| REDBONE IN EUROPE |
Featering Pat Vegas
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Redbone In Smithsonian Exhibition...
“power chord”, a prerequisite for rock-n-roll thereafter. All these key musical moments were the product of Native American songwriters and performers. Native people have been active participants in popular music worlds for nearly a century. This small exhibit appreciates the best of them, and tells their stories as well as the history behind them through film clips and videos, instruments and album covers on display, and of course, the music. It also features the testimony of mainstream music greats whom they influenced, and beyond that, to current Native performers who build on their legacy of accomplishment through their music.
Up Where They Belong: Celebrating Native Achievements in Popular Music
It might not be surprising to learn that some Native American musicians made innovative pathways into of popular music from the early part of the twentieth century to the present world of contemporary music. What is more notable, though, as we are currently exploring at the NMAI, is the extent of their accomplishment, as truly world-class musicians who influenced the sound of every genre of popular music form they came to engage with, and brought to them a unique world of perspective and musical expression that we are only beginning to appreciate as we investigate their contributions.
Native people have been active participants in contemporary music worlds for nearly a century. More than a few Native performing artists have had successfully broad and impacting careers in the world of popular music; in fact, there are many, and some in each form of popular music- from Jazz and blues to folk, country, and rock. Some took the role of the supporting performer, sideman, or session player- staying mostly in the shadows; some, though, took to the limelight and are well known, but likely, not for their Native background as for the contribution they made to their chosen form of popular music.
Through the upcoming exhibit, Up Where We Belong, opening at the Mall museum on July, we will appreciate the best of them, and tell their musical stories as well as the history behind them. We will hear from music greats whom they worked with, learn who they were inspired by, and, in their turn, consider who they influenced. And beyond that, we will look to current Native performers who build on their legacy of accomplishment through their own music.
Native Peoples and the Experience of Popular Music
Since the era of the “civilizing initiatives” of Indian policy during the turn-of-the-century period, in which traditional forms were either discouraged or even outlawed in communities and in institutions and schools, Native people were brought closer to the world of mainstream forms of music. In fact, popular music both came to them- when the radio brought mainstream music to the reservation- and, they went to experience it- in opportunities to see traveling groups or mission bands locally. And for many young Native people, even their worlds of exile in boarding schools included education in the arts, and hence, opportunities to learn and experience popular music styles. Returning home with those instruments- and the musicianship they represented- those new talents were brought face to face with the traditional fold. The interchange that occurred thereafter is part of our story. Later, when the government recognized that much policy on the reservations was unsuccessful, it created new policies that encouraged migration to urban areas for work, which was very effective; and so, large numbers of Indian people were brought to the centers of mainstream cultural life. Many, such as those highlighted here, were deeply affected by the music they experienced in the cities, so that it, too, became a part of them.
Setting the Stage: Native Performers who were pioneers in their genre of popular music in the 20th century
Mildred Bailey: A First Lady in Jazz
Though she is consistently vaunted in Jazz history as being the first singer who was not of African-American background to successfully adapt the rhythmic and improvisatory flavors of black music, such as dixieland and ragtime, into a more mainstream swing Jazz setting, Mildred Bailey was not merely 'white'- she was of Irish decent, but also a member of her mother's tribe, the Coer d'Alene. It was her mother, Josephine, who played an integral role in her muscial training in both mainstream forms- as a piano and voice teacher in Tekoa, Washington, just outside the reservation- and in her early appreciation of the flow and sounds of traditional language and musical expression. How this exposure might have given form to her unique vocal expression across such a long, influential Jazz career is difficult to say, but as the first of our notables here, it is important to highlight that for this Golden age entertainer, in a popular music world tough to break into in any circumstance, being 'known' as Native American was not a career option.
Mildred started her public career as a cinema pianist in Spokane, but by 1929 she had been handpicked by the popular bandleader Paul Whiteman to sing for his orchestra in Los Angeles- itself a first and a standout accomplishment for any female vocalist. By '32 she had made some of the recordings she would be remembered for, including her most acclaimed and memorable hit, Hoagy Carmichael's Rockin’ Chair. Along the way, her younger brother Al arrived in L.A. with their high school friend, Bing Crosby, and Mildred helped them get a foothold in the music scene, until Bing and Al managed to get a gig as a singing duo. Bing would later remember both Mildred’s style as trendsetting for he and other singers, saying, “The Bailey vocal style was just that- style.. how timeless it was!”
