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The fourth track on Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series Volume 1 is a song called ‘No More Auction Block’. The melody is simple, rising and falling in hymn like steps over acoustic guitar. The song’s lyrics are also simple and adamantly clear—a call to end the horrifying spectacle of Black humans being sold as slaves, objects […]
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Though associated with nighttime dance parties and clubs, electronic dance music has saturated many aspects of contemporary culture. We hear it in adverts and shops. Even some restaurants employ a DJ to play dance music, although people are seated to eat and are unlikely to get up for a boogie. According to Google’s Ngram viewer, […]
Read MoreWe’ve all received what used to be called a “left-handed compliment,” a comment or judgement that seems positive on the surface, but holds a thinly veiled insult. Parisian composer Louise Farrenc (1804-1877) found herself on the receiving end of that sort of compliment throughout her career as a composer, pianist, and teacher at the famous […]
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I have been writing about Cuban music and popular culture for some time, as an outsider. It is a fraught position: being based in the United States, strongly attracted to Cuban heritage, trying to undertake rigorous research and pursue sensitive topics while frequently being perceived as someone who may have an ax to grind as […]
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The idea of the “Czech lands” has never been simple. These regions have carried many titles in various languages throughout history and sometimes held radically different meanings, including “the Czech Republic,” “Czechia,” “Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia,” “Čechy, Morava, a Slezsko,” “Böhmen, Mähren, und Schlesien,” and “the Bohemian crownlands,” among other possibilities. In his landmark essay […]
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Gaetano Donizetti’s 1835 tragic opera Lucia di Lammermoor is known for a lot of things: its Scottish setting, its beautiful bel canto melodies, its tale of forbidden love and a final lover’s suicide. But for most opera lovers, one thing stands above all others-the iconic, show-stopping mad scene, which showcases a blood-soaked newly-minted bride convulsing on stage. […]
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Compared with [J. S. Bach’s] six sonatas for violin without accompaniment these violoncello solos are light and unpretending. Nevertheless, they are interesting, because they are Bach’s. The first and last (in C major) are little better than exercises for the acquirement of mechanical facility, more suitable to the studio than to the concert-room, for which […]
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In the twelfth through fourteenth centuries, at the height of the cult of the Virgin Mary, a rare and rich conflux of past and present events, both authentic and legendary, catapulted Orvieto into the spotlight as a political, religious, and intellectual center. First papal conflict with the encroaching Holy Roman Emperor and Cathar heresy were […]
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