Perfectly Awesome

"Maybe it's only when you don’t know what you are listening for that you find what you were waiting all along to discover."

Alan Lomax was a legendary collector of folk music, author, broadcaster, oral historian, musicologist, and filmmaker who raised the profile of folk music worldwide.

Friends and family of late singer Nicolette Larson remember her brilliant voice, and the ups and downs of a life that ended far too soon.

What is it about the once virtually unknown song that inspires so many musicians to make it their own?

Tennessee’s government has turned hard red, but a new set of outlaw songwriters is challenging Music City’s conservative ways—and ruling bro-country sound.

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.

Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, who died recently, wrote pieces that were elegiac, but suffused with a sense of survival: we are broken, we are wounded, we carry on.

What can elephants, birds, and flamenco players teach a neuroscientist-composer about music?

A legendary singer on faith, loss, and a family legacy.

He’s trusted to repair some of the world’s most fabled — and expensive — instruments. How does John Becker manage to unlock the sound of a Stradivarius?

On the road with the band in its forty-first year.

On October 30, 2002, a cancer-stricken Warren Zevon returned to the ‘Late Show With David Letterman’ stage for one last performance. Twenty years later, Letterman and more remember the gravitas and emotion of that stunning night.

Plant and Krauss discuss their first album together in 15 years, their 'happily incompatible' friendship and, of course, the chances of a Led Zeppelin reunion.

As he approaches 90, even brushes with death can’t keep him off the road — or dim a late-life creative burst.

Eight radio stations in Southern Louisiana still broadcast partially in French as they try to keep alive a dying language in the area. French has been spoken there since the mid-1700s.

From a neurological and evolutionary perspective, music is fascinating. There seems to be a deeply rooted biological appreciation for tonality, rhythm, and melody. Not only can people find certain sequences of sounds to be pleasurable, they can powerfully evoke emotions. Music can be happy, sad, peaceful, foreboding, energetic or comical. Why is this? Music is

In a new documentary, fans and experts explore the legacy of a song that was originally shunned before becoming a timeless classic

Recorded during several hedonistic months in a fabulous Cote d’Azur villa, Exile on Main St is seen as the Stones’ epic, creative peak. As the classic album turns 50, stars tell us how it got their rocks off

Exotic lumber salvaged from a remote forest in Belize is the world’s most coveted tonewood

The musicians were diabolically bad as people, and satanically good as performers.

Did the iconic three-note sequence come from Stravinsky, the Muppets or somewhere else? Our writer set out to – dun, dun duuuun! – reveal the mystery

Josephine Baker next week will become the first Black woman and first American to be honored with enshrinement in Paris' Pantheon.

After a chunk of his brain was removed, guitarist Pat Martino got his groove back.

58 musicians showed up for a picture that captured the giants of jazz

Nenad Georgievski writes at All About Jazz, though the world knew little about Malian music until American musicians began partnering with players from West Africa. In the 1980s, Stevie Wonder began touring with Amadou and Mariam, helping to popularize their form of Malian blues.

A lifetime of brutal injuries and misfortune robbed the world-renowned pianist João Carlos Martins of the ability to play his instrument. And then along came an eccentric designer and his bionic gloves.

After years apart, the Black Crowes perform at the Forum on Thursday, part of a tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of the group’s breakthrough debut.

Why does a genre obsessed with death attract the kindest people?

How do we understand Blue in the 21st century? Can we think of Mitchell's 1971 album, long considered the apex of confessional songwriting, as a paradigm not of raw emotion, but of care and craft?

Discover extraordinary true stories celebrating the diversity of humanity. Click to read Narratively, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

Thirty years ago, Billboard changed the way it tabulated its charts, turning the industry on its head and making room for genres once considered afterthoughts to explode in the national consciousness

Fifty years after their first release, the country-rock titans led by Don Henley and the late Glenn Frey still loom large in American music. Their hits still get play and their sound is a precursor to modern Nashville. But has this biggest of bands aged well? A panel of experts weigh the case.

Since the mid-1970s, almost every jazz musician has owned a copy of the same book. It has a peach-colored cover, a chunky, 1970s-style logo, and a black plastic binding. It’s delightfully homemade-looking—like it was printed by a bunch of teenagers at a Kinkos. And inside is the sheet music for hundreds of common jazz tunes—also

What does a crew of talented musicians do when forced to serve at the pleasure of a notoriously cruel dictator? They play like their lives depend on it.

