The Tricky Politics of Swedish Folk Music
In the early twentieth century, folk music in Sweden was connected with right-wing nationalists, leaving a complicated inheritance for today’s music fans.
The Mystery of Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved”
More than 200 years have passed since Beethoven wrote a passionate letter to his "Immortal Beloved." We still don't know her name.
The Nineteenth-Century Banjo
Derived from an instrument brought to America by enslaved Africans, the banjo experienced a surge of popularity during the New Woman movement of the late 1800s.
It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me
Rock and R&B have been considered separate genres for decades. But why?
Xerox and Roll: The Corporate Machine and the Making of Punk
On the 85th anniversary of the first xerographic print, a collection of punk flyers from Cornell University provides an object lesson on (anti-)art in the age of mechanical reproduction.
Jane Birkin’s Famous Love (Sex) Song
How the songs of the 1960s and ’70s captured the sexual liberation of women.
The Concert That Promised a Thousand Years of Peace
Guru Maharaj Ji, the teenage leader of the Divine Light Mission, was poised to usher in a new era. His huge Houston gathering proved to do anything but.
Athanasius Kircher’s “Musical Ark”
The first algorithmically generated music came to us in the seventeenth century, courtesy of Kircher and his Arca musarithmica.
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.