“Folk music has such a rich history of songs being passed down, and I feel like that exchange is something I’m meant to be a part of. It’s like passing a bucket of water from one person to the next.” Musician Le Ren (Lauren Spear) on learning while you create:

“I have always wanted to be in a band, even when I was 13. The thrill of playing with musicians, working on the music, and performing it in front of people and having them hear it, has always been one of the main joys of music for me.” Still Modern — Dave Holland at 80:

“People were disappearing or being murdered, so it blows my mind that under a dictatorship with virtually zero news, poverty and police brutality there were kids with spiky hair brave enough to wear fake leather jackets and play with passion and fury.”

“Ask them ‘why’ anything, and their reflex response is ‘why not?’… It speaks to a genuine way of operating, one driven by process and instinct rather than an expected outcome. Set up an interesting experiment, perform the experiment, record the results, proceed to the next experiment.”

“Justin and Treiops put an ad in the D.C. alt-weekly, City Paper, looking for a bassist and drummer into ‘Mission of Burma, Live Skull, Sonic Youth, and William Shatner.’ I saw the ad, was especially intrigued by the Shatner bit, and replied.” Pitchblende Reclaim Their Legacy:

“The result was that the ban was complete: a total blackout in New York City. Our altruism got in the way of our airplay… In our home city, the media capital of Earth, the native sons are banned.” Read an extract from ‘Do What You Fear Most — The History Of The Velvet Underground’:

“Alan Pierson joins us on New Sounds to look back at how the band started (playing Steve Reich’s ‘Music for 18 Musicians’) and where they are now (playing Steve Reich’s ‘Music for 18 Musicians,’ in a series of sold-out shows next week at the Park Avenue Armory).” Alarm Will Sound at 25:

Bill Brennan and Andy McNeill discuss 'Dreaming In Gamelan,' an album that honors West Javanese traditions while exploring ambient textures, electronic processing, and the emotional ambiguity of hand-forged bronze instruments. Gamelan Dreaming — The Surreal World of Bill Brennan and Andy McNeill:

“Before him, the style of popular singing was crooning, sweet, and strait-laced. Armstrong broke up phrases, played around with timbre—sang like he played the horn, in short… It’s no exaggeration to say that music has two eras: Before Louie and After Louie.” The Jazz Singers:

“Our sound is more classical, operatic, and musical. I was trying to tell stories of things that I knew about as a child. I wanted to come out with the darker side of the human brain: What are we here for? Why are we here? What happened in history?” Jinx Dawson speaks on the legacy of Coven:

The German drummer, a member of Web Web and Subtone, discusses 'Drum Seeds,' an album of drums, vintage synthesizers, and spring reverb made alone after his label asked him for drums and nothing else. The Tonearm's Bill Kopp takes the scenic route. Peter Gall's Long Way Around the Drum Kit:

“For the city’s large Haitian community, Montréal is a gathering point in their diaspora. But it’s also a crossroads, one that connects them to the other French-speaking communities in the city and to the rest of the global Francophonie.” The Musical Brilliance of Montreal’s Haitian Community:

“There was all this talent coming from this part of the Caribbean, but it wasn’t being recognized… So it was very important to create a platform where we can share all this great music from our islands, and to make a link between the old music and the new.”

“…I searched everywhere for the music that I wanted to listen to, but I’d never been able to find it. The only way left to me was to create it myself. At the time, I dreamt of how cool it would be to find a record that combined hard rock like Deep Purple with the electronic music of Stockhausen.”

“The entirety of Lewis’s vinyl record collection is displayed in the space, used as both visual enhancement and for a curated soundtrack informing the works on the walls from behind the decks.” A New Exhibit Visualizes the Influence of Music on the Art of Norman Lewis:

“…she has that extra register, that zeitgeist-charged presence, like a movie character. That’s one reason she’s in an arena and they aren’t. And also why she could improbably turn that cavernous hockey hall into a shared ritual space that felt as intimate as her songs.”

“The iron, unwavering tone of Trane’s tenor is one of the towering vertical rockfaces in 20th-century music, unassailable, harder than compressed carbon and worth far, far more to my mind than any material ore.” Something vast out of nothing: