music

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• SOURCE: Seattle Times
  9/18/2020
  

  How Jimi Hendrix, Racism and Grunge Intersect, 50 Years after the Guitarist’s Death

  Although the guitarist made a global impact on rock music, he left a particular legacy for Black musicians in his hometown of Seattle. 

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• 9/20/2020
  

  Woody Guthrie's Communism and "This Land Is Your Land"

  by Aaron J. Leonard

  The author of a new book on the FBI's surveillance of folk musicians argues that Woody Guthrie did join the Communist Party, though he was at odds with leadership over discipline. The affiliation is reflected in the lyrics of his most famous song. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  9/18/2020
  

  How Jimi Hendrix’s London Years Changed Music

  A new book, at the 50th anniversary of the guitar master's death, takes Jimi Hendrix's leap from chitlin circuit sideman to London sensation as a turning point for rock music. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/16/2020
  

  52 Years Ago, Thelonious Monk Played a High School. Now Everyone Can Hear It.

  Digitally restored and widely available for the first time on Friday, “Palo Alto” captures a band hitting a high note, even as Monk battled personal and professional turmoil. Historian and Monk biographer Robin D.G. Kelley puts the gig in context.  

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• SOURCE: The Guardian
  9/16/2020
  

  Black Sabbath's Paranoid at 50: Potent Anthems of Working-Class Strife

  Music critics dismissed Black Sabbath's sludgy sound and alienated lyrics, but fans ensured that the band's second album would become one of the most influential rock records of all time. The songs' channeling of working-class pain and frustration, not their fascination with the occult, explain why.

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• SOURCE: NPR
  9/16/2020
  

  Stanley Crouch, Towering Jazz Critic, Dead at 74

  Crouch's criticism pulled no punches, and tackled big questions about the relationship between race and art in American music. He became an influential and controversial figure in the popular history of jazz as a consultant to Ken Burns's documentary.

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• Reggae Legend Toots Hibbert Dies At 77

  Toots Hibbert, the co-founder and lead singer of Toots and the Maytals, was one of the most distinctive and important voices of reggae and one of its founding fathers.

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• SOURCE: American Songwriter
  9/13/2020
  

  John Fogerty Responds to Trump’s Unfortunate Use of “Fortunate Son”

  "I find it confusing, I would say, that that the president has chosen to use my song for his political rallies, when in fact it seems like he is probably the fortunate son.”

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  9/14/2020
  

  Black Scholars Confront White Supremacy in Classical Music

  The world of classical music is overdue for a reckoning with racist gatekeeping by institutions that have excluded Black composers and musicians. 

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• 9/13/2020
  

  Making History with Music

  by Jason Burt

  PFC Richard Burt played the trumpet in a military band tasked with raising morale in the fight to retake the Philippines before a career as a music teacher. His grandson, a history teacher, wants to make him and his bandmates posthumous recording stars.

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• 8/30/2020
  

  Remember Punk Rock? Probably Not…: The Real Culture War of 1980s America

  by Kevin Mattson

  Digging beneath the aesthetics of punk to find its politics, Kevin Mattson's new book finds a counterculture of suburban youths who identified the unrestrained capitalism of the Reagan era as the true nihilism threatening America.

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• SOURCE: The New York Times
  8/25/2020
  

  ‘Soul!’ Brought Black Culture to TV in 1968. A New Doc Tells Its Story.

  “Mr. Soul!” spotlights Ellis Haizlip, the host of a show that gave Stevie Wonder, Wilson Pickett and James Baldwin a platform.

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  8/18/2020
  

  Beyoncé’s ‘Black Is King’ and the Pitfalls of African Consciousness

  by Russell Rickford

  "Black is King" is neither radical nor fundamentally liberatory.

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• SOURCE: NPR
  8/14/2020
  

  An Ice Cream Truck Jingle's Racist History Has Caught Up To It

  The Good Humor ice cream company joined forces with RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan to replace a standard jingle with roots in racist minstrel shows. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/8/2020
  

  A Song That Changed Music Forever

  by David Hajdu

  With “Crazy Blues,” Mamie Smith opened the door to a surge of powerfully voiced female singers who defied the conventions of singerly gentility to make the blues a popular phenomenon in the 1920s.

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• SOURCE: Times of Israel
  7/31/2020
  

  The Teen Promoter, the Janitor, and a Stunning Rediscovered Thelonious Monk Gig

  “As soon as T.S. Monk listened to the recording, he knew right away that his father was feeling really good that day and wasn’t just going through the motions,” Danny Scher said.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  7/30/2020
  

  How a Historian Stuffed Hagia Sophia’s Sound Into a Studio

  Bissera Pentcheva used virtual acoustics to bring Istanbul to California and reconstruct the sonic world of Byzantine cathedral music.

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• SOURCE: NPR
  7/28/2020
  

  A New Book Traces The History Of Boy Bands, The Pop Phenomenon 'Larger Than Life'

  For reasons that she explores in her new book, "Larger Than Life: A History Of Boy Bands From NKOTB To BTS", Maria Sherman says boy bands don't get the same respect as other music acts, especially their rock peers.

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• SOURCE: TIME
  7/13/2020
  

  A History of the Newly Resurgent 'Black National Anthem'

  The influence of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" on Black culture over more than a century has been immeasurable.

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• SOURCE: NPR
  6/26/2020
  

  We Insist: A Century Of Black Music Against State Violence

  Like music itself, this spirit of resistance takes many shapes, but has never been silenced.