William Prince, Julian Taylor, Allison Russell, Aysanabee and Shawnee Kish perform a tribute to the late Robbie Robertson at the Juno awards, in Halifax, on March 24, 2024.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese
Paying tribute to departed and living musicians via memorial tributes and awards is a way of lifting up artists’ significant roles defining and shaping musical innovation and cultural identity.
Sales of vinyl records continued to increase in 2023 – decades after the LP’s death was forecast by music experts.
(AP Photo/Aaron Doster)
Vinyl’s unlikely comeback story is linked to a combination of slick marketing, claims of superior sound, its polysensorial character and how it evokes nostalgia to construct and reconstitute memory.
Cobain was very much the anti-superstar of his time.
Will Beyoncé’s new album help to break down racial barriers in the country music industry? Here she performs during the ‘On The Run’ tour on July 18, 2014 in Houston, Texas.
(Photo by Aaron M. Sprecher/Invision for Parkwood Entertainment/AP Images)
Beyoncé’s country-inspired album has caused a stir because the country music scene has a history of racial segregation that has erased its Black roots and gatekept it from Black artists.
Pianist Maurice El Medioni performing on stage.
Photo by Andy Sheppard/Redferns
Listening to El Medioni’s work is a deep dive into the history of north African Jews over the last 150 years, long pre-dating his birth.
Toronto band The Beaches, fronted by lead singer and bassist Jordan Miller, closes off the 2024 Juno awards in Halifax, March 24, 2024.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese
All-female rock bands like The Beaches are both a breath of fresh air and also heirs to a tradition of women in rock that includes early Black female guitarists and the 1990s riot grrrl movement.
The late Sikiru Ayinde Barrister.
Nigerian Tribune
For some musical artists, TikTok has become a beacon in an otherwise dismal digital streaming landscape.
Listening to music from a device creates a protective bubble that can counteract a lack of personal space at school or home.
Pierre Michel Jean/AFP via Getty Images
Beatriz Ilari, University of Southern California and Lynne Snyder, University of Southern California
In the past, adolescents’ musical palettes were dominated by the Top-40 artists, creating a widely shared – if perhaps narrow – repertoire of musical knowledge.
David Bowie on stage at Live Aid in 1985.
Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy
Live Aid showed charities how much celebrity involvement could raise the profile of particular causes – but also the kind of problems that associations like this can bring.
Emma Stone as the irrepressible Bella Baxter in Poor Things.
Yorgos Lanthimos/Searchlight Pictures
Across the program, I was struck by how it was often more in the act of putting on and performing the work, rather than their spoken content, that expressed political responses to our times.
Zimmer creates a sound world full of texture, personality and new timbral possibilities.
The composer’s expressionism is often compared to paintings of his friend and fellow expressionist, Wassily Kandinsky. Kandinsky’s 1925 painting ‘Yellow-Red-Blue.’
(Wikipedia)
Though composers after Schoenberg used his technique to create atmospheric music in film, Schoenberg’s own ‘Accompaniment to a Film Scene’ was written for concert performance.
The score of ‘Poor Things,’ by composer Jerskin Fendrix, is one of several Oscar-nominated scores by a composer with solid credentials in popular music.
(Searchlight Pictures)
Using a variety of instruments and playing live music on the film set are all part of how composer Jerskin Fendrix generated brilliant sonic accompaniment for ‘Poor Things.’