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Title card of the article styled like a Tina Turner album cover.

Manhattan in East St. Louis

The Club Manhattan could hold about 250 people. They did not know it at the time, but they were the earliest witnesses to the rise of the Queen of Rock & Roll.
John Cage on the quiz show "Lascia o Raddoppia?"

Freedom for Sale

In the 1950s and 1960s, a new generation of American artists began to think of advertising and commercial imagery as the new avant-garde.
Advertisement for Ethel Waters' record

The Rise and Fall of Black Swan Records

The story of the first major black-owned record label and the mystery behind the man who created it.
A collage featuring pictures from the 1918 Flu Pandemic and the 1920s, including people wearing masks and nurses on one side and flappers on the other.

What Caused the Roaring Twenties? Not the End of a Pandemic (Probably)

As the U.S. anticipates a vaccinated summer, historians say measuring the impact of the 1918 influenza on the uproarious decade that followed is tricky.

A Lover’s Blues: The Unforgettable Voice of Margie Hendrix

Remembering the woman who outsang Ray Charles.
Illustration taken from The Great Gatsby, The Graphic Novel

Greil Marcus Takes a Deep Dive Into "the Stubborn Myth of The Great Gatsby"

An insightful exploration of the ways America has read ‘the Great American Novel.’
Photograph of Sun Ra by Ming Smith

Sun Ra: ‘I’m Everything and Nothing’

Sun Ra, a seminal artist of afrofuturism, embraced a unique vision of blackness.
Rapper YG, one of a crowd of people at a protest over the death of George Floyd.

Hip-hop is The Soundtrack to Black Lives Matter Protests

Songs from Public Enemy and Ludacris have been heard at marches, continuing a tradition that dates back to the blues.

Ride Shotgun through Mid-Century LA with Ed Ruscha’s Photos and Jack Kerouac’s Words

A kinetic slice of Americana so pure you can almost smell Kerouac’s invoked apple pie – or maybe it’s the faint stench of exhaust fumes.

Jitterbugging with Jim Crow

Ninety years ago, young African Americans in the South took up the Lindy Hop. It was an act of resistance and an assertion of freedom.

The “Star-Spangled Banner” Hysteria of 1917

The Boston Symphony’s refusal to play the national anthem in its one concerts triggered a xenophobic panic that led an arrest.

Vessel of Antiquity

Influence, invention, and the legacy of Leon Redbone.

How 'Green Book' And The Hollywood Machine Swallowed Donald Shirley Whole

Why relatives of the musician depicted in "Green Book" called the film “a symphony of lies.”

Canon Fodder

Where's the country music on Pitchfork's Best Albums of the 1980s?
Woman playing a guitar, and the cover of the book 'Country Music USA.'

‘Country Music … Was Anything BUT Pure’

On the music’s African-American tributaries, its unpredictable politics, country radio’s woman problem, and working on Ken Burns’ forthcoming doc.

Borne Back Into the Past

Mike St. Thomas reviews ‘Paradise Lost: A Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald.'

The Powerful Tune That Drives ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’

A melody can carry an undeniable purpose even before it gets paired with a lyric.

Old New York, Seen Through a Cab Driver’s Windshield

The people Joseph Rodriguez saw through the windshield in the 1970s and 80s.

Joni Mitchell: Fear of a Female Genius

One of the greatest living artists in popular music still isn’t properly recognized.

The Rise and Fall of the “Sellout”

The history of the epithet, from its rise among leftists and jazz critics and folkies to its recent fall from favor.

The Syncopated Geography of Hip-Hop

Music scholar Katya Deve explores the history and geography of hip-hop.

Chuck Berry Invented the Idea of Rock and Roll

The origins of rock and roll are unknown, but no one can deny the role Chuck Berry played.
Booker T. Washington writing at a desk.

Toward a Usable Black History

It will help black Americans to recall that they have a history that transcends victimization and exclusion.

A Raised Voice

How Nina Simone turned the movement into music.

That World Is Gone: Race and Displacement in a Southern Town

The story of Vinegar Hill, a historically African American neighborhood in Charlottesville, Virginia.
A bronze statue of Willie Nelson.

Willie Nelson at 70

"The Essential Willie Nelson" compilation demonstrates the continuity of Nelson's style across a variety of musical genres.

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