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Folk music

Copy Rites

by E.L. Doctorow,

From “Standards,” which appeared in the November 1991 issue of Harper’s Magazine. The complete article—along with the magazine’s entire 174-year archive—is available online at harpers.org/archive. The more I think about…

The Person Who Performs

From an interview with the poet Alice Notley conducted by Janique Vigier that was scheduled to appear on the Artforum website in December. Vigier pulled the piece from publication in…

The Twenty-Three Best Train Songs Ever Written—Maybe

by Kevin Baker,

From Johnny Cash to “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad”

I Told You When I Came I Was a Stranger

by Pico Iyer,

Leonard Cohen’s first public musical performance

Bartók’s Monster

by Jay Kirk,

Stalking the dead composer through Transylvania

“Wakin’ up in an empty bed”

by Robert Kotlowitz,

Gitars, folk songs, and halls of ivy

by Arnold Shaw,

Forecast

by Katherine Gauss Jackson,

Folk music

by Edward Tatnall Canby,

“Song-ballets and devil’s ditties”

by William Aspenwall Bradley,

— (IV)

by Harper’s Staff,

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