Rodrigo Y Gabriela And Loren Stillman In The 'Musician's Spotlight'

From intricate jazz solos to his "Concerto for Diatonic Harmonica and Orchestra,” he has stretched the harmonica beyond its ostensible limits. She sings “old modal folk songs” with Solas one week and performs with the indie band tUnE-yArDs the next. This week, "Musician's Spotlight" features encores with Howard Levy and Moira Smiley, two musicians for whom visionary boundary-pushing is just an ordinary Tuesday.

In July 2019, Al Obando of The Garifuna Collective transported host John Floridis from Butte's Montana Folk Festival to the small coastal Caribbean towns where the Garifuna community (also known as the Garinagu) speaks an endangered language and sings and dances what UNESCO calls "a masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity." The Collective, an intergenerational group of musicians from Belize, galvanizes audiences around the world with lyrical call-and-response melodies and driving, overlapping rhythms, recalling a heritage of West African percussion and indigenous Arawak and Carib singing.

The vocation of instrumentalist, composer and NEA National Heritage Fellow Rahim AlHaj has brought him joy and exile, praise and torture -- always accompanied by a soundtrack provided by the 5,000-year-old Arabic oud.

Australian-American songwriter and multi-instrumentalist John Butler returns to "Musician’s Spotlight" to visit with host John Floridis about his most recent and most personal recording to date, “Home.” Butler also opens up about his battles with clinical anxiety, and a poignant moment with his wife musician Mama Kin that helped him break through.

With her twentieth studio album, Binary, singer/songwriter/activist/poet/DIY trendsetter Ani DiFranco returns to territory that brought her to the world’s attention more than twenty-five years ago. One of the first artists to create her own label in 1990, she has been recognized among the feminist pantheon for her entrepreneurship, social activism, and outspoken political lyrics. At a time of global chaos and confusion, DiFranco's punk edge remains sharp, her writing clear.