Arthur Russell's avant-garde music spanned many genres

Ray Charles' 'Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music' albums blurred genre lines

Released in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, Charles’ records showed that country music, by then largely segregated, was an American music, no matter one’s background.

Basquiat was in an experimental punk band in the late 1970s

The band Gray was formed in New York after the city’s ‘70s punk explosion, though Basquiat’s band (which also featured filmmaker Michael Holman and actor Vincent Gallo) was considered no wave—a more experimental subgenre that used the guitar for dissonance rather than melody and toyed with multiple sounds, including hip-hop.

Performance artist Laurie Anderson had an unexpected pop hit with 'O Superman'

Anderson was a working performance artist in New York through the 1970s and pressed a small run of the song—an idiosyncratic, vocoder-driven piece that sounded unlike anything on pop radio. Thanks to a push from influential British DJ John Peel, the song became an unexpected hit, propelling Anderson (and her art) into the mainstream.

Free jazz embraced the avant-garde

Ornette Coleman's 1959 album "The Shape of Jazz to Come" abandoned traditional notions of melody and structure, inadvertently creating "free jazz," a subgenre that embraced absolute musical freedom and gained popularity in the countercultural 1960s.

Zurich's Cabaret Voltaire was the epicenter of early performance art

In early 20th-century Zurich, one nightclub was the epicenter of avant-garde art and performance: Cabaret Voltaire. Night after night, crowds of artists, writers, philosophers, and others would gather to watch—or participate in—wild, unrehearsed performances that could include anything from sound poems to traditional folk dance. The atmosphere at Club Voltaire was the ideal breeding ground for outside art movements, and it is thought to be the birthplace of Dada, a precursor to performance art.

The Beat Generation inspired significant parts of 1960s counterculture

The Beat Generation championed the transformative power of psychedelics, rebelled against the post-war social order, and called for more radical politics. With a strong foothold in San Francisco, it's no surprise these themes were carried over to the city's 1960s counterculture, informing the larger national hippie movement.

Prince had an eclectic range of influences

Early in his career, Prince would sometimes claim in interviews that he didn't listen to much music outside of his own. In later years, he'd admit that was a lie born out of arrogance. In reality, he listened to a wide array of artists, with great admiration for people like the Cocteau Twins, D'Angelo, Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis, De La Soul, and many others. This survey of his career's interviews collects all those mentions of other artists, creating a fascinating database of the music that inspired Prince.

Sun Ra, a free jazz legend, claimed he was an angel

Sun Ra is one of jazz's most storied cult acts, with a career that spans multiple decades, dozens of hard-to-find self-released albums, and a sound that challenged even the most adventurous listeners. Ra, born Herman Blount, claimed to be from Saturn and once told an interviewer that "Star Wars" was "very accurate."

Dylan's raucous 1976 tour was one piece of an ongoing reinvention

In the mid-70s, Dylan assembled a ragtag group of musicians and poets—including Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, and Allen Ginsberg—he called the Rolling Thunder Revue. Rather than playing stadiums in major markets, they played smaller venues in smaller cities for a more intimate experience. The tour yielded some of the most exuberant versions of Dylan songs, captured in this 1976 performance in Fort Collins, which originally aired on NBC as “Hard Rain.”

He also influenced contemporary artist George Condo

The scale and reach of Picasso and cubism inspired artists and art movements throughout the early to mid-20th century. In fact, his influence can still be seen in artists today. One such artist, George Condo (known for painting the album cover of Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” pictured below), heavily references Picasso’s visual language, transmuting the legendary artist’s geometric shapes and perspectives for a more contemporary audience.

Ray Dalio grew up in New York City, and his dad was a jazz musician

Dalio grew up in the Jackson Heights neighborhood in Queens—though his family moved to the city's suburbs when he was eight-years-old. His father played music in famous Manhattan nightclubs like the Copacabana, while his mother stayed home.

Tom Robbins wrote comedy for the counterculture

Robbins passed away at the age of 92, leaving behind a catalog filled with surreal and comic explorations of the American counterculture. But his early success led some to disregard the prophetic and nuanced storytelling in his books.

Ragtime was criticized as dangerous, 'unmusical rot'

The genre—short for "ragged time," a reference to the music's syncopation—was wildly popular at the turn of the 20th century, leading some to deem it morally corrupting and an inferior form. In 1901, the American Federation of Musicians, then the most prominent musicians' union in the country, adopted a resolution designating ragtime as "unmusical rot."

