Music
Weekend America's Music Coverage
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Homemade Ghost Rock
The Ann Arbor, Mich., band Nomo is on the road a lot. This weekend in Minneapolis, next weekend in Madison, Wisc., supporting their new album Ghost Rock. For Nomo, touring is no easy feat. There are up to eight musicians and an avalanche of equipment, including a bunch of instruments you've never seen before.
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Medicinal Music
Having trouble sleeping? Some doctors are experimenting with a remedy that uses music personalized to your own brain waves that reportedly relaxes you into slumber. Weekend America's Jim Gates speaks with a patient who uses, and the doctors who prescribe and design a new treatment called Brain Music Therapy, or BMT.
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Focus Music for Power Lifting
More than 200 US athletes with disabilities will compete in sports like seated volleyball and blind judo in Beijing's 2008 Paralympic Games this September. Among them will be power lifter Mary Stack. In this installment of Weekend America's "Listening In" series, we find out what Stack listens to when preparing to lift.
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Mariachi Mama
Eighty-eight-year-old violinist Teresa Cuevas says being bitten by "Mariachi Fever" decades ago led her to form an extraordinary musical group. This is the story of one of the first all-female mariachi band in the U.S., and of the tragedy that devastated its tight-knit community.
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Santana's "Aquamarine"
James "Dewey" Dewhurst is a former National Guardsman from Louisiana. He is now a private contractor stationed in Afghanistan, working 11 miles from the Pakistani border. Dewhurst's Weekend Soundtrack is "Aquamarine" by Carlos Santana, which he found while on R-and-R leave in Negril, Jamaica.
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'Come O Thou Traveler'
When you want to get into a space that's all your own, what song do you keep going back to? Our latest story comes from Pastor Thomas Biatek, who listens to us in Shorewood, Minn., on KNOW radio. Biatek is a minister there, and the soundtrack to his weekend is a hymn called "Come O Thou Traveler."
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Zimbabwe's Spritual Instrument
These days, when you think of Zimbabwe, the elections are probably your first thought. But for a lot of people, their first association is the mbira -- a musical instrument that's also called a thumb piano. There are many people living in the United States who play mbira -- we tracked a couple of them down.
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The Sads Are Quiet
The Sads are a Los Angeles band that's putting on a "silent" show tonight. What they do is feed all their instruments into about 80 sets of headphones. The idea is to get the audience closer to the band, which sits in a circle at the center -- kind of like a campfire, only with lots of wires and headsets...
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Those Summer Song 'Ear Worms'
It's summer, and that means that elusive summer song is about to make its way into your brain and take up residence. Do you remember songs from your past summers? And why can't you get them out of your head? Psychologist and author Dan Levitin explains how those "ear worm" songs actually stay on your mind, even if you don't want them to...
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"Blues for Big Scotia"
Mark Kaufman's father thought he hated jazz until he heard "Blues for Scotia" by legendary pianist Oscar Peterson -- the song at the center of this week's Weekend Soundtrack. Kaufman says the things parents give us are incalculable, and the moment when a son or daughter can give back is priceless.
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Rocking Out in the War Zone
"Heavy Metal in Baghdad" is now playing in selected cities. It's a documentary about two New York filmmakers who go to Iraq in search of the metal band Acrassiacauda. It's about the band trying to stay together as musicians while surviving a war. We talk to the band's drummer and the film director.
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Iraq's Oud Ambassador
Rahim Al-haj is a master of the oud, the ancient instrument that's the precursor to the lute and guitar. It's origins are in Iraq, where Al-haj was forced to flee Saddam Hussein's regime. He found a new home in the U.S., and recently returned to Iraq to play for his mother one last time.
