The Japanese concept of the jazz kissa, a café-bar where you can hear records played on astonishingly fine sound systems in the company of other enthusiasts, dates back a century. But the phenomenon peaked in popularity after World War II, spurred by European films with jazz soundtracks and touring bands from the US. Back then, most Japanese couldn’t afford hi-fi gear or jazz records, so they got their fix in public. In recent years these spaces have begun popping up in cities like London, Paris, and New York, but Tokyo‘s remain the most immersive and original. Here are three to know.

On a Slow Boat To…

Walking through Ochanomizu, a quiet neighborhood known for its musical instrument shops and one of the city’s oldest universities, you might happen upon a hard-to-spot door and a sign that reads “On a slow boat to….” Inside, you will probably find young couples lingering over strong coffees and customers engrossed in books at the bar. Named after a 1948 Frank Loesser standard, the place has tidy shelves full of vinyl records, gleaming TEAC turntables, and vintage Altec Lansing loudspeakers, each the size of a refrigerator.

Studio Mule

Located on the third floor of a nondescript building in Shibuya, this kissa features a wraparound granite bar, the work of renowned designer Koichi Futatsumata. There are also close to a thousand kinds of wine, mostly from Italy and France, and a resident Shiba Inu, who spends most nights perched on the bar. Tokyo’s kissaten have evolved to encompass nearly every type of music, and this one shares an owner with one of Japan’s best electronic music labels, but what you’re likely to hear pouring out of the vintage Klipsch speakers is Brazilian pop and bossa nova.

Eagle

This moody wood-paneled bar near Yotsuya Station in Shunjuku has been a decidedly serious place to listen to jazz since 1967. Its owner and masuta—or kissa proprietor—is Masahiro Goto, one of Japan’s most acclaimed jazz critics. Talking isn’t allowed until 6 p.m. Even in the evenings there are often customers poring over jazz books as music old and new emanates from half-century-old JBL studio monitors. The sound is superb and loud. Sit at one of the widely spaced tables and take in a Dexter Gordon recording played on the original Blue Note vinyl.

This article appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.

Ten minutes down the road from Leo’s is Teach Hiúdaí Beag. Sitting there on the last night of my trip, I realized that the Irish pubs I’d frequented in America were imitations of pubs in Ireland that were themselves imitations of pubs like this. There was no pool table, no food. Just a dark room, dark beer, and endless whirling gusts of music from a dozen musicians. Around 11, there was a stir of excitement. A woman in her 60s had entered. She was beautiful, with long blonde hair and a fiddle case by her side. Her name was Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh.

Before I’d come to Ireland, someone had described Ní Mhaonaigh to me as the Queen of Donegal. Listening to her music online, I’d heard a voice as clear and gentle as a mountain stream. Her story seemed to have all the essential Irish themes: romance, loss, longing, perseverance. In 1973, when she was 14, she fell in love with an 18-year-old from Belfast named Frankie Kennedy. Like other people from the six counties under British control, Kennedy spent summers in the Donegal Gaeltacht. It was the height of the Troubles, and Donegal was a refuge. Ní Mhaonaigh would soon make a name for herself as a session fiddler at Teach Hiúdaí Beag. Kennedy learned the tin whistle so he’d have an excuse to spend time with her. They married when she turned 21 and later formed a band called Altan, after a lake at the foot of Errigal, Donegal’s tallest mountain. Soon they were touring America on the wave of the Irish music revival, playing Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. “We were totally in love and just wanted to be together all the time,” she told the Irish Independent. But while they were on tour in 1992, Kennedy’s back and neck began to hurt. He was diagnosed with bone cancer and died two years later, at 38.

Ní Mhaonaigh remarried and, at 45, had a daughter, Nia Ní Bheirn, in Dublin. After parting from her second husband, she and Nia, then three, moved back to Donegal. At the pub, Ní Bheirn, now 20 and a gifted musician in her own right, accompanied her mother as she made the rounds and greeted friends. Once they’d settled in, I asked Ní Mhaonaigh what accounted for the region’s remarkable creativity. “There’s nothing else to do,” Ní Mhaonaigh said with a laugh.

