Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Music

A group of 374 bagpipers performed in Melbourne's Federation Square.

Hundreds of Australian Bagpipers Attempt to Set World Record While Playing AC/DC

The performance of “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll)” took place a few days before the band played its first show in Australia in a decade

Yoko Ono with Half-a-Room, 1967

A Sweeping Yoko Ono Retrospective Aims to Make Music in Museumgoers’ Minds

The exhibition spotlights more than 200 works by the 92-year-old artist, from provocative early works to more recent creations

The Edmund Fitzgerald measured 729 feet long and had a gross tonnage of 13,632.

Nobody Knows What Sank the ‘Edmund Fitzgerald.’ But Its Doomed Final Voyage Will Always Be America’s Defining Shipwreck

Fifty years after the freighter disappeared into the depths of Lake Superior, the mystery of its demise—and the mournful ballad it inspired—still haunt the popular imagination

For more than four decades, the Athabascan Fiddle Festival has filled community halls in Fairbanks with a sound that is both global and distinctly Native.

How Old-Time Fiddle Music Took Root in Indigenous Alaska

In Fairbanks, fiddling thrives—bridging cultures, sustaining traditions and filling the dance floor with life

Composition IX, Wassily Kandinsky, 1936

You Can Listen to Kandinsky’s Vibrant Paintings at This New Exhibition in Paris

Through artworks and audio recordings, “Kandinsky: The Music of Colors” explores how music influenced the Russian artist’s abstract compositions

Friedrich Heyser's oil-on-canvas painting depicts a scene from William Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Why Hundreds of Taylor Swift Fans Are Flocking to See This 100-Year-Old Painting at a Museum in Germany

Painted around 1900, Friedrich Heyser’s “Ophelia” may have been an inspiration for a popular song on the singer’s latest album

The carpa uasi served as the bottom level of this building. It originally ended to the left of the arch.

This Inca Building—the Only Surviving Structure of Its Kind—Might Have Been Designed to Amplify Sound and Music

Researchers will use 3D modeling to assess what the “carpa uasi” in Huaytará, Peru, originally looked like and how sound traveled through it

The researchers found that tango is especially good at slowing brain aging. 

Creative Hobbies Like Tango Dancing or Playing Musical Instruments May Help Keep Your Brain Young, Study Finds

Scientists discovered that talented experts had “younger” brains than those of their less experienced counterparts, and even those who only dabbled in creativity reaped benefits

11,000 Strings at Park Avenue Armory

In an Experimental Composition, 50 Pianos Tuned to Slightly Different Frequencies Play Together

Audience members are surrounded by a ring of dozens of pianos in “11,000 Strings”

The original dye transfer print for David Bowie's Aladdin Sane album cover, shot by Brian Duffy

The Iconic Cover of David Bowie’s ‘Aladdin Sane’ Could Become the Most Expensive Album Artwork Ever Sold

Shot by Brian Duffy in 1973, the famous lightning bolt print is estimated to break the record currently held by Led Zeppelin’s self-titled debut album

The Rocky Horror Picture Show debuted in theaters across the United States on September 26, 1975.

‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ Started Out as a Critical Flop. Fifty Years Later, the Beloved Film Is a Cultural Phenomenon

Creator Richard O’Brien reflects on how the 1975 movie musical became a haven for the “marginalized and disenfranchised”

David Bowie performs as part of his sold out "New York Marathon" tour in 2002.

David Bowie Spent His Final Months Writing a Musical Inspired by Satire and Crime in 18th-Century London

Archivists discovered notes for the project, called “The Spectator,” in the artist’s New York City office after he died in 2016

Sweden's fans wave IKEA flags before a soccer game between Austria and Sweden in Vienna in 2023.

Sweden Releases an Official Cultural Canon That Features IKEA and ‘Pippi Longstocking’—but Not ABBA

Critics of the list, which features 100 artworks and other cultural creations from before 1975, say the selections are exclusionary

A listener selects “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley & His Comets on a classic Wurlitzer “bubbler.”  

The Colorful, Scandalous, True History of the Machine That Created American Pop

The jukebox got its start earlier than you might think, but it truly became iconic when rock ‘n’ roll took over in the 1950s

The Chapel Choir of the University of Exeter performed the monastic songs from the Buckland Book.

Cool Finds

Hear the Long-Lost Chants of English Monks Whose Monasteries Were Dissolved by Henry VIII

A university choir has revived music found hiding in plain sight in a book once used by monks at southern England’s Buckland Abbey

None

Before Meditation Apps, Listeners Were Hooked on Whale Songs, Rain Sounds and the ‘Scream of the Southern Leopard Frog’

We’ve been listening to the great outdoors from the comfort of our homes since the invention of the portable tape recorder. Can nature sounds drown out the cacophony of modern life?

Artists Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood

See the Abstract Artworks That Defined Radiohead’s Iconic Visual Style

A new exhibition explores the artistic collaborations between Thom Yorke, the rock band’s frontman, and artist Stanley Donwood, his longtime friend

Composer John Williams conducting in 2023

John Williams, the Famous Composer Known for ‘Jaws’ and ‘Star Wars,’ Debuts First Piano Concerto at Age 93

The renowned composer has scored many of the most famous films of our time. But until this summer, he had never attempted a concerto for piano

Bruce Springsteen on the Born to Run tour in 1975

How Bruce Springsteen Created the ‘Greatest Rock Album Ever’

Fifty years ago, the Boss was at a pivotal moment in his career. A new book details what it took to launch ‘Born to Run’

The guitar previously used by Keith Richards on display at Christie's in 2004

Former Rolling Stones Musician Mick Taylor Claims His Stolen Guitar Is at the Met

The guitarist’s team says he last saw the famous instrument when it vanished 54 years ago. The Met, which received the guitar as part of a recent donation, disputes these claims

Page 3 of 48