Democracy depends on the free exchange of ideas. Help sustain it with a tax-deductible donation today.
Browse our essays and reviews on music.
From street demonstrations to song, dance, film, and poetry, women are advancing a long legacy of struggle against authoritarianism in Iran.
Robin D. G. Kelley and Bongani Madondo honor the writer's life, work, and legacy.
Sixty years ago, a pathbreaking jazz album from Max Roach, Abbey Lincoln, and Oscar Brown, Jr., fused politics and art in the fight for Black liberation. Black artists are taking similar strides today.
Through online fan communities and digital platforms like TikTok, popular music is finding powerful new ways to shape everyday activism, protest, and resistance.
Thirty years after the Wall fell, the story of Berlin's anarchist utopia.
How the song emerged from Gaye’s struggles with faith, drug addiction, and childhood abuse.
Amazing Grace, the long-lost film of Franklin’s gospel album, offers a lesson in the deep connections between gospel and soul music.
Kanye represents what happens when the liberties of artistic genius are confused for political insight.
On the feminist essayist, journalist, and music critic who championed women’s liberation.
After years of obscurity, the “5” Royales are finally getting their due.
Drake was an artist so out of step with his own time that he came to be in lockstep with things not bound by time.
A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975. Registered 501(c)(3) organization. Learn more about our mission
We are teaming up this spring to offer a year of both magazines.
Use code DISSENT when you purchase a print BR membership.
Act fast: offer ends March 31!