1.
Croydon
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Croydon is a large town in south London, England,9.5 miles south of Charing Cross. The principal settlement in the London Borough of Croydon, it is one of the largest commercial districts outside Central London, with a shopping district. Its population of 52,104 at the 2011 census includes the wards of Addiscombe, Broad Green, Croydon expanded in the Middle Ages as a market town and a centre for charcoal production, leather tanning and brewing. The Surrey Iron Railway from Croydon to Wandsworth opened in 1803 and was the worlds first public railway, later nineteenth century railway building facilitated Croydons growth as a commuter town for London. By the early 20th century, Croydon was an important industrial area, known for car manufacture, metal working, Croydon was amalgamated into Greater London in 1965. Road traffic is diverted away from a largely pedestrianised town centre, East Croydon is a major hub of the national railway transport system, with frequent fast services to central London, Brighton and the south coast. The town is unique in Greater London for its Tramlink light rail transport system, alternative, although less probable, theories of the names origin have been proposed. According to John Corbett Anderson, The earliest mention of Croydon is in the joint will of Beorhtric and Aelfswth, in this Anglo-Saxon document the name is spelt Crogdaene. Crog was, and still is, the Norse or Danish word for crooked, which is expressed in Anglo-Saxon by crumb, from the Danish came our crook and crooked. This term accurately describes the locality, it is a crooked or winding valley, in reference to the valley runs in an oblique. However, there was no long-term Danish occupation in Surrey, which was part of Wessex, and Danish-derived nomenclature is also highly unlikely. The town lies on the line of the Roman road from London to Portslade, later, in the 5th to 7th centuries, a large pagan Saxon cemetery was situated on what is now Park Lane, although the extent of any associated settlement is unknown. By the late Saxon period Croydon was the hub of an estate belonging to the Archbishops of Canterbury, the church and the archbishops manor house occupied the area still known as Old Town. Croydon appears in Domesday Book as Croindene, held by Archbishop Lanfranc and its Domesday assets were,16 hides and 1 virgate,1 church,1 mill worth 5s,38 ploughs,8 acres of meadow, woodland worth 200 hogs. The church had established in the middle Saxon period, and was probably a minster church. A charter issued by King Coenwulf of Mercia refers to a council that had taken place close to the monasterium of Croydon, an Anglo-Saxon will made in about 960 is witnessed by Elfsies, priest of Croydon, and the church is also mentioned in Domesday Book. The will of John de Croydon, fishmonger, dated 6 December 1347, includes a bequest to the church of S John de Croydon, the church still bears the arms of Archbishop Courtenay and Archbishop Chichele, believed to have been its benefactors. In 1276 Archbishop Robert Kilwardby acquired a charter for a market
2.
Dubstep
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Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in South London, England. It emerged in the late 1990s as a development within a lineage of related styles such as 2-step garage, dub, techno, drum and bass, broken beat, jungle, and reggae. In the United Kingdom the origins of the genre can be traced back to the growth of the Jamaican sound system party scene in the early 1980s, the music generally features sparse, syncopated drum and percussion patterns with bass lines that contain prominent sub bass frequencies. The earliest dubstep releases date back to 1998, and were featured as B-sides of 2-step garage single releases. These tracks were darker, more experimental remixes with less emphasis on vocals, a very early supporter of the sound was BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, who started playing it from 2003 onwards. In 2004, the last year of his show, his listeners voted Distance, Digital Mystikz, simultaneously, the genre was receiving extensive coverage in music magazines such as The Wire and online publications such as Pitchfork, with a regular feature entitled The Month In, Grime/Dubstep. Interest in dubstep grew significantly after BBC Radio 1 DJ Mary Anne Hobbs started championing the genre, towards the end of the 2000s and into the early 2010s, the genre started to become more commercially successful in the UK, with more singles and remixes entering the music charts. Music journalists and critics noticed a dubstep influence in several pop artists work. The music website Allmusic has described Dubsteps overall sound as tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals. According to Simon Reynolds, Dubsteps constituents originally came from different points in the 1989—99 UK lineage, bleep n bass, jungle, techstep, Photek-style neurofunk, speed garage,2 step. Reynolds comments that the traces of pre-existing styles worked through their intrinsic sonic effects but also as signifiers, Dubsteps early roots are in the more experimental releases of UK garage producers, seeking to incorporate elements of drum and bass into the South London-based 2-step garage sound. These experiments often ended up on the B-side of a label or commercial garage release. Similar to a vocal garage hybrid – grime – the genres feel is commonly dark, tracks frequently use a minor key, other distinguishing features often found are the use of samples, a propulsive, sparse rhythm, and an almost omnipresent sub-bass. Some dubstep artists have incorporated a variety of outside influences. Dubstep rhythms are usually syncopated, and often shuffled or incorporating tuplets, the tempo is nearly always in the range of 138–142 beats per minute, with a clap or snare usually inserted every third beat in a bar. In its early stages, dubstep was often more percussive, with influences from 2‑step drum patterns. A lot of producers were experimenting with tribal drum samples, such as Loefahs early release Truly Dread. One characteristic of certain strands of dubstep is the bass, often referred to as the wub
3.
