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The cover of a book, titled "Biography of a Phantom: A Robert Johnson Blues Odyssey", written by Robert "Mack" McCormick.

Delta Force

A look at "Biography Of A Phantom", Robert McCormick's book about blues legend Robert Johnson.
by Dominic Green via The Washington Free Beacon on July 30, 2023
Mural depicting bluesman John Dee Holeman and friends playing on the front porch of a house.

The Living Legacy of the Piedmont Blues

The music that grew out of Durham's tobacco manufacturing plants influenced some of the most widely recorded musicians of the last 65 years—and still does.
by Marc Farinella via The Assembly on July 14, 2023
The Ferguson Unit Rhythmeer Band plays at the Jim Ferguson Unit in Madison County, Texas.

The Blues Behind Bars: How Southern Prisons Shaped American Music

Incarcerated musicians have crafted some of the most iconic songs in American music history while prisons reap the profits.
by Zeb Larson via Scalawag on June 8, 2023
Henderson Thigpen, Deanie Parker, Bobby Manuel, and Eddie Floyd, the songwriters of Stax.

The Secret Sound of Stax

The rediscovery of demos performed by the songwriters of the legendary Memphis recording studio reveals a hidden history of soul.
by Burkhard Bilger via The New Yorker on May 29, 2023
Cast of the opera "Omar" on stage, with Arabic script on the stage backdrop.

‘Tell Your Story, Omar’

A new, Pulitzer Prize–winning opera adapts the memoir of Omar ibn Said, an African Muslim who spent much of his life enslaved in North Carolina.
by Edward Ball via New York Review of Books on May 4, 2023
Little Richard holding his arms out at a performance.

What Little Richard Deserved

The new documentary “I Am Everything” explores the gulf between what Richard accomplished and what he got for it.
by Hanif Abdurraqib via The New Yorker on April 26, 2023
Cover of sheet music for “Euphonic Sounds: A Syncopated Novelty” by Scott Joplin (1909).

Scott Joplin

The ragtime composer's life, career, and resurrection.
by Alan Jacobs via Comment on April 24, 2023
Sha-Rock tells her story to a crowd at the Bronx Music Heritage Center, 2023.

"You Gotta Fight and Fight and Fight for Your Legacy"

Sha-Rock claims her place as the first female MC in hip-hop history.
by Sidney Madden, Rodney Carmichael, Mano Sundaresan via NPR on March 23, 2023
Four women looking away from the camera and smiling.

Fairytale

The Pointer Sisters, the Great Migration, and the soul of country.
by Carina del Valle Schorske via Oxford American on December 13, 2022
Diorama of a cluster of houses and people along a waterfront, with a ship in the foreground.

On the Rich, Hidden History of the Banjo

The banjo did not exist before it was created by the hands of enslaved people in the New World.
by Kristina R. Gaddy via Literary Hub on October 24, 2022
A mural of a Black musician wearing a pinstripe suit, hat, and playing guitar.

The Devil, the Delta, and the City

In search of the mythical blues—and their real urban origins.
by Alan Pell Crawford via Modern Age on October 17, 2022
Dancing crowds and a DJ at the 2022 Capitol Hill Block Party in Seattle, Washington

How the Block Party Became an Urban Phenomenon

“That spirit of community, which we all talk about as the roots of hip-hop, really originates in that block party concept.”
by Briana A. Thomas via Smithsonian on August 10, 2022
A juke joint on the circuit in Clarksdale, Mississippi, 1939

Inside the ‘Chitlin Circuit,’ a Jim Crow-Era Safe Space for Black Performers

It's where legends like Tina Turner and Ray Charles launched their careers.
by Adrian Miller via Atlas Obscura on June 28, 2022
Black and white photo of Mavis Staples, looking upward, hands raised.

The Gospel According to Mavis Staples

A legendary singer on faith, loss, and a family legacy.
by David Remnick via The New Yorker on June 24, 2022
John Bubbles dancing and Buck Washington playing keyboard, performing in Brooklyn, New York, 1930.

