Milo Miles

In the early '60s, Dave Van Ronk, still in his 20s, had become the grand honcho of the Washington Square folk scene in New York. He never managed to get as far beyond that role as he deserved. (His autobiography, The Mayor of MacDougal Street, helped inspire Joel and Ethan ...

When I first found out that a new style of dance music had conquered whole clubs in Europe, particularly France, I was put off by the name: electro-swing. Immediately, I thought of the so-called swing revival of the 1990s. Not only is swing a term with a notoriously slippery definition, ...

Born in Los Angeles in 1947, Sylvester James, always known as Sylvester, defied every convention and never hesitated to go his own way. Starting when he was a child, Sylvester never publicly shied away from his gayness and always rejected the description of "drag queen," making a persuasive case that ...

Long ago, one of my college history professors hammered home a durable truth: "If you love art," she said, "you should hate war." Because some art is always among war's victims.

A case in point is a music celebration called Festival au Desert — held near Timbuktu, Mali, since 2001 ...