Moving toward liberation through music in South Africa

A handful of us scream in recognition like sea flares on a dance floor.

Fifteen pieces on song, dance, and revolution

I close my eyes once again and let my hands remember the beat.

今夜我抱着我妈 今夜我唱着夜曲 | Tonight I hold my mother in my arms

St. Lenox performs a four-song set at the Workshop, including a track from his second album

Ashok Kondabolu speaks to Vijay Iyer about an alternate history of jazz, opening institutional spaces, and the resistance and defiance within music.

Poetry mixtapes, music for aliens, Asian American science fiction and more.

‘The Night Of’ star Riz Ahmed talks to Ashok Kondabolu about cricket jerseys, patriotism, acting while brown, and race in the UK.

Padmini Naidu, also known as the Blasted Brown Blogger on Tumblr and co-host of the ALTBrown podcast, talks about growing up brown and goth metal head in Hollis.

‘I left them both at the wedding reception. The best man was toasting the groom by listing all the women he’d given up for his new bride, and I’d had about enough.’

Journalist and music critic Hua Hsu talks to Ashok Kondabolu about the best and worst of his dad’s record collection and how his fascination with rap beef inspired his upcoming book

In the mid-1970s, with a DIY fog machine and light stands made of tire rims, Sound Explosion brought the experience of the discotheque back to garage parties, school dances, and weddings.

Gene Oishi, author of the novel Fox Drum Bebop, reflects on the Japanese American story beyond the wartime experience.

If these are ghosts, trace them / in the dismal notes of the gutter, / the window’s drumming murmur

Khmer record and film collector Nate Hun is part of a growing movement quietly reconstructing Cambodia’s tumultuous past.

Vintage American country-western music helps Indo-Guyanese express ineffable heartbreak, spirituality and political emergence.

Harmoniums are all over South Asian music. But they also connect Guyana and Punjab spiritually

“I fear that we’ll remember Fred’s evocative style, but forget his penetrating political substance.” On remembering what not to forget.

What the marginalization of Asian Americans in an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery says about the appropriation of “cool.”

The sounds of Taipei, from farting mopeds to bustling night markets, unfold through tracks by Joy Division, Asobi Sekksu, Dum Dum Girls and more

Crown Heights-based activist DJ Ushka talks about growing up in Thailand, gentrification, global bass, and Edward Said.

In Queens to “clash,” Japanese dancehall kings Mighty Crown talk old-school Brooklyn and dub plates

Bill Cheng talks us through his five favorite blues musicians, and how their work inspired his debut novel.

The Basement Bhangra deejay revisits the neighborhood of a legendary Hollis nightclub that flourished in the 90s.

Formed in Iran—and influenced by Joy Division—the indie band had to high-tail out of the Islamic Republic for fear of reprisals. Why the band wound up in Brooklyn.

A handful of books provide vivid details on the rap that grew out of Queens.

In a way, Curtis Jackson is a link to the era of black American immigration to South Jamaica, the violence that befell those who came, and the strange marriage of drugs and music that followed. He may be the last.

Stereogum editor Amrit Singh has a hang with Das Racist hypeman Ashok Kondabolu. Proper nouns mentioned: George Washington, Britney Spears, Jenny Slate (a.k.a. the “Marcel the Shell” girl), and C. Mohan (Bollywood’s most iconic designer).

“The first real song I wrote was a book report for Lord of the Flies.”

The journalist and debut fiction writer chats with fellow Grantland writer Hua Hsu about his new neo-noir novel, grading papers, and Duck Down videos.

The internet’s foremost comic book emcee joins MC Lars and Math The Band at The Knit.

“Since their submission was purely auditory, no one at Sprite realized they were Asian American.”

It all started with Beijing rock band The Fly—a cross between the Sex Pistols and Nirvana, but, you know, in Mandarin.

Ma-Yi Theater Company pays tribute to Jessica Hagedorn with a special performance.