It’s a typical scene at summertime music festivals across Europe. But in England this summer, for the first time, revelers can have their illegal drugs tested before they take them. It’s part of a new project to prevent overdoses.

“I’ve been doing festivals for three to four years now. I like my Ecstasy pills,” says Rio Brown, 29, from Manchester, England. “If I want to chill out, I have my weed. If I want to party, I’ll have some cocaine or a pill or whatever.”

Brown just bought a bag of Ecstasy pills from a dealer who somehow smuggled them past the police and sniffer dogs at the festival gate. Ecstasy is the same psychoactive drug a teenager suffered a fatal overdose from at this same festival last year. That has Brown concerned.

So he and his friends take their baggie of drugs over to a festival tent labeled The Loop. It’s a nonprofit that conducts forensic testing of drugs, and it’s set up shop at U.K. music festivals for the first time this summer.

“[It’s] just to make sure we’re getting the right thing, really, to make sure it’s not harmful,” Brown explains. “We don’t want to kill ourselves, you know what I mean?”

Brown breaks off a fragment of one of his Ecstasy pills and hands it to Chris Brady, who works full-time as a drug counselor and educator for Britain’s public National Health Service, and volunteers on weekends with The Loop.

“We’re very realistic that people do take drugs, and what we want is to keep people safe,” Brady says. “We don’t want any mothers getting a call at 4 in the morning, saying that their son or daughter is ill, or even worse.”

In a tiny trailer behind the tent, volunteers conduct chemistry tests on pink and purple pills that look like children’s vitamins. It only takes about 15 minutes. The volunteers are professional chemists, Ph.D students and pharmaceutical researchers — all here on their own time.

“They give us one pill or a small scoop of powder, and they won’t get that back,” explains Fiona Measham, co-founder of The Loop. “Normally the substance is destroyed in the testing process. So there isn’t really anything left in our possession.”

That’s how they get around drug possession laws. In the U.S., similar groups give out self-testing drug kits.

Measham is a professor of criminology at Durham University in northern England, and a drug policy adviser to the British government. She has worked for decades with police, as a forensic drug expert, testing drugs found on overdose victims, to help paramedics know how to treat them.

But then Measham had an idea: Why wait until after the drugs are taken, to find out what’s in them?

She co-founded The Loop in 2013, and convinced police of the benefits of looking the other way, so that drug users can avoid being poisoned or suffering an overdose.

“One of the key things is to win the trust of people who are giving us illegal drugs. This isn’t an undercover police sting. Genuinely, it’s a health and welfare issue,” Measham says. “The police have been very supportive of that. So they don’t stand anywhere near the tent. We don’t want them to scare off potential customers.”

On this particular day, Measham has been testing for MDMA, the active ingredient in Ecstasy and another popular drug called Molly.

“We had some Ecstasy tablets that were 20 to 25 mg of MDMA, right up to 250 mg of MDMA. So you’ve got a 10 times range,” she explains. “If people have two of the lowest strength, they probably would barely feel the effects. If they had two of the highest strength, that could potentially kill them.”

Among hundreds of samples tested at this festival, Measham and her staff also have found ground-up cement, anti-malaria medication and pesticides — all sold as party drugs.

Behind a curtain, a drug counselor sits down with Rio Brown, to explain what his Ecstasy pills are really made of. It turns out he overpaid. His drugs contain traces of MDMA, but also quite a lot of cellulose and chalk — harmless fillers.

Brown decides to go ahead and take his pills. But The Loop says that about a quarter of people who use their service, decide to dump their stash in the end.

The grounds at the Kendal Calling festival are dotted with drug amnesty bins — like municipal mailboxes, for dumping drugs.

Drug counselors here hope those bins and drug-testing tents could become a fixture at music events around the world — perhaps even part of the licensing requirements for festival organizers.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

“I do want to point out, that Finland has perhaps the most heavy metal bands in the world, per capita,” he said, “and also ranks high on good governance. I don’t know if there’s any correlation there.”

Albert Mudrian is the editor-in-chief of the heavy metal-loving Decibel Magazine. He says that many metalheads took note of President Obama’s comment.

