1.
Rochester, Kent
–
Rochester is a town and historic city in the unitary authority of Medway in Kent, England. It is situated at the lowest bridging point of the River Medway about 30 miles from London, Rochester was for many years a favourite of Charles Dickens, who owned nearby Gads Hill Place, Higham, basing many of his novels on the area. Rochester and its neighbours, Chatham and Gillingham, Strood and a number of outlying villages form a large urban area known as the Medway Towns with a population of about 250,000. These places nowadays make up the Medway Unitary Authority area and it was, until 1998, under the control of Kent County Council and is still part of the ceremonial county of Kent, under the latest Lieutenancies Act. The Romano-British name for Rochester was Durobrivae, later Durobrivis c.730, the two commonly cited origins of this name are that it either came from stronghold by the bridge, or is the latinisation of the British word Dourbruf meaning swiftstream. In later times, the word cæster was added to the name, bede mentions the city in ca.730 and calls it Hrofes cæster, mistaking its meaning as Hrofis fortified camp. From this we get c.730 Hrofæscæstre,811 Hrofescester,1086 Rovescester,1610 Rochester, the Latinised adjective Roffensis refers to Rochester. Neolithic remains have been found in the vicinity of Rochester, over time it has been occupied by Celts, Romans. During the Celtic period it was one of the two centres of the Cantiaci tribe. During the Roman conquest of Britain a decisive battle was fought at the Medway somewhere near Rochester, the first bridge was subsequently constructed early in the Roman period. During the later Roman period the settlement was walled in stone, King Ethelbert of Kent established a legal system which has been preserved in the 12th century Textus Roffensis. In AD604 the bishopric and cathedral were founded, during this period, from the recall of the legions until the Norman conquest, Rochester was sacked at least twice and besieged on another occasion. The medieval period saw the building of the current cathedral, the building of two castles and the establishment of a significant town, Rochester Castle saw action in the sieges of 1215 and 1264. Its basic street plan was set out, constrained by the river, Watling Street, Rochester Priory, the city was raided by the Dutch as part of the Second Anglo-Dutch War. The Dutch, commanded by Admiral de Ruijter, broke through the chain at Upnor and sailed to Rochester Bridge capturing part of the English fleet, Rochester has for centuries been of great strategic importance through its position near the confluence of the Thames and the Medway. Rochester Castle was built to guard the crossing, and the Royal Dockyards establishment at Chatham witnessed the beginning of the Royal Navys long period of supremacy. The town, as part of Medway, is surrounded by two circles of fortresses, the line built during the Napoleonic wars consists of Fort Clarence, Fort Pitt, Fort Amherst. During the Second World War, Shorts also designed and manufactured the first four-engined bomber, Rochester and its neighbouring communities were hit hard by this and have experienced a painful adjustment to a post-industrial economy, with much social deprivation and unemployment resulting
2.
