1.
Lansing, Michigan
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Lansing /ˈlænsɪŋ/ is the capital of the US state of Michigan. It is mostly in Ingham County, although portions of the city extend west into Eaton County, the 2010 Census placed the citys population at 114,297, making it the fifth largest city in Michigan. The population of its Metropolitan Statistical Area was 464,036, while the even larger Combined Statistical Area population and it was named the new state capital of Michigan in 1847, ten years after Michigan became a state. The Lansing Metropolitan Area, colloquially referred to as Mid-Michigan, is an important center for educational, cultural, governmental, commercial, Lansing is the only U. S. state capital that is not also a county seat. The seat of government of Ingham County is Mason, but the county maintains some offices in Lansing, the first recorded person of European descent to spot the area that is now Lansing was explorer Hugh Heward in 1790 while canoeing the Grand River. The land that was to become Lansing was surveyed as Township 4 North Range 2 West in February 1827 in what was then dense forest and it was the last of the countys townships to be surveyed, and the land was not offered for sale until October 1830. There would be no roads to this area for decades to come, in the winter of 1835 and early 1836, two brothers from New York plotted the area now known as REO Town just south of downtown Lansing and named it Biddle City. This land lay in a floodplain and was underwater during the majority of the year, nevertheless, the brothers went back to Lansing, New York, to sell plots for the town that did not exist. They told the New Yorkers this new city had an area of 65 blocks, a church,16 men bought plots in the nonexistent city, and upon reaching the area later that year found they had been scammed. Many in the group too disappointed to stay ended up settling around what is now metropolitan Lansing and those who stayed quickly renamed the area Lansing Township in honor of their home village in New York. The United States had recaptured the city in 1813, but these led to the dire need to have the center of government relocate from hostile British territory. There was also concern with Detroits strong influence over Michigan politics, during the multi-day session to determine a new location for the state capital, many cities, including Ann Arbor, Marshall, and Jackson, lobbied hard to win this designation. Unable to publicly reach a consensus because of constant political wrangling, when announced, many present openly laughed that such an insignificant settlement was now Michigans capital. Two months later, Governor William L. Greenly signed into law the act of the legislature making Lansing Township the state capital, with the announcement that Lansing Township had been made the capital, the small village quickly transformed into the seat of state government. The legislature gave the settlement the name of the Town of Michigan. In April 1848, the legislature gave the settlement the name of Lansing. It was home to the first house built in Lansing in 1843 by pioneer James Seymour, Lower Town began to develop in 1847 with the completion of the Franklin Avenue covered bridge over the Grand River. Upper Village/Town, where present-day REO Town stands at the confluence of the Grand River and it began to take off in 1847 when the Main Street Bridge was constructed over the Grand River
2.
Jazz
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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
3.
Rock and roll
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While elements of rock and roll can be heard in blues records from the 1920s and in country records of the 1930s, the genre did not acquire its name until the 1950s. For the purpose of differentiation, this deals with the first definition. The beat is essentially a blues rhythm with an accentuated backbeat, classic rock and roll is usually played with one or two electric guitars, a double bass or string bass or an electric bass guitar, and a drum kit. Beyond simply a style, rock and roll, as seen in movies and on television, influenced lifestyles, fashion, attitudes. In addition, rock and roll may have contributed to the civil rights movement because both African-American and white American teens enjoyed the music and it went on to spawn various genres, often without the initially characteristic backbeat, that are now more commonly called simply rock music or rock. The term rock and roll now has at least two different meanings, both in common usage, the American Heritage Dictionary and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary both define rock and roll as synonymous with rock music. Encyclopædia Britannica, on the hand, regards it as the music that originated in the mid-1950s. In 1934, the song Rock and Roll by the Boswell Sisters appeared in the film Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round, in 1942, Billboard magazine columnist Maurie Orodenker started to use the term rock-and-roll to describe upbeat recordings such as Rock Me by Sister Rosetta Tharpe. By 1943, the Rock and Roll Inn in South Merchantville, in 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing this music style while popularizing the phrase to describe it. The origins of rock and roll have been debated by commentators. The migration of former slaves and their descendants to major urban centers such as St. The immediate roots of rock and roll lay in the rhythm and blues, then called race music, particularly significant influences were jazz, blues, gospel, country, and folk. The 1940s saw the use of blaring horns, shouted lyrics. In the same period, particularly on the West Coast and in the Midwest, similarly, country boogie and Chicago electric blues supplied many of the elements that would be seen as characteristic of rock and roll. Rock and roll arrived at a time of technological change, soon after the development of the electric guitar, amplifier and microphone. It was the realization that relatively affluent white teenagers were listening to music that led to the development of what was to be defined as rock. Because the development of rock and roll was a process, no single record can be identified as unambiguously the first rock. Other artists with rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis
4.
