You’ve heard it before: “My great-grandmother/grandfather/long-lost aunt on my mother’s side was a full-blood Cherokee.” People like to claim native heritage, though few could actually prove it in court. The same could be said of some cultural-heritage festivals. They claim to represent this or that cultural group, but may include craftspeople and session leaders who […]

Thanks to the Jazz Composers Forum, local jazz may have finally escaped the repressive lethargy of martini-lounge commercialism. “The impetus to organize such a forum stems from the need to create and take a few risks,” says killer percussionist Taylor Davis of Asheville’s improv-jazz force Taken Back Quartet, who hosts the monthly program with the […]

Sonic Youth has built its lengthy career squarely on the backs of its fans. So if you’re into the band at this moment, chances are that you’ve been jonesing on them longer than you can remember. Sonic Youth, begun innocently enough in downtown New York City in 1981, has kept the same four members for […]

Jazz is commonly credited as the only truly American music — a cross-breed of vernacular and orchestral traditions infused with pioneer spirit. But conductor Justin DiCioccio, who will lead Brevard Music Center jazz students in an upcoming concert, espouses the virtues of group spirit instead. “A great jazz band,” he posits, “is like a great […]

In 1916, before E.W. Grove began the current trend of leveling local mountains, Asheville’s only flatland bordered the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers. Railroad tracks ran along the French Broad, and her banks were crammed with commercial enterprises — including a half-dozen lumber mills, a tannery, cotton mills, the Asheville Ice and Coal Company and […]

You might not expect a classic Walt Whitman poem to work as a rap. But no one seems to have explained that to Nick Stubblefield. Or if they did, he didn’t listen. “Ladies and gentlemen, tonight you’re gonna hear Walt Whitman the way he was meant to be heard,” the irrepressible Nick declares at the […]