The country singer, songwriter, actor, and businesswoman Dolly Parton was the fourth of twelve children in a family of sharecroppers in Sevierville, Tennessee, located in the Appalachian Mountains. Commenting on her childhood, Parton once said, “Everybody where we grew up … Continue reading →
The steel drum, or steelpan, developed in Trinidad in the late 1930s, is not a drum but a tuned idiophone, akin to a tuned gong. Unlike membranophones, the steel pan does not have a vibrating membrane. Its creation process involves … Continue reading →
Performances of Aboriginal musical traditions have become widespread in various national and international contexts and are significant to the ways in which Aboriginal people from distinct regions project their specific identities to a broader world. In recent decades, Warlpiri people, … Continue reading →
The musical style associated with the bamboo frame rattle called angklung embodies the egalitarian cooperation so essential for the agriculture that sustained Sundanese people in West Java for centuries. In the early twentieth century, Indonesian nationalists reimagined the sound of … Continue reading →