Folk rock
Folk rock is a hybrid music genre combining elements of folk music and rock music, which arose in the United States and the United Kingdom in the mid-1960s. In the U. S. folk rock emerged from the folk music revival and the influence that the Beatles and other British Invasion bands had on members of that movement. Performers such as Bob Dylan and the Byrds—several of whose members had earlier played in folk ensembles—attempted to blend the sounds of rock with their preexisting folk repertoire, adopting the use of electric instrumentation and drums in a way discouraged in the U. S. folk community. The term "folk rock" was used in the U. S. music press in June 1965 to describe the Byrds' music. The commercial success of the Byrds' cover version of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" and their debut album of the same name, along with Dylan's own recordings with rock instrumentation—on the albums Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde —encouraged other folk acts, such as Simon & Garfunkel, to use electric backing on their records and new groups, such as Buffalo Springfield, to form.
Dylan's controversial appearance at the Newport Folk Festival on 25 July 1965, where he was backed by an electric band, was a pivotal moment in the development of the genre. During the late 1960s in Britain and Europe, a distinct, eclectic British folk rock style was created by Pentangle, Fairport Convention and Alan Stivell. Inspired by British psychedelic folk and the North American style of folk rock, British folk rock bands began to incorporate elements of traditional British folk music into their repertoire, leading to other variants, including the overtly English folk rock of the Albion Band and Celtic rock. In its earliest and narrowest sense, the term "folk rock" refers to the blending of elements of folk music and rock music, which arose in the U. S. and UK in the mid-1960s. The genre was pioneered by the Byrds, who began playing traditional folk music and songs by Bob Dylan with rock instrumentation, in a style influenced by the Beatles and other British Invasion bands; the term "folk rock" was coined by the U.
S. music press to describe the Byrds' music in June 1965, the month in which the band's debut album was issued. Dylan contributed to the creation of the genre, with his recordings utilizing rock instrumentation on the albums Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde. In a broader sense, folk rock encompasses inspired musical genres and movements in different regions of the world. Folk rock may lean more towards either folk or rock in instrumentation and vocal style, choice of material. While the original genre draws on music of Europe and North America, there is no clear delineation of which other culture's music might be included as influences; the term is not associated with blues-based rock music, African American music, Cajun-based rock music, nor music with non-European folk roots. There are some exceptions; the American folk-music revival began during the 1940s. In 1948, Seeger formed the Weavers, whose mainstream popularity set the stage for the folk revival of the 1950s and early 1960s and served to bridge the gap between folk, popular music, topical song.
The Weavers' sound and repertoire of traditional folk material and topical songs directly inspired the Kingston Trio, a three-piece folk group who came to prominence in 1958 with their hit recording of "Tom Dooley". The Kingston Trio provided the template for a flood of "collegiate folk" groups between 1958 and 1962. At the same time as these "collegiate folk" vocal groups came to national prominence, a second group of urban folk revivalists, influenced by the music and guitar picking styles of folk and blues artist such as Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Brownie McGhee, Josh White came to the fore. Many of these urban revivalists were influenced by recordings of traditional American music from the 1920s and 1930s, reissued by Folkways Records. While this urban folk revival flourished in many cities, New York City, with its burgeoning Greenwich Village coffeehouse scene and population of topical folk singers, was regarded as the centre of the movement. Out of this fertile environment came such folk-protest luminaries as Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, Peter and Mary, many of whom would transition into folk rock performers as the 1960s progressed.
