#music-and-resilience

#music-and-resilience

In 2025, Dmae Lo Roberts embarked on a statewide storytelling experience focusing on personal stories from both artists and community members. These stories are a form of living oral history.

The growing Aadam Jacobs Collection is an internet treasure trove for music lovers, especially for fans of indie and punk rock during the 1980s through the early 2000s.

I see you, and it makes me so happy to see you. There is such a disconnect between what we say America is about and what it is right now. True freedom is the freedom to be who we are, and it hurts my heart so much that in some parts of this country, it is unsafe for trans people to do that right now.

Greg has been perhaps my biggest supporter of this project since it started. Greg commissioned the first batch of duos. A while back, he asked me how close I was to getting the first half of them done because I'd always talked about doing two volumes, a book one and book two of the forty-four duos, the way Bartók has them in two volumes.

Chris Thomas, a notable composer, has created music that resonates with the styles of John Williams and Danny Elfman, particularly in his theme park compositions.

In frightening times, it makes a huge difference not to feel alone. Creating art with others in community enhances agency and strengthens self. Creativity requires an open heart; love enhances hope and diminishes fear.

R&B in the 21st century has been in a constant state of flux, tugged between safe traditionalism and blurry attempts at progression. For the last decade-plus that "progression" has seen R&B music become more indebted to trap records and the moody atmospherics of alternative bands like Radiohead, Coldplay, or My Bloody Valentine.

On the first hike, about half-way up the mountain, I reached a point where the path was too slippery, steep and scary. Even though my wonderful guide talked me through the tough parts, I finally realized I'd have to do the same thing going back downhill. So, I stopped. I sat on a moss covered rock. I enjoyed the forest flowers and tree bark and birds and ferns and more.

When the Academy Award Nominations were announced late last month, you could be forgiven for thinking they were lifetime achievement awards. In the Best Supporting Actor category, 74-year-old Stellan Skarsgård is competing against 73-year-old Delroy Lindo. (Sean Penn, at 65, and Benicio Del Toro, at 58, also in the category, are mere babes.) Amy Madigan, 75, is up for Best Supporting Actress. One of the Best Adapted Screenplay nominees is in their sixties, and one of the Best Original Screenplay nominees is in his seventies.

Wooden spoons as microphones, siblings spinning in socks across the floor, a mother laughing as Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" fills the room for the third time in a row-this is love. Long before children understand romance, they learn connection this way, through synchronized movement, shared joy, and the safety of familiar songs. Research on rhythm and social bonding suggests that moving in time together can regulate the nervous system and strengthen feelings of connection.

I've just given a keynote presentation at Lines of Flight: Improvisation, Hope and Refuge, a conference hosted by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. I'd been invited to talk about my performance research with D&aacutelava, a cross-genre project that is influenced by animist, Slavic cosmology and a land-based folk song tradition that has been in my family for generations.