Never the Same Step Twice

Where previous generations of dancers arranged their steps into tidy, regular phrases, John Bubbles enjambed over bar lines, multiplying, twisting, tilting, turning.
by Brian Seibert via New York Review of Books on April 21, 2022
Photo of Danyel Smith.

Danyel Smith Tells the History of Black Women in Pop Music

The author discusses Whitney Houston, Gladys Knight, racism in magazines, and why she’s so hopeful for the future of music and writing.
by Emily J. Lordi, Danyel Smith via The New Yorker on April 17, 2022
Portraits of Dean Dixon, William Grant Still, and Margaret Bonds, three African American classical musicians.

A Prophecy Unfulfilled?

What a new book and six companion videos have to say about the fate of Black classical music in America.
by Mark N. Grant via The American Scholar on April 2, 2022
Man holding a poster of Malcolm X, African American Day Parade, 2010 in Harlem.

Malcolm X’s Gospel

A look into how Malcolm X employed gospel rhetoric to critique the mainstream civil rights movement for catering to white Christianity.
by Ellen McLarney via Black Perspectives on March 28, 2022
Odetta sitting on a park bench playing a guitar.

How Odetta Revolutionized Folk Music

She animated the horror and emotional intensity in American labor songs by projecting them like a European opera singer.
by Sasha Frere-Jones via The New Yorker on February 24, 2022

The Black Record Label That Introduced the Beatles to America

Over its 13-year run, Vee Jay built a roster that left a lasting impact on every genre of music.
by Bryan Greene via Smithsonian on February 23, 2022
Dancers performing the Cakewalk.

Reconsidering Scott Joplin's 'The Entertainer'

The king of ragtime published his hit tune 120 years ago. Pianist Lara Downes believes the piece helped shape the future of American music.
by Lara Downes via NPR on February 7, 2022
Album cover featuring a sketch of Buck Hammer playing the piano with a cigar in his mouth.

The Discovery of Buck Hammer

A remarkable blues musician emerged from obscurity in 1959, but something about him just didn’t seem right.
by Ted Gioia via The Honest Broker on January 17, 2022
A photo of Fontella Bass repeated as if it's a frame in a filmstrip.

Can't You See That I'm Lonely?

“Rescue Me,” on repeat.
by David Ramsey via Oxford American on December 7, 2021
Image of B.B. King on stage playing guitar.

When Young Elvis Met the Legendary B.B. King

King recalled: “I liked his voice, though I had no idea he was getting ready to conquer the world.”
by Daniel de Visé via Literary Hub on November 16, 2021
Marian Anderson looking downwards

Marian Anderson’s Bone-Chilling Rendition of “Crucifixion”

Her performances of the Black spiritual in the nineteen-thirties caused American and European audiences to fall silent in awe.
by Alex Ross via The New Yorker on October 19, 2021
Pages from the Chicago Defender and Metropolitan News, twentieth century.

The World According to Sylvester Russell

The career and legacy of a Black critic who argued for the elevation of Black performance.
by Dorothy Berry via Lapham’s Quarterly on August 30, 2021
Sly Stone performing in front of crowd

What the Harlem Cultural Festival Represented

Questlove’s debut as a director, the documentary "Summer of Soul," revisits a musical event that encapsulated the energies of Harlem in the 1960s.
by David Hajdu via The Nation on July 29, 2021
Album cover for "We Insist!", which features African American men sitting at a lunch counter

The Sounds of Struggle

Sixty years ago, a pathbreaking jazz album fused politics and art in the fight for Black liberation. Black artists are taking similar strides today.
by Michael Beyea Reagan via Boston Review on June 24, 2021
Almighty Kay Gee, of the Cold Crush Brothers, throwing out posters of the group at Harlem World, circa 1981.

The Photographer Who Captured the Birth of Hip-Hop

As a teen-ager, Joe Conzo, Jr., took intimate pictures of the Bronx music scene. He’s lived several lives in the time since.
by Hua Hsu via The New Yorker on June 12, 2021
A black and white photograph of a person playing the guitar.

My Father, Cultural Appropriator

The daughter of Buddy Holly's bandmate reflects on the defensiveness some white people have about the roots of rock 'n' roll.
by Sarah Curtis via Los Angeles Review of Books on June 5, 2021
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