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The reports of jazz music's death have been greatly exaggerated, and world-traveling band leader Noel Freidline and acclaimed actress/vocalist Maria Howell are here to prove it.

How do you capture the thrill of first discovering your favorite song or the adrenaline rush of your first concert? For singer-songwriter Bruce Hazel, it means taking that bottle of rock 'n' roll nostalgia and sharing it with veteran musicians as leader of the Charlotte band Temperance League.

Editing. Mixing. Engineering. While they might not be the most glamorous part of the music industry, they're just as essential to crafting your favorite song as singing and songwriting. Audio production requires a mix of patience and passion and for more than two decades, audio engineer Chris Garges has brought that level of professionalism to each of his recording experiences, whether it's with R.E.M. producer Don Dixon or legendary entertainer Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith.

This has been a historic year for women in rap and hip-hop, all the way to the 2021 Grammy Awards when Megan Thee Stallion and Beyoncé broke records as the first pair of women to win in the best rap performance category. As NPR Music put it, “To know what tomorrow sounds like, one need only listen to the women in rap today.” And to know what the future of Charlotte hip-hop is, one need only turn to rhythmic lyricist ReeCee Raps.

SouthBound host Tommy Tomlinson talks to Anna Sale, host of the podcast "Death, Sex & Money." Sale has written a new book called "Let's Talk About Hard Things."

The name "the Queen City," the crowns on everything from street signs to trash cans — there are just some common things associated with Charlotte. We look into why these things represent Charlotte and answer questions about the city’s origins.

Thousands? Millions? It’s difficult to pin down how many pictures Daniel Coston has taken in his twenty year career as one of Charlotte’s go-to music photographers. His camera lens has some stories to tell: from being invited to snap pictures of greats (James Brown, Johnny Cash, The Monkees) to highlighting local legends-in-the-making (Hope Nicholls, Superchunk, The Spongetones, Carolina Chocolate Drops), and even seeing his work featured in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Rolling Stone, and The Avett Brothers’ HBO documentary. And that’s just a tiny part of Daniel Coston’s musical picture.

SouthBound host Tommy Tomlinson interviews Kenneth Hoffman, executive director of the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience.

Grier Heights, a historic Black neighborhood in Charlotte, has changed throughout the years. The community is now starting a new chapter of giving back, while remembering its strong history.

In November, The Pew Research Center found that 42% of African Americans would take the COVID-19 vaccine — the lowest among any other racial and ethnic group. Davida Jackson of Charlotte wanted to know why.

For the past five years, singer-songwriter Jim Sharkey has taken the 200-year-old lilt of traditional Irish folk music and placed it in a 21st-century context (with contemporary references to Facebook, Whitney Houston and even the 2019 Women’s World Cup). On his 2019 full-length release "A Lovely Day," Sharkey sings to the theme of home: of finding home, of feeling at home with loved ones, of the nostalgia of remembering his home in Ireland and of making a new one here in North Carolina.

Alfred Sergel IV has three decades of experience as a professional jazz musician — not as a jazz singer or jazz pianist, but as a jazz drummer. Between performing with Grammy honorees and recording with Billboard-charting artists, Alfred (or, as his friends called him, Al) still finds time to create original music that merges new-age pop sensibilities with old-school jazz melodies.

“Democracy is not something that happens only at election time, and it’s not something that happens just with one event. It’s an ongoing, grassroots building process.”Long before the coronavirus pandemic, Charlotte musician Si Kahn understood the power of resilience. For the past 55 years, Kahn has dedicated his life's work to civil rights activism, chronicling the ebb and flow of progress through world-renowned labor anthems like "Aragon Mill" and "Go to Work on Monday." Over the course of 19 records, several books and a FolkVote initiative, Kahn has tapped into a passion for shared history and righteous humanity.

As America reckons with racial injustice, the music industry has scrambled to show its support for the Black community. Recording companies took a day off work and opened up their checkbooks with #BlackoutTuesday. Major labels like Warner Music Group and Sony Music created multi-million dollar funds to combat systemic racism.Here in Charlotte in recent weeks, there have been conversations across the arts and venues about how they can do better, be better and build a more equitable infrastructure for music together. But the question remains: How can you reform the music industry? We ask Charlotte music leader Jermaine Spencer, head of operations at BNR Records, founder of The Platform Music + Culture Series and owner of J. Spencer Agency.

Without a doubt, the coronavirus pandemic coupled with ongoing demonstrations and protests have changed the landscape for conversations and creative output. In particular, musicians have taken this time for self-reflection on the state of the music industry and their individual responsibilities in moving the conversation forward.For Charlotte-based singer-songwriter Kelsey Ryan, the past five months have been an opportunity to write, listen, and find new meaning through the "grit and grin" of country music.

If you lived in Charlotte in the early 2000’s, you lived through the golden age of Rock En Español in the Queen City. Latin reggae band Bakalao Stars (led by Christian Anzola) took root during this fertile musical period, a time of locally-produced and supported Latin music which was heralded as “the soundtrack of Charlotte’s racial and cultural evolution.”So what happened to those bands in this city? And what is happening now with Bakalao Stars, one of the remaining Rock En Español acts from that generation?

In honor of Black History Month we will host a community-centered 'songversation'. It will feature a historian to share the importance of Black storytelling, a griot, spoken word artist and musicians.

This week on SouthBound, host Tommy Tomlinson talks to Josh Dawsey, a South Carolina native who covers national politics for The Washington Post. He also covered the Trump White House, and tells Tommy the story about the time the president called him a “lowlife” on Twitter. Plus he’s a long-suffering South Carolina football fan.

School looks different for most students these days because of the coronavirus pandemic. But whether classes are in person or online, a lot of Charlotte-area high schools start very early in the morning.

Roy Wood Jr. has spent a career telling jokes with sharp edges. He grew up in Birmingham and has spent more than 20 years doing stand-up, returning again to his experiences as a Black man and a Southerner. For the last five years he has also been a correspondent for “The Daily Show,” often coming back down South to poke at our contradictions and absurdities.