Sampler (musical instrument)
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The samples are loaded or recorded by the user or by a manufacturer. These sounds are played back by means of the sampler program itself. Because these samples are stored in digital memory, the information can be quickly accessed. A single sample may often be pitch-shifted to different pitches to produce musical scales, often samplers offer filters, effects units, modulation via low frequency oscillation and other synthesizer-like processes that allow the original sound to be modified in many different ways. Most samplers have polyphonic capabilities – they are able to more than one note at the same time. Many are also multitimbral – they can play back different sounds simultaneously, prior to computer memory-based samplers, musicians used tape replay keyboards, which store recordings on analog tape. When a key is pressed the tape head contacts the moving tape, to change sounds a new set of tapes had to be installed in the instrument. The emergence of the sampler made sampling far more practical. Bruce Haack built a digital sampler which he demonstrated on Mister Rogers Neighborhood in 1967, the home made synthesizer device included a built-in sampler which recorded, stored, played back and looped sounds controlled by switches, light sensors and human skin contact. EMS Musys system, developed by Peter Grogono, David Cockerell, the system ran on two mini-computers, Digital Equipment PDP-8s. These had 12,000 bytes of memory, backed up by a hard drive of 32k. EMS equipment was used to control the worlds first digital studio, the E-mu SP-1200 percussion sampler progressed Hip-Hop away from the drum machine sound upon its release in August 1987, ushering in the sample-based sound of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Akai pioneered many processing techniques, such as crossfade looping and time stretch to shorten or lengthen samples without affecting pitch, during the 1980s, hybrid synthesizers began to utilize short samples along with digital synthesis to create more realistic imitations of instruments than had previously been possible. Examples are the Korg M1, Roland U-110, Yamahas SY series, samplers, together with traditional Foley artists, are the mainstay of modern sound effects production. Using digital techniques various effects can be pitch-shifted and otherwise altered in ways that would have required many hours when done with tape, usually a sampler is controlled by an attached music keyboard or other external MIDI controller or source. Each note-message received by the sampler accesses a particular sample, often multiple samples are arranged across the keyboard, each assigned to a note or group of notes. Keyboard tracking allows samples to be shifted in pitch by an appropriate amount, each group of notes to which a single sample has been assigned is often called a keyzone, and the resultant set of zones is called a keymap. For example, in Fig 1, a keymap has been created four different samples
4.
PlayStation (console)
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The PlayStation is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. The console was released on 3 December 1994 in Japan,9 September 1995 in North America,29 September 1995 in Europe, the console was the first of the PlayStation lineup of home video game consoles. It primarily competed with the Nintendo 64 and the Sega Saturn as part of the generation of video game consoles. The PlayStation is the first computer entertainment platform to ship 100 million units, in 2000, a redesigned, slim version called the PSone was released, replacing the original grey console and named appropriately to avoid confusion with its successor, the PlayStation 2. In 1999, Sony announced the successor to the PlayStation, the PlayStation 2, which is compatible with the PlayStations DualShock controller and games. The last PSone units were sold in winter 2004 before it was discontinued in March 2005. The inception of what would become the released PlayStation dates back to 1986 with a joint venture between Nintendo and Sony, Nintendo approached Sony to develop a CD-ROM add-on, tentatively titled the Play Station or SNES-CD. A contract was signed, and work began, Kutaragi was nearly fired by Sony because he was originally working with Nintendo on the side without Sonys knowledge. It was then-CEO, Norio Ohga, who recognized the potential in Kutaragis chip, Ohga kept Kutaragi on at Sony, and it was not until Nintendo cancelled the project that Sony decided to develop its own console. This was also to be the used in SNES-CDs, giving a large degree of control to Sony despite Nintendos leading position in the video gaming market. The product, dubbed the Play Station was to be announced at the May 1991 Consumer Electronics Show, yamauchi decided that the contract was totally unacceptable and he secretly cancelled all plans for the joint Nintendo-Sony SNES CD attachment. After the collapse of the project, Sony briefly considered allying itself with Sega to produce a stand-alone console. The Sega CEO at the time, Tom Kalinske, took the proposal to Segas Board of Directors in Tokyo, Kalinske, in a 2013 interview recalled them saying that’s a stupid idea, Sony doesnt know how to make hardware. They don’t know how to make software either, why would we want to do this. The federal judge presiding over the case denied the injunction and, in October 1991, however, it is theorized that only 200 or so of these machines were ever produced. However, Sony decided in early 1993 to begin reworking the Play Station concept to target a new generation of hardware and software. As part of process the SNES cartridge port was dropped. Early advertising prior to the launch in North America referenced PSX
5.
