1.
Music
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Music is an art form and cultural activity whose medium is sound organized in time. The common elements of music are pitch, rhythm, dynamics, different styles or types of music may emphasize, de-emphasize or omit some of these elements. The word derives from Greek μουσική, Ancient Greek and Indian philosophers defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies and vertically as harmonies. Common sayings such as the harmony of the spheres and it is music to my ears point to the notion that music is often ordered and pleasant to listen to. However, 20th-century composer John Cage thought that any sound can be music, saying, for example, There is no noise, the creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of music vary according to culture and social context. There are many types of music, including music, traditional music, art music, music written for religious ceremonies. For example, it can be hard to draw the line between some early 1980s hard rock and heavy metal, within the arts, music may be classified as a performing art, a fine art or as an auditory art. People may make music as a hobby, like a teen playing cello in a youth orchestra, the word derives from Greek μουσική. According to the Online Etymological Dictionary, the music is derived from mid-13c. Musike, from Old French musique and directly from Latin musica the art of music and this is derived from the. Greek mousike of the Muses, from fem. of mousikos pertaining to the Muses, from Mousa Muse. In classical Greece, any art in which the Muses presided, Music is composed and performed for many purposes, ranging from aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, or as an entertainment product for the marketplace. With the advent of recording, records of popular songs. Some music lovers create mix tapes of their songs, which serve as a self-portrait. An environment consisting solely of what is most ardently loved, amateur musicians can compose or perform music for their own pleasure, and derive their income elsewhere. Professional musicians sometimes work as freelancers or session musicians, seeking contracts and engagements in a variety of settings, There are often many links between amateur and professional musicians. Beginning amateur musicians take lessons with professional musicians, in community settings, advanced amateur musicians perform with professional musicians in a variety of ensembles such as community concert bands and community orchestras. However, there are many cases where a live performance in front of an audience is also recorded and distributed. Live concert recordings are popular in classical music and in popular music forms such as rock, where illegally taped live concerts are prized by music lovers
2.
Popular music
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Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training and it stands in contrast to both art music and traditional or folk music. Art music was historically disseminated through the performances of music, although since the beginning of the recording industry. Traditional music forms such as blues songs or hymns were passed along orally, or to smaller. The original application of the term is to music of the 1880s Tin Pan Alley period in the United States, although popular music sometimes is known as pop music, the two terms are not interchangeable. Popular music songs and pieces typically have easily singable melodies, in the 2000s, with songs and pieces available as digital sound files, it has become easier for music to spread from one country or region to another. Some popular music forms have become global, while others have an appeal within the culture of their origin. Through the mixture of genres, new popular music forms are created to reflect the ideals of a global culture. The examples of Africa, Indonesia and the Middle East show how Western pop music styles can blend with local traditions to create new hybrid styles. Sales of recordings or sheet music are one measure, middleton and Manuel note that this definition has problems because multiple listens or plays of the same song or piece are not counted. Manuel states that one criticism of music is that it is produced by large media conglomerates and passively consumed by the public. He claims that the listeners in the scenario would not have been able to make the choice of their favorite music, moreover, understandings of popular music have changed with time. A societys popular music reflects the ideals that are prevalent at the time it is performed or published, david Riesman states that the youth audiences of popular music fit into either a majority group or a subculture. The majority group listens to the commercially produced styles while the subcultures find a minority style to transmit their own values and this allows youth to choose what music they identify with, which gives them power as consumers to control the market of popular music. Form in popular music is most often sectional, the most common sections being verse, chorus or refrain, other common forms include thirty-two-bar form, chorus form *, and twelve-bar blues. Popular music songs are rarely composed using different music for each stanza of the lyrics, the verse and chorus are considered the primary elements. Each verse usually has the melody, but the lyrics change for most verses. The chorus usually has a phrase and a key lyrical line which is repeated
3.