But perhaps there are deeper reasons, older ones. If science has shown that trees can talk, then perhaps even the skeptics among us should refrain from ruling out the possibility that one source of Donegal’s creativity might not be in Donegal at all. According to the origin myth of the Irish nation, another people already lived in Ireland when the Gaels arrived. The Gaels slaughtered them and drove them from their homes, dispossessing them of their lands just as the British would eventually dispossess the Gaels. The survivors fled into the Otherworld and became fairies—enigmatic beings whose attitude toward humankind was ambivalent at best. There is an old story about a fiddler who, stumbling home from the pub at night, heard an enchanting tune drifting out of a cottage he’d never noticed before. Unable to resist the music’s allure, he opened the door to discover a room full of fairies with fiddles. When he returned to his village at dawn, he found that 50 years had passed and nearly everyone he had ever known was dead. But his loss was our gain, for he had returned bearing the gift of the fairies’ songs. Some say the most beautiful tunes in the Irish tradition come from the Otherworld. This might explain why they so often seem to ache with longing. Just as the Irish yearned for the world the British took from them, the fairies must have yearned for the world they lost to the Irish.

This is part of Global Sounds, a collection of stories spotlighting the music trends forging connections in 2024.

Saturdays are best spent at Bob Marley Beach, Lila Iké says. “It’s an escape from the hustle and bustle of Kingston, but at the same time, everyone hangs out there,” she says. “There’s a Rastafarian family who’s always making food, and they have this major sound system playing music.” Raised in a rural Jamaican town, Iké has since made the capital her home, performing across its storied music venues and laying down tracks in studio spaces like Camp Habitat in the Blue Mountains; her debut album will feature collaborations with H.E.R. as well as established Jamaican reggae artists. Below, her tips for Kingston: where to snag records, grab lunch, and catch the city’s best emerging acts.

Plus, listen to our Women Who Travel conversation with Iké:

Follow the music

Jason Panton, who owns Dubwise Jamaica, which throws reggae sound system events, recently opened Dubwise Cafe in the heart of the city. On any given night, there will be a DJ, live musical performances, or album launches. “It’s a really vibrant space that’s honing the talents of young reggae artists and dancers,” Iké says.

The Jamaican singer Lila Iké

Nickki Kane

A beet and kale salad at Kamila’s Kitchen

Kamila’s Kitchen

Veggie vibes

Iké suggests Kamila’s Kitchen on Reggae Mountain, a restaurant with great views that serves a rotating menu of fresh dishes, like grain bowls topped with barbecued jackfruit and loaded nachos with walnut meat. Iké says: “Whether you like vegan food or not, trust me, it will deliver.” There are live events with local reggae artists on the spot’s Skyline Levels stage, usually every Friday.

Inside Rockers International Records

Toni-Ann McKenzie

Sonic souvenirs

“Rockers International Records in downtown Kingston is a good space for listening to records,” Iké says. Located on Orange Street (also known as Beat Street) and lined with vinyl and vintage posters, it’s one of the oldest—and last remaining—record shops in Jamaica. But a new generation is following in its footsteps: “A friend of mine, Rohan Scott, opened this cool record and streetwear store in May inside the Dubwise Cafe.”

Surf’s up

Family-run surf school Jamnesia Surf Camp is also a legendary place for live music—with a history of supporting young musicians. “Anybody is welcome to hop on the mic,” says Iké “It was a special place for me when I was just starting out because it taught me how to perform with a very intelligent and experienced [in-house] band. It’s been around for a while, so names like Protoje, Chronixx, and Jah9, the generation of reggae artists that came up before mine, have all performed there.”

This article appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.

As I knock back a few beers with Ukiq, he tells me how that same techno-loving cousin who lent him those CDs suggested that the family open a bar after the war. Following years of being banned from cultural spaces like cinemas and theaters, a place to drink and gather freely as ethnic Albanians was necessary and cherished—and, suddenly, filled with opportunity.

Twenty five years on, nightlife is now a driving force of Pristina. Along the narrow street of 2 Korriku that leads from the boulevard to Servis Fantazia, both electronic and mainstream pop blasts out of vibrating bars, punctuated by takeout stands slinging kebabs to line people’s stomachs. In the 1990s, that same energy could be found in the Kurrizi, a network of underground bars and clubs playing everything from techno to jazz to punk, which lay below the residential Dardania neighborhood of the city. It was dismantled by oppressive Serbian forces as the war took hold, but young Kosovars continued to look to clubbing as an avenue for escape—from grief, from trauma, from boredom—in the aftermath. It was a trend that swept much of the region following both the break up of Yugoslavia and the fall of the Soviet Union.

For Kosovo, the soundtrack to both its post-war struggle and collective euphoria was electronic music. An early watermark of this time was The Road of Peace Train, which saw a group of Kosovar and Serbian ravers hitch themselves to a freight train, assemble some turntables, and blast ‘90s electronica as they rode across the former Yugoslavia in 2002, from Pristina to Skopje, in a symbol of unity. A tight knit community of DJs, promoters, and musicians has since formed, starting club nights, opening underground venues, and throwing festivals that pound with the heavy beats of house and techno until sunrise: parties like Episode, one of the first DJ nights to be established after the war; the late Spray Club, often credited with cementing clubbing culture into the foundations of 2000s Pristina; and the recently founded Bliss, Bliss, Bliss collective. It’s a movement that, while well covered online, has morphed and evolved behind sealed borders: Largely unable to perform outside of the country due to visa restrictions, and with few international DJs flying in, the scene has been driven by Kosovars, for Kosovars.

