The Syrian Cassette Archive, preserving a disappearing history
When Yamen Mekdad and Mark Gergis met in 2018, the pair combined their love of Syrian cassettes into a project aiming to save them — and share them more widely.
Music Features
Mexico's Son Rompe Pera bang the marimba at the crossroads of cumbia and punk
Tradition and modernity coexist peacefully within Son Rompe Pera, where punk collides with the cumbia the band grew up playing.
With '$oul $old $eparately,' Freddie Gibbs cashes in on his cachet
Forget what F. Scott Fitzgerald said about American lives and second acts, Gibbs is on his third or fourth. $$$ is a rewarding listen that sometimes labors under the weight of a forced progression.
Where are the Black musicians in the country's largest orchestras?
In 2014, a study found that only 1.4% of orchestra musicians were Black. In 2022, it's hard to know if that number is better or worse.
Youngbloods: Saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins
We close out our Youngbloods series with saxophonist and composer Immanuel Wilkins, who takes us into the relationship between his faith and his compositions.
La segunda vida de Interpol
Interpol may have been central to a post-9/11 New York scene, but it also might be considered one of the biggest Mexican rock acts of the last two decades.
Lambchop's long and winding road
Kurt Wagner's Nashville collective has always been an expression of absolute possibility. The Bible, his best album in a decade, points that instinct at life's most inescapable truth.
A composer's meditation on the moment, blown up to immersive proportions
Seven months after it debuted at the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Tyshawn Sorey relaunches his work Monochromatic Light (Afterlife) on a monumental new scale in New York's Park Avenue Armory.
How to fit a top-tier HBCU marching band and the gospel tradition onto one album
The massive sound of The Aristocrat of Bands, a highly respected HBCU marching band, and the overflowing history of gospel combine on a single album (with a great title) — 'The Urban Hymnal.'
Challenging traditional sertanejo, Brazil's Gabeu creates space for queer love songs
Part of a new scene called 'queernejo,' the Latin Grammy-nominated Gabeu is reworking the conservative, macho stylings of sertanejo.