Former V&A chief says contracts should be reviewed in the wake of Middle East instability

Any bandleader who had Snooky Young in his band could relax, knowing that he'd filled the most difficult role in the band with the best that there was. Young spent four decades leading the trumpet sections in the bands of Jimmy Lunceford, Count Basie and Lionel Hampton. He was infallible, and earned the respect and affection of all his fellows.

It was an indication of how commercially viable Michael Jackson had become by the late Eighties that out of the 11 tracks on his album Bad, ten were issued as singles in various territories.

Soul Bossa Nostra: the title, a pun linking Quincy Jones' emblematic '60s instrumental "Soul Bossa Nova" (of Austin Powers dance-routine fame) with intimations of his don-like hegemony over black American music of the last five or six decades, gives some impression of the producer's massive, mafioso-like presence in American music culture.

Forty years ago, a generation of African-American protest singers challenged a country tearing itself apart. Now, as America heads back to the polls, can a new crop of musicians galvanise a nation divided over race, recession and the longest foreign conflict in its history?

Photography has proved a crucial medium in spreading the popularity of jazz and making the music and its creators the epitome of cool.

Our writer joined the luminaries for a train ride that has become central to the trial of Charles Taylor. These are his memories of it

Artists from Amy Winehouse via David Bowie to U2 have had musical masterminds in the control room. Fiona Sturges looks at their influence

"The Music and Politics of Black Action Films 1968-75," it says, which is a fancy way of saying "Blaxploitation Movie Soundtrack Music".

Michael Jackson's signature song was primarily written by a Cleethorpes-born songwriter, Rod Temperton, who had graced the charts with the home-grown disco combo Heatwave.

Perhaps he couldn't lay claim to genius. But he was, quite simply, an incredible entertainer, who redefined pop stardom and whose influence remains impossible to ignore. Simon Price pays tribute

Roused from sleep with the shocking, if not entirely surprising, news that Michael Jackson was gone, I was halfway through my bowl of cereal when the inevitable happened.

Michael Jackson, an icon of popular music culture since the late 1960s and one of its leading creative influences in the 1980s, had by the 1990s undergone a disturbing metamorphosis which threatened to overshadow the impact his considerable artistic contributions.

Huge crowds gather to mourn the man who bestrode the pop world for 25 years