Summer Listening: heritage music from Texas to Ireland to Iraq

From Ireland to Iraq, from Wisconsin to Texas, musicians are drawing on landscape, history, and family to create lots of great music this summer. Here are several recordings for you to check out:

Tish Hinojosa travels country roads on her latest album Our Little Planet. A gorgeous and unexpected duet with singer and fiddle Carrie Rodriguez give the nod to her Mexican American roots in Mi Pueblo, while Rosie Flores joins in on a bit of social comment in We Mostly Feel That Way, and Mountain Lullabye is a gentle and unique country tinged love song.

Flute Player Joanie Madden, fiddler Brian Conway, accordion master Billy McComiskey, and keyboard player Brendan Dolan, all have roots that run deep into the Irish community of New York. That gives an edge and flair to their celebration of the music they learned and shared there, a full set of engaging reels, jigs, hornpipe, slip jigs, and a fine handling of slow airs and waltzes as well. Their debut collaboration is called Pride of New York.

Dena El Saffar and her brother Amir grew up in the United States and at first knew more of western classical music than the scales, tones, and history of the music of their Iraqi roots. When they brought their professional musicianship and their lively interest in the music of the middle east together with the feeling of family, though, the band Salaam was born, The Indiana based group has just come out with a new recording, called simply Salaam, an word which means peace. More about that here.

Wisconsin based songwriter John Smith is thinking about peace, too on his new recording Gravity of Grace. His search is most often framed in personal terms, sometimes lighthearted, sometime thoughtful and serious, always worth the listening

If your summer listening has included Celtic Women or Celtic Tenors or Lord of the Dance and you’d like to go a bit deeper, here is a link to a story which will introduce you to three of my favorite recordings to help you continue your journey in Irish music.

Kerry Dexter writes about the arts at Music Road and is the music editor at Wandering Educators. She's the former folk music editor at VH1.com and long time contributing writer to world music magazine Dirty Linen. Her work has also appeared in Strings, Ireland and the Americas, CMT, Barnes and Noble Music, CBC, Paste, Symphony, The Music Hound Guides, and other publications.