Yoruba people
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Yoruba people are an ethnic group of Southwestern and North Central Nigeria as well as Southern and Central Benin, together known as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute over 40 million people in total, the majority of this population is from Nigeria and make up 21% of its population, according to the CIA World Factbook, making them one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa. The majority of the Yoruba speak the Yoruba language, which is tonal, the Yoruba share borders with the Bariba to the northwest in Benin, the Nupe to the north, and the Ebira to the northeast in central Nigeria. To the east are the Edo, Ẹsan, and the Afemai groups in mid-western Nigeria, adjacent the Ebira and Edo groups are the related Igala people found in the northeast to the left bank of the Niger river. To the southwest are the Gbe speaking Mahi, Egun, Fon and Ewe who border Yoruba communities in Benin, to the southeast are Itsekiri who live in the north-west end of the Niger delta. They are ancestrally related to the Yoruba but chose to maintain a cultural identity. Significant Yoruba populations in other West African countries can be found in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia and this older group has communities in such countries as Cuba, Dominican Republic, Saint Lucia, Jamaica, Brazil, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, among others. As an ethnic description, the word Yoruba was first recorded in reference to the Oyo Empire in a written by the 16th-century Songhai scholar Ahmed Baba. It was popularized by Hausa usage and ethnography written in Arabic and Ajami during the 19th century, the extension of the term to all speakers of dialects related to the language of the Oyo dates to the second half of the 19th century. It is due to the influence of Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the first Anglican bishop in Nigeria, Crowther was himself a Yoruba and compiled the first Yoruba dictionary as well as introducing a standard for Yoruba orthography. The number of speakers is estimated at about 30 million in 2010. Yoruba is classified within the Edekiri languages, which together with the isolate Igala, Igala and Yoruba have important historical and cultural relationships. The languages of the two ethnic groups bear such a close resemblance that researchers such as Forde and Westermann and Bryan regarded Igala as a dialect of Yoruba, the Yoruboid languages are assumed to have developed out of an undifferentiated Volta-Niger group by the 1st millennium BCE. There are three dialect areas, Northwest, Central, and Southeast. The area where North-West Yoruba is spoken corresponds to the historical Oyo Empire, south-East Yoruba was probably associated with the expansion of the Benin Empire after c. Central Yoruba forms an area in that the lexicon has much in common with NWY. Though for a part based on the Oyo and Ibadan dialects. As of the 7th century BCE the African peoples who lived in Yorubaland were not initially known as the Yoruba, although they shared a common ethnicity, by the 8th century, a powerful Yoruba kingdom already existed in Ile-Ife, one of the earliest in Africa
6.
Nigerians
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Nigerians or Nigerian people are citizens and/or people with ancestry from Nigeria. Nigeria is composed of ethnic groups and cultures and the term Nigerian refers to a citizenship-based civic nationality. Nigerians derive from over 250 ethnic groups and languages, the English language is the lingua franca of Nigerians. About 50 percent of Nigerians are Muslims and the other 50 percent are Christians, northern Nigeria has been culturally influenced by Islamic influence including several major historic Islamic states in the region. The Kanem-Bornu Empire and the Sokoto Caliphate were major historical Islamic states in northern Nigeria, southern Nigeria historically held several powerful states, including the Benin Empire and Oyo Empire, Ife Empire and several other Yoruba states. Nigerian culture was profoundly affected by the British colonial rule, such as British colonial authorities denouncements and attacks upon polygamy, trial by ordeal, and certain types of sacrifices. At the same time, British colonial authorities maintained and promoted traditional Nigerian culture that strengthened colonial administration, the British replaced unpaid household labour with wage labour. Prior to colonization in the century, Nigerias tribes usually possessed the land as a community. Colonization brought the notion of individuals owning land and commercialization of land began and these villages compose members of the ethnicity related through ancestry as well as strangers who have been assimilated into the ethnicity. Since the time prior to colonization to the present it has been common practice of Nigerias tribes to adopt strangers into the tribes, a male elder commonly serves as a village chief. In Nigerias large cities, there is intermingling of Nigerians with foreigners, especially Europeans, Lebanese. The economic importance of Nigerias cities has resulted in migrations of people from their ethnic or cultural homeland to cities outside those territories. Ethnic, religious, and regional disputes and tensions have commonly divided Nigerians on political issues, in particular, cultural and political divisions between the Muslim north and the Christian south has politicized religion and caused significant political disputes in Nigeria. Ethnic-motivated and religious-motivated violence by extremists has increased tensions as well. Although there are cultural divisions amongst Nigerians, Nigerians commonly use the English language as their primary language, also, most Nigerians share a strong commitment to individual liberties and democracy. Even during periods of rule, such military governments were pressured to maintain democratic stances by the Nigerian people. Nigerias political figures commonly know multiple indigenous languages outside their own indigenous language, culture Media related to People of Nigeria at Wikimedia Commons
