This one’s a medium-difficulty themed puzzle inspired by my wife, who has become a true and adept devotee of the subject activity (not cow-washing, despite the picture below).
At the cow wash, Alapphuza, Kerala, India
39A: Check out the band if you’re interested – they play a raucous mix of klezmer, punk, gypsy music, and even salsa, and they sing in English, Russian, and Spanish, often in the same song.
43A: Sorry for the obscure fill. I struggled mightily to complete the mid-South, as you can probably tell; with the exception of 6D, that’s where most of the inferior fill is. I tried to put IRON-ONS here but just couldn’t make it work. Neither did IMPUGNS, or INTRONS (only slightly less obscure than what’s there), or ….
35D: Across the vast majority of (polytheistic) human cultures, there’s a trickster god. Coyote and Raven fill the role in various Native American cultures. In the Hebrew Bible, Jacob often acts as the trickster, although he’s not divine and Judaism is monotheistic.
Jeff's Puzzles 