At Oxford American, as part of their Southern Music Issue, Rosanne Cash celebrates the life and career of electric guitar pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe, an American singer and guitarist who influenced Elvis, Keith Richards, and Johnny Cash. “She traveled the world and left it scorched with her fearlessness and musical originality, inspired fierce devotion from […]
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Black America Unwittingly Provided the Soundtrack to Its Own Displacement
American music may be Black music, but it has now become the music of displacement.
“I Miss My Body When It Was Ferocious”: The Transfiguration of Paul Curreri
For years, singer-songwriter Paul Curreri was a shouter of singular beauty. Then he went quiet — slowly, at first, then all of a sudden.
Best of 2025: All Our Number Five Story Picks
Every story we selected for the number five slot in our weekly newsletter, in a handy digest.
Shelved: The Misfits’ 12 Hits From Hell
For a bunch of rock ‘n’ rollers creating the horror punk genre, the Misfits sure were sensitive.
Something About the Present
“And so I remember that it’s this moment I want, before it becomes the next, where anything could happen and anything could not.”
“Follow Along,” or How to Learn Flamenco Guitar with a Tocaora
“Before he died a few years later, my father told me there were almost no tocaoras — female flamenco guitarists — in the world. If I kept practicing, he said, I could be one of the first.”
Funk Lessons in Sonic Solitude
“Joi’s recorded performances embodied all the funkiness my little soul had been waiting for.”
Judge a Book Not By its Gender
Lisa Whittington-Hill suggests there’s a distinct gender bias in celebrity memoirs. Where female celebrities are expected to expose all, male writers get to write about whatever they want.
