This season of songs, “Connecting the Dots,” takes our usual tactic of starting with a region of the world and traveling week by week to a new country in that region and turns it on its ear. Instead, each week we begin with a geographic region, identify an element that's key to that region's music, then turn our gaze outward, seeking similar musical happenings in other parts of the world. This season we blur boundaries and break borders!

Over the course of this season we learn to expect the unexpected. (Or, don't expect anything. Your call.) One week we’re chopping wood to West African rhythms in Cuba, another we boldly battle each other in Jamaican rhyme. We dance a dozen ways to an accordion, and stage a fight between two kinds of violins. And yes, by gum, we go to Finland to tango.