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[Hall, Richard Melville ]

(b Harlem, NY; Sept 11, 1965). American Electronic musician, composer, and DJ. Growing up in Connecticut, Moby (a childhood nickname) studied classical guitar and music theory before founding the suburban punk band Vatican Commandos at age 14. He later learned to play bass guitar, keyboard, and drums. While studying philosophy at University of Connecticut he played with post-punk band AWOL, leaving in 1985 to become more active as a DJ and electronic musician and eventually moving to New York City.

He is critically recognized for his creative combining of electronic house music and judiciously chosen samples; he has also achieved worldwide popular success and brought the genre to mainstream attention. His 1991 single “Go,” which included a sampled theme from David Lynch’s cult TV series Twin Peaks, reached the UK top ten. His breakthrough album Play (1999) sold 10 million copies worldwide in the first year and yielded eight hit singles including “Porcelain,” “Natural Blues,” and “Why does my heart feel so bad?” ...

[DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid; Miller, Paul D.]

(b Washington, DC, 1970).

American composer, DJ, multimedia artist, and author. His debut full-length solo album, Songs of a Dead Dreamer (1996), is now widely regarded as a formative influence on “illbient,” an instrumental hip hop subgenre. Continuing in this experimental electronic direction, he released Riddim Warfare (1998), a critically acclaimed album featuring collaborations with Kool Keith and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore. He has been active across various media. His Rebirth of a Nation (2004), a large-scale multimedia performance piece that remixes D.W. Griffith’s seminal and controversial film Birth of a Nation (1915), was commissioned by the Lincoln Center Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, Weiner Festwochen, and the Festival d’Automne à Paris. That same year, under his birth name Paul D. Miller, he authored the book Rhythm Science (Cambridge, MA, 2004), a manifesto discussing remix culture. He also released a feature-length DVD, ...

[Edward Lawrence ]

(b Bethesda, MD, Nov 25, 1961). American disc jockey, bluegrass fiddle player, country music historian, and host of the Grand Ole Opry. Raised in bluegrass-rich Montgomery County, Maryland, Stubbs began playing fiddle at age four and was inspired by his father’s passion for family history to develop his skills as an interviewer. After high school, Stubbs spent ten years as fiddle player in the Johnson Mountain Boys, a top traditional bluegrass band of the 1980s. Stubbs began broadcasting for WYII in Williamsport, Maryland, in 1983, moving a year later to WAMU, a bluegrass-oriented public station in Washington, DC. In 1990 Stubbs earned his own WAMU show, which he would anchor until 2007. He moved to Nashville in 1995, accepting an invitation from country legends Kitty Wells and Johnnie Wright to play fiddle in their band. Within a few weeks, he won an audition for an announcer slot on the ...