Music in American life

"Florence B. Price (1887-1953) was the first African American woman composer to achieve national recognition. She grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, studies at the new England Conservatory, and spent her professional career in Chicago (1927-53), where her Symphony in E Minor, premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933 under the direction of Frederick Stock, marks the first large-scale work by an African American woman composer (and the second...

With a claim on artists from Jimmie Rodgers to Jason Isbell, Americana can be hard to define, but you know it when you hear it. John Milward s Americanaland is filled with the enduring performers and vivid stories that are at the heart of Americana. At base a hybrid of rock and country, Americana is also infused with folk, blues, R&B, bluegrass, and other types of roots music. Performers like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, and Gram Parsons used...

"As a member of Poster Children, Rose Marshack took part in entwined revolutions. Marshack and other women seized a much-elevated profile in music during the indie rock breakthrough while the advent of new digital technologies transformed the recording and marketing of music. Touring in a van, meeting your idols, juggling a programming job with music, keeping control and credibility, the perils of an independent record label (and the greater perils...