Terri Lyne Carrington has remained a powerhouse drummer in jazz since the 1980s but has also vigorously turned her attention over the last 15 years to empowering the next generation. With outstanding versatility, she excels as a composer, bandleader,...

Phil Schaap’s encyclopedic knowledge of jazz music and history has served him well: outside of hosting jazz programs on Columbia University’s WKCR station in New York since 1970 (a labor of love as he is not paid), he has won six Grammy Awards for hi...

The youngest of the three Heath Brothers, Albert “Tootie” Heath is the consummate jazz drummer, playing with seemingly everyone from John Coltrane to Ethan Iverson and performing on more than 100 recordings. Well-versed in various styles of jazz—incl...

Since the 1960s, Henry Threadgill has been on the leading edge of avant-garde jazz with his original compositions. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2016, one of only three jazz artists to win the prestigious award.

On Friday, September 28, 2018 at 8:00 p.m. ET, the National Endowment for the Arts honored the 2018 NEA National Heritage Fellows at a free concert, featuring music, demonstrations, and conversations with the 2018 Fellows and other special guests.

Born in 1939 and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, William Bell was among a small group of musical artists who signed with a fledgling Memphis record label named Stax Records in the early 1960s, shortly after it was established in a shuttered movie theat...

Onnik Dinkjian is one of the most beloved and influential Armenian singers in America. Four generations have listened to his recordings and have treasured his singing at Armenian concerts, dances, weddings, and church services throughout the United S...

Dr. Zakarya Sao Diouf and Naomi Gedo Diouf are culture bearers and artists from Senegal and Liberia, respectively, who have contributed to the practice and performance of West African dance, drum, and culture in African diasporic communities for more...

Karen Ann Hoffman has been beading peace, beauty, and meaning through her Haudenosaunee Raised Beadwork since the 1990s.

Los Matachines de la Santa Cruz are a ritual dance troupe whose origin can be traced back to a festival on the feast day of the Holy Cross during the Colonial period in Real de Catorce, a mining town in Central Mexico.

Cultural heritage and radio shaped the extraordinary life of Hugo Morales, recipient of the 2020 Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Fellowship, for his lifetime of work opening spaces for Latino voices in media.

An acclaimed fiddler, banjo player, guitarist, songwriter, and lifelong resident of Clay County, West Virginia, John Morris is the living carrier of the old-time fiddle and banjo tradition particular to his rural home county and the surrounding area.

Suni Paz was one of the first artists to bring the nueva canción tradition—the “new song” music of the 1960s and 1970s—to North American audiences.

Birchbark canoes are considered an apex of Anishinaabe culture—aesthetically beautiful objects that for centuries represented one of the most sophisticated inland watercrafts in the world.

The 201st public meeting of the National Council on the Arts took place on October 29, 2020, and focused on agency business and updates.

Roscoe Mitchell is considered one of the key figures in avant-garde jazz, integrating influences from everywhere—world music, funk, rock, classical—to create music that is at once beautiful and complex.

Reggie Workman is one of the premier bassists in jazz, performing in mainstream jazz as well as in the avant-garde scene, and a member of two of jazz’s most important groups: the John Coltrane Quartet and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.

Bobby McFerrin is a master of vocal improvisation, using his four-octave range in various techniques, from scat singing to polyphonic overtone singing to vocal percussion, working both unaccompanied and with instruments.

Dorthaan Kirk, recipient of the 2020 NEA Jazz Master award for advocacy, has been a major force at WBGO Jazz 88.3 FM, Newark Public Radio—the only full-time jazz format station in New York and New Jersey—working in various roles for more than four de...