The vast majority of the urban folk revivalists shared a disdain for the values of mainstream American mass culture and led many folk singers to begin composing their own "protest" material. The influence of this folk-protest movement would manifest itself in the sociopolitical lyrics and mildly anti-establishment sentiments of many folk rock songs, including hit singles such as "Eve of Destruction", "Like a Rolling Stone", "For What It's Worth", "Let's Live for Today". During the 1950s and early 1960s in the UK, a parallel folk revival referred to as the second British folk revival, was led by folk singers Ewan MacColl and Bert Lloyd. Both viewed British folk music as a vehicle for leftist political concepts and an antidote to the American-dominated popular music of the time. However, it wasn't until 1956 and the advent of the skiffle craze that the British folk revival crossed over into the mainstream and connected with British youth culture. Skiffle renewed popularity of folk music forms in Britain and led directly to the progressive folk movement and the attendant B
Europe
Europe is a continent located in the Northern Hemisphere and in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Mediterranean Sea to the south, it comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Since around 1850, Europe is most considered to be separated from Asia by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas and the waterways of the Turkish Straits. Although the term "continent" implies physical geography, the land border is somewhat arbitrary and has been redefined several times since its first conception in classical antiquity; the division of Eurasia into two continents reflects East-West cultural and ethnic differences which vary on a spectrum rather than with a sharp dividing line. The geographic border does not follow political boundaries, with Turkey and Kazakhstan being transcontinental countries. A strict application of the Caucasus Mountains boundary places two comparatively small countries and Georgia, in both continents.
Europe covers 2 % of the Earth's surface. Politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a total population of about 741 million as of 2016; the European climate is affected by warm Atlantic currents that temper winters and summers on much of the continent at latitudes along which the climate in Asia and North America is severe. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast. Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization; the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD and the subsequent Migration Period marked the end of ancient history and the beginning of the Middle Ages. Renaissance humanism, exploration and science led to the modern era. Since the Age of Discovery started by Portugal and Spain, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at various times the Americas all of Africa and Oceania and the majority of Asia.
The Age of Enlightenment, the subsequent French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars shaped the continent culturally and economically from the end of the 17th century until the first half of the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to radical economic and social change in Western Europe and the wider world. Both world wars took place for the most part in Europe, contributing to a decline in Western European dominance in world affairs by the mid-20th century as the Soviet Union and the United States took prominence. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the West and the Warsaw Pact in the East, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1949 the Council of Europe was founded, following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill, with the idea of unifying Europe to achieve common goals, it includes all European states except for Belarus and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, a separate political entity that lies between a confederation and a federation.
The EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The currency of most countries of the European Union, the euro, is the most used among Europeans. In classical Greek mythology, Europa was a Phoenician princess; the word Europe is derived from her name. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, "wide, broad" and ὤψ "eye, countenance", hence their composite Eurṓpē would mean "wide-gazing" or "broad of aspect". Broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. There have been attempts to connect Eurṓpē to a Semitic term for "west", this being either Akkadian erebu meaning "to go down, set" or Phoenician'ereb "evening, west", at the origin of Arabic Maghreb and Hebrew ma'arav. Michael A. Barry, professor in Princeton University's Near Eastern Studies Department, finds the mention of the word Ereb on an Assyrian stele with the meaning of "night, sunset", in opposition to Asu " sunrise", i.e. Asia.
The same naming motive according to "cartographic convention" appears in Greek Ἀνατολή. Martin Litchfield West stated that "phonologically, the match between Europa's name and any form of the Semitic word is poor." Next to these hypotheses there is a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning "darkness", which produced Greek Erebus. Most major world languages use words derived from Europa to refer to the continent. Chinese, for example, uses the word Ōuzhōu. In some Turkic languages the Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa; the prevalent definition of Europe as a geographical term has been in use since the mid-19th century. Europe is taken to be bounded by large bodies of water
Kygo
Kyrre Gørvell-Dahll, better known by his stage name Kygo, is a Norwegian DJ, record producer, songwriter. He garnered international attention with his remix of the track "I See Fire" by Ed Sheeran, which has received over 55 million plays on SoundCloud and 76 million views on YouTube and his single "Firestone" which has over 500 million views on YouTube with an additional 560 million plays on the music streaming service Spotify, as of August 2017. Kygo has accumulated over 2.5 billion views on his music on YouTube. He holds. Kygo has since released several singles, such as "Stole the Show", "Here for You", "Stay", "It Ain't Me", which have debuted on several international charts. Kygo's debut album Cloud Nine was released on 13 May 2016, he made history on 21 August 2016 at the 2016 Rio Olympics, when he became the first house music producer to perform at an Olympics closing ceremony. In March 2018, Billboard named Kygo as number three on their 2018 ranking of dance musicians titled Billboard Dance 100.
