Music Features

'The Big Boss' took a genre from working-class neighborhoods and turned it into a commercial powerhouse. But as the trailblazer retires, reggaeton meets a new moment for rebellion and experimentation.

A Mexican cumbia-punk band called Son Rompe Pera, a traditional singer from West Bengal named Rina Das Baul and a group from near Timbuktu called Al Bilali Soudan: three global acts on the rise.

In times of crisis, we're grateful for music that speaks to the current moment. So we asked a handful of visionary artists: Who taught you that music could be a vehicle for political expression?

Rose's early records mixed country, pop and indie rock — a rare approach at the time. Now, she's released her lustrous new record, CAZIMI, into the musical landscape that she helped shape.

In the three decades between her solo debut and this year's Fossora, Björk has turned her singular singing voice toward a more egalitarian ideal.

On the startlingly direct Spirituals, and in headline-grabbing rebukes of music's trickle-down economy, Santi White is what she's always been: a forward-thinking alternative to pop's here and now.

How does a scene survive when disaster strikes its venues, music schools, rare instruments and priceless archives all at once? The musicians of flood-ravaged eastern Kentucky have a few answers.

Parker's crystalline vocals and spare percussion gave Low's sound a grounding force and a leavening agent all at once. She died Saturday, but her voice is eternal.