Sound recording and reproduction
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Sound recording and reproduction is an electrical, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording, prior to the development of analog recording, there were mechanical systems for reproducing instrumental music, such as wind-up music boxes and later, in the late 19th century, player pianos. Analog sound reproduction is the process, with a bigger loudspeaker diaphragm causing changes to atmospheric pressure to form acoustic sound waves. Digital recording and reproduction converts the sound signal picked up by the microphone to a digital form by the process of digitization. This lets the audio data be stored and transmitted by a variety of media. Whereas successive copies of an analog recording tend to degrade in quality, as noise is added. A digital audio signal must be reconverted to analog form during playback before it is amplified and connected to a loudspeaker to produce sound, long before sound was first recorded on cylinders or records, music was recorded—first by written music notation, then also by mechanical devices. Fowler, this. cylinder with raised pins on the surface remained the device to produce and reproduce music mechanically until the second half of the nineteenth century. The Banu Musa brothers also invented an automatic flute player, which appears to have been the first programmable machine, according to Fowler, the automata were a robot band that performed. more than fifty facial and body actions during each musical selection. In the 14th century, Flanders introduced a mechanical bell-ringer controlled by a rotating cylinder, similar designs appeared in barrel organs, musical clocks, barrel pianos, and musical boxes. A music box is a musical instrument that produces sounds by the use of a set of pins placed on a revolving cylinder or disc so as to pluck the tuned teeth of a steel comb. They were developed from musical snuff boxes of the 18th century, some of the more complex boxes also have a tiny drum and/or bells, in addition to the metal comb. The fairground organ, developed in 1892, used a system of accordion-folded punched cardboard books, the player piano, first demonstrated in 1876, used a punched paper scroll that could store an long piece of music. The most sophisticated of the rolls were hand-played, meaning that the roll represented the actual performance of an individual. This technology to record a live performance onto a piano roll was not developed until 1904, piano rolls were in continuous mass production from 1896 to 2008. A1908 U. S. Supreme Court copyright case noted that, in 1902 alone, the use of piano rolls began to decline in the 1920s although one type is still being made today. The first device that could record actual sounds as they passed through the air was the phonautograph, the earliest known recordings of the human voice are phonautograph recordings, called phonautograms, made in 1857. They consist of sheets of paper with sound-wave-modulated white lines created by a stylus that cut through a coating of soot as the paper was passed under it
4.
Hardcover
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A hardcover or hardback book is one bound with rigid protective covers. It has a flexible, sewn spine which allows the book to lie flat on a surface when opened, following the ISBN sequence numbers, books of this type may be identified by the abbreviation Hbk. Hardcover books are printed on acid-free paper, and are much more durable than paperbacks. Hardcover books are more costly to manufacture. If brisk sales are anticipated, an edition of a book is typically released first. Some publishers publish paperback originals if slow hardback sales are anticipated, for very popular books these sales cycles may be extended, and followed by a mass market paperback edition typeset in a more compact size and printed on shallower, less hardy paper. In the past the release of an edition was one year after the hardback. It is very unusual for a book that was first published in paperback to be followed by a hardback, an example is the novel The Judgment of Paris by Gore Vidal, which had its revised edition of 1961 first published in paperback, and later in hardcover. Hardcover books are sold at higher prices than comparable paperbacks. Hardcovers typically consist of a block, two boards, and a cloth or heavy paper covering. The pages are sewn together and glued onto a flexible spine between the boards, and it too is covered by the cloth, a paper wrapper, or dust jacket, is usually put over the binding, folding over each horizontal end of the boards. On the folded part, or flap, over the front cover is generally a blurb, the back flap is where the biography of the author can be found. Reviews are often placed on the back of the jacket, bookbinding Paperback How to make a simple Hardcover book
5.
