Although the sound of the music has changed, country’s themes have endured.
Aaron Gilbreath
A Genre of Myths: A Jazz Reading List
Created in New Orleans and played around the world, the music we call jazz is filled with genius, legend, and tragedy.
Removing Beethoven’s Wig: A Classical Music Reading List
Classical music is more than dead Europeans in wigs, starched collars, and stuffy concert halls.
What classical music is, where it’s going, and what it still can be.
Smoking: A Legal Weed Reading List
The economy, the culture, and the promise of cannabis.
Down the Rabbit Hole: A Psychedelic Reading List
The science, the strangeness, the promise, of psychedelic journeys.
Tangled Up in Bob Stories: A Dylan Reading List
Few musicians have generated as much music and as much study as this Nobel Prize winning singer-songwriter. Dylanology will last hundreds of years.
Hearing Voices
Editor’s note: the essay originally referenced in this post at Threepenny Review was taken down.
Bone, Blood & Bigots: On The Liberation of L.B. Jones
“A 1965 novel about racial injustice and police brutality in the Deep South was hailed by critics and made into a major movie. The story would haunt its author until the bitter end.”
The Power and Business of Hip-Hop: A Reading List on an American Art Form
Stories of hip-hop’s genius, influence, struggle, and endurance.
Life in the Chelsea Hotel During Pandemic
The remaining residents face isolation, and the challenges of preserving their history while enduring the present.