Why one country legend embraced punk rock

Dwight Yoakam was among the most popular country music acts of the 1980s, praised for his upbeat rockabilly and neo-Bakersfield sound. In this interview, Yoakam explains why he left the Midwest for California and began playing in punk clubs, including with an iteration of the legendary LA punk outfit X.

Béla Fleck took the banjo from Appalachian porches to African villages and Carnegie Hall

In a conversation recorded at a Philadelphia instrument shop, Fleck reflects on how an instrument associated with a single American folk tradition became his vehicle for bluegrass, jazz, classical, African folk, and orchestral music. He has long advocated that every living room should have a banjo, and he highlights how he has integrated the instrument across genres in this fascinating discussion.

The Shaggs weren't good musicians, but they still made a classic

In 1969, the three sisters recorded "Philosophy of the World"; only 100 copies were publicly distributed. The record became a cult classic thanks to its strange backstory (their father forced them into playing music) and the band's amateurism. Critic Lester Bangs wrote, "They can't play a lick! But mainly they got the right attitude, which is all rock'n'roll's ever been about from day one."

Long before Coachella, Steve Wozniak attempted a similarly-minded festival

In 1982, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak was on a hiatus from Apple after a near-fatal plane crash. In his spare time, he decided to throw a festival that would bring together cutting-edge music and technology—a Woodstock for the 1980s. The result was the US Festival, an early ancestor of Coachella that brought world-class acts like Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac, Talking Heads, the Grateful Dead, and the Ramones to a rustic venue outside Los Angeles.

Rockwell left high school to become an artist

He began taking art classes at 14, while still in high school, but by 1910, he left traditional schooling to focus on his training at the National Academy of Design. He transferred to the Art Students League soon after to study under Thomas Fogarty, who taught him the particulars of commercial illustration, and George Bridgman, who was known for anatomically precise portraits.

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

Before the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed was a workaday songwriter

His job at Pickwick Records, a label that churned out budget records for department stores, was to crank out generic pop fare. One of those songs was 1964’s “The Ostrich,” a dance song in the style of Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” and Little Eva’s “The Loco-Motion.”

Listen to an interview with Martha Graham from 1974

This interview, from the "Bernard Gabriel Views the Music Scene" program, features a candid conversation in which Graham discusses how her career did not take off until her 30s and how she learned to ignore criticism.

Jimi Hendrix covered ‘Auld Lang Syne’ to ring in 1970

The guitar hero played the song to ring in the new year during his 1969 New Year’s Eve concert at the Filmore East in New York. As you might expect from Hendrix, the standard gets pulled in some interesting directions.

A Harvard radio station once dedicated 24 hours to Jandek

The enigmatic singer-songwriter plays atonal dirges that are haunting or horrible, depending on your taste. He has self-released over 120 albums but rarely performs live, preferring to conceal his true identity. In 2003, a Harvard radio station aired the "Jandek Orgy," which included his fans debating his identity, lyrics, and philosophy.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

Irish music became popular in the US during the 19th century

The influx of Irish immigrants in the mid-1800s, driven by starvation and abysmal employment opportunities, led to a significant Irish-American culture, especially in urban hubs such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco.

Lenny Bruce's stand-up challenged US law

Bruce came up in burlesque theaters, but began to find success as stand-up comedy developed a more political and subversive bent. His sets often satirized what he believed to be an oppressively conformist society, which led to his arrest on several occasions.

Robert Fripp manipulated feedback to create his guitar part on David Bowie's 'Heroes'

The King Crimson guitarist placed markings on the studio floor that instructed him where to get the particular sounds he was seeking. Producer Brian Eno then ran the signal through a synthesizer and bent the sound waves with a joystick.

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

Brian Wilson wrote the Beach Boys' 'Don't Worry Baby' for the Ronettes, but the legendary girl group rejected it.

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

Against his wishes, Albert Einstein's brain was removed before his cremation, and the pathologist responsible stored it for decades in mason jars within a beer cooler.

After her fellow cult members tried to kill her with an LSD-infused hamburger, one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, decided to testify against the group's leader.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

During the French Revolution, a botanist's letter asking about "dear Rhus" (poison ivy) was intercepted, leading authorities to suspect he was conspiring with the Russians.

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

While atoms are normally made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, exotic ones have been built with antimatter—alternate versions of normal matter that live for fractions of a second and are about a billion times as rare.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

Fireworks make a loud booming sound after exploding due to air expanding faster than the speed of sound.

Explore chaos in this simulation of two double pendulums, where small differences in the release angles produce wildly different outcomes.

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.