Lenny Bruce
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Leonard Alfred Schneider, better known by his stage name Lenny Bruce, was a Jewish-American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, and screenwriter. He was renowned for his open, free-style and critical form of comedy which integrated satire, politics, religion, sex, and vulgarity. His 1964 conviction in an obscenity trial was followed by a posthumous pardon and he paved the way for future outspoken counterculture-era comedians, and his trial for obscenity is seen as a landmark for freedom of speech in the United States. In 2017, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him third on its list of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time, Lenny Bruce was born Leonard Alfred Schneider in Mineola, New York, grew up in nearby Bellmore, and attended Wellington C. His parents divorced when he was five years old, and Lenny lived with relatives over the next decade. His British-born father, Myron Schneider, was a shoe clerk, Bruces mother, Sally Marr, was a stage performer and had an enormous influence on Bruces career. In May 1945, after a performance for his shipmates in which he was dressed in drag. He defiantly convinced his ships medical officer that he was experiencing homosexual urges and this led to his dishonorable discharge in July 1945. However, he had not admitted to or been found guilty of any breach of naval regulations, by reason of unsuitability for the naval service. In 1959, while taping the first episode of Hugh Hefners Playboys Penthouse, Bruce talked about his Navy experience, after a short stint in California spent living with his father, Bruce settled in New York City, hoping to establish himself as a comedian. However, he found it difficult to differentiate himself from the thousands of other showbusiness hopefuls who populated the city, One locale where they congregated was Hansons, the diner where Bruce first met the comedian Joe Ancis, who had a profound influence on his approach to comedy. Many of Bruces later routines reflected his meticulous schooling at the hands of Ancis, according to Bruces biographer Albert Goldman, Ancis humor involved stream-of-consciousness sexual fantasies and references to jazz. Lenny took the stage as Lenny Marsalle one evening at the Victory Club and his ad-libs earned him some laughs. Soon afterward, in 1947, just after changing his last name to Bruce, he earned $12, in 1956 Frank Ray Perilli, a fellow nightclub comedian who eventually became a screenwriter of two dozen successful films and plays, became a mentor and part-time manager of Lenny Bruce. Through Perilli, Bruce met and collaborated with photojournalist William Karl Thomas on three screenplays, none of which made it to the screen, and the material on the first three albums. These albums were compiled and re-released as The Lenny Bruce Originals. Two later records were produced and sold by Bruce himself, including a 10-inch album of the 1961 San Francisco performances that started his legal troubles. Starting in the late 1950s, other unissued Bruce material was released by Alan Douglas, Frank Zappa and Phil Spector, as well as Fantasy
6.
Bill Cosby
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William Henry Bill Cosby, Jr. is an American stand-up comedian, actor, author, and singer. Cosbys start in comedy began at the hungry i in San Francisco and was followed by his landing a starring role in the 1960s television show I Spy. He was also a regular on the television series The Electric Company during the shows first two seasons. Throughout the 1970s, Cosby starred in a number of films, after attending Temple University in the 1960s, he received his bachelors degree there in 1971. In 1973, he received a degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His dissertation discussed the use of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids as a tool in elementary schools. The sitcom highlighted the experiences and growth of an affluent African-American family, Cosby has been the subject of publicized sexual assault allegations since about 2000. He surrendered to authorities on December 30,2015, and was released on $1 million bail, Cosby is scheduled to go on trial on or before June 5,2017. Cosby was born on July 12,1937 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and he is one of four sons of Anna Pearl, a maid, and William Henry Cosby Sr. who served as a mess steward in the U. S. Navy. During much of Cosbys early childhood, his father was away in the U. S. armed forces, as a student, he described himself as a class clown. Cosby was the captain of both the team and the track and field team at Mary Channing Wister Public School in Philadelphia. Early on, though, teachers noted his propensity for clowning around rather than studying, at FitzSimons Junior High School, Cosby began acting in plays as well as continuing his devotion to playing sports. Cosby went on to Philadelphias Central High School, a magnet and academically rigorous university prep school where he played football, basketball, baseball, and ran track. In addition, Cosby was working before and after school, selling produce, shining shoes and he transferred to Germantown High School, but failed the tenth grade. Instead of repeating, he got a job as an apprentice at a repair shop, which he liked. In 1956, Cosby enlisted in the Navy, serving at the Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, Naval Station Argentia, Newfoundland and at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. During his four years in the Navy, Cosby served as a Hospital Corpsman working in therapy with Navy. He finished his equivalency diploma via correspondence courses and was awarded a track, there, he studied physical education while running track and playing fullback on the universitys football team
7.
