Gwen Thompkins
Gwen Thompkins is a New Orleans native, NPR veteran and host of WWNO's Music Inside Out, where she brings to bear the knowledge and experience she amassed as senior editor of Weekend Edition, an East Africa correspondent, the holder of Nieman and Watson Fellowships, and as a longtime student of music from around the world.
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Ellis Marsalis, jazz pianist, educator and patriarch of the Marsalis family, has died. His music students included Terence Blanchard, Donald Harrison, Harry Connick, Jr., and four of his sons.
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The Latin American Library at Tulane University is digitizing a whopping collection of Cold War-era, must-hear entertainment — Spanish language radionovelas made by Cuban emigrés in Miami. -
African-Americans in the city have paraded in spectacular regalia inspired by Native American motifs for more than a century. The song of the Mardi Gras Indians exudes joy, defiance — and mystery. -
Regine Chassagne of Arcade Fire pays tribute to her Haitian roots with a new Krewe du Kanaval at carnival this year. The effort is a collaboration with Preservation Hall Foundation.
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In music, "accidentals" are notes that color just outside the lines. They shocked listeners during the Renaissance, but these days you can find them all over the place. -
NPR contributor Gwen Thompkins met the musician at a time when he'd thrown himself into performing around the world. Before his death this week in Madrid, he gave her a song he never got to release. -
New Orleans lost much since Hurricane Katrina, and the failed levees that flooded the city. But Gwen Thompkins says the passions that survived the flood kept her city alive too. -
Though not yet 30, The Kentucky Sisters sing songs that date back to the 1920s. Along the way, they've found that a little emotional involvement can make learning history a lot more fun.
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In the 1990s, Jim McCormick was teaching at the University of New Orleans and looking ahead to a future in academia. Today, he's one of the hottest lyricists in country music, having hit the top of the Billboard Country Music charts twice in the past six months. -
Any New Orleans piano player worth his fingers owes a debt to Henry Roeland Byrd, aka Professor Longhair. The late musician's home is still standing on Terpsichore Street, but it's in serious disrepair.
