Music & Culture

Tartit performs at the Festival au Desert.

Music & Culture

Festival Au Desert: Music Of Peace Not Silenced By War

9:20am May 31, 2013

by Milo Miles

For a dozen years, a music festival that highlights the music of Africa has been held near Timbuktu, Mali. This year, a nationalist uprising and ongoing battles made the Festival au Desert impossible. A new recording from the most recent event helps fans continue to celebrate the music.

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Vampire Weekend (left to right: Chris Tomson, Chris Baio, Rostam Batmanglij, Ezra Koenig) met while they were all students at Columbia University.

Music & Culture

Vampire Weekend Comes Of Age In 'The City'

11:02pm May 30, 2013

by Ken Tucker

The band just released its third album, Modern Vampires of the City. Chief lyricist and singer Ezra Koenig has described it as the third part of a trilogy about maturing. As part of that process, the album finds sustenance invoking Desmond Dekker and The Rolling Stones.

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Darius Rucker's new album is titled True Believers.

Music & Culture

Darius Rucker: Busted Hearts And Pickup Trucks

8:43am May 29, 2013

by Meredith Ochs

Rucker is a rock star, courtesy of his years as leader of Hootie and the Blowfish. But on his new country album, you hear the guy who still lives in and loves his home state of South Carolina, right down to its sweet tea and kudzu.

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Woody Guthrie with his parents, Nora Belle and Charley, and brother George, at their home in Okemah, Okla., in 1926.

Music & Culture

Coming Home: The Woody Guthrie Center Opens In Tulsa

8:43am May 29, 2013

by Kurt Gwartney

The folk music icon's relationship with his home state has always been complicated. To many in Oklahoma, Guthrie's progressive political views didn't fit with a strong conservative streak during the Cold War period. His reputation there is now closer to full restoration as Tulsa opens his archives.

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Music & Culture

Quincy Jones: The Man Behind The Music

9:33am May 28, 2013

Legendary music producer, arranger, composer and media mogul Quincy Jones was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on May 18. In 2001, Fresh Air spoke with him about his career and working with the likes of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson.

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Keith Carradine (right) performs with the cast of Hands on a Hardbody during its spring 2013 run in New York.

Two Songs That Led Keith Carradine From Screen To Broadway

6:22pm May 25, 2013

by NPR Staff

One of Keith Carradine's most famous roles in recent years was as Wild Bill Hickok on the HBO TV show Deadwood. But Carradine is also a musician, and it was a song that jump-started his career — and another that drew him to his latest Broadway role.

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The Toronto band Kobo Town plays a mix of old-school calypso, ska and West Indian styles.

Music & Culture

Kobo Town: A Haunted 'Jukebox' Filled With Caribbean Sounds

6:03pm May 24, 2013

by Banning Eyre

The Toronto band plays a mix of old-school calypso, ska and West Indian styles. But its new album, Jumbie in the Jukebox, doesn't so much revive classic genres as reinvent them for a new time.

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The video for Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's newly released song starts by re-creating the conditions of his captivity during the 81 days he was held in police detention in 2011, and later dissolves into a dystopian nightmare.

China's Artist Provocateur Explores New Medium: Heavy Metal

8:18pm May 22, 2013

by Louisa Lim

In 2011, police detained Ai Weiwei for 81 days. Now, he's released a song that's turned the experience into a heavy metal protest song, along with a dystopian nightmare video. The lyrics are explicit and angry. Ai says his music is for the many political prisoners who remain jailed.

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Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter are the two men behind Daft Punk.

Music & Culture

Daft Punk: Accessing Electronic Music's Humanity

1:08pm May 22, 2013

by Ken Tucker

Random Access Memories finds the French duo changing its music-making process in an effort to make its songs sound more human. To that end, Daft Punk enlists guest stars such as Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers.

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Best known for bright, accessible modern jazz, Pat Metheny takes on an experimental composer's work with the new Tap: John Zorn's Book of Angels, Vol. 20.

Music & Culture

Pat Metheny And John Zorn: A Vivid Sound World

5:43pm May 21, 2013

by Tom Moon

The two artists are known opposites in the world of instrumental music. On Metheny's latest, the jazz guitarist wrings an unexpectedly visual listening experience from Zorn's knotty compositions.

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