1.
Country music
–
Country music is a genre of United States popular music that originated in the southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from the genre of United States, such as folk music. Blues modes have been used throughout its recorded history. The term country music is used today to many styles and subgenres. In 2009 country music was the most listened to rush hour radio genre during the evening commute, immigrants to the Southern Appalachian Mountains of North America brought the music and instruments of Europe and Africa along with them for nearly 300 years. Country music was introduced to the world as a Southern phenomenon, Bristol, Tennessee, has been formally recognized by the U. S. Congress as the Birthplace of Country Music, based on the historic Bristol recording sessions of 1927. Since 2014, the city has been home to the Birthplace of Country Music Museum, historians have also noted the influence of the less-known Johnson City sessions of 1928 and 1929, and the Knoxville sessions of 1929 and 1930. Prior to these, pioneer settlers, in the Great Smoky Mountains region, had developed a musical heritage. The first generation emerged in the early 1920s, with Atlantas music scene playing a role in launching countrys earliest recording artists. Okeh Records began issuing hillbilly music records by Fiddlin John Carson as early as 1923, followed by Columbia Records in 1924, many hillbilly musicians, such as Cliff Carlisle, recorded blues songs throughout the 1920s. The most important was the Grand Ole Opry, aired starting in 1925 by WSM in Nashville, during the 1930s and 1940s, cowboy songs, or Western music, which had been recorded since the 1920s, were popularized by films made in Hollywood. Bob Wills was another musician from the Lower Great Plains who had become very popular as the leader of a hot string band. His mix of country and jazz, which started out as dance hall music, Wills was one of the first country musicians known to have added an electric guitar to his band, in 1938. Country musicians began recording boogie in 1939, shortly after it had played at Carnegie Hall. Gospel music remained a component of country music. It became known as honky tonk, and had its roots in Western swing and the music of Mexico. By the early 1950s a blend of Western swing, country boogie, rockabilly was most popular with country fans in the 1950s, and 1956 could be called the year of rockabilly in country music. Beginning in the mid-1950s, and reaching its peak during the early 1960s, the late 1960s in American music produced a unique blend as a result of traditionalist backlash within separate genres
Country music
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Jimmie Rodgers
Country music
–
Vernon Dalhart
Country music
–
Roy Acuff
Country music
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Publicity photo of Roy Rogers and Gail Davis, 1948
2.
Folk music
–
Folk music includes both traditional music and the genre that evolved from it during the 20th century folk revival. The term originated in the 19th century, but is applied to music older than that. Some types of music are also called world music. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways, as music transmitted orally, music with unknown composers and it has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles. Starting in the century, a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the revival and reached a zenith in the 1960s. This form of music is called contemporary folk music or folk revival music to distinguish it from earlier folk forms. Smaller, similar revivals have occurred elsewhere in the world at other times and this type of folk music also includes fusion genres such as folk rock, folk metal, electric folk, and others. Even individual songs may be a blend of the two, a consistent definition of traditional folk music is elusive. The terms folk music, folk song, and folk dance are comparatively recent expressions and they are extensions of the term folklore, which was coined in 1846 by the English antiquarian William Thoms to describe the traditions, customs, and superstitions of the uncultured classes. Traditional folk music also includes most indigenous music, however, despite the assembly of an enormous body of work over some two centuries, there is still no certain definition of what folk music is. Some do not even agree that the term Folk Music should be used, Folk music may tend to have certain characteristics but it cannot clearly be differentiated in purely musical terms. One meaning often given is that of old songs, with no known composers, the fashioning and re-fashioning of the music by the community that give it its folk character. Such definitions depend upon processes rather than abstract musical types, one widely used definition is simply Folk music is what the people sing. For Scholes, as well as for Cecil Sharp and Béla Bartók, Folk music was already. seen as the authentic expression of a way of life now past or about to disappear, particularly in a community uninfluenced by art music and by commercial and printed song. In these terms folk music may be seen as part of a schema comprising four types, primitive or tribal, elite or art, folk. Music in this genre is often called traditional music. Although the term is only descriptive, in some cases people use it as the name of a genre
Folk music
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Béla Bartók recording Slovak peasant singers in 1908
Folk music
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Indians always distinguished between classical and folk music, though in the past even classical Indian music used to rely on the unwritten transmission of repertoire.
Folk music
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Armenian traditional musicians
Folk music
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Assyrians playing
zurna and
Davul, the typically used instruments for their folk music.
3.
Blues
–
Blues is a genre and musical form originated by African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in African musical traditions, African-American work songs, spirituals, Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. Blue notes, usually thirds or fifths flattened in pitch, are also a part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove, Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times, Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the troubles experienced in African-American society. Many elements, such as the format and the use of blue notes. The origins of the blues are closely related to the religious music of the Afro-American community. The first appearance of the blues is often dated to after the ending of slavery and, later and it is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the former slaves. Chroniclers began to report about blues music at the dawn of the 20th century, the first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908. Blues has since evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves into a variety of styles and subgenres. Blues subgenres include country blues, such as Delta blues and Piedmont blues, as well as urban blues styles such as Chicago blues, World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a form called blues rock evolved. The term blues may have come from blue devils, meaning melancholy and sadness, the phrase blue devils may also have been derived from Britain in the 1600s, when the term referred to the intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal. As time went on, the phrase lost the reference to devils, by the 1800s in the United States, the term blues was associated with drinking alcohol, a meaning which survives in the phrase blue law, which prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sunday. Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to in print since 1912, in lyrics the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood. The lyrics of traditional blues verses probably often consisted of a single line repeated four times. Two of the first published songs, Dallas Blues and Saint Louis Blues, were 12-bar blues with the AAB lyric structure. Handy wrote that he adopted this convention to avoid the monotony of lines repeated three times, the lines are often sung following a pattern closer to rhythmic talk than to a melody
Blues
–
John Lomax (left) shaking hands with musician "Uncle" Rich Brown in Sumterville,
Alabama
Blues
–
Charley Patton, one of the originators of the Delta blues style, playing with a
pick or a
bottleneck slide.
Blues
–
Sheet music from "
Saint Louis Blues " (1914)
Blues
–
Bessie Smith, an early blues singer, was known for her powerful voice.
4.
Folkways Records
–
Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and childrens music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987 and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways, the Folkways Records & Service Co. was founded by Moses Asch and Marian Distler in 1948 in New York City. Asch sought to record and document sounds and music from everywhere in the world, from 1948 until Aschs death in 1986, Folkways Records released 2,168 albums. In 1964, Asch helped MGM Records start Verve Folkways Records which evolved in 1967 into Verve Forecast Records, the Folkways catalog includes traditional and contemporary music from around the world, poetry, spoken word, language instruction, and field recordings of people and nature. Folkways was a supporter of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Lead Belly. The Anthology of American Folk Music appeared on Folkways, as did the album to The Country Blues by Samuel Charters. Folkways was one of the earliest companies to release albums of world music and it also released many spoken word albums, and other unusual repertoire. The albums came with a pull-out leaflet containing extensive liner notes, the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage in Washington, D. C. acquired Aschs Folkways recordings and business files after his death in 1986. This acquisition was initiated by Ralph Rinzler of the Smithsonian before Aschs death and completed by the Asch Family to ensure the sounds and artists would be preserved for future generations. As a result, it was agreed to continue Aschs policy that all of the 2,168 titles would stay in print indefinitely regardless of market sales. The Smithsonian Folkways website uses the internet to make the recordings available as streaming samples, DRM-free digital downloads in MP3 and lossless FLAC format, and on CDs via mail order. A complete set of the Folkways recordings was donated to the University of Alberta where Michael Asch. Since acquiring Folkways, the Smithsonian has expanded Aschs collection by adding several other labels, including Cook, Monitor, Fast Folk, Dyer-Bennet. They have released over 300 new recordings, Smithsonian Folkways states that their mission is the legacy of Moses Asch, who founded Folkways Records in 1948 to document peoples music. By making these available, they intend to strengthen peoples engagement with their own cultural heritage and to enhance their awareness. Smithsonian Folkways has produced or co-produced a number of series based on Folkways collections. Sounds to Grow On is hosted by Michael Asch, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Alberta and the son of Moses Asch
Folkways Records
–
Gangland Rhythms LP
5.
