Music & Culture

Shawana Kemp, lead singer for Shine and the Moonbeams.

Music & Culture

Shine And The Moonbeams: R&B For The Kids

8:03pm August 12, 2013

by Stefan Shepherd

Family music comes in a broad range of styles — folk, rock, punk and even polka. But, compared with its popularity among adults, there have been very few R&B and soul music albums for kids. Enter Shine and the Moonbeams.

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Record producer Huey Meaux wound up in jail twice, but he sure had a knack for finding talent in unlikely places. Some of those songs are included on South Texas Rhythm 'n' Soul Revue.

Music & Culture

'South Texas' Collects Producer's Checkered Career

12:42pm August 12, 2013

Huey Meaux wound up in jail twice, but he sure had a knack for finding talent in unlikely places.

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The band Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino is leading the revival of an old Italian folk style called taranta, which has hypnotic rhythms meant to have restorative powers.

Music & Culture

Trumpeters And Troubadours: New And Old Music From Italy

5:53pm August 11, 2013

by NPR Staff

World music DJ Betto Arcos just got back from an Italian vacation. He joins NPR's Jacki Lyden with some of his favorite musical finds.

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Music & Culture

Jack Clement Worked With Some Of Country Music's Best

5:45pm August 09, 2013

We remember recording producer Cowboy Jack Clements, who died Thursday in Nashville at the age of 82. In the 1950s, he helped record Elvis, Carl Perkins and Roy Orbison when he worked at Sun Records in Memphis. He also discovered Jerry Lee Lewis and began a life-long friendship with Johnny Cash. Clement later provided the signature sound to one of Cash's biggest hits, "Ring of Fire."

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Kongar-Ol Ondar at the 72nd Annual Academy Awards in Los Angeles. Genghis Blues was nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary Short.

Music & Culture

Remembering The People's Throat Singer Of Tuva

11:57am August 09, 2013

by NPR Staff

In a 1999 interview, Kongar-Ol Ondar demonstrates his ancient style of singing for Terry Gross.

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Thai Elephant Orchestra co-founder David Sulzer (bottom center, in red) poses with the animals and their mahouts, or keepers.

The Biggest Thing Out Of Thailand: An Elephant Orchestra

3:01pm August 08, 2013

by NPR Staff

Based out of a conservation center for former work animals, the Thai Elephant Orchestra is just what it sounds like: a group of elephants trained to play enormous percussion instruments, holding mallets in their trunks and sometimes trumpeting along.

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Jayda Neor and Kephra Shaw Meredith, seventh-graders from KIPP Bridge middle school in Oakland, Calif., perform a rap song about the discovery of DNA's structure in front of a green screen.

Science Rap B.A.T.T.L.E.S. Bring Hip-Hop Into The Classroom

12:48pm August 08, 2013

by Adam Cole

The program is part of a national push for science education among minorities. A U.S. Department of Commerce study found that blacks and Latinos are half as likely as whites to have a job in science or engineering.

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Oud player Rachid Berkani, 76, is one of the musicians of El Gusto.

Music & Culture

Reunited After 50 Years, An Algerian Buena Vista Social Club Makes Its U.S. Debut

4:31am August 08, 2013

by Anastasia Tsioulcas

A group of Jewish and Muslim musicians who played together in the bars and cafes of Algiers in the 1940s and '50s thought they'd never see each other again. But after a chance encounter one of them had with a tourist in an Algerian bazaar, their lives changed forever.

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Buddy Guy's new two-disc set is titled Rhythm & Blues.

Music & Culture

Buddy Guy: 'Rhythm And Blues' Titan Channels Guitar Wisdom

7:25pm August 06, 2013

by Tom Moon

The 77-year-old guitarist and vocalist's new two-disc set features cameos from Kid Rock, Keith Urban and members of Aerosmith. But the lyrics merely set the scene, and the jolts come after the verses — when the profound legend begins to play.

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Donald Byrd onstage, in an image circulated by his record label at the time, Blue Note Records.

Music & Culture

Remembering Donald Byrd, Jazz Trumpeter Who Spanned Generations

11:23am August 06, 2013

by Frannie Kelley

After he helped to develop the bluesy, driving hard bop style in the '50s and '60s, his funkier commercial hit recordings shaped black pop music through the advent of hip-hop. A committed music educator, the Detroit native was 80 when he died last week.

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