Kygo was born 11 September 1991 as a non-native foreign in Singapore, the son of Kjersti Gjerde, a dentist, Lars Gørvell-Dahll, an abroad worker in the maritime industry. He has an older stepbrother Mads, two older sisters Johanne and Jenny, a younger half-brother Sondre. Through his childhood, he lived and traveled with his family in Brazil, Japan and Egypt. Kygo started getting piano lessons at the age of six, he stopped when he was 15 or 16 and started producing music with Logic Studio and a MIDI keyboard while watching several tutorials on YouTube. When he decided to pursue music full-time he was halfway through a degree in business and finance at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, he has cited Swedish DJ Avicii as his main inspiration. On 15 May 2013, Kygo released his first single called "Epsilon" on Romanian record label Ensis Records. After that, on 1 December 2014, he released the single "Firestone", featuring vocals from Conrad Sewell, which gained international recognition and debuted on several charts worldwide.
After receiving over 80 million views on YouTube and SoundCloud, Kygo was contacted by Avicii and by Chris Martin of Coldplay to create a remix of the song "Midnight". He has supported Avicii at Findings Festival in Oslo, Norway, in 2014. On 19 September 2014, it was confirmed that Kygo was to replace Avicii at mainstage in TomorrowWorld, due to Avicii's health concerns, he was featured in an interview for Billboard magazine, where he talked to writer Matt Medved about his remixes for Diplo and Coldplay, talked about his upcoming tour in North America. In July 2014, Kygo entered into a partnership with EDM lifestyle brand Electric Family to produce a collaboration bracelet for which 100% of the proceeds are donated to Médecins Sans Frontières. In the same month, he signed a record label deal with Ultra Music. In February 2015, Kygo's song; the same track is featured on FIFA 16, a popular association football video game by EA Sports. In August 2015, Kygo was a featured headliner at Lollapalooza in Chicago, one of the biggest music festivals in the world.
He made his U. S. television debut on The Late Late Show with James Corden in October 2015. On 21 March 2015, he released his second single, titled "Stole the Show", featuring Parson James, which as of September 2018, had 304 million views on YouTube. On 31 July 2015, he released his third single, "Nothing Left". "Nothing Left" reached number one on the Norwegian Singles Chart. On 4 September 2015, he released his fourth single, titled "Here for You", featuring Ella Henderson, revealed to be the vocal version of the song "ID", released as part of the Ultra Music Festival. Three months his fifth single, "Stay", produced with fellow Norwegian record producer William Larsen and featuring vocals by Maty Noyes, was released on 4 December 2015. In December 2015, Kygo became the fastest artist in history to reach one billion streams on Spotify. After the release of the single, Kygo announced that he was embarking on a worldwide tour to promote his debut studio album. Soon after, he revealed that his debut studio album was going to be released on 19 February 2016, but was delayed.
He, released a teaser of the songs that he was working on that were on his debut studio album and released it on SoundCloud. In the beginning of March 2016, Kygo announced that his debut studio album was going to be released on 13 May 2016, under the title Cloud Nine, he announced that he would be releasing three promotional singles, leading up to the release of the album. The first of these singles, released 18 March 2016, was entitled "Fragile", which features vocals and was collaborated with Labrinth; the second single came out on 1 April 2016, was called "Raging", which features vocals from the Irish band Kodaline and was co-written by James Bay. The third and last single was released on 22 April 2016 and was entitled "I'm In Love", featuring vocals from James Vincent McMorrow. Kygo's debut studio album was released on 13 May 2016. Other collaborations were revealed to include Parson James, Tom Odell, Conrad Sewell, John Legend, James Vincent McMorrow, Rhodes, Matt Corby, Maty Noyes, Julia Michaels and Angus & Julia Stone.
