“Refusing to sacrifice her socialist principles for commercial success, folk-blues-jazz singer Barbara Dane dedicated her life to bringing music from around the world back to where it belonged: in the hands of the people struggling to change it.”
Two Algerian rai tunes made the top ten of the Village Voice music critics’s poll in 1989. Why were post-liberation Algerian pop singers winning a wide Western audience while an earlier generation of popular Arab singers like Umm Kulthoum, Muhammad ‘Abd al-Wahhab and Fairouz never did?
“Let’s call things by their name!
If we don’t break the silence
we will die in silence
Against fear is life,
against fear is love,
against fear we are,
against fear without fear.”
“…a new aesthetic, one of protest, full of popular longings, and that lives in the full multitude of rebellion, is strong and great and captures us with the emotion of battle — this is life.”
This playlist collects is for the skeletons in our closet, the departed longing for a glimpse of the living world, the werewolves, and zombies, and vampires. Hot tunes to warm their rattling chains and naked bones, and some cool tunes to join them in their blue moods.
A facinating article about a special category of miniature painting called ‘Ragamala,’ which is the pictorial representation of an Indian musical mode or melody which is called a ‘raga.’
A playlist of songs we discovered because they were sampled in Hip Hop tracks.
A collection of all the articles we’ve published over the past month, for those who like to savor their Magpies’ tidings as an issue.
Bukka White has long been one of my favorite musicians, and I’m so happy to share this interview with Chris Strachwitz, from the Arhoolie archives, in which he talks about his life, his travels, his loves, his work, and his music.
A selection of music we find oddly perfect, to celebrate a different kind of freedom this Independence Day.
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