The 'Rockin' Chair lady' was a household name by the mid 1930's, trumping even her own earlier accomplishments by becoming a band leader, and working with almost every big name in the swing Jazz era: Red Norvo; Benny Goodman; Woody Hermann; Jack Teagarden; and many others. And, as the hallmark of notoriety for band leaders in the period, having her own radio show, on which she sang songs arranged for her and served as the hostess in musical interludes with a veritable who's who of the swing era; here, in as show from 1945, she introduces Woody Hermann.
Russell “Big Chief Moore: Understanding the Achievements of a Great “Sideman”
One question we are asking about Native performers in contemporary music is how their early musical lives were shaped within their community, and how it was that popular music came to be their expression of choice, where there may have been other options- including traditional music- to choose from. For both Pettiford and Moore, a key factor in shaping their potential accomplishment as young musicians seems clear- and in essence, a clearly Native factor- family. Russell Moore was born at Gila River Indian Community in 1912 to J. Newton and Elizabeth Moore. When his father died, his aunt and uncle, William and Mary Moore, undertook responsibility for raising Russell, and brought him to Chicago, where they were active musical educators. Russell had the opportunity to experiment with many instruments during this time, but one experience seems to have solidified his inclination to a particular style and instrument: He saw Louis Armstrong play at the Sunset Café, of which he later recalled, “Oh, what a sound! I liked his style and that’s the story. He inspired me.” Russell’s next career move sheds light on an experience that is certainly unique to some American Indian musicians- music education programs at Indian boarding schools. Enrolling voluntarily at Sherman Indian Institute in California, Russell may have understood that what he saw in Louis’ playing was greatness, and if he wanted to aspire to that for himself, he would need an environment in which to pursue that level of musicianship. The Sherman music and band program was a fine program that generated several accomplished performers. At Sherman, Russell focused on the trombone, and modeled his sound and style after that which he recalled from the clubs, café’s, and streets of Chicago. Barely graduating before being called upon to play in some of the notable big bands in nearby Los Angeles, Moore would woodshed his technique and style in the bands of Lionel Hampton and Eddie Barefield, before pointing his horn to the source of his first inspiration- to New Orleans and the Dixieland sound Louis Armstrong had brought to Chicago years earlier.
It was neither chance nor luck that found the great ‘Satchmo’ picking him up for the trombone section in his big band in 1944- hard work had given him the chops and the temperament to play well on the demanding tour circuit of the day. “I was elated, just to be behind him. I listened to the way he sang, to the way he played. We never had a cross word.” And that’s where you’ll see Russell in the 1946 film , New Orleans, behind Louis and Billie Holiday, with ‘Satchmo’ calling him out to solo, growling, “Take it, Big Chief!”- The name he would carry for the rest of his career as a performer. It is after the big band heyday, though, that Russell would go beyond Satchmo’s shadow to hone his contribution to the role of the Dixieland sideman in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the clubs of Paris, where a revival of the small band sound was in. “Big Chief” made his most notable recordings there, with Mezz Mezzrow, Buck Clayton, Sidney Bechet, and others. His sound, at its most confident there, is almost raucous, his vibrato as wide as the room, yet his solos are understated, well-chosen tonal statements. In the sixties, though, after serving Louis Armstrong again for another turn, this time with his “All-Stars” in their Hello, Dolly! heyday, Moore took the solo turn that brings him back to his roots, and provides a glimpse at how his career was both the simple story of a musician in the top tier of his genre’s performers, and a man with a background that may have made him appreciate it differently. He retired from the All-Stars to finally head his own band, the Russell Moore “Pow-Wow Jazz Band”, including leading stints to Native communities and schools with the support of the National Congress of American Indians. There, he performed as a band leader, even singing the great standards, but also brought the message of music and achievement to Native youth at home, saying, “You can do it, too… Music is a source of revelation, and a means of understanding one’s self and a means of understanding one’s fellow man.”
