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Musician, composer and bandleader Don Byron has a new album out, Do the Boomerang. It's a collection of songs associated with the great Motown saxophonist and singer Autry "Junior Walker" DeWalt. Tracks include Shotgun and Roadrunner. While Byron is usually associated with the clarinet, he plays tenor sax on this new CD.

Lupe Fiasco is a Chicago-based rapper who made his mainstream debut on the most recent CD by Kanye West, who is also from Chicago. Now Fiasco is further cementing the Windy City's reputation as a breeding ground for innovative hip-hop, with a new CD, Food and Liquor.

The film Blood Diamond is about the violent underbelly of the international diamond trade. Writer Tom Zoellner's book The Heartless Stone chronicles how diamonds are mined in some of the world's poorest countries.

A review of Never Hear the End of It, the new double album by Sloan, the quartet from Nova Scotia.

Music critic Milo Miles tells us how the klezmer-fusion band the Klezmatics are keeping the music of Woody Guthrie alive. Their latest albums are Woody Guthrie's Happy Joyous Hanukkah and the Grammy-nominated Wonder Wheel. They are currently on tour.

It's not easy living on the avant-garde edge of any art, let alone the always-changing world of jazz. But for nearly 50 years, the sound of Ornette Coleman has proven to be one of the most unorthodox — and most influential — in modern jazz.

After the more than 15 years together, the five-piece Canadian band Barenaked Ladies is having a first. They are releasing their latest album, Barenaked Ladies Are Me, on their own record label. Two members of the band, Steven Page and Kevin Hearn, elaborate.

Journalist Martha Raddatz has spent extensive time covering the war in Iraq. Her new book The Long Road Home examines the First Cavalry Division's surprise battle at Sadr City in April 2004.

Bethany & Rufus play their own style of traditional American tunes on the new recording 900 Miles. The duo features Bethany Yarrow singing and Rufus Cappadocia playing cello.

Singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka, who marks his 50th anniversary in the music business this year, helped create what's known as the Brill Building sound in the late '50s and early '60s. He's been inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame, but he got his start as a classical pianist. He joins Terry Gross to talk about his life as a performer — and about The Definitive Collection, a career-spanning greatest-hits compendium.