“Parties [after the war] introduced us to a new way of receiving culture, listening to music, and being together,” Rina Meta, a Pristina-born creative who recently collaborated with Montez Press Radio on a series about Kosovo’s cultural landscape, told me over the phone. “This music scene was shaped in isolation. You never created music with an audience in mind, only your friends.”

***

The Palace of Youth and Sports is a large, brutalist piece of architecture from the 1970s that looms over this city of 227,154 people like a monolith. It was formerly named Boro and Ramiz after Boro Vukmirović and Ramiz Sadiku, two World War II Yugoslav Partisans of Serbian and Albanian descent, commonly referred to as a gesture of “brotherhood and unity.” For years it functioned as a sports and community complex, hosting tournaments and other large events, even a 1989 miner’s strike against the ongoing destruction of Kosovo’s autonomy. After a fire in 2000, though, parts of it were thrown into disuse and left to ruin.

Sunset descends like a dream in Kenya’s Lamu archipelago: Each evening, the channel separating the islands of Manda and Lamu is anointed in a hazy veil of golden light as dhows pirouette in the water, triangle sails billowing overhead. I gazed out over a carousel of boats from my perch on the deck of Taqwa, delighting in the snatches of American hip-hop, Afrobeats, and Bollywood bangers emanating from them as they passed by. At some point, Taqwa sailed in tandem with a smaller vessel boasting the best playlist on the water. As we floated together companionably, a romantic Swahili tune filled the air—and for a moment, the weather, landscape, and music came together in a sublime alchemy that left me breathless.

Several weeks later—and time zones away—that song continued to transfix me. At the time, I hadn’t thought to interrupt the mood by inquiring after its name, but now its notes began arriving unbidden as I rode the subway or browsed the grocery store—phonetic approximations of lyrics I didn’t know that had still managed to burrow into my subconscious. After countless attempts to plug them into Google (“baby ukosawana?” “sisimi?”), I finally struck gold: “Malaika” by Nyashinski. Now whenever I play it, I drift back to the gentle waves and sultry breezes of Lamu.

Over the years, I’ve amassed a trove of souvenirs from my travels: an abstract painting of Bosnia’s Stari Most bridge; a vase inscribed with Kufic calligraphy by a seventh-generation ceramicist in Tashkent; juniper wood trivets from an Estonian island; a Seychellois bowl shaped like a coco de mer; a neon-yellow pop art rendering of the Kaaba in Saudi Arabia. But there is one thing that goes much farther to immortalize my most memorable trips: my playlists.

Each country has its own sights, flavors, and melodies, and the sounds that filter in from the periphery of cafés or open car windows, and nest neatly into your subconscious, can often define the destination as much as its skyline or cuisine. After a few days adrift in a new foreign musical vernacular, I start to pick up on some favorites. I’ll request Uber drivers in Durban to turn up the volume on their favorite Gqom tracks; I ask hair stylists in India to switch the salon playlist from Bieber to Bollywood; and I wave Siri around at restaurants in Samarkand to identify an Uzbek pop song.

These songs stay with me long after the trips end. A week in Egypt and Jordan revived my enthusiasm for Amr Diab’s earnest ballads. Road-tripping through Wyoming and Montana made a country music fan out of me. Tunisia is where I discovered an abiding passion for North African French hip-hop. And I may have resisted K-pop’s global spell for years, but one visit to Seoul changed that. These newfound musical preferences accompany me back on planes and across borders—indelible imprints from every place I visit.

My first time at a rave, I got there by 10 p.m. and left less than twenty minutes later because, well, I now realize it hadn’t even started. But when I went back for a second go, this time arriving around midnight, I was introduced to a whole new world. Also in Lekki Phase 1, the warehouse was packed with hundreds of people spanning different age groups, all with glittery eye makeup, brightly-colored hair, and shorts so short that traditional Nigerian clubs would surely turn them away—everyone was swaying to the beat thumping from the speakers. Hours were spent kissing, dancing, grinding, talking, shouting, and laughing with new and old friends. By the time I was on my way home at 5 a.m., rumpled clothes, dilated pupils, and all, the only thing on my mind was: I am coming back.

