music 
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SOURCE: New York Times
10/15/2020
How to Handle the Hate in America’s Musical Heritage
A new project updating the famous Anthology of American Folk Music wrestles with the fact that a large proportion of the American songbook has been overtly racist.
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SOURCE: NPR
10/8/2020
Throughline: The United States vs. Billie Holiday (audio)
Billie Holliday's legal problems over drugs were made more difficult by her refusal to stop performing the anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit."
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SOURCE: The Conversation
10/7/2020
With His Signature Guitar Style, Eddie Van Halen Changed Rock Music
by Ken Murray
A professor of guitar performance explains Eddie Van Halen's innovations in technique, contribution to electric guitar design, and influence across genres including the solo on Michael Jackson's 1983 mega-hit "Beat It"
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SOURCE: New York Times
10/6/2020
Eddie Van Halen, Virtuoso of the Rock Guitar, Dies at 65
The influential rock guitarist died today at age 65 after a battle with cancer.
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SOURCE: CNN
10/6/2020
Led Zeppelin Victorious in 'Stairway to Heaven' Plagiarism Case
Representatives of the estate of the late Randy Wolfe, who claimed authorship, said the case nevertheless proved its point that "Led Zeppelin are the greatest art thieves of all time."
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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.