Portside

Jason Isbell, one of the most critically lauded singers and songwriters of the new millennium, raised questions about his own life experience, about the privileges he’s enjoyed, where those privileges came from and who paid what price to create them.

Sheryl Crow, who is releasing a song dedicated to Newtown victims, says country musicians are afraid of speaking about gun laws and losing their audience. Money and fear have kept country music artists from speaking out about gun laws, the nine-time Grammy Award-winner said, even after thousands of country fans were targeted in October in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.

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We can't be silent in the face of racism anymore. "It needs to be white Americans who stand up in solidarity and say this isn't right," country music singer Meghan Linsey took a knee with her guitarist Tyler Cain, Sept. 24 at the Titans-Seahawks NFL game.

'More Southern Dudes Need to Say Black Lives Matter.' From police treatment of African-Americans to the current presidential election, the issues roiling America today have led the Drive-By Truckers to drill down on the topic that has preoccupied them for 20 years - the South - while bringing a relatively unheard perspective to pop music's discourse: that of the progressive white Southerner.

Warren: Senate GOP 'Paying the Price for Their Own Extremism.' Baba Brinkman | A Brief History of Rhyme. Voters for Trump. The Computer That Mastered Go. Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell | Till I Can Gain Control Again.

Meet Greensboro, North Carolina native Rhiannon Giddens; see and hear why she has taken the music world by storm. Hear her music, and that of the Carolina Chocolate Drops. See why she is stretching the borders of traditional folk music, blues, country and old-time music. Hear her tribute to the Charleston Nine.