Search Results for: music on money
Laura Jane Grace sings the gender dysphoria blues
It has been noted that the durability of punk has been driven by a communal ethos that embodies inclusivity, resistance, challenge, and transformation. First wave punk represented this ethos, and it remains evident in punk’s ongoing engagement with queer politics … Continue reading
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Filed under Gender and sexuality, Performers, Popular music
Global designs for 78 RPM record sleeves
The 78 RPM record was originally a means of commerce intended to make money. When recording engineers were dispatched across the globe to capture sounds and voices, there was no intention to preserve the recordings that they created. The point, … Continue reading
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Filed under Mass media, Visual art, World music
Celebrating Tyagaraja ārādhana in South India
The social organization of musicians in South India is often reflected in the Tyagaraja ārādhana, the annual death-anniversary celebration in honor of the revered composer Tyagaraja (1767–1847, pictured above). Thousands of musicians appear at this huge annual celebration, including men … Continue reading
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Filed under Asia, Performers, Religious music, World music
Joni Mitchell and 1960’s women’s sexual freedom
Born in Fort MacLeod, Alberta in Canada, a young Joni Mitchell (born Joan Anderson) moved to North Battleford, Saskatchewan with her parents shortly after World War II. Inspired by an older friend, she begged her parents at age 7 to … Continue reading
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Filed under North America, Performers, Politics, Popular music, Women's studies
The dark side of the rainbow
Fifty years ago today Pink Floyd’s album The dark side of the moon soared to number one on the US Billboard chart, beginning a record-breaking 741-week chart run; it has since sold over 45 million copies worldwide, making it the … Continue reading
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Filed under Curiosities, Film music, Popular music
Piatigorsky’s youthful adventure
Already a cello prodigy with a full scholarship to the Moscow Conservatory, the ten-year-old Gregor Piatigorsky found himself stranded in Astrahan’ due to one of his father’s failed enterprises. Tall enough to pass as a teenager, he found a temporary … Continue reading
Filed under Curiosities, Performers, Romantic era
Moroccan insult contests
A performance that occurred almost daily in a public square in Marrakech in the early 1980s traded on ethnic identity for fun and profit. The performance began with an Arab duo singing in Arabic; as a crowd began to gather … Continue reading
Filed under Africa, Curiosities, Humor
Women and gramophones
A letter published in the June 1925 issue of Gramophone noted the magazine’s general absence of women correspondents: “are the sweet little things too shy, or what?” A response published in August of that year dismissed the idea of women … Continue reading
Filed under Curiosities, Mass media, Reception, Women's studies
Shine and the Titanic
Religious African Americans saw the sinking of the Titanic as an example of God’s intervention in human affairs, as a divine overriding of the advantages conferred by wealth and mastery of technology. Their secular songs about the disaster either nihilistically … Continue reading
Filed under Black studies, Humor
Doctor Love’s diagnoses
The Zimbabwean singer-songwriter Paul Matavire was widely celebrated for his witty but sharply pointed songs addressing themes of intimacy, romance, and social relations, earning him the nickname Doctor Love. Matavire’s well-calculated social commentary, disseminated through sungura music, continues to hold … Continue reading
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Filed under Humor, Performers, Popular music