Record producer
–
A record producer or music producer oversees and manages the sound recording and production of a band or performers music, which may range from recording one song to recording a lengthy concept album. A producer has many roles during the recording process, the roles of a producer vary. The producer may perform these roles himself, or help select the engineer, the producer may also pay session musicians and engineers and ensure that the entire project is completed within the record companies budget. A record producer or music producer has a broad role in overseeing and managing the recording. Producers also often take on an entrepreneurial role, with responsibility for the budget, schedules, contracts. In the 2010s, the industry has two kinds of producers with different roles, executive producer and music producer. Executive producers oversee project finances while music producers oversee the process of recording songs or albums. In most cases the producer is also a competent arranger, composer. The producer will also liaise with the engineer who concentrates on the technical aspects of recording. Noted producer Phil Ek described his role as the person who creatively guides or directs the process of making a record, indeed, in Bollywood music, the designation actually is music director. The music producers job is to create, shape, and mold a piece of music, at the beginning of record industry, producer role was technically limited to record, in one shot, artists performing live. The role of producers changed progressively over the 1950s and 1960s due to technological developments, the development of multitrack recording caused a major change in the recording process. Before multitracking, all the elements of a song had to be performed simultaneously, all of these singers and musicians had to be assembled in a large studio and the performance had to be recorded. As well, for a song that used 20 instruments, it was no longer necessary to get all the players in the studio at the same time. Examples include the rock sound effects of the 1960s, e. g. playing back the sound of recorded instruments backwards or clanging the tape to produce unique sound effects. These new instruments were electric or electronic, and thus they used instrument amplifiers, new technologies like multitracking changed the goal of recording, A producer could blend together multiple takes and edit together different sections to create the desired sound. For example, in jazz fusion Bandleader-composer Miles Davis album Bitches Brew, producers like Phil Spector and George Martin were soon creating recordings that were, in practical terms, almost impossible to realise in live performance. Producers became creative figures in the studio, other examples of such engineers includes Joe Meek, Teo Macero, Brian Wilson, and Biddu
Record producer
–
Alan Parsons in an
ESO 50th anniversary video.
Record producer
–
A
Danish recording session
Record producer
–
Mixing Console
6.
LP album
–
The LP is an analog sound storage medium, a vinyl record format characterized by a speed of 33 1⁄3 rpm, a 12 or 10 inch diameter, and use of the microgroove groove specification. Introduced by Columbia in 1948, it was adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry. Apart from a few relatively minor refinements and the important later addition of stereophonic sound, the new product was a 12- or 10-inch fine-grooved disc made of vinyl and played with a smaller-tipped microgroove stylus at a speed of 33 1⁄3 rpm. Each side of a 12-inch LP could play for more than 20 minutes, although the LP was suited to classical music because of its extended continuous playing time, it also allowed a collection of ten or more pop music recordings to be put on a single disc. The use of the word album persisted for the one-disc LP equivalent, the prototype of the LP was the soundtrack disc used by the Vitaphone motion picture sound system, developed by Western Electric and introduced in 1926. For soundtrack purposes, the less than five minutes of playing time of side of a conventional 12-inch 78 rpm disc was not acceptable. The sound had to play continuously for at least 11 minutes, long enough to accompany a full 1, the disc diameter was increased to 16 inches and the speed was reduced to 33 1⁄3 revolutions per minute. Unlike their smaller LP descendants, they were made with the same large standard groove used by 78s, unlike conventional records, the groove started at the inside of the recorded area near the label and proceeded outward toward the edge. Like 78s, early soundtrack discs were pressed in an abrasive shellac compound, syndicated radio programming was distributed on 78 rpm discs beginning in 1928. The desirability of a longer continuous playing time soon led to the adoption of the Vitaphone soundtrack disc format, 16-inch 33 1⁄3 rpm discs playing about 15 minutes per side were used for most of these electrical transcriptions beginning about 1930. Transcriptions were variously recorded inside out like soundtrack discs or with an outside start, some transcriptions were recorded with a vertically modulated hill and dale groove. This was found to allow deeper bass and also an extension of the frequency response. Neither of these was necessarily an advantage in practice because of the limitations of AM broadcasting. Today we can enjoy the benefits of those higher-fidelity recordings, even if the radio audiences could not. Initially, transcription discs were pressed only in shellac, but by 1932 pressings in RCA Victors vinyl-based Victrolac were appearing, by the late 1930s, vinyl was standard for nearly all kinds of pressed discs except ordinary commercial 78s, which continued to be made of shellac. Use of the LPs microgroove standard began in the late 1950s, the King Biscuit Flower Hour is a late example, as are Westwood Ones The Beatle Years and Doctor Demento programs, which were sent to stations on LP at least through 1992. RCA Victor introduced a version of a long-playing record for home use in September 1931. These Program Transcription discs, as Victor called them, played at 33 1⁄3 rpm and used a somewhat finer and they were to be played with a special Chromium Orange chrome-plated steel needle
LP album
–
At top, format logo used on early issues. Below, a typical LP, showing its central spindle hole and label surrounded by the grooved area. Three separate "tracks" are visible, but all are parts of one continuous spiral groove.
LP album
–
LP
LP album
–
Neumann SX-24 Record Cutting Machine
LP album
–
LPs
pressed in multicolored vinyl (Sotano Beat: A Todo Color, a various-artists compilation) and clear yellow vinyl - (Rock On Elvis by Tulsa McLean) both from Argentina.
7.
Blues music
–
Blues is a genre and musical form originated by African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in African musical traditions, African-American work songs, spirituals, Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. Blue notes, usually thirds or fifths flattened in pitch, are also a part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove, Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times, Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the troubles experienced in African-American society. Many elements, such as the format and the use of blue notes. The origins of the blues are closely related to the religious music of the Afro-American community. The first appearance of the blues is often dated to after the ending of slavery and, later and it is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the former slaves. Chroniclers began to report about blues music at the dawn of the 20th century, the first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908. Blues has since evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves into a variety of styles and subgenres. Blues subgenres include country blues, such as Delta blues and Piedmont blues, as well as urban blues styles such as Chicago blues, World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a form called blues rock evolved. The term blues may have come from blue devils, meaning melancholy and sadness, the phrase blue devils may also have been derived from Britain in the 1600s, when the term referred to the intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal. As time went on, the phrase lost the reference to devils, by the 1800s in the United States, the term blues was associated with drinking alcohol, a meaning which survives in the phrase blue law, which prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sunday. Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to in print since 1912, in lyrics the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood. The lyrics of traditional blues verses probably often consisted of a single line repeated four times. Two of the first published songs, Dallas Blues and Saint Louis Blues, were 12-bar blues with the AAB lyric structure. Handy wrote that he adopted this convention to avoid the monotony of lines repeated three times, the lines are often sung following a pattern closer to rhythmic talk than to a melody
Blues music
–
John Lomax (left) shaking hands with musician "Uncle" Rich Brown in Sumterville,
Alabama
Blues music
–
A minor
pentatonic scale; play (
help ·
info)
Blues music
–
Charley Patton, one of the originators of the Delta blues style, playing with a
pick or a
bottleneck slide.
Blues music
–
Sheet music from "
Saint Louis Blues " (1914)
8.
Harry Everett Smith
–
Harry Everett Smith was a visual artist, experimental filmmaker, record collector, bohemian, mystic, and largely self-taught student of anthropology. Besides his films, Smith is widely known for his influential Anthology of American Folk Music, throughout his life Smith was an inveterate collector. In addition to records, artifacts he collected included string figures, paper airplanes, Seminole textiles, Harry Smith was born in Portland, Oregon, and spent his earliest years in Washington state in the area between Seattle and Bellingham. As child he lived for a time with his family in Anacortes, Washington, a town on Fidalgo Island and he attended high school in nearby Bellingham. Smiths parents were Theosophists with Pantheistic tendencies, and both were fond of folk music and his mother, Mary Louise, originally from Sioux City, Iowa, came from a long line of school teachers and herself taught for a time on the Lummi Indian reservation near Bellingham. His father, Robert James Smith, a fisherman, worked as a watchman for the Pacific American Fishery and he had also been a prominent Freemason and had authored several books about the history of the order. Smiths parents, who didnt get along, lived in separate houses, although poor, they gave their son an artistic education, including 10 years of drawing and painting lessons. For a time, it is said, they ran an art school in their house. Smith was also a reader and he recalled his father bringing him a copy of Carl Sandburgs folksong anthology. We were considered some kind of low family, Smith once said, friends recall that in high school Smith carried around a camera and in his high school yearbook said that he wanted to compose symphonic music. Physically, Smith was undersized and had a curvature of the spine, during World War II he took a job as a mechanic working nights on the construction of the tight, hard-to-reach interior of Boeing bomber planes, for which his short stature suited him. Smith used the money he made from his job to buy blues records and it also enabled him to formally study anthropology at the University of Washington in Seattle for five semesters between 1942 and the fall of 1944. When the war ended Smith, now 22, moved to the Bay Area of San Francisco, then home to a bohemian folk music. In 1948, his mother succumbed to cancer, immediately after her funeral, Smith, who was estranged from his father, left Berkeley for a room above a well-known after hours jazz club in the Fillmore district of San Francisco. In 1950 Smith received a Guggenheim grant to complete an abstract film and he arranged for his collections, including his records, to be shipped to the East Coast. He said that one reason he moved to New York was to study the Cabala, and, I wanted to hear Thelonious Monk play. When his grant money ran out, he brought what he termed the cream of the crop of his collection to Moe Asch, president of Folkways Records. The recording engineer on the project was Péter Bartók, son of the renowned composer, LP discs could hold much more material than the old three-minute 78s, and had greater fidelity and far less surface noise
Harry Everett Smith
–
Smith c. 1965
9.