Pop music
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Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form in the United States and United Kingdom during the mid 1950s. The terms popular music and pop music are used interchangeably, although the former describes all music that is popular. Pop and rock were synonymous terms until the late 1960s, when they were used in opposition from each other. Although pop music is seen as just the singles charts, it is not the sum of all chart music. Pop music is eclectic, and often borrows elements from other such as urban, dance, rock, Latin. Identifying factors include generally short to medium-length songs written in a format, as well as the common use of repeated choruses, melodic tunes. David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop music as a body of music which is distinguishable from popular, jazz, according to Pete Seeger, pop music is professional music which draws upon both folk music and fine arts music. Although pop music is seen as just the singles charts, it is not the sum of all chart music, the music charts contain songs from a variety of sources, including classical, jazz, rock, and novelty songs. Pop music, as a genre, is seen as existing and developing separately, pop music continuously evolves along with the terms definition. The term pop song was first recorded as being used in 1926, Hatch and Millward indicate that many events in the history of recording in the 1920s can be seen as the birth of the modern pop music industry, including in country, blues and hillbilly music. The Oxford Dictionary of Music states that while pops earlier meaning meant concerts appealing to a wide audience. Since the late 1950s, however, pop has had the meaning of non-classical mus, usually in the form of songs, performed by such artists as the Beatles. Grove Music Online also states that, in the early 1960s pop music competed terminologically with beat music, while in the USA its coverage overlapped with that of rock and roll. From about 1967, the term was used in opposition to the term rock music. Whereas rock aspired to authenticity and an expansion of the possibilities of music, pop was more commercial, ephemeral. It is not driven by any significant ambition except profit and commercial reward, and, in musical terms, it is essentially conservative. It is, provided from on high rather than being made from below, pop is not a do-it-yourself music but is professionally produced and packaged. The beat and the melodies tend to be simple, with limited harmonic accompaniment, the lyrics of modern pop songs typically focus on simple themes – often love and romantic relationships – although there are notable exceptions
5.
Trombone
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The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the players vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate, nearly all trombones have a telescoping slide mechanism that varies the length of the instrument to change the pitch. Many modern trombone models also utilize a rotary valve as a means to lower pitch of the instrument, variants such as the valve trombone and superbone have three valves like those on the trumpet. The word trombone derives from Italian tromba and -one, so the name means large trumpet, the trombone has a predominantly cylindrical bore like its valved counterpart the baritone and in contrast to its conical valved counterparts, the euphonium and the horn. The most frequently encountered trombones are the trombone and bass trombone. The most common variant, the tenor, is an instrument pitched in B♭, an octave below the B♭ trumpet. A person who plays the trombone is called a trombonist or trombone player, the trombone is a predominantly cylindrical tube bent into an elongated S shape. Rather than being completely cylindrical from end to end, the tube is a series of tapers with the smallest at the mouthpiece receiver. The design of these affects the intonation of the instrument. As with other instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through pursed lips producing a vibration that creates a standing wave in the instrument. The detachable cup-shaped mouthpiece is similar to that of the baritone horn and it has the venturi, a small constriction of the air column that adds resistance greatly affecting the tone of the instrument, and is inserted into the mouthpiece receiver in the slide section. The slide section consists of a leadpipe, the inner and outer tubes. Modern stays are soldered, while sackbuts were made with loose, the slide, the most distinctive feature of the trombone, allows the player to extend the length of the air column, lowering the pitch. To prevent friction from slowing the action of the slide, additional sleeves were developed during the Renaissance, and this part of the slide must be lubricated frequently. Additional tubing connects the slide to the bell of the instrument through a neckpipe, for example, second position A is not in exactly the same place on the slide as second position E. Many types of trombone also include one or more rotary valves used to increase the length of the instrument by directing the air flow through additional tubing. This allows the instrument to reach notes that are not possible without the valve as well as play other notes in alternate positions. Like the trumpet, the trombone is considered a cylindrical bore instrument since it has sections of tubing, principally in the slide section
6.
