To the chagrin of many, Bob Dylan has become the first singer-songwriter to win a Nobel Prize. But this James Joyce expert is fully in support.
Many people have turned to Adele in times of trouble. But for people with the symptoms of clinical depression, sad music can do more harm than good.
Reuters/Lucy Nicholson
Plenty of people listen to sad music to make themselves feel better. But new research shows that for people with depression, it can do the opposite – triggering a cycle of negative thoughts.
Best Classical Album winners Flight Facilities, playing at the ARIA award ceremony last year.
Tracey Nearmy/AAP
High-profile awards ceremonies are often only as interesting as the controversies they create. The 2016 ARIA Awards has started strongly in this area. Although the main ceremony is still a month away…
Sonic weapons usually leave no physical marks but can be devastating psychologically.
Vikash Kumar/flickr
From Long Range Acoustic Devices used to disperse protesters to ear-splitting military drones to songs blasted on rotation to prisoners, ours is an age in which sound has been repositioned as a tool of terror.
Mandoza at the South African music Awards in 2012.
South African Music Awards/flickr
Kwaito music star Mandoza was an important symbolic figure in the post-apartheid cultural scene. His success and his refusal to relinquish his tsotsi identity redefined what kind of man could be respected in a free South African.
Music and politics have long been intertwined and political patronage can sometimes lead artists to self-censor. On the other hand, some musicians are just more interested in entertainment than politics.
The OzAsia Festival will showcase innovative and youthful performance art from across Asia.
Hiroaki Umeda's split flow and Holistic Strata. Credit Ryuichi Marui Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media
From a dancer moving against a wash of static, to a show that takes the audience hostage, Adelaide’s OzAsia Festival celebrates both high art and high energy performances.
Sometimes album sleeves reveal little about the music. Instead they illuminate the society it came from, exposing unexpected stories of people, art forms and struggles.
Realpen Pencil is a young instant live drawing artist who lives and works in Accra, Ghana.
Nduka Mntambo
Ghana’s Chale Wote festival’s main aim is to provide an alternative platform for the arts. It uses street arts to break creative boundaries and cultivate a wider audience for the arts in West Africa.
Woody Guthrie’s tenancy in Fred Trump’s Beach Haven apartment complex coincided with a diagnosis of Huntington’s disease.
Library of Congress
A trombonist is forced to play the cymbals, while a pair of marching girls dance out his frustrations. A full brass band slips from classical, to jazz, to folk and cabaret. En Avant, Marche! is a strange show, but worth your time.
The MTV music video awards will be held on Sunday, putting this under-rated genre in the spotlight. Videos are inseparable from music in the digital age and the best examples deserve to be taken seriously as works of art.