“I Can’t Breathe”: Protest Music Now

By: Felicia Miyakawa (Round Rock, TX) // The following essay discusses violence and brutality. Music videos contain news footage of violent acts, accompanied by strong, explicit language. In 2012, the New York Times offered a retrospective about Woody Guthrie’s life to honor his centenary, noting his legendary ability to sing truth to power, to embody protest …

Writing, Memory, and Music: The Birth of Notation

From Capturing Music: The Story of Notation by Thomas Forrest Kelly (W. W. Norton & Company, 2014) // The air around us is filled with sounds. Some are annoying, some are pleasing, and some provide us with information we need. Noise, music, language—what they have in common is that they happen in real time. The …