Bob Dylan

The 1960s saw a stampede of lefty folk musicians, but none as politically engaged as Phil Ochs.

Rambunctious and often offensive, R. Crumb draws freely on pre-existing racial and gender stereotypes.

Springsteen’s 1982 classic has become an American scripture, its ghosts of fathers and highways still haunting today’s America.

The new Boss biopic robs his music of its mythic American qualities.

The story of the woman who inspired Janis Joplin’s signature song, then slipped away.

J. Hoberman’s teeming history of New York’s avant-garde scene is a fascinating trove of research and a thrilling clamor of voices.

Bradley Cooper’s prosthetic nose is the latest example of the struggles around Jewish representation on the stage and screen.

Europeans translated the "Chinese Book of Changes" in the nineteenth century, but the philosophy really took off in the West after 1924.

Johnny Cash wasn't the only superstar to play in prisons. Music, initially allowed as worship, came to be seen as a rockin' tool of rehabilitation.

Jerry Lee Lewis was known as the Killer, and it wasn’t a casual sobriquet.

The Folkies and WWII, Part Two.

A legendary singer on faith, loss, and a family legacy.

She animated the horror and emotional intensity in American labor songs by projecting them like a European opera singer.

After the 1927 Great Flood, Black musicians from the Delta produced an outpour of songs testifying to the destruction. The same is true today.

Joni Mitchell might not have wanted to be the glamorous bard of women’s rising consciousness, but with “Blue,” she became just that.

Six decades ago, leaders in the GOP backed away from the conspiracy theories peddled by the leader of the increasingly influential John Birch Society.

“Robert Johnson was one of the most inventive geniuses of all time,” wrote Bob Dylan. “We still haven’t caught up with him.”

Was he or wasn't he a member of the Communist Party USA?

The polarized dialogue over Vietnam and the civil rights movement convinced Ginsberg that America was teetering on the precipice of a fall.

Coronavirus songwriting has gone as global as the pandemic itself, creating a new genre called pandemic pop. It’s a tradition with a long history.