When Bob Dylan's 2026 European tour hit Killarney, Ireland, he treated the crowd to the first live version of 'The Lakes of Pontchartrain' since 1991.

It is not the first “murder ballad,” a subgenre of the traditional ballad with a crime or a gruesome death as the theme. “L.A. County” by Lyle Lovett and “Red Headed Stranger” by Willie Nelson are a ...

Since Poetry from Daily Life began Nov. 5, you’ve met poets from Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Alabama, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. We began in one paper — the Springfield News-Leader — now we’re ...

Katherine Jackson French traveled the Kentucky mountains in the early 1900s searching for traditional ballads that were disappearing. Her work was... Katherine Jackson French's Ballad Collection ...

Ballads have been around for a long time — a really, really long time. Some say it comes from the 14th-century French ballade, a song form that composer Guillaume Machaut used to convey the loftiest ...

When Paul Simon first came to Britain in the mid-1960s, he was still in the early stages of his music career as a songwriter and was in search of inspiration. That’s when he bumped into Martin Carthy, ...

After the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, that claimed 22 lives, many residents mourned through music. Singer-songwriter Josue Rodriguez helped his community cope by writing a corrido. After the mass ...