Holly Springs, Miss., a city of 7,000 residents, lies 56 miles southeast of Memphis. It was once a lively center of the cotton trade, and as I recently learned from a newfound cousin, it is also where my enslaved ancestors lived.

When I was a child, I knew my great-grandfather on my mother’s side, and I have decades of memories, stories and photographic evidence of my Jewish maternal family. My Black paternal family has always been more of a mystery. I’ve never known my father, so I was thrilled when several years ago I obtained a family tree that dates back to 1824 — and even more excited when my cousin claimed to know specifically where our ancestors had lived.

It’s normally a quick 45-minute drive from Seattle to Tacoma, Washington, but on that day, it felt like an eternity. It was hot, and not only did my friend’s car not have air conditioning, the cassette player was broken, so we were forced to endure staticky, classic rock guitar riffs on the radio.

Writing my memoir My Life in the Sunshine brought out dozens of new paternal connections including Chi’cas Reid, 73, a vocalist in Roy Ayers Ubiquity from 1975 to 1979 – the female voice you hear on Everybody Loves the Sunshine – and Henry Root, 71, Ayers’s road manager during the same period. In a video call along with 84-year-old drummer Bernard Purdie, I asked them to tell me everything about their time touring Nigeria.

A contribution to Marcus J. Moore’s “5 Minutes” New York Times column…

The second LP of the 1972 Mtume Umoja Ensemble album, “Alkebu-Lan,” opens with an epic 16-minute journey into its title, which translates to “Land of the Blacks.” Over a patient backdrop of horns, voices and Stanley Cowell’s piano, James Mtume emphatically states the ensemble’s goals: Organizing and unifying! Unifying and organizing! Going back, back, back … to Africa!

During the two-and-a-half hour concert, it became clear that the Cure were there because they wanted to be, and they wanted all of their fans to be there with them. Some audience members around me, I learned, had paid as little as $8 for their tickets. Exuberant fans sang along to every one of Smith’s moody, reverb-soaked songs—comfortable, perhaps, in the knowledge that the concert tickets didn’t set them back so much that they’d have to curtail their summer vacation plans or put off a home repair. Unlike many concerts where the most fanatical attendees crowd the front rows, a quick glance around the arena revealed that the most enthusiastic dancing, jumping, and arm waving was happening at the back, the nosebleed seats at the very top.

When my mother recounts stories from my childhood in the 1970s, she inevitably includes the comments her neighbors made about her “beautiful adopted baby.” When she explained to these neighbors that I was not adopted, she was often met with a look of confusion, which placed into question the progressive New York City that I remember as a child. The assumption by our neighbors that I — a brown-eyed, darker-skinned boy — was adopted by my blue-eyed, white mother was much more complicated than the actual truth: My father is Black.

The seventy-nine mile stretch of rural highway between Spokane, Washington and Moscow, Idaho is dotted with quaint small towns, snow-dusted farms, and the kind of beautiful empty space I never encounter at home in New York City.

She appeared to be in her late 30s. She was wearing mostly black with a few nonthreatening silver studs on her sleeves. Dark sunglasses hid her eyes, and a large shopping bag with a designer logo hung from each hand, as she asked the question nobody wants to hear:

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but can I please use your phone?”

2022 was a musically bright year for me. I saw tons of shows, I bought lots of records, and I happily returned to the listening habits I missed: spending time with music on subways and flights.

That, to me, is the power of the guitar solo. It’s a moment of risk for the player, a demonstrative attempt to connect sonically, physically and emotionally with the audience — even if only for a moment.

That, to me, is the power of the guitar solo. It’s a moment of risk for the player, a demonstrative attempt to connect sonically, physically and emotionally with the audience — even if only for a moment.

Antagonistic throngs of metal heads and punks looked ready to collide when my friends and I arrived, a group of high school juniors, at a packed Salt Lake City arena to see Guns N’ Roses.

The annual June observance started more than 40 years ago, but a new generation is now offering fresh ways to celebrate Black Music Month’s ideals of artistry and economic power.

When I saw them play “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for the first time 30 years ago at a tiny Seattle club, I could feel history happening.

When my grandmother died in 2009, she took her stories with her. But recently, my mother discovered a stack of Grandma’s written stories. They’ve opened a new window into her life — and highlighted similarities between us I’d never understood before.

In 2020, music reemerged as a basic need that was less about tuning out and more about engaging. I spent less time streaming music on subway commutes, and more time enjoying the arcs of full album sides at home; less casual listening to distract myself during flight takeoffs and more to soundtrack my long walks.

Although the natural wine movement has swept the country, it still remains largely concentrated in metropolitan areas like New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles. That there’s a natural wine distributor in Elkader—a tiny town in Iowa—feels as unlikely as the journey that landed its owner, Algerian-born Frederique Boudouani, the founder of Abu Nawas Beverage Company, in Elkader in the first place.

Revered for their skilled musicianship, their ability to play at breakneck speed, and H.R.’s flamboyantly shapeshifting voice and persona, Bad Brains were a force, a phenomenon. If punk was the snotty, irreverent response to the pretentious and bloated rock of the 1970s, Bad Brains were a lightning bolt sent to blow up punk.

This week, a large portion of the music business shut down for Blackout Tuesday, a day meant to disrupt business as usual and take a stand against racial injustice.

When the sprawling collection of inexpensive family housing known as North Village in Amherst is demolished in July by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a private developer will build new housing on the property. The demolition will mark the end of a unique, half-century-long social experiment that provided to me, as a kid growing up, a foundation of diversity and community.