Kygo launched a new lifestyle brand called Kygo Life on 17 August 2016. The brand consists of two collections of high-fashion and relaxed wear, in addition to hardware such as headphones. Kygo Life is at the moment only available in United States and Canada, he performed "Carry Me" with American singer and songwriter Julia Michaels at the closing ceremony of the 2016 Summe
Sam Smith (singer)
Samuel Frederick Smith is an English singer-songwriter. He rose to fame in October 2012 when he was featured on Disclosure's breakthrough single "Latch", which peaked at number eleven on the UK Singles Chart, his subsequent feature—on Naughty Boy's "La La La"—earned him his first number one single in May 2013. In December 2013, he was nominated for the 2014 Brit Critics' Choice Award and the BBC's Sound of 2014 poll, both of which he won, he released his debut studio album, In the Lonely Hour, in May 2014 on Capitol Records UK. The lead single, "Lay Me Down", was released prior to "La La La"; the second single, "Money on My Mind", became his second number one single in the UK. The album's third single, "Stay with Me", was an international success, reaching number one in the UK and number two on the US Billboard Hot 100, while the fourth single "I'm Not the Only One" reached the top five in both countries; the fifth single, "Like I Can", reached number nine in the United Kingdom. He made his United States debut on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, followed by a performance on Saturday Night Live in March 2014.
In December 2014, Smith was nominated for six Grammy Awards, at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2015 he won four: Best New Artist, "Stay with Me" for Record of the Year and Song of the Year, In the Lonely Hour for Best Pop Vocal Album. At the 2015 Brit Awards, he won the awards for British Breakthrough Global Success. At the 2015 Billboard Music Awards, Smith received three Billboard Awards: Top Male Artist, Top New Artist, Top Radio Songs Artist, his musical achievements have led him to be mentioned twice in the Guinness World Records. For his and Jimmy Napes' song "Writing's on the Wall", the theme for the James Bond film Spectre, Smith won the Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Original Song, his second studio album, The Thrill of It All, was released in November 2017, debuted atop the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200. The lead single, "Too Good at Goodbyes", reached number one in the UK and Australia and number four in the US. Samuel Frederick Smith was born on 19 May 1992 in London, the son of Frederick Smith and broker Kate Cassidy.
He stated he was bullied for having breasts as a child, had liposuction at age 12. He was an alumnus of Youth Music Theatre UK and appeared in their 2007 production of Oh! Carol, a musical featuring the music of Neil Sedaka. Before entering the musical theatre, Smith had been in jazz bands. For a number of years he studied songwriting under jazz pianist Joanna Eden, he attended St Mary's Catholic School in Bishop's Stortford. He was a member of the Cantate Youth Choir. Smith was featured on the Disclosure song "Latch", released on 8 October 2012 and peaked at No. 11 on the UK Singles Chart. In February 2013, he released the first single from his debut album, "Lay Me Down", he was featured on Naughty Boy's single "La La La". It was peaked at No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart. The same year, he released his first EP Nirvana consisting of four tracks; the first song on the EP titled, "Safe with Me", is produced by Two Inch Punch and premiered on MistaJam's BBC Radio 1Xtra show on 24 July 2013. The second song on the EP is produced by Craze & Hoax and Jonathan Creek.
The EP includes Smith's acoustic solo version of "Latch" and a live version of "I've Told You Now". Smith released the Disclosure, Nile Rodgers, Jimmy Napes collaboration "Together" on 25 November 2013 as the only single from Settle: The Remixes; the second single from his debut album, titled "Money on My Mind", was released on 16 February 2014. It was announced on 16 December that Smith's debut studio album titled In the Lonely Hour would be released on 26 May 2014 through Capitol Records, he describes the album as "all about unrequited love" because he has never been loved back by any of his love interests. The album reached number one in the UK Albums Chart and number two on the Billboard 200, by 5 November it had become the second biggest selling album of 2014 in the US behind only 1989 by Taylor Swift. In January 2015, In the Lonely Hour was named the second best selling album of 2014 in the UK, behind x by Ed Sheeran. A live version of album track "I've Told You Now", performed at St Pancras Old Church, was made available for free download as part of an Amazon.com promotion on 27 December 2013.