Link Wray: Instrumental Innovator and Shaper of the Rock and Roll Sound
In 1958, a lot of people heard Link Wray’s song Rumble, as it climbed the sales charts to # 16. But the dark and sinister quality of the tune was very different from the other instrumentals on the radio, such as that of Dick Dale or Duane Eddy, and coupled with the suggestion of violence the tune’s title conveyed, many radio stations refused to play it. As an instrumental, they didn’t hear him sing, and couldn’t envision precisely who was sending such a raucous, fuzzy, over-the-top sound through their little radios, which were hardly large enough to reproduce the sound the guitarist was creating in the studio. Such began the notorious career of Link Wray, who was simply the first guitarist to shape an image of musical power wielded through the guitar, both through a dark, mysterious persona, and most importantly, though the innovations behind that anthemic sound: volume, distortion, and a simplicity of song structures that were immediately, and ever-after, a hallmark of rock and roll. He is nearly universally credited with inventing the “power chord” without which the hard rock form could not stand, and in his hands, distortion, echo and ‘wah’- now staples of guitarists, were seamless before there was any equipment to produce them easily. Link was just one member of another musical family that was part Shawnee in background and had remained in the South, where he absorbed the blues and gospel that was all around him, but found a niche playing in country and western gigs on and off with his brothers as the Palomino Ranch Hands. Link never quite fit the rockabilly mold, as the form could not contain his boundless innovation and tendencies toward sonic extremes; it was after tiring of that format that he woodshedded the sound they unleashed as Link Wray and the Ray-Men, following Rumble with a string of chart-denters- Raw-Hide: #23; and Jack the Ripper, never getting the full support of the radio and publicity machine, but selling a ton of records anyway. It was who was buying those records that puts Link of any map of the history of rock and roll: Major rock figures from The Who’s Pete Townsend to Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page credit Link with awakening their interest in playing guitar, and in the sonic possibilities they could explore once they were on the bandwagon. He lives as the quintessential guitarist’s guitarist.
In 2003, Rumble was chosen for the “500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll” list of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, who also has one of Link’s signature guitars.
Peter La Farge: Completing the Folk Circle
By the age of ten, Peter La Farge had already had a New York debut- dancing the eagle dance alongside his father, the Native activist and novelist Oliver La Farge. Representing the Hopi/Tewa upbringing that was his adoptive native community{he was Narragansett by heritage} in that way, it is hard to envision the path that took him from the Korean war to long stints as a professional rodeo rider, and back again to New York’s Greenwich Village, and the folk circle that had been gathering there in the early 60’s. He was a regular in that circle of would-be greats, which included Pete Seeger, Ed McCurdy, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, as well as a young folk singer named Bob Dylan, who encouraged a friend of his to come around the Gaslight café and see La Farge play. La Farge was no upstart, having honed a western themed, cowboy-folk style while still on the rodeo circuit under the tutelage of such legends as Big Bill Broonzy and Cisco Houston. But Johnny Cash would not have been impressed by all that; he was impressed with La Farge’s straight-talking ballads of American Indian history and life, the struggles of contemporary Native people for essential rights, and for a true accounting of their history. This would become no ordinary musical exchange- Cash would become fascinated with La Farge and his songs, and understudy to the ins and outs of the folk scene, the village lifestyle of Dylan and company. Sharing this and song material, he would take at least five of La Farge’s songs back to Nashville to record. The resulting album, Bitter Tears, was a landmark for Cash, but also, for the country music business, through which the album served as a catharsis- a reckoning point of the role of the country music performer with that of the social activist- a role Cash felt was his birthright, and is now only truly understood by.
“Peter was a genuine intellectual, but he was also very earthy, very proud of his Hopi heritage…The history he knew so well wasn’t known at all by most white Americans in the early 1960’s…his was a voice crying in the wilderness. I felt lucky to be hearing it.” Johnny Cash, from Streissguth.
We were pretty tight for awhile.
We had the same girlfriend. When I think of a guitar poet or protest
singer, I always think of Peter, but he was a love song writer too.”
