Tracy Fessenden: Decades after Billie Holiday’s death, ‘Strange Fruit’ is still a searing testament to injustice – and of faithful solidarity with suffering
Sixty-five years ago, on July 17, 1959, Billie Holiday died at Metropolitan Hospital in New York.
Jason Irwin: Blaze of Glory
I remember sitting on the floor watching my parents dance to Chubby Checker’s “The Twist,” their bodies bending and gyrating as Checker called out: “Round and round and up and down we go” like a shaman, beckoning them to partake in this ritual of body and soul…
KATIE MYERS: How Folklore Can Shape Our Climate Futures
As climate change fractures communities, folklorists help stitch them back together.
Al Maginnes: Lydia Loveless’s X
And just over her heart,
a tattooed X, a set of crossed sticks, stitched
into the skin with a sewing needle and ink,
jailhouse style.
Video: Dernier Round
In a Parisian suburb, a promising young boxer must find a way to finance the future of his little sister, a piano prodigy.
Video: Rhiannon Giddens | Songs that bring history to life
Rhiannon Giddens pours the emotional weight of American history into her music. Listen as she performs traditional folk ballads — including “Waterboy,” “Up Above My Head,” and “Lonesome Road” by … Continue reading
Video: Winter
Jamie Scott: “Winter is my third seasonal time-lapse film and the second collaboration with composer Jim Perkins. It is the culmination of 5 years of shooting across New York State … Continue reading
Audio: Chet Baker | Leaving
Chet Baker was an American jazz trumpeter and vocalist. He is known for major innovations in cool jazz that led him to be nicknamed the “Prince of Cool”.
Jose Padua: A Free Jazz Solo for the New Wave Sky
a Saturday afternoon when summer was a deep blue heaven
I could crawl into with my hands waving in the air like long goodbyes
as soon as the sky turned dark
Video: Nick Cave | Forothermore
This short documentary presents the work of wildly imaginative artist, designer and dancer Nick Cave who expresses his liberation on the dance floor as a queer Black man.
Video: Birdsong | The dying whistled language of the Hmong people in northern Laos
Exploring the whistling traditions of the Hmong people of northern Laos, whose language straddles the boundary between music and speech, this film witnesses a collision of ancient tradition with modern … Continue reading
Michael Simms: The Song
The young man and the older woman met at an artist’s colony. They were both in the habit of walking on the wooded paths in the afternoon, so they began … Continue reading
Video: Imelda May Sings “Johnny Got a Boom Boom”
Pulling me down
Like a rumble in the ground
Crawls up from the depths
With a deep down sound
Video: Walt Whitman — “Song of Myself”
Produced by Harvard University, this series of animations looks to poetry to explain what science renders dry and academic.
