Yo-Yo Ma

Our final entry for the Revolutionary Music series of posts that have centered on individual musicians is about the cellist Yo-Yo Ma. He was born in Paris on October 7, 1955, and took up the cello when he was four years old. Just one year later, he made his professional debut. His family moved to…
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Joan Baez

The folk music star and activist Joan Baez was born on January 9, 1941, in Staten Island, New York. She was a self-taught singer and guitarist who fell in love with folk music when she was in high school in Belmont, Massachusetts. She started to play at local clubs, usually appearing with other local folk…
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Italian-American Heritage Month

October is the month when Italian-American heritage is honored. To do so, we are looking at two different Italian-Americans in Boston: Carlo Carciotto, mandolinist, and Anthony Conigliaro, baseball player for the Boston Red Sox. Carlo Carciotto and the Mandolin These days, most Americans, if asked, probably associate the mandolin with country and old-time music. This…
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Go_A

Go_A is a folktronica band from Ukraine. While the group was formed in 2012 by keyboardist and percussionist Taras Shevchenko and folk singer Kateryna Pavlenko, they didn't really hit the international scene until they appeared in the 2021 Eurovision competition with their entry "Shum," based on a Ukrainian folksong that is about a Spring ritual…
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Hildegard Von Bingen

Hildegard Von Bingen was a German composer, Abbess, mystic visionary, herbal healer, scientist, poet, and more. She was born on September 16, 1098 in the town of Bermersheim to a noble family. She first started having visions when she was only five years old, and three years later her family sent her to a small…
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Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington was a pianist, a composer, and a bandleader. He was born in Washington, D.C. in 1899 as Edward Kennedy Ellington. Duke was a name he picked up in childhood, given to him to describe his elegant manner. His parents were part of the Black middle class of Washington, D.C., and both played music…
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Noah Kahan

Noah Kahan is a singer-songwriter who was born on January 1, 1997, on a tree farm in Vermont. His father taught him how to play guitar at a young age, and by the time he was eight years old he was already writing his own songs. Soon he was uploading them to YouTube and SoundCloud…
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Elton John

Sir Elton John, born Reginald Kenneth Dwight in Pinner, Middlesex, England on March 25, 1947, has had a career spanning decades. He studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music for several years in the late 1950s and early 1960s, though he was already a big fan of the rock and roll of the time…
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Fanny

The band Fanny was a four piece all-woman band, and the first all-women's band to get a record contract. This hard rock band got its start in California when sisters June and Jean Millington were in high school and created the all-girl band called the Svelts, which later morphed into Wild Honey with members June…
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Shakira

Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, known professionally as Shakira, was born in Colombia February 2, 1977, to a Colombian mother and a Lebanese father. Her musical talent was recognized from an early age as she soaked up musical influences from her Latin and Middle Eastern heritages as well as rock and roll sung in English. Her…
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