Based out of a conservation center for former work animals, the Thai Elephant Orchestra is just what it sounds like: a group of elephants trained to play enormous percussion instruments, holding mallets in their trunks and sometimes trumpeting along.
The program is part of a national push for science education among minorities. A U.S. Department of Commerce study found that blacks and Latinos are half as likely as whites to have a job in science or engineering.
A group of Jewish and Muslim musicians who played together in the bars and cafes of Algiers in the 1940s and '50s thought they'd never see each other again. But after a chance encounter one of them had with a tourist in an Algerian bazaar, their lives changed forever.
The 77-year-old guitarist and vocalist's new two-disc set features cameos from Kid Rock, Keith Urban and members of Aerosmith. But the lyrics merely set the scene, and the jolts come after the verses — when the profound legend begins to play.
After he helped to develop the bluesy, driving hard bop style in the '50s and '60s, his funkier commercial hit recordings shaped black pop music through the advent of hip-hop. A committed music educator, the Detroit native was 80 when he died last week.
Shires has had a rough year: First she was sidelined by a broken finger, then her 150-year-old violin was broken while she looked on. She discusses her recovery and her new album, Down Fell The Doves.
As the brains behind the hip-hop parody group responsible for digital shorts like "D--- in a Box," Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer have produced some of the funniest Saturday Night Live material in recent memory. Here, they talk about comedy, Yo! MTV Raps and adolescence.
Part of understanding African sacred music means thinking about its colonial context. It's the music of oppressed people combined with the music of their oppressors. For decades, Fred Onovwerosuoke has collected and arranged this music for choral groups.