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Music is changing at a breakneck speed in today�s modern culture. Spurred by new technology and increased access via the internet, new genres are popping up nearly every day. EDM has influenced the popular music sphere, rap has gone mainstream, and thumping bass seems to be creeping its way into all sorts of music. If someone just a few decades ago flipped through today�s radio channels, they would be utterly confused by the futuristic qualities of the music. However, if a denizen of perhaps the 1940�s or 50�s flipped to a modern alternative channel, they would recognize something very familiar: the loud twang of a banjo. To understand the banjo, we must first look at its history. It started as an African folk instrument fashioned out of a hollow gourd and sticks. Slaves brought the instrument over to the America�s where it slowly evolved. These slaves taught their masters to play the banjo and soon the instrument caught on in the popular culture of the South. In the mid-...

It�s been hard to avoid tragic tales of troubled musicians lately. Two recent documentaries, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck (on HBO) and Amy (in theaters), chronicle the lives, and early demises, of Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse, respectively, beloved singers whose struggle with drugs, depression and the consequences of fame precipitated their deaths at age 27. Another recent biopic, Love & Mercy , takes us inside the head of the Beach Boys� Brian Wilson, who only just survived such swirling forces and more in his own life. In some ways, like Achilles, the legendary Greek warrior in Homer�s Iliad beset with inner conflict, these artists sense that joining the tour and pursuing earthly glory could mean dying young, but many choose to embrace it nonetheless. �[I]t�s better to burn out than to fade away,� Cobain wrote in his suicide note. Of course, such tales of downfall and destruction are not limited to m...