Music Only for a Woman: The Birth of Easy Listening
A 1970s radio format geared towards the "feminine psyche" featured musical rearrangements with softer and gentler styles of the day's hits.
Ladies and Gentlemen, It’s The Kim Sisters
The diversification of talent on American variety shows obscured the reality of race relations in the United States during the Cold War.
Reggae in Australia
In the 1970s, Willie Brim, a member of the Buluwai people, learned about Peter Tosh and Bob Marley from hippies who lived near his community. And the joy began.
“It’s Tight Like That”
A "dirty" song recorded by Georgia Tom and Tampa Red in 1928 launched the "hokum" blues.
Tape Heads
The Mellotron, an electronic keyboard of recorded samples, heralded the digital age, and its use in “Strawberry Fields Forever” changed pop music history.
Martha Graham’s Night Journey
Reinterpreting the Greek tragedy, Graham built a choreography of dramatic, angular movements to embody the female experience, past and present.
Honey Cocaine’s Unexpected Cambodian Canadian Life Story
The Toronto rapper embraces a patois-inflected “bad gal” image to tell a deeply personal story about historical violence.
The Bossa Nova Craze
In the early 1960s, bossa nova was hugely popular in the US thanks to its reinvention as a social dance and its connections with upper-class culture.
Connie Converse Wasn’t Just a Folk Singer. She Was a Scholar, Too.
The disappeared—but recently rediscovered—folk musician edited and published in academic journals under the name Elizabeth Converse.