Raised in Avalon, Mississippi, Hurt learned to play guitar at age 9. He spent much of his youth playing old time music for friends and dances, earning a living as a farm hand into the 1920s. In 1923 he often partnered with the fiddle player Willie Narmour (Carroll County Blues) as a substitute for hi

Gritty, Playful, Repetitive, Rhythmic, Self-reflection, Witty

Bach achieved a religious, mathematical, and musical ideal: he combined extreme complexity with impeccable stability, at once defining and surpassing Baroque ideals. From painting to music to architecture, the arts of the Baroque era took embellishment to its limit without surrendering harmony or uni

Baroque music, Ebullient, Layered, Mathematical, Organic, Religious, Repetitive, Serial

Though he was born Prince Sunday Adeniyi, he would grow up to become King Sunny Ade, the best-known proponent of juju: a guitar-based style of music indigenous to western Nigeria. The Green Spots, Ade's first group, evolved into the African Beats in 1971. The African Beats went on to record some 4

Ebullient, Expansive, Juju/highlife, Repetitive, Tribal

Laurie Anderson trained as a violinist, art historian, sculptor, and more recently, as a poet. For those familiar with her work, the mere mention of her name is enough to start a multimedia memory extravaganza. Anderson embraced multiple technologies before "multimedia" became an unhyphenated wor

Cd-rom, Collage, Composed, Electronic, New musical hybrids, Political, Repetitive, Smarty arty pop, Technology, Trippy, Witty