Electronic dance music
–
Electronic dance music is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres made largely for nightclubs, raves, and festivals. EDM is generally produced for playback by disc jockeys who create seamless selections of tracks, called a mix, EDM producers also perform their music live in a concert or festival setting in what is sometimes called a live PA. In the United Kingdom and in continental Europe, EDM is more commonly called dance music or simply dance. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, following the emergence of raving, pirate radio, at this time a perceived association between EDM and drug culture led governments at state and city level to enact laws and policies intended to halt the spread of rave culture. By the early 2010s the term dance music and the initialism EDM was being pushed by the US music industry. Early examples of dance music include the disco music of Giorgio Moroder. During the early 1980s, the popularity of disco music declined in the United States, abandoned by major US record labels. European disco continued evolving within the mainstream pop music scene. European acts Silver Convention, Love and Kisses, Munich Machine, and American acts Donna Summer, in 1977, Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte produced I Feel Love for Donna Summer. It became the first well-known disco hit to have a completely synthesised backing track, other disco producers, most famously American producer Tom Moulton, grabbed ideas and techniques from dub music to provide alternatives to the four on the floor style that dominated. The sound that originated from P-Funk the electronic side of disco, dub music. Much of the music produced during this time was, like disco, at this time creative control started shifting to independent record companies, less established producers, and club DJs. Other dance styles that began to become popular during the era include dance-pop, boogie, electro, Italo disco, house. In the early 1980s, electro emerged as a fusion of funk, also called electro-boogie, but later shortened to electro, cited pioneers include Zapp, D. Train, Sinnamon. Early hip hop and rap combined with German and Japanese electropop influences such as Kraftwerk, as the electronic sound developed, instruments such as the bass guitar and drums were replaced by synthesizers and most notably by iconic drum machines, particularly the Roland TR-808. Early uses of the TR-808 include several Yellow Magic Orchestra tracks in 1980-1981, the 1982 track Planet Rock by Afrikaa Bambaataa, and the 1982 song Sexual Healing by Marvin Gaye. In 1982, producer Arthur Baker with Afrika Bambaataa released the seminal Planet Rock which was influenced by the Yellow Magic Orchestra using Kraftwerk samples, Planet Rock was followed later that year by another breakthrough electro record, Nunk by Warp 9. In 1983, Hashim created an electro funk sound which influenced Herbie Hancock, the early 1980s were electros mainstream peak
3.
Trance music
–
Trance is a genre of electronic dance music that developed during the 1990s in Germany. Although trance is a genre of its own, it incorporates influences from other musical styles such as techno, house, pop, chill-out, classical music, tech house, ambient. A trance refers to a state of hypnotism and heightened consciousness and this is portrayed in trance music by the mixing of layers with distinctly foreshadowed build-up and release. Trance tracks are often lengthy to allow for such progression and commonly have sufficiently sparse opening and closing sections to facilitate mixing by DJs, Trance can be purely instrumental, although vocals are also a common feature. Typically they are performed by mezzo-soprano to soprano female soloists, often without verse/chorus structure, structured vocal form in trance music forms the basis of the vocal trance subgenre, which has been described as grand, soaring, and operatic and ethereal female leads floating amongst the synths. It was promoted by the well-known UK club-night megatripolis whose scene catapulted it to international fame, One writer traces the roots of trance to Paul van Dyks 1993 remix of Humates Love Stimulation. However, van Dyks trance origins can be traced back to his work with Visions Of Shiva. With film music also being influential, Trance was arguably at its commercial peak in the second part of 1990s and early 2000s. Classic trance employs a 4/4 time signature, a tempo of 125 to 150 BPM, a kick drum is usually placed on every downbeat and a regular open hi-hat is often placed on the upbeat or every 1/8th division of the bar. Rapid arpeggios and minor keys are common features of Trance, the latter being almost universal, instruments are added or removed every 4,8,16, or 32 bars. In the section before the breakdown, the motif is often introduced in a sliced up and simplified form. Then later, the climax is usually a culmination of the first part of the track mixed with the main melodic reprise. As is the case with many music tracks, trance tracks are usually built with sparser intros and outros in order to enable DJs to blend them together immediately. As trance is more melodic and harmonic than other dance music. More recent forms of trance music incorporate other styles and elements of music such as electro. It emphasizes harsher basslines and drum beats which decrease the importance of offbeats, the bpm of more recent styles tends to be on par with house music at 120 -135 beats per minute. However, unlike house music, recent forms of trance stay true to their melodic breakdowns, Trance music is broken into a large number of subgenres. Chronologically, the major subgenres are classic trance, acid trance, progressive trance, uplifting trance, closely related to Uplifting Trance is Euro-trance, which has become a general term for a wide variety of highly commercialized European dance music
4.