Gramophone record
–
The groove usually starts near the periphery and ends near the center of the disc. The phonograph disc record was the medium used for music reproduction until late in the 20th century. It had co-existed with the cylinder from the late 1880s. Records retained the largest market share even when new formats such as compact cassette were mass-marketed, by the late 1980s, digital media, in the form of the compact disc, had gained a larger market share, and the vinyl record left the mainstream in 1991. The phonograph record has made a resurgence in the early 21st century –9.2 million records were sold in the U. S. in 2014. Likewise, in the UK sales have increased five-fold from 2009 to 2014, as of 2017,48 record pressing facilities remain worldwide,18 in the United States and 30 in other countries. The increased popularity of vinyl has led to the investment in new, only two producers of lacquers remains, Apollo Masters in California, USA, and MDC in Japan. Vinyl records may be scratched or warped if stored incorrectly but if they are not exposed to heat or broken. The large cover are valued by collectors and artists for the space given for visual expression, in the 2000s, these tracings were first scanned by audio engineers and digitally converted into audible sound. Phonautograms of singing and speech made by Scott in 1860 were played back as sound for the first time in 2008, along with a tuning fork tone and unintelligible snippets recorded as early as 1857, these are the earliest known recordings of sound. In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, unlike the phonautograph, it was capable of both recording and reproducing sound. Despite the similarity of name, there is no evidence that Edisons phonograph was based on Scotts phonautograph. Edison first tried recording sound on a paper tape, with the idea of creating a telephone repeater analogous to the telegraph repeater he had been working on. The tinfoil was wrapped around a metal cylinder and a sound-vibrated stylus indented the tinfoil while the cylinder was rotated. The recording could be played back immediately, Edison also invented variations of the phonograph that used tape and disc formats. A decade later, Edison developed a greatly improved phonograph that used a wax cylinder instead of a foil sheet. This proved to be both a better-sounding and far more useful and durable device, the wax phonograph cylinder created the recorded sound market at the end of the 1880s and dominated it through the early years of the 20th century. Berliners earliest discs, first marketed in 1889, but only in Europe, were 12.5 cm in diameter, both the records and the machine were adequate only for use as a toy or curiosity, due to the limited sound quality
Gramophone record
–
Edison wax cylinder phonograph c. 1899
Gramophone record
Gramophone record
–
Emil Berliner with disc record gramophone
Gramophone record
–
Hungarian Pathé record, 90 to 100 rpm
10.
Folk music revival
–
A roots revival is a trend which includes young performers popularizing the traditional musical styles of their ancestors. Often, roots revivals include an addition of newly composed songs with socially and politically aware lyrics, the term roots revival is vague, and may not always refer to identical events. The first folk revival was a movement to transcribe and record traditional British songs during the late 19th. Pioneers of this movement were the Harvard professor Francis James Child, compiler of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Sabine Baring-Gould, Frank Kidson, Lucy Broadwood, the Folk Song Society was founded in 1898 to promote this new endeavour. A major figure in movement was Cecil Sharp who was the most influential on the repertoire of subsequent performers. His lectures and other publications attempted to define a musical tradition that was rural in origin, oral in transmission, a second wave of revival that was orientated around culture and entertainment began in the 1930s and 1940s in America and in Britain in the 1940s. The movement became global in the 1960s and 1970s, in other cases, such as Cameroon and the Dominican Republic, no revival was necessary as the music remained common, and was merely popularized and adapted for mainstream audiences at home and abroad. By the 1980s, popular bands included Brabants Volksorkest and the rock band Kadril. Cameroonian music, Beginning with bikutsi in the 1950s and continuing with makossa into the end of the 20th century, the leader of Chinese rock is undoubtedly Cui Jian. Czech music, In 1966, the Porta Festival was held, danish music, In contrast to its neighbors, Denmark did not see a roots revival until to the late 1990s, when performers like Morten Alfred Høirup gained a widespread following in the country. Egyptian music, The city of Cairo is the most important center for Egyptian music, Finnish music, Finlands folk styles include a variety of national genres and ballads, while the traditional rhyming sleigh songs rekilaulu have become an integral part of many pop singers. In 1967, the Savonlinna Opera Festival, the first of similar festivals, contributed to a revival of Finnish opera. French music, Though many of Frances regional styles have seen popularization, the region boasts a uniquely Celtic heritage, which has been emphasized by the revival since its beginnings in the early 1970s, led by Alan Stivell. Corsican music has seen a revival, though with little popular success. See also the Québécois under Canadian music, Gambian music, By the 1970s, Gambian musicians were mostly playing popular merengue or other styles. A visit by pop band The Super Eagles to London to record saw a change, the band became known as Ifang Bondi, and their music was called Afro-Manding blues. Pen Cayetano was the most important figure in this scene, german music, Following the 1968 student revolution in West Germany, singer-songwriters playing a kind of expressive, melancholy music with traditional influences became popular. Due to governmental interference, East Germany did not see much of this influence until the mid-1970s, ghanaian music, Ghana is best known for the highlife style of music, which has been popular throughout the 20th century
Folk music revival
–
Cecil Sharp, founding figure of the early 20th century folk revival in England.
11.
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
–
Smithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a part of the Smithsonians Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located at Capital Gallery in downtown Washington, the label was founded in 1987 after the family of Moses Asch, founder of Folkways Records, donated the entire Folkways Records label to the Smithsonian. The donation was made on the condition that the Institution continue Aschs policy that each of the more than 2,000 albums of Folkways Records remain in print forever, regardless of sales. Since then, the label has expanded on Asch’s vision of documenting the sounds of the world, adding six other labels to the collection. Some well-known artists have contributed to the Smithsonian Folkways collection, including Pete Seeger, Ella Jenkins, Woody Guthrie, famous songs include This Land Is Your Land, Goodnight, Irene, and Midnight Special. The Smithsonian Folkways Recordings label arose when the Smithsonian acquired a vast collection of recordings from Folkways Records, the original 2,168 titles produced by Folkways Records now make up the bulk of the labels collection. In 1905, Moses Moe Asch was born in Poland and his father, Sholem Asch, a successful author, made enough money to move the family to Paris in 1912. In 1914, Sholem left Paris for work in New York City and, the experience at Ellis Island was traumatic for 10-year-old Moe, and, based on his own account, memory was seared into his mind. Sholem believed in educating his fellow man through his literature, in the mid-1920s, Asch studied radio engineering in Germany, a center for the new science. When he returned to the United States, he worked for electronic firms before opening his own radio repair business, Radio Labs. In this business, Moe built equipment for radio stations and installed recorders for air use. Asch wrote in a 1961 article, “Forming one of the first independent record companies it was natural for me to want to record music and people’s expression of their wants, needs. Soon after that meeting, in early 1940, Asch founded Asch Records with a staff and studio located in downtown Manhattan. He allowed any artist to come and record at no charge, because of his open-door policy, Asch attracted many young and/or unique would-be artists. Due to the American Federation of Musicians’1942 strike against major record labels, the label grew and became more successful through deals with other producers, including Norman Granz. This partnership proved successful, leading to the concept of recording live concerts and these recordings came close to Asch’s vision of documenting “real” sound, and, because there were no studio fees, were less expensive to produce. Around this time, Asch began another record label, Disc Records, Asch received recordings from Granz of an up-and-coming pianist named Nat Cole, which he decided to issue on a record in fall 1946. He invested an amount of money in publicity and advertising
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
–
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
12.
Jazz
–
Jazz is a music genre that originated amongst African Americans in New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in Blues and Ragtime. Since the 1920s jazz age, jazz has become recognized as a form of musical expression. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrhythms, Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music. Although the foundation of jazz is deeply rooted within the Black experience of the United States, different cultures have contributed their own experience, intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as one of Americas original art forms. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on different national, regional, and local musical cultures, New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass-band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. In the 1930s, heavily arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz, bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging musicians music which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed in the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments. In the early 1980s, a form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful. Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s, such as Latin, the question of the origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm, a term dating back to 1860 meaning pep. The use of the word in a context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Its first documented use in a context in New Orleans was in a November 14,1916 Times-Picayune article about jas bands. In an interview with NPR, musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of the slang connotations of the term, saying, When Broadway picked it up. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century. Jazz has proved to be difficult to define, since it encompasses such a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years. Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, in the opinion of Robert Christgau, most of us would say that inventing meaning while letting loose is the essence and promise of jazz. As Duke Ellington, one of jazzs most famous figures, said, although jazz is considered highly difficult to define, at least in part because it contains so many varied subgenres, improvisation is consistently regarded as being one of its key elements
Jazz
–
Louis Armstrong (1901–1971) is considered one of the pivotal musicians in jazz for his contributions as a trumpet player, composer and singer.
Jazz
–
Double bassist
Reggie Workman, saxophone player
Pharoah Sanders, and drummer
Idris Muhammad performing in 1978
Jazz
–
Albert Gleizes, 1915, Composition pour Jazz, gouache on cardboard, mounted on Masonite, 73 x 73 cm,
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Jazz
–
In the late 18th-century painting
The Old Plantation, African-Americans dance to banjo and percussion.
