This week's podcast of NPR's best arts stories includes a delicious admixture that begins with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, who are first on my admittedly very short list of Jug Bands I Most Want to See Live. They're a bunch of young African-American hipsters who discuss how the jug and string band sound— usually associated with white Southern music — is also part of a black musical tradition.
Actress Chloe Sevigny confesses to Terry Gross her real feelings about all those plain prairie dresses she wears on the HBO show Big Love, which just ended its fourth season. She plays a fundamentalist Mormon wife in a polygamous marriage, and the show has become increasingly sensational, rococo and bizarre — not unlike some of the real-life outfits of Sevigny, a fearless fashion experimentalist.
We've got an appreciation of a couple other divas — film critic Mia Mask puts the career of former blaxploitation star Pam Grier in its proper sociohistorical context, and we chat with the author of a new biography of Nina Simone.
Another author, first-time novelist Heidi Durrow, discusses her story of a biracial girl who survives a nearly unimaginable family tragedy — that's based in part on a true story. Her book is The Girl Who Fell From The Sky.
As ever, active subjects can listen below or click here to subscribe.
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