The album track "Make It To Me", co-written by Howard of Disclosure and Jimmy Napes, was made available for free download as part of an iTunes Store promotion on 13 January 2014. Smith went on his debut American headlining tour in the Spring of 2014, with a setlist of new material. On 20 January 2014, Smith made his American television debut performing "Latch" with Disclosure on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, he performed on Saturday Night Live on 29 March 2014, performing the gospel-tinged "Stay with Me" and an acoustic version of "Lay Me Down". "Stay with Me" reached number one on the UK Singles Chart and number two on the US Billboard Hot 100. The fourth single from the album, "I'm Not the Only One", reached number three in the UK and number five in the US. In June 2014, Smith first appeared on the cover of The Fader in its 92nd issue. In August 2014, Smith's single "Stay with Me" was named Variance Magazine's Song of Summer. Smith performed "Stay With Me" live at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards on 24 August at The Forum in Inglewood, California.
On 15 November 2014, Smith joined the charity group Band Aid 30 along with other British and Irish pop acts, recording the latest version of the track "Do They Know It's Christmas?" at Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill, London, to raise money for the 2014 Ebola crisis in Wes
Australia
Australia the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area; the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea and East Timor to the north. The population of 25 million is urbanised and concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Australia's capital is Canberra, its largest city is Sydney; the country's other major metropolitan areas are Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians for about 60,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, it is documented. After the European exploration of the continent by Dutch explorers in 1606, who named it New Holland, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788, a date which became Australia's national day; the population grew in subsequent decades, by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored and an additional five self-governing crown colonies established.
On 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated. Australia has since maintained a stable liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy, comprising six states and ten territories. Being the oldest and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils, Australia has a landmass of 7,617,930 square kilometres. A megadiverse country, its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east and mountain ranges in the south-east. A gold rush began in Australia in the early 1850s, its population density, 2.8 inhabitants per square kilometre, remains among the lowest in the world. Australia generates its income from various sources including mining-related exports, telecommunications and manufacturing. Indigenous Australian rock art is the oldest and richest in the world, dating as far back as 60,000 years and spread across hundreds of thousands of sites. Australia is a developed country, with the world's 14th-largest economy.
It has a high-income economy, with the world's tenth-highest per capita income. It is a regional power, has the world's 13th-highest military expenditure. Australia has the world's ninth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 26% of the population. Having the third-highest human development index and the eighth-highest ranked democracy globally, the country ranks in quality of life, education, economic freedom, civil liberties and political rights, with all its major cities faring well in global comparative livability surveys. Australia is a member of the United Nations, G20, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Trade Organization, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, Pacific Islands Forum and the ASEAN Plus Six mechanism; the name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis, a name used for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere since ancient times. When Europeans first began visiting and mapping Australia in the 17th century, the name Terra Australis was applied to the new territories.
Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as "New Holland", a name first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 and subsequently anglicised. Terra Australis still saw occasional usage, such as in scientific texts; the name Australia was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders, who said it was "more agreeable to the ear, an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth". The first time that Australia appears to have been used was in April 1817, when Governor Lachlan Macquarie acknowledged the receipt of Flinders' charts of Australia from Lord Bathurst. In December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office. In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known by that name; the first official published use of the new name came with the publication in 1830 of The Australia Directory by the Hydrographic Office. Colloquial names for Australia include "Oz" and "the Land Down Under". Other epithets include "the Great Southern Land", "the Lucky Country", "the Sunburnt Country", "the Wide Brown Land".
The latter two both derive from Dorothea Mackellar's 1908 poem "My Country". Human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun around 65,000 to 70,000 years ago, with the migration of people by land bridges and short sea-crossings from what is now Southeast Asia; these first inhabitants were the ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. Aboriginal Australian culture is one of the oldest continual civilisations on earth. At the time of first European contact, most Indigenous Australians were hunter-gatherers with complex economies and societies. Recent archaeological finds suggest. Indigenous Australians have an oral culture with spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime; the Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, obtained their livelihood from seasonal horticulture and the resources of their reefs and seas. The northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited s
Glasgow
Glasgow is the most populous city in Scotland, the third most populous city in the United Kingdom, as of the 2017 estimated city population of 621,020. Part of Lanarkshire, the city now forms the Glasgow City council area, one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. Glasgow is situated on the River Clyde in the country's West Central Lowlands. Inhabitants of the city are referred to as "Glaswegians" or "Weegies", it is the fourth most visited city in the UK. Glasgow is known for the Glasgow patter, a distinct dialect of the Scots language, noted for being difficult to understand by those from outside the city. Glasgow grew from a small rural settlement on the River Clyde to become the largest seaport in Scotland, tenth largest by tonnage in Britain. Expanding from the medieval bishopric and royal burgh, the establishment of the University of Glasgow in the fifteenth century, it became a major centre of the Scottish Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. From the eighteenth century onwards, the city grew as one of Great Britain's main hubs of transatlantic trade with North America and the West Indies.