‘‘To pinpoint when exactly it started would be difficult,’’ says Jarlight, an EDM DJ based in Lagos, who has played at raves like Sweat It Out and Retrograde, while also working as a resident DJ at popular party House on The Reef. ‘‘Most of the raves started with people throwing private parties,” he says. “DJs would bring their decks over to a friend’s house and before you knew it it was a party.’’ Jarlight also credits raves like Element House for shaping the community, noting it as “one of the first, if not the first, to play Afrohouse in clubs around Lagos.”

During the loneliness of COVID-19 lockdowns, many in Lagos began to reevaluate their social lives—and take them underground. ‘‘How Nigerians socialize has changed significantly post-COVID,’’ says Ejiro Otiotio, one-half of the popular DJ duo, Sons of Ubuntu. ‘‘During the lockdown, we saw people opting to socialize in more intimate and private spaces. [In turn] raves quickly became popular due to their anti-establishment and underground nature.’’

For others, it was the ENDSARS movement, a string of protests against police brutality, specifically against the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), which ended with 12 people killed in October 2022, that drove them to EDM. ‘‘I believe the ENDSARS protests, more than anything, triggered a new wave of freedom,’’ says Nelson C.J, a Nigerian culture writer whose work has explored the rise of raving in Lagos. ‘‘Young Nigerians were tapping into parts of themselves that would otherwise have been shunned before the protests, which highlighted the power of the youth. EDM spaces and raves function based on unrestricted, judgement-free gatherings. With a new generation closely aligned with those virtues, it makes sense why raves have become popular.’’

Sweat It Out currently averages around 2,000 attendees per rave—so large that in December 2022 it had to host one event across two different locations to meet the demand (I went to both). Most recently, they created a subscription-based service for their core fan base. That December, Activity Fest also hosted an EDM festival on the beach, complete with two gigantic holograms on both sides of the stage.

In the weeks after I bought tickets to the Houston show, I found myself having to defend my decision to family and friends. Everyone wanted to know how much I’d spent on the tickets; people asked why I needed to go to Houston when Atlanta was so much closer; everyone was shamelessly asking, eyebrows raised, how much the entire trip would cost me.

But I was one of many women doing these calculations, wondering just how far—financially, and literally—we would go for Beyoncé.

On July 12, Beyoncé kicked off the long-awaited U.S. leg of the tour at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Center. New mom Mindy Sullivan was only 10 feet away.

“It was unbelievable,” Sullivan says a few days after the show. “I am still physically recovering from standing the whole time. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

The Renaissance World Tour is the fifth time Sullivan has seen the star perform live. However, she says in the months leading up to purchasing her ticket, the $950 price tag caused her some hesitation.

“When I heard she was going on tour, I knew it would be right after I’d had my daughter,” says Sullivan, who welcomed her newborn in April, just three months before the concert. “The guilt was there as I was putting this money aside for enjoyment for myself instead of something for her.”

The New Jersey resident chose Philly because of her proximity, knowing she’d be able to save on hotel costs. In the midst of her maternity leave, Sullivan says she felt it was important for her to make time for herself and her social life; even one night out on the town, 20 minutes from home, can feel like a big trip while learning to be a new parent. Today, sore feet aside, Sullivan regrets nothing and might try to snag tickets for another show later this summer.

“I think women should be more unapologetic about spending their time and money on experiences that make them happy,” she says. “I joke with my husband about needing a Beyoncé fund because she likes to drop things with no warning!”

Kiara Griffin, meanwhile, took a two-hour flight from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Chicago to see Beyoncé perform, booking an inflated-rate five-night stay in a downtown hotel for the trip.

“At the time I bought the tickets, I had just moved to Charlotte,” she says. “I really had to think about it. But also—it’s Beyoncé.”

Griffin’s back and forth debate about committing to the trip sounded a lot like my own: “I’ve worked hard in my career and I shop secondhand,” she says. “You’re never going to see me driving a Mercedes because my Ford Focus works. So, I decided to treat myself.” But Griffin tries to go on a big trip once or twice a year, and will always prioritize experiences over material things. This year, the trip was for Bey.

Between the tickets, her round-trip flight and her hotel, Griffin spent around $1,200. Part of the reason she chose Chicago was a sentimental effort to recreate the first time she saw Beyoncé perform at the Formation tour in 2016. But mostly, Griffin says she chose the Windy City because of what she expected of the audience.

“Black people in Chicago are going to show up and show out,” she says. “I’m looking forward to having this very Black experience, where everyone around me also loves Beyoncé. I don’t think I would’ve gotten that in Charlotte.”