World music
–
The term was popularized in the 1980s as a marketing category for non-Western traditional music. Globalization has facilitated the expansion of world musics audiences and scope and it has grown to include hybrid subgenres such as world fusion, global fusion, ethnic fusion, and worldbeat. To enhance the process of learning, he invited more than a dozen visiting performers from Africa and Asia, the term became current in the 1980s as a marketing/classificatory device in the media and the music industry. There are several conflicting definitions for world music, one is that it consists of all the music in the world, though such a broad definition renders the term virtually meaningless. The term also is taken as a classification of music that combines Western popular music styles with one of many genres of music that are also described as folk music or ethnic music. However, world music is not exclusively traditional folk music and it may include cutting edge pop music styles as well. Succinctly, it can be described as music from out there. It is a nebulous term with an increasing number of genres that fall under the umbrella of world music to capture musical trends of combined ethnic style and texture. As a result, definitions of the genre have become particularly varied, similar terminology between distinctly different sub-categories under primary music genres, such as world, rock and pop can be as ambiguous and confusing to industry moguls as it is to consumers. In a report on the 2014 globalFEST National Public Radios Anastasia Tsioulcas said Even within the music community. Whats more, I believe that in peoples imaginations, world music means a kind of fairly awful, gloppy, hippy-ish. Its a problematic, horrible term that satisfies absolutely no one, the Breton musician Alan Stivell pioneered the connection between traditional folk music, modern rock music and world music with his 1972 album Renaissance of the Celtic Harp. At this time, Stivells contemporary, Welsh singer-songwriter Meic Stevens popularised Welsh folk music, more recently, other Welsh-language bands such as Calan and 9 Bach have achieved international acclaim. The broad category of music includes isolated forms of ethnic music from diverse geographical regions. These dissimilar strains of music are commonly categorized together by virtue of their indigenous roots. World fusion / Worldbeat / Ethnic fusion / Global fusion can also blend specific indigenous sounds with more blatant elements of Western pop. Depending on style and context, world music can sometimes share the music genre. Good examples are Tibetan bowls, Tuvan throat singing, Gregorian chant or Native American flute music, World music blended with new-age music is a sound, loosely classified as the hybrid genre, ethnic fusion
5.
Flute
–
The flute is a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening, according to the instrument classification of Hornbostel–Sachs, flutes are categorized as edge-blown aerophones. A musician who plays the flute can be referred to as a player, flautist, flutist or, less commonly. Flutes are the earliest extant musical instruments, as paleolithic instruments with hand-bored holes have been found, a number of flutes dating to about 43,000 to 35,000 years ago have been found in the Swabian Jura region of present-day Germany. These flutes demonstrate that a musical tradition existed from the earliest period of modern human presence in Europe. Flutes, including the famous Bansuri, have been a part of Indian classical music since 1500 BC. A major deity of Hinduism, Krishna, has been associated with the flute, the English verb flout has the same linguistic root, and the modern Dutch verb fluiten still shares the two meanings. Attempts to trace the word back to the Latin flare have been pronounced phonologically impossible or inadmissable, the first known use of the word flute was in the 14th century. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this was in Geoffrey Chaucers The Hous of Fame, today, a musician who plays any instrument in the flute family can be called a flutist, or flautist, or simply a flute player. Flutist dates back to at least 1603, the earliest quote cited by the Oxford English Dictionary, flautist was used in 1860 by Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Marble Faun, after being adopted during the 18th century from Italy, like many musical terms in England since the Italian Renaissance. Other English terms, now obsolete, are fluter and flutenist. The oldest flute ever discovered may be a fragment of the femur of a cave bear. In 2008 another flute dated back to at least 35,000 years ago was discovered in Hohle Fels cave near Ulm, the five-holed flute has a V-shaped mouthpiece and is made from a vulture wing bone. The researchers involved in the officially published their findings in the journal Nature. The flute, one of several found, was found in the Hohle Fels cavern next to the Venus of Hohle Fels, on announcing the discovery, scientists suggested that the finds demonstrate the presence of a well-established musical tradition at the time when modern humans colonized Europe. Scientists have also suggested that the discovery of the flute may help to explain the probable behavioural and cognitive gulf between Neanderthals and early modern human. A three-holed flute,18.7 cm long, made from a mammoth tusk was discovered in 2004, the earliest extant Chinese transverse flute is a chi flute discovered in the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng at the Suizhou site, Hubei province, China. It dates from 433 BC, of the later Zhou Dynasty and it is fashioned of lacquered bamboo with closed ends and has five stops that are at the flutes side instead of the top
6.