With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the population and economy of Glasgow and the surrounding region expanded to become one of the world's pre-eminent centres of chemicals and engineering. Glasgow was the "Second City of the British Empire" for much of the Victorian era and Edwardian period, although many cities argue the title was theirs. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Glasgow's population grew reaching a peak of 1,127,825 people in 1938. Comprehensive urban renewal projects in the 1960s, resulting in large-scale relocation of people to designated new towns; the wider metropolitan area is home to over 1,800,000 people, equating to around 33% of Scotland's population. The city has one of the highest densities of any locality in Scotland at 4,023/km2. Glasgow hosted the 2014 Commonwealth Games and the first European Championships in 2018; the origin of the name'Glasgow' is disputed. It is common to derive the toponym from the older Cumbric glas cau or a Middle Gaelic cognate, which would have meant green basin or green valley.
The settlement had an earlier Cumbric name, Cathures. It is recorded that the King of Strathclyde, Rhydderch Hael, welcomed Saint Kentigern, procured his consecration as bishop about 540. For some thirteen years Kentigern laboured in the region, building his church at the Molendinar Burn where Glasgow Cathedral now stands, making many converts. A large community became known as Glasgu; the area around Glasgow has hosted communities for millennia, with the River Clyde providing a natural location for fishing. The Romans built outposts in the area and, to keep Roman Britannia separate from the Celtic and Pictish Caledonia, constructed the Antonine Wall. Items from the wall like altars from Roman forts like Balmuildy can be found at the Hunterian Museum today. Glasgow itself was reputed to have been founded by the Christian missionary Saint Mungo in the 6th century, he established a church on the Molendinar Burn, where the present Glasgow Cathedral stands, in the following years Glasgow became a religious centre.
Glasgow grew over the following centuries. The Glasgow Fair began in the year 1190; the first bridge over the River Clyde at Glasgow was recorded from around 1285, giving its name to the Briggait area of the city, forming the main North-South route over the river via Glasgow Cross. The founding of the University of Glasgow in 1451 and elevation of the bishopric to become the Archdiocese of Glasgow in 1492 increased the town's religious and educational status and landed wealth, its early trade was in agriculture and fishing, with cured salmon and herring being exported to Europe and the Mediterranean. Following the European Protestant Reformation and with the encouragement of the Convention of Royal Burghs, the 14 incorporated trade crafts federated as the Trades House in 1605 to match the power and influence in the town council of the earlier Merchants' Guilds who established their Merchants House in the same year. Glasgow was subsequently raised to the status of Royal Burgh in 1611. Glasgow's substantial fortunes came from international trade and invention, starting in the 17th century with sugar, followed by tobacco, cotton and linen, products of the Atlantic triangular slave trade.
Daniel Defoe visited the city in the early 18th century and famously opined in his book A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain, that Glasgow was "the cleanest and beautifullest, best built city in Britain, London excepted". At that time the city's population was about 12,000, the city was yet to undergo the massive expansionary changes to its economy and urban fabric, brought about by the Scottish Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution. After the Acts of Union in 1707, Scotland gained further access to the vast markets of the new British Empire, Glasgow became p
Indie rock
Indie rock is a genre of rock music that originated in the United States and United Kingdom in the 1970s. Used to describe independent record labels, the term became associated with the music they produced and was used interchangeably with alternative rock; as grunge and punk revival bands in the US and Britpop bands in the UK broke into the mainstream in the 1990s, it came to be used to identify those acts that retained an outsider and underground perspective. In the 2000s, as a result of changes in the music industry and the growing importance of the Internet, some indie rock acts began to enjoy commercial success, leading to questions about its meaningfulness as a term. Sometimes used interchangeably with "guitar pop rock", in the mid-1980s, the term "indie" began to be used to describe the music produced on punk and post-punk labels; some prominent indie rock record labels were founded during the 1980s. During the 1990s, grunge bands broke into the mainstream, the term "alternative" lost its original counter-cultural meaning.
