Music News

In a 1999 interview, Kongar-Ol Ondar demonstrates his ancient style of singing for Terry Gross.

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.

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.

In the Bible, Psalm 150 tells the faithful to praise the Lord with trumpet, harp, tambourine, stringed instrument and cymbal. In the United House of Prayer for All People, it's all about the trombones. No one knows exactly how trombones ended up in church, but it's an intensely vocal sound.

The group's 1993 debut was the opening shot of an audacious plan to open the music industry to hip-hop made way outside the mainstream.

Our series about rap's greatest year begins with the album that drew directly on cultural and social upheaval to make one of the most popular rap albums of all time.

The club, which booked bands like R.E.M., the Replacements and Yo La Tengo before and after they hit the big time, is shutting down while "people still love us," says an owner.

As more music becomes available for free online, concepts of music ownership start to break down. A musician, a songwriter and Spotify's director of Artist Services share their viewpoints on the ongoing controversy over royalty payments made by streaming services.

Iraq vet Brian Castner wrote a memoir of post-traumatic stress disorder and a difficult homecoming. His book, The Long Walk, got good reviews. But Castner never expected that it would get turned into an opera in New York City.

One of China's hidden musical gems is to be found in the country's hardscrabble northwest, where farmers and the descendents of river boatmen belt out lusty, foot-stomping, knee-slapping folk songs.