13.
Cajun music
–
Cajun music, an emblematic music of Louisiana, is rooted in the ballads of the French-speaking Acadians of Canada. Cajun music is mentioned in tandem with the Creole-based, Creole-influenced zydeco form. These French Louisiana sounds have influenced American popular music for decades, especially country music. Cajun music is relatively harsh with a beat and a lot of forward drive. Besides the voices, only two instruments are heard, the accordion and fiddle, but usually in the background can also be heard the high. The harmonies of Cajun music are simple, basically I, IV, and V, tonic, sub-dominant, the melodic range is just one octave, rising a fifth above the tonic and descending a fourth below. Because the Cajun accordion is an instrument it can only play tunes in a few keys. For example, a C accordion is tuned such that the entire C scale is available on the ten buttons, a C accordion can also play a tune in the key of G, but one note of the G scale will be missing which is F#. So tunes played in the key of G will not have an F# note, a C accordion can also play a few Cajun songs in the key of F however the Bb note will be missing. Also it can play in the key of D with a bluesy sound since the F natural note becomes a third or minor third in the key of D. However a skilled player can play in these other keys. Since an instrument must match the range, much Cajun singing is sung in the singers upper range. The accordionist gives the vocal melody greater energy by repeating most notes and this style comprises the roots of Cajun dance music, involving only a few instruments such as the Cajun accordion, fiddle, and triangle. This form holds firm to a rhythm with staccato style notes. Each fiddle solo is composed of a major scale riff, repeated between verses and this form has existed since the early 1900s and the waltz and two-step are the most common dances of this Cajun music genre. Many songs that became standards in the Cajun music repertoire were first recorded in this period of the 1920s and 1930s, a number of the most prominent traditional Cajun musicians are featured in the 1989 documentary JAi Ete Au Bal. Amédé Ardoin, Canray Fontenot, Wade Frugé, Dewey Segura, Joe Falcon and Cléoma Falcon, and this style involves heavy elements of Texas country music influence and a move away from the traditional accordion. This music has more of a style popularized by Bob Wills
Cajun music
–
Traditional Cajun instruments:
tit-fer,
Cajun accordion, and a
fiddle.
14.
Gospel music
–
Gospel music is a music genre in Christian music. The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of music varies according to culture. Gospel music is composed and performed for many purposes, including aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, Gospel music usually has dominant vocals with Christian lyrics. Gospel music can be traced to the early 17th century, with roots in the oral tradition. Hymns and sacred songs were repeated in a call and response fashion, most of the churches relied on hand clapping and foot stomping as rhythmic accompaniment. Most of the singing was done a cappella, the first published use of the term Gospel Song probably appeared in 1874. The original gospel songs were written and composed by such as George F. Root, Philip Bliss, Charles H. Gabriel, William Howard Doane. The advent of radio in the 1920s greatly increased the audience for gospel music, following World War II, gospel music moved into major auditoriums, and gospel music concerts became quite elaborate. Gospel blues is a form of gospel music. Southern gospel used all male, tenor-lead-baritone-bass quartet make-up, progressive Southern gospel is an American music genre that has grown out of Southern gospel over the past couple of decades. Christian country music, sometimes referred to as gospel music, is a subgenre of gospel music with a country flair. It peaked in popularity in the mid-1990s, bluegrass gospel music is rooted in American mountain music. Celtic gospel music infuses gospel music with a Celtic flair, and is popular in countries such as Ireland. British black gospel refers to Gospel music of the African diaspora, some proponents of standard hymns generally dislike gospel music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, with distance, there is a greater acceptance of such gospel songs into official denominational hymnals. Gospel music in general is characterized by dominant vocals referencing lyrics of a Christian nature, subgenres include contemporary gospel, urban contemporary gospel, Southern gospel, and modern gospel music. Several forms of gospel music utilize choirs, use piano or Hammond organ, tambourines, drums, bass guitar and, increasingly, electric guitar. In comparison with hymns, which are generally of a statelier measure, several attempts have been made to describe the style of late 19th and early 20th century gospel songs in general
Gospel music
–
Mahalia Jackson in the
Concertgebouw concert hall, The Netherlands
Gospel music
–
Exemplification of gospel music: an open Bible and a CD, which represent the gospel in written and musical forms
15.
Ephemeral
–
Ephemerality is the concept of things being transitory, existing only briefly. Because different people may value the passage of time differently, the concept of ephemerality is a relative one, an ephemeral waterbody is a wetland, spring, stream, river, pond or lake that only exists for a short period following precipitation or snowmelt. They are not the same as intermittent or seasonal waterbodies, which exist for longer periods, examples of ephemeral streams are the Luni river in Rajasthan, India, Ugab River in Southern Africa, and a number of small ephemeral watercourses that drain Talak in northern Niger. Other notable ephemeral rivers include the Todd River and Sandover River in Central Australia as well as the Son River, Batha River, any endorheic basin, or closed basin, that contains a playa or dry lake at its drainage lowpoint can become an ephemeral lake. Examples include Lake Carnegie in Western Australia, Lake Cowal in New South Wales, Mystic Lake and Rogers Lake in California, even the driest and lowest place in North America, Death Valley, became flooded with a short-lived ephemeral lake in the spring of 2005. There are also ephemeral islands such as Banua Wuhu and Home Reef and these islands appear when volcanic activity increases their height above sea level, but disappear over several years due to wave erosion. Bassas da India, on the hand, is a near-sea level island that appears only at low tide. Many plants are adapted to a lifestyle, in which they spend most of the year or longer as seeds before conditions are right for a brief period of growth. The spring ephemeral plant mouse-ear cress is a well-known example, animals can be ephemeral, with brine shrimp and the mayfly being examples. The placenta is considered an ephemeral organ present during gestation and pregnancy, ephemeral can also be used as an adjective to refer to a fast-deteriorating importance or temporary nature of an object to a person. Brands are notoriously ephemeral assets, and magazine publishing was once much more ephemeral than it is today, a number of art forms can be considered ephemeral because of their temporary nature. Early land art and all sand sculptures, ice sculptures and chalk drawings on footpaths are examples of ephemeral art, G. Augustine Lynas and Duthain Dealbh create ephemeral sculptures. Ephemeroptera Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Esthetique De Lephemere, Galilee, ISBN 2-7186-0622-3
Ephemeral
–
The ephemeral nature of Granite Plateau Creek on the
Mawson Plateau, means the creek is usually a series of waterholes.
Ephemeral
–
Staircase Falls in
Yosemite National Park only flows after heavy rainfall or snowmelt.
Ephemeral
–
Home Reef has repeatedly breached the surface and been subsequently eroded by wave action.
Ephemeral
–
A lake formed at
Badwater within
Death Valley National Park during the unusually wet winter and spring of 2005
16.
The Depression
–
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place during the 1930s. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, in most countries it started in 1929 and it was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. In the 21st century, the Great Depression is commonly used as an example of how far the economy can decline. The depression originated in the United States, after a fall in stock prices that began around September 4,1929. Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide GDP fell by an estimated 15%, by comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession. Some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s, however, in many countries, the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II. The Great Depression had devastating effects in both rich and poor. Personal income, tax revenue, profits and prices dropped, while international trade plunged by more than 50%, unemployment in the U. S. rose to 25% and in some countries rose as high as 33%. Cities all around the world were hit hard, especially dependent on heavy industry. Construction was virtually halted in many countries, farming communities and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by about 60%. Facing plummeting demand with few sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as mining and logging suffered the most. Even after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 optimism persisted for some time, john D. Rockefeller said These are days when many are discouraged. In the 93 years of my life, depressions have come, prosperity has always returned and will again. The stock market turned upward in early 1930, returning to early 1929 levels by April and this was still almost 30% below the peak of September 1929. Together, government and business spent more in the first half of 1930 than in the period of the previous year. On the other hand, consumers, many of whom had suffered losses in the stock market the previous year. In addition, beginning in the mid-1930s, a severe drought ravaged the agricultural heartland of the U. S, by mid-1930, interest rates had dropped to low levels, but expected deflation and the continuing reluctance of people to borrow meant that consumer spending and investment were depressed. By May 1930, automobile sales had declined to below the levels of 1928, prices in general began to decline, although wages held steady in 1930
The Depression
–
Dorothea Lange 's
Migrant Mother depicts destitute
pea pickers in
California, centering on
Florence Owens Thompson, age 32, a mother of seven children, in
Nipomo, California, March 1936
The Depression
–
USA annual real GDP from 1910 to 1960, with the years of the Great Depression (1929–1939) highlighted.
The Depression
–
Crowd gathering at the intersection of
Wall Street and Broad Street after the
1929 crash
The Depression
–
Crowds outside the
Bank of United States in New York after its failure in 1931
17.
