Kristina Jacobsen + WES (Staffan Wester)

Kristina Jacobsen, singer-songwriter, anthropologist, and ethnomusicologist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, was born in Massachusetts but has lived for many years on the Navajo Nation, where she has studied Diné language, culture, and country music. More recently, she fell in love with another rural place, the Italian island of Sardinia, where she lived in the village of Santu Lussurgiu—writing co-authored songs with Sardinian musicians and storytellers—and then in the city of Cagliari, where she was in residence as a Visiting Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Cagliari. A Fulbright Artist and Scholar (Italy 2019-2020), Kristina has been nominated for four New Mexico Music Awards. Her oeuvre, informed by a world of global music—all deeply considered and then seemingly wrapped up quietly but with profound sentimentality in her spacious and intimate songs—includes sonic touches of American honky-tonk and folk music. She delivers her songs in a yodeling alto that can warm your heart, bite off a searing denunciation, or celebrate good times with equal fervor. Her travels, from the American Southwest and Scandinavia to Sardinia and Spain, resound in every note in a rich melting pot of culture and human connection.