wayneandwax.com

As I prepare to teach various classes about ragtime (and its roots), I’ve returned to Dale Cockrell’s recent book, Everybody’s Doin’ It: Sex, Music, and Dance in New York, 1840-1917 (Nort...

https://wayneandwax.com/?p=9515

It all started when I tried to learn to play Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag on the piano. I never really got past the first couple of bars. Instead, I just found myself banging out this particul...

https://wayneandwax.com/?p=9638

It’s a strange time to do anything other than shelter in place or get out in the streets, but I’m looking forward to next week’s virtual gathering for Sound System Outernational #6, a confe...

https://wayneandwax.com/?p=9582

I first worked with Todd Burns back in 2013 when he commissioned me to write a “loop history” of one of my fave loops of all time: dembow. Of course, RBMA is no more, nor are various other ou...

https://wayneandwax.com/?p=9575

Pitchfork’s Sunday Review is a weekly forum where writers revisit a “significant album from the past” that has not been reviewed at Pitchfork before. As someone who really enjoys reading th...

https://wayneandwax.com/?p=9568

Next week I’ll help kick off a 3-day “spatial sound” festival at MIT’s Black Box theater as one of about 20 acts diffusing sound/music through a 360-degree soundsystem powered by d&b audi...

https://wayneandwax.com/?p=9533

A few years ago I started teaching a class at Berklee called “DJ Cultures and American Social Dance.” We survey the history of social dance across the Americas, with particular attention to t...

https://wayneandwax.com/?p=9513

I started contributing to Pitchfork last year, and I just want to flag the reviews here. (You’ll also find them collected at the Journalism & Criticism page.) I meant to do so sooner, but my Wo...

https://wayneandwax.com/?p=9511

MIT’s Stefan Helmreich and I have collaborated on a mega-mix of music that evokes or otherwise represents ocean waves. Building on Stefan’s anthropological work with ocean scientists and my i...

https://wayneandwax.com/?p=9317

This month’s New York magazine features a set of articles about popular music today and why questions of plagiarism seem to dog so many hit songs. I was happy to contribute an article teasing o...

https://wayneandwax.com/?p=9285