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Music

Arts in Society, Politics

A New Age of Protest Music

Through online fan communities and digital platforms like TikTok, popular music is finding powerful new ways to shape everyday activism, protest, and resistance.

Byrd McDaniel

Arts in Society, Race

Ally: From Noun to Verb

Robin D. G. Kelley talks with musician Vijay Iyer about systems of oppression, the responsibility of artists, and how jazz sells proximity to blackness to white people.

Robin D. G. Kelley, Vijay Iyer

Arts in Society

Rap on Trial

Prosecutors use defendants’ rap lyrics to win cases despite the flimsiest evidence. Behind this rests a unique paranoia around hip hop and a long history of criminalizing black art. 

Erik Nielson, Andrea L. Dennis

Arts in Society, Class & Inequality

Zero Hour: The First Days of New Berlin

30 years after the Wall, the story of Berlin's anarchist utopia.

Paul Hockenos

Arts in Society

The Origins of Sexual Healing

Grammy winner David Ritz, who cowrote Marvin Gaye’s legendary “Sexual Healing,” recalls how the song emerged from Gaye’s struggles with faith, drug addiction, and childhood abuse.

David Ritz

Arts in Society, Race

Aretha Franklin’s Soul

‘Amazing Grace,’ the long-lost film of Franklin’s gospel album, offers a lesson in the deep connections between gospel and soul music.

Ed Pavlić

Race

What Happened to Kanye West?

Kanye represents what happens when the liberties of artistic genius are confused for political insight.

Christopher Lebron

Arts in Society

Lenny Boy

A personal essay on family, death, and the healing power of music.

Peter E. Gordon

Arts in Society, Race

Janelle Monáe for President

What Afrofuturism can teach us about surviving Trump.

Christopher Lebron

Class & Inequality

Leaving Behind the Yellow Submarine

Mentorship is how the humanities justify themselves.

Jo Guldi

Arts in Society

Hashpipe of the Vanities

Overestimating the counterculture of the 1960s

Hal Stucker

Arts in Society

A Good, Bad, Hard, Easy Life

A new collection of Lead Belly's recordings.

Dave Byrne

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