--Bob Dylan, CBS Biography
Rita Coolidge: A Hummingbird’s Journey to the Top of the Charts, and back to her roots
Rita Coolidge’s musical background was firmly rooted in the gospel traditions of her Cherokee and Scottish family, and in the vibrant country and crossover music industry she emerged within between Nashville and Memphis. By the time her voice started to draw particular attention in the early ‘70s, she had ten years of experience as both a commercial session singer and as backing vocalist for such figures as Glen Campbell, Joe Cocker, and Jimmy Buffet. When she signed her first solo recording contract, her record company explored her Indian side in terms of her image- evident in how she is portrayed in early album covers such as The Lady’s Not For Sale- though not musically. Once she had hit the charts with songs like, Love me Again, and The Way You do the Things You Do, she was firmly established as a leading songstress of the ‘70s romantic ballad style, wholesome and angelic.
The image helped her cross industry boundaries and make an impression on film and television, too, making appearances such as that alongside Kris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan in the western, Pat Garret and Billy the Kid (1973), A Star is Born (1976), and on numerous soundtrack recordings in the 1980’s, including the Billboard Adult Contemporary number-one hit All Time High, in 1983.
Interestingly, it was her work across this range of entertainment that would bring the two-time Grammy winner back to her Cherokee roots. While working with Robbie Robertson to arrange vocals for the television crossover project, Music for the Native Americans, she brought her sister and niece into the work, and eventually, the inspiration of their shared heritage found them forming the trio Walela, Cherokee for “Hummingbirds”. The group was critically acclaimed in the Native music scene, and did much to generate mainstream industry interest in what Coolidge called “Indigenous contemporary music”. And yet, Coolidge has also continued to sing gospel, pop, country, and blues arrangements in high profile residency appearances in New York and London.
Playlist Text:
Her restyling of the R&B classic, Your Love is Lifting Me (Higher and Higher), a hit for Jackie Wilson a few years earlier, is possibly her most memorable chart topper; the song was made it to number two on the U.S. sales charts.
Jesse ‘Ed’ Davis: The Ballad of
the ‘Red Dirt Boogie Brother’
Imagine the kind of guitar player John Lennon would need. In 1976, when
Lennon sought a guitar player for the solo album he was working on in
New York, he had, of course, a million choices- who wouldn’t play guitar
for John Lennon?- but in a way, there was only one: Jesse ‘Ed’ Davis, to
whom George Harrison had turned for support on his Concert for
Bangladesh project a few years earlier; as had Ringo Starr; and Jackson
Browne; Rod Stewart; Neil Diamond; Helen Reddy; and the list goes on and
on... Jesse was Comanche and Kiowa, and grew up in a musically adept
family in Norman, Oklahoma, where he was very conscious of the racial
boundaries that made him feel “a little weird, being Indian”, especially
when it came to his choice to pursue rock and roll, after Jimmy Reed and
Elvis Presley came to town and he took the first chance to hit the road,
which happened to be as Conway Twitty’s guitarist. He quickly became
widely appreciated as the bluesy lead player for Taj Mahal, even out in
front of Ry Cooder, who was on rhythm guitar, on Taj’s first four
albums, which are credited with bringing authentic, bluesy rock to a
more mainstream audience. For the next fifteen years, he was nobody’s
guitarist- but one of the most sought-after session players for these
biggest of pop music greats. Davis played, at some point or another,
with every one of the ex-Beatles. The closest he would come to a loyal
spot in a supporting band would be with Lennon- both personally and
professionally- and for whom he played on four successive projects
between 1974 and 1984, including helping create the sound under the
Lennon/Elton John collaboration which became a number one hit, Whatever
Gets You Through the Night. But even this was merely the result of an
even greater testimonial: that the legendary producer Phil Spector
considered Jesse Ed an indispensible in recording sessions with many of
his artists to make sure the job got done, and sounded great.
Somehow, amidst all this demand for his talent, Jesse Ed strove to shape a solo breakout, but his identity as an artist seemed bound up in the comfortable role in the shadows of the stage, and in the anonymity of the studio session under someone else’s banner. Nonetheless, Jesse’s three solo albums are not frustrated efforts, but liberated, grooving jam sessions, full of soulful, enjoyable music, made by Jesse at the head of a roomful of famous friends – Leon Russell; Eric Clapton; Jim Keltner, who would always get there to be on his albums. These records were also his only opportunity to make more than trivial reference to his Indian background. On his own, tunes like Ululu, and Washita Love Child, where Clapton takes over the solo guitar, Jesse singing lead, he finally found the voice to proclaim his identity as well as his musicianship. Davis increasingly pursued that voice, and a chance introduction to one of the most significant of Indian activists and poets, John Trudell, began what would prove to be a bittersweet finale for Davis’ musical career. Davis set music to Trudell’s spoken word poetry, and enlisted his friend Jackson Browne to produce a record and Krist Kristofferson on some backing vocals; the result, aka Grafitti Man, released in 1986, was nominated for a Grammy, and won wide critical acclaim- Bob Dylan considered it the most important record of the year. One year later, Davis died in Los Angeles.