With all the perks of a night out like dancing, fried food, and disco lights, roller skating rinks hold a magic that is both nostalgic and joyous. Even through the social and economic changes spurred on by the 2020 pandemic, they make visitors feel free in a way few places can.

Roller rinks have a long history of doing just that, dating back to the mid 1700s, when stage actors tried imitating ice skating as part of a skit. Eventually skates were patented, and roller rinks were opened in the U.K., and then in the U.S. By the late 1800s, the activity had gained widespread popularity, and sports like roller derby were born.

Roller skating rinks in the US have hundreds of years of history. 

Getty Images

Roller rinks have also evolved with American history since—they were initially segregated (which the documentary United Skates digs into), but have also been a staple safe haven for Black and Brown youth and their families to come together. Rinks thrived with the disco boom, birthing Roller Disco, and rode the coattails of hip-hop’s rise.

Still, over recent years, roller rinks have been suffering, with places like the iconic Northridge Skateland in California—one of the premier roller skating rinks in the nation known for star appearances—closing down in 2020, along with SkateDaze in Omaha, Nebraska; Golden Skate in California; and countless other once-thriving community treasures.

Nonetheless, interest in roller skating remains. In 2020, while roller rinks may have been suffering, skating shops were running out of inventory. At a time when so much of nightlife is increasingly costly (and arguably monotonous), spots like Tampa’s United Skates of America offer an affordable, creative alternative. And if you’re traveling? What better way to tap into a new city than through a visit to a time-warping roller rink.

Pack your socks, and plan to check out some of these roller rinks in the U.S. that are keeping the unique enchantment of skating alive in 2023.

In between meals, how do you like to spend time in the city?

I used to go thrift shopping at places like Katangua. It was so cheap and I could buy crazy ‘fits. Now I go to the mall. There’s also Nike Art Gallery, it’s very African, and Kó—that’s the first gallery I ever went to, and it’s so beautiful. Everyone’s there.  

Where do you head for dinner?

I like The House restaurant. That’s our proper hangout place. It’s made like a house, with different rooms with a couch, and a TV, so my friends and I get the room that looks like a living room. We can play video games and they have really good food there. They have these potato chips that are so good, I always ask them to pack some up for me. 

After dinner, what’s your go-to spot for a night out?

I usually don’t drink, but W Bar is where people go to drink and dance a bit. I go to Oti’s. It’s a jazz club, very low-key, and it’s run by this older man. He loves me and my friends because we’re all musicians. So we go there to hang out, we get to play the piano, and all the music they play is old—like records of Nina Simone. He has pictures of when Nina Simone was in Lagos, and other historic people who have been there in the jazz club. It’s very old school. We’ll hang out ‘til like 3 a.m. even though they technically close earlier. He lets us stay and makes great coffee. 

If you have a friend visiting, do you have a special spot you take them to?

That place I mentioned with the chicken wings? Sometimes we’ll buy the food and go to an empty beach where we can sit on the rocks and eat. We talk, we laugh, we make videos. Most of the beach is really good—like Ilashe Beach, or this stretch we call Lighthouse Beach because there’s a view of a lighthouse. I usually hire a ‘banana boat’, which is just a small boat, and the boys in charge of it will build a tent, and catch and grill fish for you. You just show up at the beach and can find someone to hire for the day.

Any side trips outside the city that you recommend?

Landmark Beach is another nice one, good for the day but you can also stay overnight. It’s a 50-minute yacht ride from the heart of Lagos to Ilashe or Landmark beaches [Ilashe connects to the mainland; Landmark is on Lagos Island]. Lakowe is far from the city, but people will go just for the weekend to chill, to play golf. I’ve never been but it always looks so beautiful. 

Is there a part of the city you wish more people spent time in?

I wish people that came to Lagos went more to the mainland than just the island; the island is beautiful, but it’s made to look that way. When you go to the mainland, you feel everything is more authentic. There are safe places you can drive to on the mainland, like Ikeja, Magodo. I grew up in Ijaiye which is safe and very local, but it’s far. On the island, food is in a proper building or restaurant, but on the mainland you’ll find people cooking outside, and people are buying it right as the lady is cooking the next batch—try food like ofada rice, or àmàlà from a local vendor.

What do you think people misunderstand about the city?

I used to be ‘people,’ I used think Lagos had too much noise, or too much going on, but everything is for a reason. You have to jump into the rhythm of Lagos to understand Lagos, or you can feel very out of place. But if you understand the rhythm of Lagos, there’s not too much going on. You have to know where to go, how to avoid traffic, you need to always have cash with you, these are the types of things you have to understand about Lagos to really enjoy Lagos. 

It’s not the kind of city you can visit for only one day. I feel like everybody that comes to Lagos always wants to stay longer.