Columbia Records
–
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, Inc. the United States division of Sony Corporation. It was founded in 1887, evolving from an enterprise named the American Graphophone Company. Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the sound business. Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of singers, instrumentalists. It is one of Sony Musics three flagship record labels alongside RCA Records and Epic Records, rather, as above, it was connected to CBS, a broadcasting media company which had purchased the company in 1938, and had been co-founded in 1927 by Columbia Records itself. Though Arista Records was sold to Bertelsmann Music Group, it would become a sister label of Columbia Records through its mutual connection to Sony Music. The Columbia Phonograph Company was founded in 1887 by stenographer, lawyer and New Jersey native Edward Easton and it derived its name from the District of Columbia, where it was headquartered. At first it had a monopoly on sales and service of Edison phonographs and phonograph cylinders in Washington. As was the custom of some of the regional companies, Columbia produced many commercial cylinder recordings of its own. Columbias ties to Edison and the North American Phonograph Company were severed in 1894 with the North American Phonograph Companys breakup, thereafter it sold only records and phonographs of its own manufacture. In 1902, Columbia introduced the XP record, a brown wax record. According to Gracyk, the molded brown waxes may have sold to Sears for distribution. Columbia began selling records and phonographs in addition to the cylinder system in 1901, preceded only by their Toy Graphophone of 1899. For a decade, Columbia competed with both the Edison Phonograph Company cylinders and the Victor Talking Machine Company disc records as one of the top three names in American recorded sound. In order to add prestige to its catalog of artists. The firm also introduced the internal-horn Grafonola to compete with the extremely popular Victrola sold by the rival Victor Talking Machine Company, during this era, Columbia used the famous Magic Notes logo—a pair of sixteenth notes in a circle—both in the United States and overseas. Columbia was split into two companies, one to make records and one to make players, Columbia Phonograph was moved to Connecticut, and Ed Easton went with it. Eventually it was renamed the Dictaphone Corporation, in late 1923, Columbia went into receivership
Columbia Records
–
Original home of Columbia in Washington, D.C., in 1889
Columbia Records
Columbia Records
–
A Columbia type AT cylinder
graphophone, first released in 1898
Columbia Records
–
This article is about the American record label active worldwide except in Japan. For the Columbia label which was a unit of EMI, see
Columbia Graphophone Company. For the Columbia label in Japan, see
Nippon Columbia.
18.
Paramount Records
–
Paramount Records was an American record label known for its recordings of jazz and blues in the 1920s and early 1930s, including such artists as Ma Rainey and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Paramount Records was founded in 1917 by the Wisconsin Chair Company, the labels offices were located in Port Washington, Wisconsin and the pressing plant was in Grafton. The label was managed by Fred Dennett Key, the Wisconsin Chair Company made wooden phonograph cabinets for Edison Records. In 1915 it started making its own phonographs in the name of its subsidiary and it made phonographs under the Vista brand name through the end of the decade, the line failed commercially. In 1918, a line of gramophone records debuted on the Paramount label, advertisements, however, stated, Paramounts are recorded in our own New York laboratory. In its early years, the Paramount label fared only slightly better than the Vista phonograph line, the product had little to distinguish itself. Paramount released pop recordings with average audio quality pressed on average quality shellac, in the early 1920s, Paramount was accumulating debt while producing no profit. Paramount began offering to press records for other companies on a basis at low prices. Paramount was contracted to press discs for Black Swan Records, when the Black Swan company later floundered, Paramount bought out Black Swan and made records by and for African-Americans. These so-called race music records became Paramounts most famous and lucrative business, Paramounts race record series was launched in 1922 with vaudeville blues songs by Lucille Hegamin and Alberta Hunter. The company had a large mail-order operation which was a key to its early success, most of Paramounts race music recordings were arranged by black entrepreneur J. Mayo Williams. Williams did not know at the time that the market had become Paramounts prime business. Problems with low fidelity and poor pressings continued, Blind Lemon Jeffersons 1926 hits, Got the Blues and Long Lonesome Blues, were quickly rerecorded in the superior facilities of Marsh Laboratories, and subsequent releases used the rerecorded version. Both versions were released on compilation albums, in 1927, Ink Williams moved to competitor Okeh Records, taking Blind Lemon Jefferson with him for just one recording, Matchbox Blues. Paramounts recording of the song can be compared with Okehs on compilation albums. In 1929, Paramount was building a new studio in Grafton, so it sent Charley Patton —sent up by Jackson, Mississippi, storeowner H. C. Speir —to the studio of Gennett Records in Richmond, Indiana, where on June 14 he cut 14 famous sides, as the 12000 race series sold well, Paramounts 20000 popular series floundered. Paramount turned to its label, Broadway Records, which was taken over by Paramount following the collapse of Bridgeport Die & Machine Company in 1924
Paramount Records
–
Label of a Paramount record from 1926
Paramount Records
–
Paramount Records ad, 1919
19.
Bootleg recording
–
A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. The process of making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging, bootlegs usually consist of either unreleased studio recordings, live performances or interviews with an unpredictable level of quality. The following year, the Rolling Stones Liver Than Youll Ever Be, subsequent bootlegs became more sophisticated in packaging, particularly the Trademark of Quality label with William Stouts cover artwork. Compact disc bootlegs first appeared in the 1980s, and internet distribution became popular in the 1990s. Changing technologies have affected the recording, distribution, and varying profitability of the underground industry, the copyrights for the song and the right to authorise recordings often reside with the artist, according to several international copyright treaties. The recording, trading and sale of bootlegs continues to thrive, however, even as artists, the word bootleg originates from the practice of smuggling illicit items in the legs of tall boots, particularly the smuggling of alcohol during the American Prohibition era. The word, over time, has come to refer to any illegal or illicit product and this term has become an umbrella term for illicit, unofficial, or unlicensed recordings, including vinyl LPs, silver CDs, or any other commercially sold media or material. The alternate term ROIO or VOI arose among Pink Floyd collectors, to clarify the recording source, although unofficial and unlicensed recordings had existed before the 1960s, the very first rock bootlegs came in plain sleeves with the title rubber stamped on it. However, they developed into more sophisticated packaging, in order to distinguish the manufacturer from inferior competitors. With todays packaging and desktop publishing technology, even the layman can create official looking CDs, with the advent of the cassette and CD-R, however, some bootlegs are traded privately with no attempt to be manufactured professionally. This is even more evident with the ability to share bootlegs via the Internet, some record companies have considered that any record issued outside of their control, and for which they do not receive payment, to be a counterfeit, which includes bootlegs. The most common type is the live bootleg, or audience recording, a number of bootlegs originated with FM radio broadcasts of live or previously recorded live performances. Other bootlegs may be soundboard recordings taken directly from a mixing console used to feed the public address system at a live performance. Artists may record their own shows for review, but engineers may surreptitiously take a copy of this. Some bootlegs consist of private or professional studio recordings distributed without the involvement, including demos. A theme of early rock bootlegs was to copy deleted records, such as old singles and B-sides, onto a single LP, some bootlegs, however, did lead to official releases. According to enthusiast and author Clinton Heylin, the concept of a record can be traced back to the days of Shakespeare. The US did not agree to the terms, resulting in many piratical reprints of sheet music being published there by the end of the century
Bootleg recording
–
The
audio cassette greatly increased the distribution of bootleg recordings in the 1980s.
Bootleg recording
–
Who's Zoo compiled early singles and B-sides by
The Who, which had not been commercially released in the U.S. Like several
Trademark of Quality bootlegs, it featured cover artwork by
William Stout.
Bootleg recording
–
Kum Back, a collection of recordings by
The Beatles in early 1969, appeared before the official release of
Let It Be.
Bootleg recording
–
The Rolling Stones '
Live'r Than You'll Ever Be, released in late 1969, received a rave review in
Rolling Stone
20.
Child ballads
–
The Child Ballads are 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century. Their lyrics and Childs studies of them were published as the 2, the tunes of most of the ballads were collected and published by Bertrand Harris Bronson in and around the 1960s. There were also comprehensive ballad collections from other countries, Child modelled his work on Svend Grundtvigs Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, classifying and numbering the ballads and noting different versions, which were placed side by side to aid comparison. As a result, one Child number may cover several ballads, conversely, ballads classified separately may contain turns of phrase, and even entire verses, that are identical. The ballads vary in age, for instance, the manuscript of Judas dates to the thirteenth century, the majority of the ballads, however, date to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although some are claimed to have very ancient influences, only a handful can be traced to before 1600. Moreover, few of the tunes collected are as old as the words, nevertheless, Childs collection was far more comprehensive than any previous collection of ballads in English. Many of Childs ballads were obtained from printed broadsides, but he distinguished the traditional ballads that interested him from later broadside ballads. As Child died before writing a commentary on his work, it is exactly how and why he selected some ballads. Child Ballads are generally heavier and darker than is usual for ballads, on one extreme, some Child Ballads recount identifiable historical people, in known events, embellished for dramatic effect. On the other, some differ from fairy tales solely by their songs and in verse. A large part of the collection is about Robin Hood, some are about King Arthur, a few of the ballads are rather bawdy. The editorial history of Childs publication received a study by Mary Ellen Brown in 2011. In 1860, Child published a collection entitled English and Scottish Ballads, generally presenting just one variant of each ballad, via Little, Brown. However, as a scholarly edition this was superseded by his later, the first edition of Childs book was, once complete, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, ed. by Francis James Child,5 vols. It was printed in one thousand copies, and actually issued in ten parts, the final title pages for each of the five volumes, printed in red and black, were issued with part 10. Part 10 actually emerged after Childs death, and was edited by George Lyman Kittredge, the book was reprinted, this time physically in three volumes, in 1957 by the New York-based Folklore Press, in association with the Pageant Book Company. It was reprinted again in 1965 in New York by Dover, this time with an essay by Walter Morris Hart entitled Professor Child, many Child Ballads have subsequently appeared in contemporary music recordings
Child ballads
–
The 1904 Houghton Mifflin edition of Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads
Child ballads
–
Francis James Child collected the words to over 300 British folk ballads.