Buffy Sainte-Marie:
‘She used to wanna be a ballerina; she settled for the satisfaction of her soul’
Recognized as one of the ‘Greatest folk singers of the Sixties’, Buffy Sainte-Marie has made an impact on an even broader range of popular music in every decade since. Of primarily Canadian Cree heritage, but raised by a Mi’kmaq family in Maine, Buffy developed her unique style and folksong craft first in the college café scene, but then, as a younger member of the Greenwich Village circle that included Peter La Farge and Bob Dylan. Buffy’s to-the-point delivery of ballads that commemorated Native history and its hard truths carried on in La Farge’s tradition, and were established on her very first Vanguard recording, It’s My Way, where tracks like Now that the Buffalo’s Gone would serve to define her style of outspoken, but poignantly expressed ballads for a generation. Her contributions to the social climate of the era were again solidified when she wrote and sang the title track for the film, Soldier Blue, and her song, Universal Soldier, was recorded by Donovan, Glen Campbell, and others before the close of the Vietnam war, earning for her- like La Farge and Cash earlier- some critical political attention as a notable voice of conscience.
“When I was a little boy in kindergarten in the late ’60s, my teacher brought in a Buffy Sainte-Marie record and asked us to watch Ed Sullivan that night because Buffy would be on, which I dutifully did. It was the first and most informative instruction in my memory.” Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth
However, as an artist, Buffy’s career has been as full of surprises as it has of high accolades: as a innovative composer who could employ both traditional instrumentation, such as the mouthbow of her Cree heritage, as well as technology, in her musical palette- as an early computer music artist, and through techniques such as vocal multitracking. And, her own notoriety for edgy, socially provocative material has always been paralleled by success as a writer of unforgettable songs that have gained tremendous mainstream popularity through other performers, beginning with songs like Until it’s Time For You To Go, which was recorded by Elvis Presley, Helen Reddy and Barbra Streisand. In 1972, she had no less than three top 100 singles on the charts. Notably, her Grammy-award winning song, Up Where We Belong, was a million selling, number-one hit single, for which she received an Academy Award for its role in the film, An Officer and a Gentleman, in 1983. Since then, she has lent her unmistakable voice to numerous film and television roles, and her influence on the alternative folk music of the early 1990’s, through groups like the Indigo Girls, and on the more recent singer-songwriter revival, are incalculable.
Robbie Robertson: Reinventing ancient music for new generations
“That’s what I do. I write American mythology. I’m the storyteller of the shadowland.” Robbie Robertson.
In 1965, when Bob Dylan asked Robbie Robertson and some of his friends jamming around Woodstock, N.Y., to be his backup band for an upcoming tour to support his new album, The Times They Are A-Changin’, Robertson was already an accomplished songwriter and guitarist, having supporting and composed with Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks since the early 1960’s. When Dylan went electric- and solo- his supporting band simply kept working on new material, too busy with new material to bother renaming themselves. The Band went on to become a long running, commercially successful roots music vehicle, groundbreaking in the world of Americana for their eclectic instrumentation, purity of sound, and pop refrains sung in an inimitable, angelic tonality; but in particular, memorable primarily for the evocative power of Robertson’s lyricism, where he painted images of American settings, history, and the minor dramas of life as poignant as a Rockwell painting for the beat generation- an interesting accomplishment for a Canadian-born man of Native descent. And interesting too, because like Dylan, his long journey from a bleak Northern suburb, Toronto, where trips to visit his Native family at Six Nations- where he had heard his first blues, and learned his first chords- to the folk and roots scene around Woodstock, was the basis of experience that he would use to write such impressionistic and impacting material for the next 35 years. When it came to moving on from such a phenomenally successful band that only a star-studded feature film could lay it to rest for the public, Robertson made the choice that brought his musical life full circle: to choose to highlight Native themes, issues, and people as fellow musicians in his solo career for the next twenty years.
