Derek Gripper was a musician with a problem. He'd been playing classical music since he was 6 years old — violin, then piano and finally guitar. He was poised for an international career as a ...

Epochal artists provoke only obscurity or silence during their lifetimes. The interpretation of their art and their contribution begins only after they have departed from the scene. This is proving to ...

Covering the upcoming concert by Ballaké Sissoko and Vincent Segal has rekindled my long-time love of the West African kora, the beautiful 21-string harp-lute used by griots, the storytellers who… ...

The kora is a West African harp with 21 strings and a large calabash gourd body. According to Eric Charry, a historian of West African music, the instrument originated in the late 18th century, during ...