The term "indie rock" became associated with the bands and genres that remained dedicated to their independent status. By the end of the 1990s, indie rock developed several subgenres and related styles, including lo-fi, noise pop, slowcore, post-rock, math rock. In the 2000s, changes in the music industry and in music technology enabled a new wave of indie rock bands to achieve mainstream success. In the early 2000s, a new group of bands that played a stripped-down, back-to-basics version of guitar rock emerged into the mainstream; the commercial breakthrough from these scenes was led by four bands: The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Hives and The Vines. Emo broke into mainstream culture in the early 2000s. By the end of the decade, the proliferation of indie bands was being referred to as "indie landfill"; the term indie rock, which comes from "independent," describes the small and low-budget labels on which it is released and the do-it-yourself attitude of the bands and artists involved. Although distribution deals are struck with major corporate companies, these labels and the bands they host have attempted to retain their autonomy, leaving them free to explore sounds and subjects of limited appeal to large, mainstream audiences.
The influences and styles of the artists have been diverse, including punk, post-punk and country. The terms "alternative rock" and "indie rock" were used interchangeably in the 1980s, but after many alternative bands followed Nirvana into the mainstream in the early 1990s, "indie rock" began to be used to describe those bands, working in a variety of styles, that did not pursue or achieve commercial success. Aesthetically speaking, indie rock is characterized as having a careful balance of pop accessibility with noise, experimentation with pop music formulae, sensitive lyrics masked by ironic posturing, a concern with "authenticity," and the depiction of a simple guy or girl. Allmusic identifies indie rock as including a number of "varying musical approaches compatible with mainstream tastes". Linked by an ethos more than a musical approach, the indie rock movement encompassed a wide range of styles, from hard-edged, grunge-influenced bands, through do-it-yourself experimental bands like Pavement, to punk-folk singers such as Ani DiFranco.
In fact, there is an everlasting list of subgenres of indie rock. Many countries have developed an extensive local indie scene, flourishing with bands with enough popularity to survive inside the respective country, but unknown elsewhere. However, there are still indie bands that start off locally, but attract an international audience. Indie rock is noted for having a high proportion of female artists compared with preceding rock genres, a tendency exemplified by the development of the feminist-informed Riot Grrrl music of acts like Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, 7 Year Bitch, Team Dresch and Huggy Bear. However, Cortney Harding pointed out that this sense of equality is not reflected in the number of women running indie labels; the BBC documentary Music for Misfits: The Story of Indie pinpoints the birth of indie as the 1977 self-publication of the Spiral Scratch EP by Manchester band Buzzcocks. Although Buzzcocks are classified as a punk band, it has been argued by the BBC and others that the publication of Spiral Scratch independently of a major label led to the coining of the name "indie".
"Indie pop" and "indie" were synonymous. In the mid-1980s, "indie" began to be used to describe the music produced on post-punk labels rather than the labels themselves; the indie rock scene in the US was prefigured by the college rock that dominated college radio playlists, which included key bands like R. E. M. from the US and The Smiths from the UK. These two bands rejected the dominant synthpop of the early 1980s, helped inspire guitar-based jangle pop. In the United States, the term was associated with the abrasive, distortion-heavy sounds of the Pixies, Hüsker Dü, Meat Puppets, Dinosaur Jr. and The Replacements. In the United Kingdom the C86 cassette, a 1986 NME compilation featuring Primal Scream, The Pastels, The Wedding Present and other bands, was a document of the UK indie scene at the start of 1986, it gave its name to the indie pop scene that followed, a major influence on the development of the British indie scene as a whole. Major precursors of indie pop included Postcard bands Josef K and Orange Juice, significant labels included Creation and Glass.
The Jesus and Mary Chain's sound combined the Velvet