South East England
–
South East England is the most populous of the nine official regions of England at the first level of NUTS for statistical purposes. It consists of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Hampshire, as with the other regions of England, apart from Greater London, the south east has no elected government. It is the third largest region of England, with an area of 19,096 km², and is also the most populous with a population of over eight. Its proximity to London and connections to several national motorways have led to south east England becoming an economic hub and it is the location of Gatwick Airport, the UKs second-busiest airport, and its coastline along the English Channel provides numerous ferry crossings to mainland Europe. The region is known for its countryside, which includes the North Downs, the River Thames flows through the region and its basin is known as the Thames Valley. The region has many universities, the University of Oxford is ranked among the best in the world. South east England is host to sporting events, including the annual Henley Royal Regatta, Royal Ascot and the Epsom Derby. Some of the events of the 2012 Summer Olympics were held in the south east, including the rowing at Eton Dorney, the largest city in the region is Brighton & Hove. The dominant influence on the economy is neighbouring London. The highest point is Walbury Hill in Berkshire at 297 metres, until 1999, there was a south east Standard Statistical Region, which also included the counties of Bedfordshire, Greater London, Essex and Hertfordshire. The former south east Civil Defence Region covered the area as the current government office region. The South East is also used as a synonym for the home counties. The population of the region at the 2011 census was 8,634,750 making it the most populous English region, the major conurbations of the region include Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton, Portsmouth, Southampton and Reading. Settlements closer to London are part of the known as the Greater London Urban Area. The South East has the highest percentage of people born outside of Britain other than London. Estimates in 2007 state 87. 2% of people as White British,4. 8% Other White,3. 5% South Asians,1. 5% Mixed Race,1. 6% Black British,0. 7% Chinese,0. 7% Other. The area also has some seats where there is support for other parties, for example, Slough and Oxford for Labour. Buckingham, the seat of Speaker John Bercow, is also in this region, out of 83 parliamentary seats, the Conservatives hold 78
7.
Royal Academy of Music
–
The Royal Academy of Music is a conservatoire in London, England, is a constituent college of the University of London and is one of the leading conservatoires in the world. It was founded in 1822 and is Britains oldest degree-granting music school and it received a Royal Charter in 1830. It is a charity under English law. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist, the Academy was granted a Royal Charter by King George IV in 1830. The Academys current facilities are situated on Marylebone Road in central London adjacent to Regents Park, the Royal Academy of Music offers training from infant level, with the senior Academy awarding the LRAM diploma, B. Mus. and higher degrees to Ph. D. The former degree GRSM, equivalent to a university honours degree, all undergraduates now take the University of London degree of BMus. There are also departments for musical performance and jazz. The Academy collaborates with other worldwide, including participating in the SOCRATES student. The Academy has students from over 50 countries, following diverse programmes including instrumental performance, conducting, composition, jazz, musical theatre, the Academy has an established relationship with Kings College London, particularly the Department of Music, whose students receive instrumental tuition at the Academy. In return, many students at the Academy take a range of Humanities choices at Kings, the Junior Academy, for pupils under the age of 18, takes place every Saturday. The Academys library contains over 160,000 items, including significant collections of printed and manuscript materials. The library also houses dedicated to Sir Arthur Sullivan and Sir Henry Wood. The Academys museum displays many of these items, the Orchestral Library has approximately 4,500 sets of orchestral parts. Other collections include the libraries of Sir Henry Wood and Otto Klemperer, noted for her performances of Bach and modern English music, she was a friend and advocate of Arnold Bax and also premièred Vaughan Williams Piano Concerto — a work dedicated to her — in 1933. In 1886, Franz Liszt performed at the Academy to celebrate the creation of the Franz Liszt Scholarship, in summer 2012, John Adams conducted an orchestra which combined students from the Academy and New Yorks Juilliard School at the Proms and at New Yorks Lincoln Center. Conductors who have worked with the orchestras include Semyon Bychkov, Daniel Barenboim, Sir Simon Rattle, Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Famous people who have conducted the Academys orchestra also include Carl Maria Von Weber in 1826, for many years, the Academy celebrated the work of a living composer with a festival in the presence of the composer. In February–March 2006, an Academy festival celebrated the violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini, the festival included a recital by Academy professor Maxim Vengerov, who performed on Il Cannone Guarnerius, Paganinis favourite violin
8.