The Recording Academy
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The Recording Academy is a U. S. organization of musicians, producers, recording engineers and other recording professionals. The Recording Academy is headquartered in Santa Monica, neil Portnow is the current president of The Academy. The Recording Academy, which began in 1957, is known for its Grammy Awards, in 1997, the Recording Academy launched The Latin Recording Academy, which produces the Latin Grammy Awards. Michael Greene was the founder and the first President of the Latin Grammys, the origin of the Academy dates back to the beginning of the 1950s Hollywood Walk of Fame project. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce asked the help of recording industry executives in compiling a list of people in the music business who should be honored by Walk of Fame stars. This was the start of the Academy and also of the Grammy Awards, the Producers and Engineers Wing is a part of the academy made up of producers, engineers, mixers, and other technically involved professionals. It is composed of almost 6,000 members, the producers and engineers wing addresses various aspects of issues facing the recording profession. They also support music and recording arts education, the P&E Wing also advocates for the use of professional usage of recording technology as well as the preservation of recordings. The members of this division make up a portion of those who vote on the Grammy Awards each year. The Grammy University Network is an organization for students who are pursuing a career in the music industry. It offers forms of networking, interactive experiences and programs, advice from music professionals. The Recording Academy supports the MusiCares Foundation, an organization which provides money. The Academy has twelve chapters in various locations in the United States, the twelve chapters are, Atlanta, Chicago, Florida, Los Angeles, Memphis, Nashville, New York City, Pacific Northwest, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Texas and Washington D. C. List of music organizations in the United States The Latin Recording Academy Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences The Recording Academy Producers and Engineers Wing
7.
Count Basie
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William James Count Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. His mother taught him to play the piano and he started performing in his teens, dropping out of school, he learned to operate lights for vaudeville and to improvise accompaniment for silent films at a local movie theater in his home town of Red Bank, New Jersey. By 16 years old, he played jazz piano at parties, resorts. In 1924, he went to Harlem, where his career expanded, he toured with groups to the major jazz cities of Chicago, St. Louis. In 1929 he joined Bennie Motens band in Kansas City, in 1935, Basie formed his own jazz orchestra, the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and their first recording. William Basie was born to Harvey Lee and Lillian Basie in Red Bank and his father worked as a coachman and caretaker for a wealthy judge. After automobiles replaced horses, his became an groundskeeper and handyman for several wealthy families in the area. Both of his parents had some type of musical background and his father played the mellophone, and his mother played the piano, in fact, she gave Basie his first piano lessons. She took in laundry and baked cakes for sale for a living and she paid 25 cents a lesson for piano instruction for him. Not much of a student in school, Basie dreamed of a traveling life and he finished junior high school but spent much of his time at the Palace Theater in Red Bank, where doing occasional chores gained him free admission to performances. He quickly learned to improvise music appropriate to the acts and the silent movies, though a natural at the piano, Basie preferred drums. Discouraged by the talents of Sonny Greer, who also lived in Red Bank and became Duke Ellingtons drummer in 1919. Greer and Basie played together in venues until Greer set out on his professional career, by then, Basie was playing with pick-up groups for dances, resorts, and amateur shows, including Harry Richardsons Kings of Syncopation. When not playing a gig, he hung out at the pool hall with other musicians. He got some jobs in Asbury Park at the Jersey Shore, around 1920, Basie went to Harlem, a hotbed of jazz, where he lived down the block from the Alhambra Theater. Early after his arrival, he bumped into Sonny Greer, who was by then the drummer for the Washingtonians, soon, Basie met many of the Harlem musicians who were making the scene, including Willie the Lion Smith and James P. Johnson. His touring took him to Kansas City, St. Louis, New Orleans, throughout his tours, Basie met many jazz musicians, including Louis Armstrong. Before he was 20 years old, he toured extensively on the Keith and TOBA vaudeville circuits as a solo pianist, accompanist, and music director for blues singers, dancers and this provided an early training that was to prove significant in his later career
8.