“The metal underground got pretty excited about the President of the United States referencing the Finnish metal scene,” he says.

He says Finland has one of the most vibrant metal scenes in the world. It’s estimated the country has 54 metal bands for every 100,000 Finns. But why Finland?

“I’m sure the 200 days of a bone-crushing winter have something to do with it,” he says. “And perpetual darkness.”

He might be on to something. Finland does share that climate with its neighboring Scandinavian countries, and metal is a flourishing genre all over the region. But while Sweden is known for its death metal bands, and Norway is famous for black metal, Mudrian says the Finns are less homogeneous.

“There’s so many different types of bands, but the one thing, to me, that kind of unites them is that they all have kind of a difficult sound,” he says. “Finland is making the weirdest heavy metal imaginable.”

Whether there’s a connection between bizarre heavy metal and good governance, however, is still anybody’s guess.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

A fellow passenger introduced himself: Leelai Demoz, he’s Ethiopian, too. He’d just finished co-producing Difret, a movie based on the true story of a 14-year-old Ethiopian girl abducted by a man who wanted to marry her; the girl shot him and was tried for murder.

Hadero and Demoz hung out, hoped to see the Northern Lights (no luck, it was foggy). By coincidence, a few weeks later, Hadero got a call from Lincoln Center to see if she’d sing at a screening of Difret.

So it’s a small world for global artists.

And that’s especially true for African musicians who’ve come to the West. They can get together and mix it up in diaspora more readily than on the continent, says Hadero, who left Ethiopia as a toddler in 1981 and now lives in the Bay Area. “There are 437 million people in the Nile Basin. There are all sorts of political tensions around how we share water,” she says. “There are barriers to getting to know each other. There’s not a lot of access.”

Her solution was to co-found the Nile Project, along with Egyptian ethnomusicologist Mina Girgis. They invite musicians from the 10 countries along the Nile River to play together and record an album. She was returning from a three-weeks session in Kampala, Uganda, when she had her Arctic detour.

Back home, Hadero talked about her music, how the Nile Project has changed it — and what it’s like to be compared to Joni Mitchell. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Did you contribute any songs to the movie?

No, but I wrote a song for the [concert]. It doesn’t have a name yet. It’s about the strength and resilience of women and what happens when a personal story becomes a way for a whole country to move forward around a particular issue. The story of the film is how [this practice of abducting a bride] became illegal.

Your new album, We Are Alive, draws from Ethiopia as well — you sing “Kemekem,” an Ethiopian folk song.

Kemekem is a slang term in Amharic for freshly mown grass. It’s applied to an afro that has been perfectly cut and coiffed. “Kemekem” is a love song sung to a person with a perfect afro. The lyrics are very cute: “You live at the top of the hill, I live at the bottom. Just roll on down and meet me at the bottom.”

Wouldn’t that mess up the perfect afro?

You just take your pick with you! [Note: Hadero is crowdsourcing videos of afros through July 23 for “Kemekem’s” music video.]

Critics compare your spare and intimate style, tinged with folk and jazz, to Joni Mitchell.

Lyrically, she was a huge influence on me. I still think “Just before our love got lost, you said, ‘I am as constant as a northern star …’ ” is one of the greatest first lines ever.

Do you mind being compared to her?

There’s so much music out there that we ask for reference points. But as our world gets smaller, it’s harder to categorize music.

How do you categorize your music?

I usually say it sits at the intersection of singer-songwriter and jazz influences — and Ethiopian and East African influences.

What kind of African influences?

I’m really attracted to a kind of super-emotive vibrato that comes from Ethiopia. It appears on my new album.

I read that one song you wrote uses a “five count” you learned from a Sudanese musician at a Nile Project session. What’s a five count?

In the Western world, music is typically four or three counts. Sudanese rhythms are out of this world. The five count, it’s don dee dee don dee. It has a walking feel. Radiohead also has a song in five: “15 Step.”

So does Dave Brubeck, with “Take Five” — five beats per measure. Is that the same as the Sudanese five count?

Dave Brubeck’s five count somehow feels a little bit like a swing. The camel walk [another name for the Sudanese five count] feels as though you’re traveling across a long distance. These are [rhythms] you get in your body. You can only understand them to a certain degree with your intellect.