New Age
–
The New Age is a term applied to a range of spiritual or religious beliefs and practices that developed in Western nations during the 1970s. Precise scholarly definitions of the New Age differ in their emphasis, although analytically often considered to be religious, those involved in it typically prefer the designation of spiritual and rarely use the term New Age themselves. Many scholars of the subject refer to it as the New Age movement, although others contest this term, such prominent occult influences include the work of Emanuel Swedenborg and Franz Mesmer, as well as the ideas of Spiritualism, New Thought, and Theosophy. Although the exact origins of the phenomenon remain contested, it is agreed that it developed in the 1970s and it expanded and grew largely in the 1980s and 1990s, in particular within the United States. By the start of the 21st century, the term New Age was increasingly rejected within this milieu, despite its highly eclectic nature, a number of beliefs commonly found within the New Age have been identified. Theologically, the New Age typically adopts a belief in a form of divinity which imbues all of the universe. There is thus a strong emphasis on the authority of the self. This is accompanied by a belief in a wide variety of semi-divine non-human entities, such as angels and masters, with whom humans can communicate. There is also a focus on healing, particularly using forms of alternative medicine. Those involved in the New Age have been primarily from middle, the New Age has generated criticism from established Christian organisations as well as modern Pagan and indigenous communities. From the 1990s onward, the New Age became the subject of research by scholars of religious studies. The New Age phenomenon has proved difficult to define, with much scholarly disagreement as to its scope, the scholars Steven J. Sutcliffe and Ingvild Sælid Gilhus have even suggested that it remains among the most disputed of categories in the study of religion. According to Hammer, this New Age was a fluid and fuzzy cultic milieu and he thus argued against the idea that the New Age could be considered a unified ideology or Weltanschauung, although he believed that it could be considered a more of less unified movement. Conversely, various scholars have suggested that the New Age is insufficiently homogenous to be regarded as a singular movement. There is no authority within the New Age phenomenon that can determine what counts as New Age. Many of those groups and individuals who could analytically be categorised as part of the New Age reject the term New Age in reference to themselves, some even express active hostility to the term. Rather than terming themselves New Agers, those involved in this milieu commonly describe themselves as spiritual seekers, other figures have argued that the sheer diversity of the New Age renders it too problematic for such use. In discussing the New Age, academics have varyingly referred to New Age spirituality and those involved in the New Age rarely consider it to be religion—negatively associating that term solely with organized religion—and instead describe their practices as spirituality
9.
