In blues music, there's a lot of borrowing, so it's often difficult to identify the originator of a song.

Being Italian, I have a very special relationship with the culinary arts. One of my projects was to share Italian cultural food with my colleagues.

My father, who was a good deal older than my mother, had basically grown up with silent films; sound didn't arrive until he was 30 years old. So he took me to see silent pictures at MoMA when I was 5...

Iraq was home of the Abbasid Caliphate, a golden age when the Muslim world was at the forefront of math, science, and medicine.

Banjos are used in Celtic, English folk music and obviously American music. But not that much in pop music. But it's more versatile than people realise it to be. It's a beautiful instrument, very...

Both my mother and my father grew up in Asia, in a time of political instability. They'd earned college degrees before setting foot in the States but had to work menial jobs early on in order to make...

When it comes to '90s R&B, I grew up on a lot of Aaliyah and Destiny's Child, Missy Elliott, Usher, Jill Scott. Whatever my mom was playing in the house is what I was listening to.

My parents weren't artistic, but I was always surrounded by beautiful things. And Mexico is a country which has experienced thousands of years of art and culture.

Two people who really inspire me are my parents, Wanda and Anthony, just because they really made sure to keep up Hispanic culture in my family.

I grew up with a heavy diet of gospel, folk, and blues because those are kind of the cornerstones of traditional American music.

When speaking of the mighty Andes and the so-called "eyebrows" country at the range's eastern base - the Tropical Wet Forest region - I am first obliged to give homage to the Apu, the Mountain Lords,...

The lively oral storytelling scene in Scots and Gaelic spills over into the majority English-speaking culture, imbuing it with a strong sense of narrative drive that is essential to the modern novel,...

All modern humans are related to what scientists call "Mitochondrial Eve." This refers to our common matrilineal ancestor. She lived approximately 200,000 years ago and depending on how you estimate...

Dear and most respected bookcase! I welcome your existence, which has for over one hundred years been devoted to the radiant ideals of goodness and justice.

Soiled, forgotten coats of arms were carved above their massive doorways, and these unsettled Ted: such universal, defining symbols made meaningless by nothing more than time.

Oh. Does Mississippi have some kind of grave - desecration statute? I know they differ from state to state.

The hundred lovers sleep forever beneath the dry earth. Andalusia has long red roads. Córdoba, green olive trees where to place a hundred crosses, that they remember them.

If you memorize three hundred Tang poems, you might be able to write a little.

People die, that's clear. But the loss of certain objects is so tragic and unnecessary... Out of pure carelessness. In fires and wars. Like the Parthenon, which was used as a gunpowder storage. I...

We are the people of Misr, the old woman rasped. Since our Sunni ancestors fled from Nilotic al-Ourouba, we have known flight and death. The young go on that our people shall not die.

And from that time on the boys were no longer called Elder and Younger, but they were given school names by the old teacher, and this old man, after inquiring into the occupation of their father,...