With music widely banned in Islamist-controlled areas of Mali, the Glastonbury Festival announced it’ll be highlighting Malian musicians this year, with Rokia Traoré—who played the Walker in 2004—kicking off the event.

In a recent edition of “The Source,” artist Doug Aitken talks with experimental music duo Lucky Dragons (Luke Fischbeck and Sarah Rara, who visited the Walker in 2009) about sonic and emotional resonance, looping, and music as a form of research.

Celebrating his 66th birthday, David Bowie released the new single “Where Are We Now?” Tuesday. Teasing a new album due in March, the tune is accompanied by a video directed by Tony Oursler (last at the Walker in 2006 for Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty).

Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, who performs John Cage’s work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art this week, tells Elliott Sharp he loved Cage’s minimal approach: “What is the composer doing when the composer is hardly doing anything? It’s like a Zen poem.”

Conceived by guitar wizard Nels Cline (Wilco) and poet David Breskin, the unruly “trialogue” DIRTY BABY sold out during its second—and likely final—performance at the Walker on November 29. Combining imagery by Ed Ruscha, Middle Eastern ghazals by Breskin, and a Cline-led musical ensemble, this “synaesthetic fantasia” can now be experienced in its entirety on the Walker Channel.

Contrary to a São Paulo news report, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood is not, in fact, hiding out in Brazil “to wait for the end of the world” when the Mayan calender ends on 12/21. Band management called the story, which quotes a tourism minister, fabricated.

Ravi Shankar, the sitar player who exposed the world to Indian classical music through his friendship with the Beatles’ George Harrison, has died at age 92. Harrison dubbed him “the Godfather of World Music.”

Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck has died at age 91. His 1959 single “Take Five” was the first million-selling jazz number in history. “One of the reasons I believe in jazz,” he said, “is that the oneness of man can come through the rhythm of your heart.”