Child ballads
–
Illustration by
Arthur Rackham of Child Ballad 26, "
The Twa Corbies "
Child ballads
–
Illustration by
Alexander George Fraser of Child Ballad 275,
Get Up and Bar the Door
21.
Anthology of American Folk Music, Vol. 4
–
Compiled by experimental filmmaker and notable eccentric Harry Smith as the fourth album of his Anthology of American Folk Music set from 1952, it was never completed by Smith himself. While the CD is out of print, an LP version has been issued, the original anthology jump-started the folk music revival of the 1950s. In 1972, Moses Asch, interviewed by Sing Out, magazine, claimed that tapes for two additional volumes of the project had survived, although the documentation necessary to make a meaningful release of the volumes had been lost. Revenant Records worked with the Harry Smith Archive to recreate and release the fourth volume, the extensive liner notes presented in a hardcover book were written by Dick Spottswood and John Fahey. Smith included material released as late as 1940, with a selection of union songs making their first appearances for an Anthology set, other less famous performances are quite intriguing. Club review, Joshua Klein wrote Volume Four is stylistically akin to the first three, with some of the artists from the earlier volumes making encore performances. As Spottswood notes, the two-disc set ignores several country developments and its another essential, timeless piece of the Americana puzzle, fitting nicely into the incomparable picture Smith painted. E
Anthology of American Folk Music, Vol. 4
–
Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, Volume 4
22.
Collage
–
Collage is a technique of an art production, primarily used in the visual arts, where the artwork is made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. The origins of collage can be traced back hundreds of years, the term collage was coined by both Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in the beginning of the 20th century when collage became a distinctive part of modern art. Techniques of collage were first used at the time of the invention of paper in China, around 200 BC. The use of collage, however, wasnt used by many people until the 10th century in Japan, when began to apply glued paper, using texts on surfaces. The technique of collage appeared in medieval Europe during the 13th century, gold leaf panels started to be applied in Gothic cathedrals around the 15th and 16th centuries. Gemstones and other metals were applied to religious images, icons. An 18th-century example of art can be found in the work of Mary Delany. In the 19th century, collage methods also were used among hobbyists for memorabilia, the exhibition later traveled to The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Art Gallery of Ontario. For example, the Tate Gallerys online art glossary states that collage was first used as a technique in the twentieth century. The glued-on patches which Braque and Picasso added to their canvases offered a new perspective on painting when the patches collided with the plane of the painting. Collage in the modernist sense began with Cubist painters Georges Braque, according to some sources, Picasso was the first to use the collage technique in oil paintings. According to the Guggenheim Museums online article about collage, Braque took up the concept of collage itself before Picasso, applying it to charcoal drawings. Picasso adopted collage immediately after, It was Braque who purchased a roll of simulated oak-grain wallpaper and began cutting out pieces of the paper, Picasso immediately began to make his own experiments in the new medium. In 1912 for his Still Life with Chair Caning, Picasso pasted a patch of oilcloth with a design onto the canvas of the piece. Surrealist artists have made use of collage. Cubomania is a made by cutting an image into squares which are then reassembled automatically or at random. Collages produced using a similar, or perhaps identical, method are called etrécissements by Marcel Mariën from a method first explored by Mariën, surrealist games such as parallel collage use collective techniques of collage making. Many of these artists used techniques in their work
Collage
–
Kurt Schwitters, Das Undbild, 1919, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
Collage
–
Hannah Höch, Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919, collage of pasted papers, 90x144 cm, Staatliche Museum,
Berlin.
Collage
–
Pablo Picasso, 1913-14, Head (Tête), cut and pasted colored paper, gouache and charcoal on paperboard, 43.5 x 33 cm,
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
Collage
–
What may be called wood collage is the dominant feature in this 1964
mixed media painting by
Jane Frank (1918–1986)
23.
Postmodern
–
Postmodernism describes a broad movement that developed in the mid to late 20th century across philosophy, the arts, architecture and criticism which marked a departure from modernism. Accordingly, postmodern thought is characterized by tendencies to epistemological and moral relativism, pluralism, irreverence. The term postmodernism has been applied both to the era following modernity, and to a host of movements within that era that reacted against tendencies in modernism. Postmodernism includes skeptical critical interpretations of culture, literature, art, philosophy, history, linguistics, economics, architecture, fiction, feminist theory, and literary criticism. Postmodernism is often associated with schools of such as deconstruction and post-structuralism, as well as philosophers such as Jean-François Lyotard. The term postmodern was first used around the 1880s, John Watkins Chapman suggested a Postmodern style of painting as a way to depart from French Impressionism. In 1921 and 1925, postmodernism had been used to new forms of art. In 1942 H. R. Hays described it as a new literary form, however, as a general theory for a historical movement it was first used in 1939 by Arnold J. Toynbee, Our own Post-Modern Age has been inaugurated by the general war of 1914–1918. Peter Drucker suggested the transformation into a post modern world happened between 1937 and 1957, post-structuralism resulted similarly to postmodernism by following a time of structuralism. It is characterized by new ways of thinking through structuralism, contrary to the original form, postmodernist describes part of a movement, Postmodern places it in the period of time since the 1950s, making it a part of contemporary history. Martin Heidegger rejected the philosophical basis of the concepts of subjectivity and objectivity, instead of resisting the admission of this paradox in the search for understanding, Heidegger requires that we embrace it through an active process of elucidation he called the hermeneutic circle. He stressed the historicity and cultural construction of concepts while simultaneously advocating the necessity of an atemporal, in this latter premise, Heidegger shares an affinity with the late Romantic philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, another principal forerunner of post-structuralist and postmodernist thought. Instead, Foucault focused on the ways in which such constructs can foster cultural hegemony, violence and his writings have had a major influence on the larger body of postmodern academic literature. These metanarratives still remain in Western society but are now being undermined by rapid Informatization, Richard Rorty argues in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature that contemporary analytic philosophy mistakenly imitates scientific methods. For Baudrillard, “simulation is no longer that of a territory and it is the generation by models of a real without origin or a reality, a hyperreal. In Analysis of the Journey, a journal birthed from postmodernism, Douglas Kellner insists that the assumptions and his terms defined in the depth of postmodernism are based on advancement, innovation, and adaptation. Extensively, Kellner analyzes the terms of theory in real-life experiences and examples. Kellner used science and technology studies as a part of his analysis
Postmodern
–
Portland Building, an example of
Postmodern architecture
Postmodern
–
Detail of the postmodern
Abteiberg Museum in
Germany.
Postmodern
–
Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2006
Nobel Prize in Literature.
Postmodern
–
Composer
Henryk Górecki.
24.
Theodore de Bry
–
Theodorus de Bry was an engraver, goldsmith, editor and publisher, famous for his depictions of early European expeditions to the Americas. The Spanish Inquisition forced de Bry, a Protestant, to flee his native and he moved around Europe, starting from the city of Liège in the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, then to Strasbourg, Antwerp, London and Frankfurt, where he settled. De Bry created a number of engraved illustrations for his books. Most of his books were based on observations by explorers, even if De Bry himself, acting as a recorder of information. To modern eyes, many of the illustrations seem formal but detailed, as a man he trained under his grandfather, Thiry de Bry the Elder, and under his father, Thiry de Bry the Younger, who were jewellers and engravers, engraving copper plates. The art of copper engraving was the technology required at that time for printing images. In 1524 Thiry de Bry the Younger married Catherine le Blavier, daughter of Conrad le Blavier de Jemeppe and their son, Theodore de Bry, also became a jeweller and engraver. Theodore de Bry became a Protestant, and in 1570 was sentenced to perpetual banishment and he moved to Strasbourg, along the west bank of the Rhine. In 1588, Theodorus and his family moved permanently to Frankfurt-am-Main, the most famous one is known as Les Grands Voyages, i. e. The Great Travels, or The Discovery of America and he also published the largely identical India Orientalis series, as well as many other illustrated works on a wide range of subjects. His books were published in Latin, and were translated into German, English. His illustrations were based on the paintings of colonist John White. The book sold well, and the year de Bry published a new one about the first French attempts to colonize Florida, Fort Caroline, founded by Jean Ribault. It featured 43 illustrations based on paintings of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, Jacques de Moyne had planned to publish his account of his expeditions but died 1587. According to de Brys account, he had bought de Moynes paintings from his widow in London, the Latin and German editions varied markedly, in accordance with the differences in estimated readership. The verisimilitude of many of de Brys illustrations is questionable, not least because he never crossed the Atlantic, amerindians look like Mediterranean Europeans, and illustrations mix different tribal customs and artifacts. In addition to life of the American natives, Theodore de Bry even included a few depictions of cannibalism. All in all, the vast amount of illustrations and texts influenced the European perception of the New World, Africa
Theodore de Bry
Theodore de Bry
–
The Trvve Picture of One
Picte: Theodor de Bry’s engraving of an imagined Pict (a member of an ancient people from what is today
Scotland), published in
Thomas Hariot ’s 1588 book A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia.
