music

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• SOURCE: Forward
  10/14/2021
  

  The Most Important Band of the 80s Broke Up a Decade Before

  "For all the reams that have been written about the band in recent decades, nothing has so succinctly dissected the Velvet Underground's dark magic as Haynes’ new documentary."

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/28/2021
  

  Bob Moore, Key Pillar of the "Nashville Sound", dies at 88`

  "Over 40 years Mr. Moore elevated the bass in country music from a subordinate timekeeper to an instrument capable of considerable tonal and emotional reach."

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  9/26/2021
  

  How the Drive-By Truckers Hacked the Music Industry

  by Stephen Deusner

  Through lineup changes, record label hassles, and fans upset with their political lyrics, the Truckers have used the internet and social media to build support and survive for decades. Their story is a history of the changing business and a map for younger acts. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  9/15/2021
  

  The 70s are Back, But Not How You Think

  by Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff

  "In the coronavirus era, disco themes resonate. People long for community and wonder if leaders have our backs. Social media offers some of the trappings that defined disco — from the clothes to the allure of being seen in a new way."

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/8/2021
  

  Phil Schaap, Grammy-Winning Jazz D.J. and Historian, Dies at 70

  “They say I’m a history teacher,” he said in a video interview for the National Endowment for the Arts, which this year named him a Jazz Master, the country’s highest official honor for a living jazz figure, but he viewed his role differently. “I teach listening.” 

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• SOURCE: Vanity Fair
  8/30/2021
  

  Why Hip Hop Conquered the World: The Smithsonian Anthology of Hip Hop and Rap Drops

  The new anthology "tells the story of American history from 1979 to 2013 through the eyes of the young Black Americans who changed it profoundly."

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/27/2021
  

  When Europe Gave its Ears to Black American Composers

  by Kira Thurman

  In the wake of World War II many Black American classical composers found welcoming audiences in Europe, but their experiences should not overshadow the ways European cultural institutions have marginalized domestic Black artists.

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  8/31/2021
  

  "Respect" Highlights the Other Black Women Artists who Helped Aretha Franklin Become the Queen of Soul

  by Fredara M. Hadley

  "Black women, even female Black entertainers, are rarely accorded that sense of control over their own lives. But as Aretha Franklin’s longevity in music and life demonstrated, the possibilities are endless when Black women are the center of their own universe."

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  8/24/2021
  

  Charlie Watts Put Some Jazz in Rock and Roll

  by Victor Coelho

  "In an era when rock drummers were larger-than-life showmen with big kits and egos to match, Charlie Watts remained the quiet man behind a modest drum set. But Watts wasn’t your typical rock drummer."

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  8/13/2021
  

  Reassessing Gladys Knight's Talent and Impact

  "The scholar Mark Anthony Neal has written that Knight was “the female voice of the Black working class in the 1970s”—more grounded than either the divine Aretha Franklin or the glamorous Diana Ross—and the group’s sensibilities were also working-class."

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• SOURCE: Radio Open Source
  7/15/2021
  

  Daphne Brooks on Truth-Telling Music

  African American Studies scholar Daphne Brooks tells the back stories of Black women in music and the cultural impact of their songs. 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  6/28/2021
  

  Country Music's Next Big Question: Where are Latino Artists?

  by Amanda Marie Martinez

  “My dream is for the cowboys and the vaqueros — who were the first cowboys — to all be in one place, to bring those two worlds together.”

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• 6/20/2021
  

  "Juke": Bluesman Bobby Rush on the Roots of Rock and Roll

  by Bobby Rush with Herb Powell

  Blues musician Bobby Rush's new autobiography chronicles his life and career, and the way that the appropriation of Black music into American popular culture often left Black entertainers behind. Read here how he remembers the roots of rock and roll. 

• 
• 5/16/2021
  

  Reverberations of the Photography of Jazz

  by Jeffrey Mifflin

  The photographs of William Gottlieb and other observers of jazz's golden age deserve more attention for capturing and creating the aesthetics of the music. 

• 
• SOURCE: HuffPost
  5/10/2021
  

  FBI Releases File On Suspicions Raised About Kurt Cobain’s 1994 Death

  Fans who doubted the official story that Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain's death in 1994 was a suicide had requested investigation by the FBI, which declined. 

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• SOURCE: LitHub
  5/4/2021
  

  How Malcolm X Inspired John Coltrane to Embrace Islamic Spirituality

  by Richard Brent Turner

  John Coltrane's embrace of influences from religious music from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, profoundly influential to the Black Arts movement and African American spirituality, was influenced by Malcolm X. 

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• SOURCE: Tribune Magazine
  4/21/2021
  

  The Radical Politics of Nina Simone

  by Chardine Taylor-Stone

  "On the anniversary of her death, we can look at how the story of Simone’s political life is told, and who is telling it; at what they choose to include, and what they do in fact ‘erase’."

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  4/13/2021
  

  Sounds of Freedom: The Music of Black Liberation

  Shana Redmond and Rickey Vincent discuss their research, which deals with the ways that musical expression has been integrated into the politics of Black freedom in different moments (and different musical styles, including the Black Panther Party's own funk band). 

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• SOURCE: The Metropole
  3/30/2021
  

  The Emergence Of Gangsta Rap — A Review Of To Live And Defy In LA

  by Katherine Rye Jewell

  A review by historian Katherine Rye Jewell of Felicia Angeja Viator's new book on the rise of "gangsta" rap music in the context of racism, poverty and policing in South Los Angeles in the 1980s. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/19/2021
  

  In ‘Genius: Aretha,’ Respecting the Mind, Not Just the Soul

  "The full scale of Franklin’s contributions to her own music has long been obscured. She was a gifted songwriter and a superb pianist. In the studio, she was a taskmaster, pushing herself and her collaborators until they captured the exact sound she heard in her head — not easy for a Black female musician of her time."