Maybe that’s why it’s hard to talk about what a five count is.

It’s difficult to talk about music because we use music to talk about things that are hard to talk about. And it’s important to recognize the mysterious aspect to music. You’re training your hands and vocal cords to interact with a kind of mystery to produce sound. Music is a mystery, isn’t it?

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

On this episode, we follow our own tradition and play new Brazilian artists worth hearing. Our guide is Lewis Robinson, a British DJ whose love of Brazilian music is so great, it led him to assemble Rolê, a stellar 43-song compilation that showcases up-and-coming musicians.

As always, we’re eager to hear from you. What Brazilian artists are you loving these days?

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Von Trapp, whose family escaped Nazi Germany, died on Tuesday of natural causes, her brother Johannes von Trapp said, according to the New York Daily News.

“She was a lovely woman who was one of the few truly good people,” he said, according to The Associated Press. “There wasn’t a mean or miserable bone in her body. I think everyone who knew her would agree with that.”

The Associated Press writes:

“Maria von Trapp was the third child and second-oldest daughter of Austrian Naval Capt. Georg von Trapp and his first wife, Agathe Whitehead von Trapp. Their seven children were the basis for the singing family in the musical and film.

“The Sound of Music was based loosely on a 1949 book by von Trapp’s second wife, also Maria von Trapp, who died in 1987. It tells the story of an Austrian woman who married a widower with seven children and teaches them music.

“In 1938, the family escaped from Nazi-occupied Austria and performed concert tours throughout Europe and then a three-month tour in America. The family settled in Vermont in the early 1940s and opened a ski lodge in Stowe.

“Von Trapp played accordion and taught Austrian dance with sister Rosmarie at the lodge.”

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

But for Tell Me More’s “In Your Ear” series, Trinidadian musician Bunji Garlin says soca is not always on his playlist.

Garlin says Black Eyed Peas Let’s Get It Started helps him get “ready to party, get ready to move, get ready to get work done, get ready to get something started.”

A star on the soca scene, Garlin also loves Tears For Fears Everybody Wants to Rule the World. “It just lifts my spirit,” he says.

And finally, a family man, he gets comfort from “the stories” of Drake’s Hold On, We’re Going Home. “Every time I’m leaving from a show, and I’m going home to my wife and daughter, that’s the song I play,” he explains. “Because sometimes it’s been a long night, and you just need to take it easy to go home.”

Bunji Garlin’s Playlist

Let’s Get It Started by Black Eyed Peas

Hold On, We’re Going Home by Drake

Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears For Fears

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

There’s something a little ethereal about Mo. He’s dark-skinned, but — thanks to some striking contact lenses — blue-eyed, with hair that is both short and long and a big laugh that belies a life filled with tragedy.

Mo came to Norway with his mother at the age of 7 to escape the civil war in Somalia, a conflict that cost most of his family their lives.

“I don’t remember so much about it,” he says. “But I don’t want to go into that sad stuff.

Nor does Mo like to talk about Utøya, where, in 2011, he and hundreds of politically active young people were targets in the shooting rampage of a right-wing extremist named Anders Breivik. Mo escaped, but his best friend — whom he’d met in a refugee camp as a child — was among the 69 people murdered.

What Mo will say about the tragedy is that there’s one song that helped him get through it.

“Heal” was written for Mo before the shooting took place. It’s not that the song holds any secret cure for grief; it’s essentially about having patience. But that’s what worked.

“I really connected with the message behind the song, especially after all the things I went through over the years,” he says. “I took a break and I finally feel ready to move on and to just be me again.”

And for Mo, a lifelong performer, that means getting back on stage. Soon, he’ll compete against 14 other Norwegians for the chance to represent his country at Eurovision, that glittery tribute to song that, for a few days each year, seeks to unite Europe around a musical popularity contest.

Laila Samuelson, who wrote “Heal” for Mo, admits it’s not a typical Eurovision entry.

“I mean, the sound is darker, and also the beat is slower than the usual winning song of the whole thing,” she says.

