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The Go-Go's on July 30, 1981. From left, Kathy Valentine, Charlotte Caffey, Jane Wiedlin, Belinda Carlisle, and Gina Schock.

We Got the Beat

How The Go-Go’s emerged from the LA punk scene in the late ’70s to become the first and only female band to have a number one album.
Miles Davis.

Not Not Jazz

When Miles Davis went electric in the late 1960s, he overhauled his thinking about songs, genres, and what it meant to lead a band.
A kickline of five Asian American dancers at the Forbidden City nightclub in San Francisco.

Americanism, Exoticism, and the “Chop Suey” Circuit

Asian American artists who performed for primarily white audiences in the 1930s and ’40s both challenged and solidified racial boundaries in the United States.
Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway standing on stage singing to each other.

Radical Light

The cosmic collision of Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway.
An painting depicting a murder ballad, with the murder happening in the background and a band playing music in the foreground.

Blood Harmony

The far-flung tale of a murder song.
A series of headshots of the members of R.E.M..

Was It Cooler Back Then?

A search for the memory of R.E.M. in Athens, Georgia.
Snoop Dogg.

The Snoop Dogg Manifesto

A pop star’s road map to decadence.
The Fisk Jubilee Singers.

How the Negro Spiritual Changed American Popular Music—And America Itself

In 1871, the Fisk University singers embarked on a tour that introduced white Americans to a Black sound that would reshape the nation.
Grandmaster Flash, DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa and Chuck D.
partner

Hip-Hop's Black Caribbean Roots

The relationship between the DJ and his MC derived from a Jamaican “toasting” tradition and its related “sound clash” culture.
George C. Wolfe.

George C. Wolfe Would Not Be Dismissed

A conversation with the longtime director about “Rustin,” growing up in Kentucky, and putting on a show.
Members of the Wu-Tang Clan.

'Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)' Turns 30

How the album pays homage to hip-hop's mythical and martial arts origins.
A musician wearing a Moog hat and playing a Moog synthesizer in a recording studio

The Sounds of Science

The Moog synthesizer was one of the most influential inventions in 20th-century sound. With the recent sale of the Asheville-based company, a new era begins.
Bruce Springsteen performing live onstage during the Born In the U.S.A. tour.

Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska and Born in the U.S.A. Captured Two Sides of Reagan’s America

Springsteen's albums offer a tragic-romantic view of the working class in Reagan-era America.
Jewish characters in television and film

The Long History of Jewface

Bradley Cooper’s prosthetic nose is the latest example of the struggles around Jewish representation on the stage and screen.
Musical notation and a drawing of a barbed wire fence.

The Musical Legacy of a Mississippi Prison Farm

The new album “Some Mississippi Sunday Morning” collects gospel songs recorded inside a notorious penitentiary.
Performers at the 1963 Renaissance Pleasure Faire. Ron Patterson, a co-founder of the event, appears in orange at the far right.

The Surprisingly Radical Roots of the Renaissance Fair

The first of these festivals debuted in the early 1960s, serving as a prime example of the United States' burgeoning counterculture.
Prisoners at Parchman Farm march to work on cotton fields

‘It’s a Charged Place’: Parchman Farm, the Mississippi Prison with a Remarkable Musical History

Inmates at this bucolic but brutal prison have long been singing the blues to sustain themselves, and a new compilation of gospel songs continues the legacy.
A photograph of Pharaoh Sanders.

Feel-Ins, Know-Ins, Be-Ins

The most hypnotic piece of music released so far in 2023 was recorded forty-seven years ago in a barely adequate studio in Rockland County, New York.
Sly Stone performing at a concert.

The Undoing of a Great American Band

Sly and the Family Stone suggested new possibilities in music and life—until it all fell apart.
Mother-daughter opera singers Givonna Joseph and Aria Mason.

The Black Composers of New Orleans Opera Are Finally Getting Their Due

And it's all thanks to this mother-daughter dream team.
Lady Columbia drawing from 1890.

Before Lady Liberty, There Was Lady Columbia, America's First National Mascot

The forgotten figure symbolized the hopes—and myths—of the early United States.
The Sugarhill Gang's Wonder Mike, Master Gee and Hen Dogg in November 2019.

The Unlikely Origins of ‘Rapper’s Delight,’ Hip-Hop’s First Mainstream Hit

The Sugarhill Gang song remains one of rap's most beloved. But it took serendipity, a book of rhymes, and an agreement to settle a lawsuit for it to survive.
Cover of "Playing for the Man at the Door" album.

Smithsonian Releases an Unheard Treasure Trove of Blues Music

A Smithsonian curator John Troutman and a blues musician discuss a new folk album, "Playing for the Man at the Door," from late chronicler Mack McCormick's collection.
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.
Man spinning record player with woman in the background

Making Music Male

How did record collecting and stereophile culture come to exclude women as consumers and experts?

Tony Bennett Saw Racism and Horror in World War II. It Changed Him.

He marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Ala., after he witnessed atrocities while liberating Nazi death camps.
The sixty-four hexagrams from the King Wen sequence of the I Ching.

The I Ching in America

Europeans translated the "Chinese Book of Changes" in the nineteenth century, but the philosophy really took off in the West after 1924.
Painting called "Hudibras’ Discomfiture at the Hands of the Skimmington," by Francis Le Piper, seventeenth century.

American Charivari

The history and context of the made-up aesthetics of the early Ku Klux Klan.
Connie Converse playing a guitar

The Lost Music of Connie Converse

A writer of haunting, uncategorizable songs, she once seemed poised for runaway fame. But only decades after she disappeared has her music found an audience.
Albert Ayler (right) and his brother Donald Ayler, Harlem, 1966.

Escaping from Notes to Sounds

The saxophonist Albert Ayler revolutionized the avant-garde jazz scene, drastically altering notions of what noises qualified as music.

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