Theodore de Bry
–
Depiction of Spanish atrocities in the
New World, as recounted by
Bartolomé de las Casas in Narratio Regionum indicarum per Hispanos Quosdam devastatarum verissima.
Theodore de Bry
–
Village of Secoton, engraved illustration by de Bry accompanying
Thomas Hariot 's book of 1588 A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia
25.
Alchemy
–
Alchemy is a philosophical and protoscientific tradition practiced throughout Europe, Egypt and Asia. It aimed to purify, mature, and perfect certain objects, the perfection of the human body and soul was thought to permit or result from the alchemical magnum opus and, in the Hellenistic and western tradition, the achievement of gnosis. In Europe, the creation of a stone was variously connected with all of these projects. In English, the term is limited to descriptions of European alchemy, but similar practices existed in the Far East, the Indian subcontinent. In Europe, following the 12th-century Renaissance produced by the translation of Islamic works on science, Islamic and European alchemists developed a structure of basic laboratory techniques, theory, terminology, and experimental method, some of which are still in use today. However, they continued antiquitys belief in four elements and guarded their work in secrecy including cyphers and their work was guided by Hermetic principles related to magic, mythology, and religion. The latter interests historians of esotericism, psychologists, and some philosophers, the subject has also made an ongoing impact on literature and the arts. The word alchemy was borrowed from Old French alquemie, alkimie, taken from Medieval Latin alchymia, the Arabic word is borrowed from Late Greek chēmeía, chēmía, with the agglutination of the Arabic definite article al-. This ancient Greek word was derived from the early Greek name for Egypt, Chēmia, based on the Egyptian name for Egypt, the Medieval Latin form was influenced by Greek chymeia meaning ‘mixture’ and referring to pharmaceutical chemistry. Alchemy covers several philosophical traditions spanning some four millennia and three continents and these traditions general penchant for cryptic and symbolic language makes it hard to trace their mutual influences and genetic relationships. It is still a question whether these three strands share a common origin, or to what extent they influenced each other. Here, elements of technology, religion, mythology, and Hellenistic philosophy, each with their own much longer histories, Zosimos of Panopolis wrote the oldest known books on alchemy, while Mary the Jewess is credited as being the first non-fictitious Western alchemist. They wrote in Greek and lived in Egypt under Roman rule, mythology – Zosimos of Panopolis asserted that alchemy dated back to Pharaonic Egypt where it was the domain of the priestly class, though there is little to no evidence for his assertion. Alchemical writers used Classical figures from Greek, Roman, and Egyptian mythology to illuminate their works and these included the pantheon of gods related to the Classical planets, Isis, Osiris, Jason, and many others. The central figure in the mythology of alchemy is Hermes Trismegistus and his name is derived from the god Thoth and his Greek counterpart Hermes. Hermes and his caduceus or serpent-staff, were among alchemys principal symbols, according to Clement of Alexandria, he wrote what were called the forty-two books of Hermes, covering all fields of knowledge. The Hermetica of Thrice-Great Hermes is generally understood to form the basis for Western alchemical philosophy and practice and these writings were collected in the first centuries of the common era. Technology – The dawn of Western alchemy is sometimes associated with that of metallurgy, Many writings were lost when the emperor Diocletian ordered the burning of alchemical books after suppressing a revolt in Alexandria
Alchemy
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The
Emerald Tablet, a key text of Western Alchemy, in a 17th-century edition.
Alchemy
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Kimiya-yi sa'ādat (The Alchemy of Happiness) – a text on Islamic philosophy and spiritual alchemy by
Al-Ghazālī (1058–1111).
Alchemy
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Ambix, cucurbit and retort of
Zosimos, from
Marcelin Berthelot, Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs (3 vol., Paris, 1887–1888).
Alchemy
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Jabir ibn Hayyan (Geber), considered the "father of
chemistry ", introduced a
scientific and
experimental approach to alchemy.
26.
Robert Fludd
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Robert Fludd, also known as Robertus de Fluctibus, was a prominent English Paracelsian physician with both scientific and occult interests. He is remembered as an astrologer, mathematician, cosmologist, Qabalist, Fludd is best known for his compilations in occult philosophy. He had an exchange of views with Johannes Kepler concerning the scientific and hermetic approaches to knowledge. He was born at Milgate House, Bearsted, Kent, not too long before 17 January 1573/4 and he was the son of Sir Thomas Fludd, a high-ranking governmental official, and Member of Parliament. His mother was Elizabeth Andrews Fludd and he entered St John’s College, Oxford as a commoner in 1591, graduating with a B. A. in 1597 and a M. A. in 1598. Fludd may have encountered Gwinne, or his writing, during his time at Oxford, providing an additional influence for his later medical philosophy, between 1598 and 1604, Fludd studied medicine, chemistry and hermeticism on the European mainland following his graduation. His itinerary is not known in detail, on his own account he spent a winter in the Pyrenees studying theurgy with the Jesuits. Furthermore, he indicated that he traveled throughout Spain, Italy, upon returning to England in 1604, Fludd matriculated to Christ Church, Oxford. He intended to take a degree in medicine from Christ Church College, the main requirements to obtain this, at the time, included demonstrating that he had read and understood the required medical texts—primarily those by Galen and Hippocrates. Fludd defended three theses following these texts, and on 14 May 1605, Fludd made his supplication and he graduated with his M. B. and M. D. on 16 May 1605. After graduating from Christ Church, Fludd moved to London, settling in Fenchurch Street, after at least six failures, he was admitted in September 1609. He became a prosperous London doctor, serving as Censor of the College four times and he became such an established figure within the College that he was included in seventeenth century critiques of the College, including those by Nicholas Culpepper and Peter Coles. Subsequently both his career and his standing in the College took a very much for the better. He was on terms with Sir William Paddy. Fludd was one of the first to support in print the theory of the circulation of the blood of the Colleges William Harvey, to what extent Fludd may have actually influenced Harvey is still debated, in the context that Harveys discovery is hard to date precisely. The term circulation was certainly ambiguous at that time, while he followed Paracelsus in his medical views rather than the ancient authorities, he was also a believer that real wisdom was to be found in the writings of natural magicians. His view of these mystical authorities was inclined towards the great mathematicians, and he believed, like Pythagoras and his followers, certainty in religion could only be discovered through serious study of numbers and ratios. This later brought Fludd into conflict with Johannes Kepler, isaac Newton, at this time, also held similar beliefs, focused on the dimensions of Solomons Temple
Robert Fludd
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Robert Fludd
Robert Fludd
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Fludd's illustration of man the microcosm within the universal macrocosm
Robert Fludd
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Titlepage of the Summum Bonum under the name of Joachim Frizius
Robert Fludd
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'An Astrologer Casting a Horoscope' from Robert Fludd's Utriusque Cosmi Historia, 1617
27.
Cosmology
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Cosmology is the study of the origin, evolution, and eventual fate of the universe. The term cosmology was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blounts Glossographia, religious or mythological cosmology is a body of beliefs based on mythological, religious, and esoteric literature and traditions of creation and eschatology. Physical cosmology is studied by scientists, such as astronomers and physicists, as well as philosophers, such as metaphysicians, philosophers of physics, and philosophers of space and time. Because of this scope with philosophy, theories in physical cosmology may include both scientific and non-scientific propositions, and may depend upon assumptions that can not be tested. Cosmology differs from astronomy in that the former is concerned with the Universe as a whole while the latter deals with individual celestial objects. Theoretical astrophysicist David N. Spergel has described cosmology as a science because when we look out in space. Physics and astrophysics have played a role in shaping the understanding of the universe through scientific observation. Physical cosmology was shaped through both mathematics and observation in an analysis of the whole universe, cosmogony studies the origin of the Universe, and cosmography maps the features of the Universe. In Diderots Encyclopédie, cosmology is broken down into uranology, aerology, geology, metaphysical cosmology has also been described as the placing of man in the universe in relationship to all other entities. Physical cosmology is the branch of physics and astrophysics that deals with the study of the physical origins and it also includes the study of the nature of the Universe on a large scale. In its earliest form, it was what is now known as celestial mechanics, greek philosophers Aristarchus of Samos, Aristotle, and Ptolemy proposed different cosmological theories. The geocentric Ptolemaic system was the theory until the 16th century when Nicolaus Copernicus. This is one of the most famous examples of epistemological rupture in physical cosmology, when Isaac Newton published the Principia Mathematica in 1687, he finally figured out how the heavens moved. A fundamental difference between Newtons cosmology and those preceding it was the Copernican principle—that the bodies on earth obey the same laws as all the celestial bodies. This was a crucial advance in physical cosmology. Physicists began changing the assumption that the Universe was static and unchanging, in 1922 Alexander Friedmann introduced the idea of an expanding universe that contained moving matter. In parallel to this approach to cosmology, one long-standing debate about the structure of the cosmos was coming to a climax. This difference of ideas came to a climax with the organization of the Great Debate on 26 April 1920 at the meeting of the U. S. National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D. C
Cosmology
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The
Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (XDF) was completed in September 2012 and shows the farthest
galaxies ever photographed. Except for the few stars in the foreground (which are bright and easily recognizable because only they have
diffraction spikes), every speck of light in the photo is an individual galaxy, some of them as old as 13.2 billion years; the observable universe is estimated to contain more than 200 billion galaxies.