Herbie Hancock
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Herbert Jeffrey Herbie Hancock is an American pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, composer and actor. He was one of the first jazz musicians to embrace synthesizers, Hancocks music is often melodic and accessible, he has had many songs cross over and achieved success among pop audiences. Hancocks best-known compositions include Cantaloupe Island, Watermelon Man, Maiden Voyage, Chameleon, and his 2007 tribute album River, The Joni Letters won the 2008 Grammy Award for Album of the Year, only the second jazz album ever to win the award, after Getz/Gilberto in 1965. Hancock was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Winnie Belle, a secretary, and Wayman Edward Hancock and his parents named him after the singer and actor Herb Jeffries. He attended the Hyde Park Academy, like many jazz pianists, Hancock started with a classical music education. He studied from age seven, and his talent was recognized early, through his teens, Hancock never had a jazz teacher, but developed his ear and sense of harmony. He was also influenced by records of the group the Hi-Los. He reported that. by the time I actually heard the Hi-Los, I started picking that stuff out, my ear was happening. I could hear stuff and thats when I really learned some much farther-out voicings – like the harmonies I used on Speak Like a Child – just being able to do that, I really got that from Clare Fischers arrangements for the Hi-Los. Clare Fischer was an influence on my harmonic concept. he and Bill Evans. You know, thats where it came from, in 1960, he heard Chris Anderson play just once, and begged him to accept him as a student. Hancock often mentions Anderson as his harmonic guru, Hancock left Grinnell College, moved to Chicago and began working with Donald Byrd and Coleman Hawkins, during which period he also took courses at Roosevelt University. Byrd was attending the Manhattan School of Music in New York at the time and suggested that Hancock study composition with Vittorio Giannini, the pianist quickly earned a reputation, and played subsequent sessions with Oliver Nelson and Phil Woods. He recorded his first solo album Takin Off for Blue Note Records in 1962, Watermelon Man was to provide Mongo Santamaría with a hit single, but more importantly for Hancock, Takin Off caught the attention of Miles Davis, who was at that time assembling a new band. Hancock was introduced to Davis by the young drummer Tony Williams, Hancock received considerable attention when, in May 1963, he joined Daviss Second Great Quintet. Davis personally sought out Hancock, whom he saw as one of the most promising talents in jazz, the rhythm section Davis organized was young but effective, comprising bassist Ron Carter, 17-year-old drummer Williams, and Hancock on piano. After George Coleman and Sam Rivers each took a turn at the saxophone spot and this quintet is often regarded as one of the finest jazz ensembles, and the rhythm section has been especially praised for its innovation and flexibility. The second great quintet was where Hancock found his own voice as a pianist, not only did he find new ways to use common chords, but he also popularized chords that had not previously been used in jazz
9.
