music from Nani’s new album "Ke Haber" ("What's New"), featuring new music – often about contemporary subjects in Ladino – the language she was banned from speaking as a child. Later in the show, we’ll hear how Nani discovered a 13th century poem that describes the transformation of a transgender teenage girl who came out to her parents, and wanted to be recognized as a boy. Nani found the ancient poem when she was looking for material in an old library within a synagogue in Leiden, in the Netherlands.

Today on Cafe International, we visit Neuchatel Switzerland, a beautiful lakeside town – that in the middle of every August, is transformed by a remarkable buskers festival. But there aren’t jugglers or acrobats on unicycles. Instead, its pedestrian zone in the center of the city becomes a huge global music festival – and on our show, we’ll hear music from Georgia, Sardinia, Syria, and Brazil. Our guests include founder of the Neuchatel, Buskers festival Georges Grillon plus members of the Lusophone group Ayom, the Sardinian polyphonic quartet Andhira and more!

Cafe International: Learning to Yodel, with award-winning singer Christine Lauterberg. Recorded in Bern Switzerland

Cafe International - On this week's Cafe International - an interview and samba guitar workshop with Roge. He was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and now lives in Los Angeles. We'll hear music from his new album Curyman, learn about how to play samba on guitar - and how he created "Samba Funk."

On our show, we speak with Marko Halanevych and Irina Gorban of the Ukrainian group DakhaBrakha. After Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, they’ve performed over 200 concerts around the world in the past 500 days, including six concerts in Ukraine as its cities were being bombed, becoming de facto cultural ambassadors, sharing music from a culture whose very existence is under threat.

- Our guest this week is Alfredo Caxaj, founder of the Sunfest in London, Ontario. We’ll learn how Afredo Caxaj came to Canada in 1985 as a refugee from Guatemala, and founded the Sunfest, Canada’s largest free world music festival. We’ll also hear music from some of the performers at the 2023 Sunfest, including Bejuco from Colombia, The Garifuna Collective from Belize, Sara Curruchich from Guatemala, DakhaBrakha from Ukraine, Jupiter and Okwess from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Frander from Sweden.