In 1978 he was music’s next big thing. Then his album bombed, he began a long slide into obscurity, and a bizarre fraud sent him to prison. Will Dane Donohue finally get his encore?

After a turbulent decade, the Gary, Indiana, native has cemented himself as one of the greatest rappers of his—or any—generation. And on Sunday, he’s up for a Grammy award.

The hard life and overlooked brilliance of Zane Campbell.

For the first time since the passing of Rush's drum god, Neil Peart, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson speak about his legacy.

Generations of musicians got their start busking the streets of the Deep Ellum neighborhood of Dallas, Texas. After a decade of 'hobo-ing' around cities like New Orleans, Paris, and New York, Charley Crockett discovered it was his turn.

On Syd Barrett's time with Pink Floyd and making an album with household objects and found sounds.

We look back on the many chapters of Leonard Cohen's long, remarkable life, from teenage poet to midlife monk and beyond.

How Single Lock Records unites the hometown legends of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, music with the new generation.

The jazz musician’s impeccably maintained home in a modest New York City neighborhood is a testament to his — and midcentury design’s — legacy.

This down-on-his-luck headbanger fabricated a persona, faked a tour and promoted himself as a hard-rock savior

Fifty years ago, a plane carrying Buddy Holly crashed in a remote Iowa cornfield. This month, hundreds of fans will gather at the ballroom where he played his final show to sing, dance, and mourn the greatest rock star ever to come out of Texas.

How the American music legends behind 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' made millions off the work of a Zulu tribesman named Solomon Linda who died a pauper.

Most guitars don’t have names. This one has a voice and a personality, and bears a striking resemblance to his owner.

In 2001, the internet’s premier file-sharing service Napster was shut down after just two years, leaving a giant vacuum in the ever-expanding peer-to-peer file-sharing space....

History makes no mention of what was one of the most popular all-female country acts ever. Yet the story of the Goree Girls—inmates who banded together in the forties at Texas’ sole penitentiary for women—is worth a listen.

A new short film captures some of Cohen’s reflections on creativity and spirituality, and on preparing for the end of life.

In a new memoir, the bassist describes how he expanded his consciousness, found his muse and landed in a storied rock band.

After a chunk of his brain was removed, guitarist Pat Martino got his groove back.

Few embodied the spirit of New Orleans, or helped take its music to strange new places, the way the man born Mac Rebennack did.

Mac Rebennack devoted himself to New Orleans culture.

He was falsely cast as Mozart’s murderer and music’s sorest loser. Now he’s getting a fresh hearing.

“Dakar was where everyone came to make music.”

A quiet Sunday night in 1953. The Dodgers had just won the pennant. J.F.K. and Jacqueline Bouvier had just married. And four titans of bebop came together in a dive bar for a rare jam session.

A writer never knew her family’s house on St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, but discovering it, and her history, became an obsession.

Plus, explosive photography from Austin, instrumentals from Billy Preston, and a podcast investigation of Anna Nicole Smith.

Thousands of French people are coming to live in Quebec and discovering that a common language doesn’t necessarily mean a common culture.

Color constancy continues to confound us.

Seated at a table on the rear deck with Lindsay Lohan and her entourage, I spotted Alex Jimenez — a professional yacht influencer.

Seems there was a time when the dominant story of punk was the story of British punk. If you knew nothing else, you knew the name Sid Vicious, and that seemed to sum it up.

Investigation finds officials ignored warnings for years before one of the deadliest crashes in decades.

They made music together, took drugs, and slept together. But none of the legends of Laurel Canyon, including Joni Mitchell and David Crosby, remember it the same way.

John Lydon, the 62-year-old punk legend, was in New York for a new documentary about Public Image Ltd. But first, he wanted to shop and smoke in a bar.

A strange and bittersweet ballad of kidnapping, stolen identity and unlikely stardom

Launched by two of the biggest names in Texas business, Clear Channel was once the most powerful—and feared—player in radio. Now rebranded as iHeartMedia, it’s on the brink of bankruptcy.

Take the rough with the smooth: how the sound of a voice is multisensory, and creates interior meaning through metaphor