In March 1939, a 23-year-old Billie Holiday walked up to the mic at West 4th's Cafe Society in New York City to sing her final song of the night. Per her request, the waiters stopped serving and the room went completely black, save for a spotlight on her face.
Caucus-goers in Des Moines will arrive to a disturbing sight on Monday, with dozens of chain-link cages appearing to hold migrant children cropping up across the city overnight.
Global corporation Unilever dumped toxic and contaminated waste behind its thermometer factory located in Kodaikanal, a city in the South Indian state Tamil Nadu. In 2001, once word spread about this breach in environmental precautions, Unilever closed its factory. However, it is yet to adequately compensate its workers, many of whom suffered mercury poisoning. The corporation has also yet to clean up its mess and remediate the land.
As Black History Month commemorations start to wind down, one festival is just gearing up. Afropunk the Takeover — Harlem, running from Tuesday through Feb. 25, will celebrate black culture with music, art, film screenings, discussions and comedy.
Presaged by shimmering spin-off hits “Dreams” and “Linger,” The Cranberries’ landmark debut album, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?, suggested its creators had taken up the baton handed down by jangly indie-pop classicists The Smiths and The Sundays.
Nadya Tolokonnikova is a Siberian artist and a creator of the feminist protest art collective Pussy Riot. Tolokonnikova’s political actions and wide-ranging performance interventions have established her as a leading voice in the fight against authoritarian power. During her residency, she will compose performances that demonstrate her multifaceted approach to resisting systems of oppression and dehumanization.
Music energizes us, lifts us up when we're down, reaches deep within us to release emotions, creates cultural understanding, and makes us more open and receptive to new ideas. Studies show that when people are listening and dancing together, they are more likely to feel a sense of togetherness, be inspired, show empathy, and be more giving.
Under the moniker BomBaebs, Pankhuri Awasthi and Uppekha Jain rap about rape, cultural stereotypes, religious biases, and hypocrisy surrounding sexism and gender biases in India. They open the video with a disclaimer, warning that “This video doesn’t have any explicit or bannable content. It is just that the reality for women in India is Explicit.”
The Voice of Dissent
“I am not here to entertain you; I am here to disturb you. Those who are here for entertainment, I request them, please go.” It’s unusual, if not rare, for a live performer to begin by saying that to the audience. The compact of patronage that’s implicit is what Sambhaji Bhagat smashes right at the onset of his performance. For him, this art is a quest for the truth that will liberate the people he represents.
Vince Staples mentioned Long Beach's Ramona Park approximately 80 times on his debut album Summertime '06 and even allotted the park two of its own tracks: "Ramona Park Legend Pt. 1" and "Ramona Park Legend Pt. 2." "The sun come down and guns come out, you know Ramona Park."
When the revolution began in Cairo's Tahrir Square,
music played a big role in galvanizing young people and
giving them a voice. So it's not surprising that music
continues to play an important role in Egyptian politics
as the presidential candidates began their campaigns.
"A live interview with the leader of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland was interrupted by protesters. During the live television interview with ARD, Alice Weidel, co-leader of AfD, appeared at times to struggle to hear the questions being asked of her as protesters gathered below the provisional stage for the interview in Berlin.
The rise of rock and roll in the late 1980 was largely associated with the student movements taking place at the same time. Cui Jian, considered by many to be the godfather of Chinese rock, even performed for the students on hunger strike in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, better known to the world as Bad Bunny, has once again proven that his artistry goes far beyond reggaeton and trap. On January 5, 2025 — the eve of Puerto Rico’s cherished Three Kings Day — the Puerto Rican superstar released DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, an album that both celebrates his homeland and delivers a sobering message about its uncertain future.
Promoted as a DIY festival with no corporate sponsorship, the 2015 Latino Punk festival in Brooklyn, NY featured bands from all over the Americas. With an emphasis on local bands supporting each other and nurturing local scenes, this festival functions in reference to the ideals of the punk and Riot Grrrl movements in the 1990s.
Zimmerman a composer who uses art, dance, tech, and even robots in his shows. You might call this interdisciplinary. Wagner called it total art, or gesamtkunstwerk.
Demonstrators aligned with the Occupy Wall Street movement sang their way into handcuffs during a Bronx foreclosure auction Monday to protest the housing crisis that continues to plague the borough.
They serenaded a courtroom of real estate investors with the lyrics, "Y'all are speculating off people's pain. With all due respect, you should be ashamed."
In 1996, filmmaker John Akomfrah created the character of the Data Thief as a narrative device to offer an insightful study of Afrofuturism in his film The Last Angel of History, which links Black musicians including George Clinton, Derrick May, and Sun Ra to Akomfrah’s thesis about the role of technological fantasy in Black artistry across genres and mediums.
Fespaco is a meeting place put to good use to promote the development of black cinematography. From 1973, topics of discussion are introduced at each edition.
Resonate, Reverberate, Roar (Re-Re-Roar) is a growing archive of original sounds that express an experimental, independent, and socially progressive spirit. The sounds on Re-Re-Roar include field recordings, interviews, songs, speeches, experimental music, and more. Re-Re-Roar is a site for research and activ[ist] listening, with the purpose of distributing sounds of resistance to eager ears around the globe.
Counterspace is an independent curatorial platform functioning as the first decolonial thinktank mapping cultural activism worldwide. It shapes collectively decolonial toolkits with common tools and resources, and a global directory browsable by continent, praxis, and social construct, as a Beuys-inspired ‘social sculpture’ revisited, and an alternative map of the universe.
Björk and the French artist Aleph have collaborated on an immersive, AI sound piece that recreates extinct animal calls, set to run at the Pompidou Centre, in Paris, from November 20 until December 9. It will play as visitors travel on escalators in the art museum, as part of its “Biodiversity: Which culture for which future?” forum.
In Kiev, clashes between protestors and police have persisted since December. Blood has been shed, and the political stability of Ukraine remains uncertain.
During late January and early February, the opposition began to play music (from pianos) in front of riot police. These artists modus operandi has been to serenade protestors and police toward peaceful consensuses.