Music & Culture

Nashville the city, Nashville the TV show, close-harmony groups and two financially viable, independent-minded singers have shattered country music's glass ceiling — and the year's only half over.

Alex Zhang Hungtai is a musician who has spent his life drifting from home to home. His parents were children of communist China, and since setting out, he's lived in places as far-flung as Honolulu, Montreal and most recently, Berlin.

Sherman worked a tight niche: classic songs rewritten to tickle a Jewish audience's funny bone. A new biography, Overweight Sensation: The Life and Comedy of Allan Sherman, explains how the performer's 1960s crossover fell in line with a collective awakening to ethnic identity in America.

Vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant and pianist Aaron Diehl, both in their 20s, have already racked up major industry prizes. They took radically different paths to get there, but on Salvant's new album, they find ways to honor old traditions as young people.

On her second solo release, the Fiery Furnaces singer mines the music of her birth decade. "I'm not embarrassed to say I love the sound of an Elton John record or I love the sound of a Carole King record," she says. "That's my taste."

Dallas Green, once a member of the post-hardcore group Alexisonfire, now makes much quieter music on his own. His fourth solo album, recorded under the name City and Colour, is The Hurry and the Harm.

For a dozen years, a music festival that highlights the music of Africa has been held near Timbuktu, Mali. This year, a nationalist uprising and ongoing battles made the Festival au Desert impossible. A new recording from the most recent event helps fans continue to celebrate the music.

The band just released its third album, Modern Vampires of the City. Chief lyricist and singer Ezra Koenig has described it as the third part of a trilogy about maturing. As part of that process, the album finds sustenance invoking Desmond Dekker and The Rolling Stones.

Rucker is a rock star, courtesy of his years as leader of Hootie and the Blowfish. But on his new country album, you hear the guy who still lives in and loves his home state of South Carolina, right down to its sweet tea and kudzu.

The folk music icon's relationship with his home state has always been complicated. To many in Oklahoma, Guthrie's progressive political views didn't fit with a strong conservative streak during the Cold War period. His reputation there is now closer to full restoration as Tulsa opens his archives.