Cosmology
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Evidence of
gravitational waves in the
infant universe may have been uncovered by the microscopic examination of the
focal plane of the
BICEP2 radio telescope.
Cosmology
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Art
28.
Classical element
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Ancient cultures in Egypt, Babylonia, Japan, Tibet, and India had similar lists, sometimes referring in local languages to air as wind and the fifth element as void. The Chinese Wu Xing system lists Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and these different cultures and even individual philosophers had widely varying explanations concerning their attributes and how they related to observable phenomena as well as cosmology. Sometimes these theories overlapped with mythology and were personified in deities, some of these interpretations included atomism but other interpretations considered the elements to be divisible into infinitely small pieces without changing their nature. Centuries of empirical investigation have proven that all the ancient systems were incorrect explanations of the physical world. It is now known that atomic theory is an explanation, and that atoms can be classified into more than a hundred chemical elements such as oxygen, iron. These elements form chemical compounds and mixtures, and under different temperatures and pressures, the concept of the five elements formed a basis of analysis in both Hinduism and Buddhism. In Hinduism, particularly in a context, the four states-of-matter describe matter. Similar lists existed in ancient China and Japan, in Buddhism the four great elements, to which two others are sometimes added, are not viewed as substances, but as categories of sensory experience. A Greek text called the Kore Kosmou ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus, names the four fire, water, air. And, on the contrary, again some are made enemies of fire, and some of water, some of earth, and some of air, and some of two of them, and some of three, and some of all. For instance, son, the locust and all flies flee fire, the eagle and the hawk and all high-flying birds flee water, fish, air and earth, the snake avoids the open air. Not that some of the animals as well do not love fire, for instance salamanders and it is because one or another of the elements doth form their bodies outer envelope. Each soul, accordingly, while it is in its body is weighted and constricted by these four. According to Galen, these elements were used by Hippocrates in describing the body with an association with the four humours, yellow bile, black bile, blood. Medical care was flexible and primarily about helping the patient stay in or return to his/her own personal natural balanced state. In other Babylonian texts these phenomena are considered independent of their association with deities, though they are not treated as the component elements of the universe, the five elements are associated with the five senses, and act as the gross medium for the experience of sensations. The basest element, earth, created using all the elements, can be perceived by all five senses – hearing, touch, sight, taste. The next higher element, water, has no odor but can be heard, felt, seen, next comes fire, which can be heard, felt and seen
Classical element
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Segment of the macrocosm showing the elemental spheres of terra (earth), aqua (water), aer (air), and ignis (fire),
Robert Fludd, 1617
Classical element
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Seventeenth century alchemical emblem showing the four Classical elements in the corners of the image, alongside the tria prima on the central triangle
Classical element
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1s, 2s, 2p x,2p y, and 2p z. The
shapes of the first five
atomic orbitals using
color to depict the
phase of the
wave function
29.
Irwin Silber
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Irwin Silber was an American Socialist, editor, publisher, and political activist. Irwin Silber was born October 17,1925 in New York City, as a young man, Silber joined the Young Communist League, the youth section of the Communist Party USA, moving later to membership in the adult party. Silber ultimately severed his ties with the CPUSA in 1955, Silber attended Brooklyn College, where he was instrumental in establishing the American Folksay Group. Through his involvement with music, Silber made the acquaintance of Pete Seeger, Alan Lomax. His creation of Oak Publications was responsible for a portion of the folk music material available in print during the growth of the revival. In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, after leaving Sing Out. in 1968, Silber became cultural editor of the independent radical newsweekly, The Guardian and also its film critic. He began to write on more political subjects, specializing in analysis of both national and international developments and developing a broad and appreciative readership. He became the Guardians executive editor in 1972 and led it into the milieu of the New Communist Movement, Silber and blues/folk singer/fellow activist Barbara Dane became a couple in 1964. Among other collaborations, they established the independent recording company Paredon to distribute, Dane produced nearly 50 LPs, and Silber handled the promotion and distribution. To insure availability of the material, in the mid-1980s they donated the label to Smithsonian Folkways, among Silbers most important political writing is Socialism, What Went Wrong, an examination of the theoretical and practical events in the USSR leading up to its collapse. His only non-political book in the last 20 years is A Patients Guide to Hip, in the December 24,2007 issue of Newsweek magazine Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion fame was asked to name his five most important books. His #2 choice is The Folksingers Wordbook by Irwin Silber, a collection of hymns, blues, murder ballads. In the November 1964 edition of Sing Out, Silber wrote an article called Open Letter to Bob Dylan. I saw at Newport how you had somehow lost contact with people, some of the paraphernalia of fame were getting in your way. Dylan did not like being told how to perform or how to write and he replied by telling his manager Albert Grossman that his songs were no longer available for publication in Sing Out. Eventually, in 1968, Silber retracted his criticism in The Guardian, many of us who did not fully understand the dynamics of the political changes. felt deserted by a poet. Dylan is our poet – not our leader. Dylan. is communicating where it counts, the words quoted above are from page 314 of No Direction Home, the Life and Music of Bob Dylan, by Robert Shelton. In Chronicles Volume One, Bob Dylan commented, I liked Irwin, miles Davis would be accused of something similar when he made the album Bitches Brew. what I did to break away was to take simple folk changes and put new images and attitudes into them
Irwin Silber
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Irwin Silber
30.
Ben Shahn
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Ben Shahn was a Lithuanian-born American artist. He is best known for his works of realism, his left-wing political views. Shahn was born in Kaunas, Lithuania, then occupied by the Russian Empire and his father was exiled to Siberia for possible revolutionary activities in 1902, at which point Shahn, his mother, and two younger siblings moved to Vilkomir. In 1906, the family immigrated to the United States where they rejoined Hessel and they settled in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York, where two more siblings were born. His younger brother drowned at age 17, Shahn began his path to becoming an artist in New York, where he was first trained as a lithographer. Shahns early experiences with lithography and graphic design is apparent in his prints and paintings which often include the combination of text. Shahns primary medium was egg tempera, popular among social realists, although Shahn attended New York University as a biology student in 1919, he went on to pursue art at City College in 1921 and then at the National Academy of Design. After his marriage to Tillie Goldstein in 1924, the two traveled through North Africa and then to Europe, where he made the traditional artist pilgrimage, there he studied great European artists such as Henri Matisse, Raoul Dufy, Georges Rouault, Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee. Contemporaries who would make a impact on Shahns work and career include artists Walker Evans, Diego Rivera. Shahn was dissatisfied with the inspired by his travels, claiming that the pieces were unoriginal. Shahn eventually outgrew his pursuit of European modern art, and redirected his efforts toward a realist style which he used to contribute to social dialogue. The twenty-three gouache paintings of the trials of Sacco and Vanzetti communicated the political concerns of his time, the Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti was exhibited in 1932 and received acclaim from both the public and critics. This series gave Shahn the confidence to cultivate his personal style, Shahns subsequent series of California labor leader Tom Mooney won him the recognition of Diego Rivera. In May and June 1933, he served as an assistant to Diego Rivera while Rivera executed the Rockefeller Center mural, Shahn had a role in fanning the controversy, by circulating a petition among the workers. Also during this period, Shahn met photojournalist Bernarda Bryson, who would become his second wife. Although this marriage was successful, the mural, his 1934 project for the Public Works of Art Projects, fortunately, in 1935, Shahn was recommended by Walker Evans, a friend and former roommate, to Roy Stryker to join the photographic group at the Farm Security Administration. As a member of the FSA group, Shahn roamed and documented the American south together with his colleagues Walker Evans, like his earlier photography of New York City, Shahn’s FSA work can be viewed as social-documentary. Similarly, Shahn’s New Deal art for the FSA and Resettlement Agency exposed American living and working conditions and he also worked for these agencies as a graphic artist and painter
Ben Shahn
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Ben Shahn
Ben Shahn
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Photograph of a sailor taken by Shahn in
Jackson Square, New Orleans, 1935.
Ben Shahn
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Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) poster (1946)
Ben Shahn
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Detail from "The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti" (1967, mosaic),
Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
