Aretha Franklin started out singing in the gospel choir at her Baptist church in Detroit, Michigan – her father was the minister and took Aretha on the road during his "gospel caravan" tours. [...]

In traditional Chinese culture, Nian is the ferocious beast that lives in the mountains or under the sea, and comes out to terrorize the village on New Year’s Day. According to legend, an [...]

Like most people, I dread having tough conversations. I walk through them in my head, running different scenarios on how the other person will react, wondering whether I’ll sufficiently answer the hard questions [...]

Country music superstar Paul Brandt loves Christmas, not least because he met the love of his life — his wife Liz — on Christmas Eve of 1995. “I picked her up at church,” [...]

The music associated with traditional winter celebrations like Christmas, Chanukah, and Kwanzaa is incredibly diverse, but the Smithsonian Folkways label says it all has one thing in common: it reflects the intimacy of [...]

You first mentioned your dream for Thorgy and the Thorchestra when you appeared on RuPaul's Drag Race. How did that dream become reality? I was so ecstatic when Rupaul asked me to play [...]

When Jeremy Dutcher announced he would be performing with orchestras across Canada this season, he said: “This orchestra tour means so much to me. It sews together two musical halves of myself.” For [...]

The official ‘James Bond Theme’ has been featured in every Eon Productions Bond film since Dr. No in 1962. Some of pop music’s greatest artists have recorded songs for the Bond films, such [...]

Ghostbusters hit movie theatres 35 years ago. It became the highest grossing comedy of all time (until Home Alone in 1990) and earned two Oscar nominations, including Best Original Song. The score was [...]

Walt Disney considered Mary Poppins (1964) one of the crowning achievements of his career. The first feature-length film to combine live action and animation, it earned 13 Oscar nominations and won five, including [...]