Ocarina

An ocarina is an ancient flute-like wind instrument shaped like a gourd.Its name comes from the Italian for "little goose." In America it is sometimes known as "sweet potato" or "potato flute."

On How Life Is

On How Life Is was the 1999 debut album by Macy Gray.

Shaggy's real name

The rapper Shaggy (not Norville Rogers) was born Orville Richard Burrell in Kingston, Jamaica in 1968.  He was a U.S. Marine!

The Rolling Stones' first single

The Rolling Stones' first single was a cover of the 1961 Chuck Berry song "Come On," released on June 7, 1963.

The origin of the term "rock and roll"

The thing I learned today is that Cleveland DJ Alan "Moondog" Freed is popularly credited with the introduction of the phrase "rock and roll" to refer to the popular music of the '50s.  He is thus known as "father of rock and roll."  It should be noted that the phrase predated Freed, but that he helped popularize it and applied it to the music itself.

The chau gong

The thing I learned today was that the name of the Chinese gong used in Western orchestras is called the Chau gong, or tam-tam.

NBC Nightly News theme music

The thing I learned today is that the theme song for the NBC Nightly News since 1985 is composed by John "Star Wars" Williams and is called "The Mission."

The musical 'Fiddler on the Roof' takes its title from the painting 'The Fiddler' by Marc Chagall, which shows a fiddler looming over a town, his right foot apparently on a small house's roof. The musical is about Tevye and his five daughters, who move away from their father's traditions.

Amati was a dynasty of violin makers from Cremona, Italy, flourishing 1550-1740. Nicolo Amati is said to have taught Antonio Stradivarius.

"Land der Berge, Land am Strome" (Land of Mountains, Land on the River") is the national anthem of Austria. The music is adapted from a work by Mozart, itself adapted from an earlier work by Johann Holzer. The lyrics were written in 1946 by Paula von Preradović.

The clarinet is the only single reed woodwind usually found in orchestras. (The saxophone is the other single reed woodwind.)

Bangladeshi national anthem

Rabindranath Tagore wrote the words to the national anthems of both Bangladesh ("Amar Shonar Bangla") and India ("Jana Gana Mana").

John Coolidge Adams

John Coolidge Adams is a minimalist composer. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his "On the Transmigration of Souls," which commemorates the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attack. Also he has something to say about pop culture.

shawm

A shawm is a loud double-reed instrument which is the ancestor of the oboe.

fermata

A fermata (also known as a hold, pause, colloquially a birdseye or cyclops eye, or as a grand pause when placed on a note or a rest) is a symbol of musical notation indicating that the note should be prolonged beyond the normal duration its note value would indicate.

Fugue For Tinhorns

"Fugue For Tinhorns" is the name of the song that goes "I got the horse right here" from Guys and Dolls.  It was written in 1950 by Frank Loesser.  Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Dean Martin recorded the song in 1963.

A melisma is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession.

The shamisen, or samisen, also called samsen, is the three-stringed instrument used by geishas.

Amen break

The "Amen break" is a drum break that has been widely sampled in popular music. It comes from the 1969 track "Amen, Brother" by the American soul group the Winstons.  It has been used in thousands of tracks of various genres, making it one of the most sampled recordings in music history. Salt-N-Pepa's 1986 single "I Desire" has one of the earliest uses of the Amen break. A number of releases in 1988 took it into the mainstream, including "Straight Outta Compton" by N.W.A and "Keep It Going Now" by Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock.

Lohengrin

"Lohengrin" is an 1850 opera by Richard Wager. It is based on the Germanic folk hero, son of Percival, who memorably rides in a boat pulled by swans. The most famous part of the opera is the Bridal Chorus, popularly known as "Here Comes the Bride" (in a boat pulled by swans!).