And although some discourse will inevitably tie the song to Utøya, Samuelsen says that’s become something of a taboo subject in Norway these days.

“It’s not cool to bring up in any political discussion,” she says. “So it really kind of now feels like people are really afraid to talk about it.”

And starting a public discussion about Norway’s national tragedy was never the point. Mo says the song is meant to be much more universal.

“Everyone that lives in this world, they have gone through a thing or two,” Mo says. “And so when they listen to this song it could inspire them to just get right back there and don’t lose their strength, and just never give up.”

When it comes to Eurovision, it’s about the performance as much as the song — and that is likely to be a major point in Mo’s favor.

“My strength, being an artist, is that I’m real. And I just pour my heart out,” he says. He adds, “Mo style,” and that big laugh returns.

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

That rebellion stemmed from being the daughter of Brazilian pop legend Elis Regina, who died in 1982. “People would come up to me very emotionally and say ‘You have to sing,'” she remembers. “They made such a big deal out of it… and it always made me angry because it felt like they wanted me to fulfill a hole that they felt after my mom’s passing.”

Rita moved to the United States as a teenager, and ended up attending New York University. In a country where Elis Regina’s name isn’t quite as known as it is in Brazil, Rita learned to love her mother’s music. “It was easier,” she says. “There [weren’t] people coming up to me and talking about her, and crying because they miss her.”

But, as she learned to cope with the past, Rita started to realize that music was her future. “It was my soul and was my truth talking,” she says. After graduating, she started singing professionally in Brazil and released her first album, Maria Rita, in 2003.

As she rose to stardom, Rita was determined to become an artist in her own right. Despite numerous requests, she refused to cover her mother’s songs for nearly a decade. “I would be so, so upset whenever a TV show would put it as a condition, you know ‘You can only come here if you do your mom’s music,'” she recalls. “I’d be like ‘Well, so I won’t be going there, thank you very much.'”

By 2012, Rita was ready to pay tribute. She performed a handful of her mother’s songs before an ecstatic audience in Rio de Janeiro. That performance became Rita’s 2013 album, Redescobrir (“Rediscover”).

“It was such a wonderful thing,” Rita said, “to be up on stage as a daughter, and not solely as a singer, and see the reaction in people’s faces… It touches me just by talking about it.”

Interview Highlights

On her mother’s legacy

I didn’t listen to my mom as I was growing up because it was too painful, as it still is somewhat. I mean, you have to understand that this woman was not only the greatest singer ever in Brazil. She was also beautiful, smart, intelligent. She was really involved in all kinds of social and political issues. She was just a pioneer. She was ahead of her time. And, she would read a lot. She was just so mind-boggling.

And people were so in love with her — whoever from, you know, I’m talking about the audience, I’m talking about the people who worked with her. I’ve met up with a bunch of musicians who played for her, at one point or another, you know, early in the conversation or later in the conversation, they would just look at me and it’s like “You know, I have something to tell you.” And I was like “Okay, go ahead,” and they would say “I was completely in love with her!” I’ve heard that way too many times, because that’s the kind of woman that she was…She would light up the room.

On music as a language

The kind of music that I do, the kind of music that I like to present to people, is one which they can relate to. On a deeper level, you know? Don’t just shake your head and snap your fingers every now and again. … I find that it’s very seductive in a way, you know? To have someone listen to your music whether in Portuguese, or English, or in Spanish…and just be like ‘Oh, I’m so glad that someone gets me. I’m so glad that someone put that into music and put that into words.” Because oftentimes, we feel something. We don’t really understand what it is, we don’t really have the words to explain it, but it’s right there in the song.

On her mother’s death

Having lost my mom when I was four years old, I don’t really know what it’s like to have a mother. So I miss something that I don’t have, you see? So it’s this constant — I don’t search for her, that’s not the thing — but like, I feel like there’s this little hole in my heart, and it’s forever gonna be there. Because there’s nothing that I can do.So, I do therapy. I have no issues telling people that I’m in therapy. I’ve done therapy for the past 10 years. This whole pain, so to speak, I can deal with it now. So now it’s easier for me to watch her and to listen to her.

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.