Sedona, Arizona
–
Sedona /sᵻˈdoʊnə/ is a city that straddles the county line between Coconino and Yavapai counties in the northern Verde Valley region of the U. S. state of Arizona. As of the 2010 census, its population was 10,031, sedonas main attraction is its array of red sandstone formations. The formations appear to glow in brilliant orange and red when illuminated by the rising or setting sun, the red rocks form a popular backdrop for many activities, ranging from spiritual pursuits to the hundreds of hiking and mountain biking trails. Sedona was named after Sedona Arabella Miller Schnebly, the wife of Theodore Carlton Schnebly, the citys first postmaster and her mother, Amanda Miller, claimed to have made the name up because it sounded pretty. The first documented presence in Sedona area dates to between 11,500 and 9000 B. C. It was not until 1995 that a Clovis projectile point discovered in Honanki revealed the presence of the Paleo-Indians, around 9000 B. C. the pre-historic Archaic people appeared in the Verde Valley. These were hunter-gatherers and their presence in the area was longer than in areas of the Southwest, most likely because of the ecological diversity. There is an assortment of art left by the Archaic people in places near Sedona such as Palatki and Honanki. Around 650 A. D. the Sinagua people entered the Verde Valley and their culture is known for its art such as pottery, basketry and their masonry. They left rock art, pueblos, and cliff dwellings such as Montezuma Castle, Honanki, Palatki and Tuzigoot, the Sinagua abandoned the Verde Valley about 1400 A. D. Researchers believe the Sinagua and other clans moved to the Hopi mesas in Arizona, the Yavapai came from the west when the Sinagua were still there in the Verde Valley around 1300 A. D. Some archaeologists place the Apache arrival in the Verde Valley around 1450 A. D, many Apache groups were nomadic or seminomadic and traveled over large areas. The Yavapai and Apache tribes were removed from the Verde Valley in 1876. About 1,500 people were marched, in midwinter, to San Carlos, the survivors were interned for 25 years. About 200 Yavapai and Apache people returned to the Verde Valley in 1900 and have since intermingled as a political entity although culturally distinct residing in the Yavapai-Apache Nation. The first Anglo settler, John J. Thompson, moved to Oak Creek Canyon in 1876, the early settlers were farmers and ranchers. Oak Creek Canyon was well known for its peach and apple orchards, in 1902, when the Sedona post office was established, there were 55 residents. In the mid-1950s, the first telephone directory listed 155 names, some parts of the Sedona area were not electrified until the 1960s
10.
Grand Canyon
–
The Grand Canyon is a steep-sided canyon carved by the Colorado River in the U. S. state of Arizona in North America. President Theodore Roosevelt was a proponent of preservation of the Grand Canyon area. The Grand Canyon is 277 miles long, up to 18 miles wide, since that time, the Colorado River has driven the down-cutting of the tributaries and retreat of the cliffs, simultaneously deepening and widening the canyon. For thousands of years, the area has been inhabited by Native Americans. The Pueblo people considered the Grand Canyon a holy site, the first European known to have viewed the Grand Canyon was García López de Cárdenas from Spain, who arrived in 1540. It is not the deepest canyon in the world, however, the Grand Canyon is known for its visually overwhelming size and its intricate and colorful landscape. Geologically, it is significant because of the sequence of ancient rocks that are well preserved and exposed in the walls of the canyon. These rock layers record much of the geologic history of the North American continent. Uplift associated with mountain formation later moved these sediments thousands of feet upward, the higher elevation has also resulted in greater precipitation in the Colorado River drainage area, but not enough to change the Grand Canyon area from being semi-arid. The uplift of the Colorado Plateau is uneven, and the Kaibab Plateau that Grand Canyon bisects is over a one thousand feet higher at the North Rim than at the South Rim. Almost all runoff from the North Rim flows toward the Grand Canyon, the result is deeper and longer tributary washes and canyons on the north side and shorter and steeper side canyons on the south side. Temperatures on the North Rim are generally lower than those on the South Rim because of the greater elevation, heavy rains are common on both rims during the summer months. Access to the North Rim via the route leading to the canyon is limited during the winter season due to road closures. The Grand Canyon is part of the Colorado River basin which has developed over the past 40 million years, a recent study places the origins of the canyon beginning about 17 million years ago. Previous estimates had placed the age of the canyon at 5–6 million years, the study, which was published in the journal Science in 2008, used uranium-lead dating to analyze calcite deposits found on the walls of nine caves throughout the canyon. There is an amount of controversy because this research suggests such a substantial departure from prior widely supported scientific consensus. In December 2012, a study published in the journal Science claimed new tests had suggested the Grand Canyon could be as old as 70 million years, the canyon is the result of erosion which exposes one of the most complete geologic columns on the planet. The major geologic exposures in the Grand Canyon range in age from the 2-billion-year-old Vishnu Schist at the bottom of the Inner Gorge to the 230-million-year-old Kaibab Limestone on the Rim