Robertson’s debut solo album was a new landmark in the recording industry: For 1987, it was not so much late eighties music as a foreshadowing of what the nineties pop world would sound like, and how music would be made- collaborations, soundscapes with extremely high production values, where technology enabling the sound, but not being the sound, as in the previous decade. With his second and third albums, he successfully brought his two words into expressive relief, putting on equal ground his musical association with the best in the world of pop -the likes of Bono and Peter Gabriel appear on his solo records- and the Native musicians he increasingly sought out for creative musical encounters. He began a role as an advocate of Native people and their music which has brought him honors from that part of his world. Robertson can now be credited as the most accomplished organizer and arranger of Native talent in creating crossover pop and soundtrack music, and giving new life to his legacy of memorable scene-making and mythical narratives wrought through his lyrical imagery. Robertson remains viable in the mainstream world, too, with an impressive list of film scores and appearances.
“When you think about it…in terms of taking something this ancient, this old- this is the original roots music of America” - Robbie Robertson.
Redbone: Not just a one-hit wonder!
By the time they formed Redbone in 1968, Pat and Lolly Vegas, two Yaqui/Shoshone brothers from Fresno, had been in the music business for most of the decade. They had been in a movie playing surf music, and recorded and released several surf tunes; written film scores; recorded music to back Elvis Presley in his film Kissin’ Cousins; appeared regularly on a television music show, Shindig; and, done sessions with the likes of Sonny and Cher, Leon Russell, and Glen Campbell. Adept at recording and songwriting- having a song, Niki Hokey, on the charts by 1967- their experience with the industry and its numerous styles and trends led to Redbone- their dream of a Native-themed band they envisioned would have appeal in the transitioning pop world, which was increasingly oriented toward highly produced studio dance music that sounded good on the radio and in dance clubs. Making it happen was their introduction to guitarist Tony Bellamy and drummer Pete DePoe, who was a versatile Cheyenne traditional drum member as well as an innovative contemporary kit player. Their first release unveiled the Redbone sound: a unique layering of pop harmony over traditional sounds and chanted vocal leads, combined with samplings of their fluency in the emerging sounds that would become the hallmarks of 70’s pop and dance music: saturated, wah-wah guitar lines, tight horn section complements, and funk-derived grooves: Redbone recordings were finely produced pieces that sounded unique on the radio. Critics recognized the quality of their music, but often panned their lyrics, missing the Native messages that the Vegas brothers persistently attempted to foreground, pushing them as album titles and lead-ins, though none were released as singles. Amidst the flamboyancy that dominated that 70’s funk-pop and dance scene, with groups like K.C. and the Sunshine Band, Parliament Live, and of course, Sly and the Family Stone visible at every turn, Redbone’s Indian image seemed not enough to make a lasting impression. But then came their whopper hit. By 1974, their fourth album was released, featuring the most finely honed representation of that sound, and with the album’s title track leading it off: Wovoka. This time it was the single, however, a strutting dance vehicle that had no Native reference lyrically, but revolved around their trademark call-and-response vocal delivery style- Come and Get Your Love went straight up the charts on the strength of its simple, unforgettable refrain; hitting number five and earning a permanent place among the most memorable of ’70s popular songs.
These profiles are not the end of our stories of musical inspiration and accomplishment; they are the beginnings of others. It is true that we might have revisited the lives of other highly accomplished artists and performers of Native background, because there is no shortage of alternative achievers on record. For every Mildred Bailey, there was a Kay Starr and a Lee Wiley: other success stories that would come as a surprise to your ears. Yet, unlike for Mildred Bailey or Russell Moore, it is no longer unusual to be Indian in a mainstream music scene- due to their groundbreaking achievements, and those of the others we have highlighted. And, what Moore had learned about music as a common world of expression to be shared and passed on like a new world of tradition, now comes natural to a new generation of Native musicians. And in a world of music which has become so vibrant and diverse, we could hardly begin to describe all its participants of Native background who are, right now, following their musical paths in genres as different as the blues, country, heavy metal, and classical. What we can do is share a few stories of musicians who represent this new generation and their work in an ever-expanding musical world.