Beyonce’s hit “Texas Hold ’Em” opens with a beat seldom heard on hip-hop tracks: the unmistakable clip-clop of a four-stringed clawhammer banjo. It comes via folk icon Rhiannon Giddens, who was ...

Early American banjo music is Black music. The banjo was created by enslaved African Americans, and according to the Smithsonian Institute, up until the 1830s, the banjo was exclusively an African ...

Beyoncé's surprise new country album has kicked open the saloon doors to a new audience. While this may not be Beyoncé's first rodeo when it comes to country music, people are now exploring the genre ...

Pop superstar Beyoncé released "Texas Hold 'Em" a few weeks ago and it features an instrument that she had never emphasized before. This hit song, on her new (and hugely popular) Cowboy Carter album, ...

This is an updated version of a story first published on May 18, 2025. The original video can be viewed here. The idea that this country has become one big, bland, conformist culture, the United ...

Many musicians would be just fine with earning the kind of success seen by Lost Bayou Ramblers. The Grammy-winning Cajun band melded brothers Louis and Andre Michot’s traditional music heritage with ...

The music came from Louisiana. Two fiddlers sang swift, warm phrases in Cajun French, repeated like a private joke among friends. Mitch and Jen Reed, known among the best Cajun fiddlers in the country ...

Cajun dance and old-time string band music will be highlighted this evening in Honokaa. ADVERTISING Cajun dance and old-time string band music will be highlighted this evening in Honokaa. Cajun ...

I took a break from the late-night gigs and got a job at Werlein's music store. There were a couple of banjos hanging up with the guitars and it was my job to take care of them. As I was cleaning one ...