Frank Sinatra
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Francis Albert Sinatra was an American singer, actor, and producer who was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century. He is one of the music artists of all time. Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, to Italian immigrants, Sinatra began his career in the swing era with bandleaders Harry James. Sinatra found success as a solo artist after he signed with Columbia Records in 1943 and he released his debut album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra, in 1946. Sinatras professional career had stalled by the early 1950s, and he turned to Las Vegas and his career was reborn in 1953 with the success of From Here to Eternity, with his performance subsequently winning an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. Sinatra released several critically lauded albums, including In the Wee Small Hours, Come Fly with Me, Only the Lonely and Nice n Easy. Sinatra left Capitol in 1960 to start his own label, Reprise Records. It was followed by 1968s collaboration with Duke Ellington, using his Las Vegas shows as a home base, he toured both within the United States and internationally until a short time before his death in 1998. Sinatra forged a successful career as a film actor. After winning an Academy Award for From Here to Eternity, he starred in The Man with the Golden Arm and he appeared in various musicals such as On the Town, Guys and Dolls, High Society, and Pal Joey, winning another Golden Globe for the latter. Toward the end of his career, he associated with playing detectives. Sinatra would later receive the Golden Globe Cecil B, on television, The Frank Sinatra Show began on ABC in 1950, and he continued to make appearances on television throughout the 1950s and 1960s. While Sinatra never formally learned how to read music, he had a natural, intuitive understanding of it, a perfectionist, renowned for his impeccable dress sense and cleanliness, he always insisted on recording live with his band. His bright blue eyes earned him the popular nickname Ol Blue Eyes, Sinatra led a colorful personal life, and was often involved in turbulent affairs with women, such as with his second wife Ava Gardner. He went on to marry Mia Farrow in 1966 and Barbara Marx in 1976, Sinatra had several violent confrontations, usually with journalists he felt had crossed him, or work bosses with whom he had disagreements. He was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors in 1983, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1985, Sinatra was also the recipient of eleven Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Trustees Award, Grammy Legend Award and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. After his death, American music critic Robert Christgau called him the greatest singer of the 20th century, Francis Albert Sinatra was born on December 12,1915, in an upstairs tenement at 415 Monroe Street in Hoboken, New Jersey. He was the child of Italian immigrants Antonino Martino Marty Sinatra
10.
Jaco Pastorius
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John Francis Anthony Jaco Pastorius III was an American jazz musician, composer, big band leader and electric bass player. He is best known for his work with Weather Report from 1976 to 1981, as well as work with artists including Joni Mitchell, Pat Metheny, as a musician, he developed an influential approach to bass playing that combined the use of complex harmony with virtuosic technique. His signature approach employed Latin-influenced funk, lyrical solos on fretless bass, bass chords and he was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame in 1988, one of only seven bassists so honored. His grandmother was a Finn named Kaisa Eriika Isojärvi and he was of Finnish, Sami, German, Swedish, and Irish ancestry. In 1960, his family moved to Oakland Park, Florida, Pastorius went to St. Clements Catholic School in Wilton Manors, and he was an altar boy at the adjoining church. He went to Northeast High School in Oakland Park and he was talented in football, basketball, and baseball, and he picked up music at an early age. He often watched baseball with his father and his nickname was influenced by his love of sports and by umpire Jocko Conlan. He changed the spelling from Jocko to Jaco after French pianist Alex Darqui misspelled it on a note and his seemingly endless energy led his younger brother, Gregory, to call him Mowgli after the wild boy in The Jungle Book. Pastorius played drums until he injured his wrist playing football at age 13, the damage to his wrist was severe enough to warrant corrective surgery and inhibited his ability to play drums. He had been playing with a band, Las Olas Brass. By 1968–1969, at the age of 17, Pastorius had begun to appreciate jazz and had saved money to buy an upright bass. Its deep, mellow tone appealed to him, though it strained his finances and he had difficulty maintaining the instrument, which he attributed to the humidity in Florida. When he woke one day to find it had cracked, he traded it for a 1962 Fender Jazz Bass and his first break came when he became the bassist for Wayne Cochran and the C. C. He also played on various local R&B and jazz records during time, such as with Little Beaver. In 1973 at the age of 22, Pastorius was teaching bass at the University of Miami, in 1974, Pastorius began playing with Metheny. In 1975, Pastorius was introduced to Blood, Sweat & Tears drummer Bobby Colomby, Pastoriuss first album, produced by Colomby, was Jaco Pastorius, a breakthrough album for the electric bass. Many consider this the finest bass album ever recorded, it was praised by critics. The album also boasted a lineup of heavyweights in the community at the time – including Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, David Sanborn, Lenny White, Hubert Laws, Don Alias
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