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.
-
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom made its debut last year with a striking cast of characters, but it was Branford Marsalis' job to make the music take flight.
-
Listen to a selection of marvelous music from the First Lady of Song, plus music by artists who have felt her influence. -
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. -
The city of New Orleans is on a first-name basis with Quint Davis, who has happily occupied a central role in the city's beloved Jazz and Heritage Festival since the very beginning. -
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.
-
The rhythm-and-blues legend who became one of the progenitors of rock 'n' roll — and reportedly sold more than 65 million records along the way — died Tuesday. -
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. -
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. -
A New Orleans socialite donated space in her family's mausoleum in the city's famous St. Louis Cemetery No. 2. Now, the final resting place of a white, aristocratic family is also the eternal home of black musical royalty: Ernie "Emperor of the Universe" K-Doe and Earl King.