Spike Jones
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Lindley Armstrong Spike Jones was an American musician and bandleader specializing in satirical arrangements of popular songs. Ballads and classical works receiving the Jones treatment were punctuated with gunshots, whistles, cowbells and outlandish and comedic vocals. From the early 1940s to the mid-1950s, Jones and his band recorded under the title Spike Jones and his City Slickers and toured the United States, Jones father was a Southern Pacific railroad agent. Young Lindley Jones got his nickname by being so thin that he was compared to a railroad spike, at age 11 he got his first set of drums. As a teenager he played in bands that he formed himself, Jones first band was called Spike Jones, a railroad restaurant chef taught him how to use pots and pans, forks, knives and spoons as musical instruments. Jones frequently played in pit orchestras. In the 1930s he joined the Victor Young orchestra and got many offers to appear on shows, including Al Jolsons Lifebuoy Program, Burns and Allen. Jones became bored playing the music each night with the orchestras. He found other like-minded musicians and they began playing parodies of songs for their own entertainment. The musicians wanted their wives to share their enjoyment, so they recorded their weekly performances, one of the recordings made its way into the hands of an RCA Victor executive, who offered the musicians a recording contract. The City Slickers first record was Der Fuehrers Face, the records success inspired Jones to become the bands leader. He initially thought the popularity the record brought them would fade, however, audiences kept asking for more, so Jones started working on more comic arrangements. From 1937 to 1942, Jones was the percussionist for the John Scott Trotter Orchestra and he was part of a backing band for songwriter Cindy Walker during her early recording career with Decca Records and Standard Transcriptions. Her song Were Gonna Stomp Them City Slickers Down provided the inspiration for the name of Jones’s future band, the City Slickers developed from the Feather Merchants, a band led by vocalist-clarinetist Del Porter, who took a back seat to Jones during the groups embryonic years. They made experimental records for the Cinematone Corporation and performed publicly in Los Angeles, original members included vocalist-violinist Carl Grayson, banjoist Perry Botkin, trombonist King Jackson and pianist Stan Wrightsman. The band signed a contract with RCAs budget-priced Bluebird label in 1940. They recorded extensively for the company until 1955 and they also starred in various radio programs and in their own NBC and CBS television shows from 1954 to 1961. Peter James and Paul Mousie Garner were former members of Ted Healys stage act on Broadway, James joined Healy for a two-year run in the Shubert revue A NIGHT IN SPAIN where he worked alongside Shemp Howard and Larry Fine
8.
Richard Pryor
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Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, and actor. Pryor was known for uncompromising examinations of racism and topical contemporary issues and he reached a broad audience with his trenchant observations and storytelling style. Dave Chappelle said of Pryor, You know those, like and he was the dude walking upright. Richard was the highest evolution of comedy and this legacy can be attributed, in part, to the unusual degree of intimacy Pryor brought to bear on his comedy. As Bill Cosby reportedly once said, Richard Pryor drew the line between comedy and tragedy as thin as one could possibly paint it. Pryors body of work includes the concert movies and recordings, Richard Pryor, Live & Smokin, Bicentennial Nigger, Richard Pryor, Live in Concert, Richard Pryor, Live on the Sunset Strip, and Richard Pryor, Here and Now. As an actor, he starred mainly in comedies such as Silver Streak and he collaborated on many projects with actor Gene Wilder. Another frequent collaborator was actor/comedian/writer Paul Mooney, Pryor won an Emmy Award and five Grammy Awards. In 1974, he won two American Academy of Humor awards and the Writers Guild of America Award. The first-ever Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor was presented to him in 1998 and he was listed at Number 1 on Comedy Centrals list of all-time greatest stand-up comedians. In 2017, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him first on its list of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time, many comedians have stated that the late Patrice ONeal was the only comic who came close to achieving Pryors stage presence. Pryor and ONeals discussions on race and gender is considered by many prominent stand-ups to be some of the best material performed in stand-up history. Born on December 1,1940 in Peoria, Illinois, Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor grew up in his grandmothers brothel and his father, LeRoy Buck Carter Pryor, was a former boxer and hustler. After his alcoholic mother abandoned him when he was 10, Pryor was raised primarily by his grandmother Marie Carter, Pryor was one of four children raised in his grandmothers brothel and was sexually abused at age seven. He was expelled from school at the age of 14 and his first professional performance was playing drums at a night club. Pryor served in the U. S. Army from 1958 to 1960, according to a 1999 profile about Pryor in The New Yorker, Pryor was incarcerated for an incident that occurred while stationed in Germany. Angered that a soldier was overly amused at the racially charged sections of Douglas Sirks movie Imitation of Life, Pryor and some other black soldiers beat and stabbed him. In 1963, Pryor moved to New York City and began performing regularly in clubs alongside performers such as Bob Dylan, on one of his first nights, he opened for singer and pianist Nina Simone at New Yorks Village Gate
9.
Folk music
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Folk music includes both traditional music and the genre that evolved from it during the 20th century folk revival. The term originated in the 19th century, but is applied to music older than that. Some types of music are also called world music. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways, as music transmitted orally, music with unknown composers and it has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles. Starting in the century, a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the revival and reached a zenith in the 1960s. This form of music is called contemporary folk music or folk revival music to distinguish it from earlier folk forms. Smaller, similar revivals have occurred elsewhere in the world at other times and this type of folk music also includes fusion genres such as folk rock, folk metal, electric folk, and others. Even individual songs may be a blend of the two, a consistent definition of traditional folk music is elusive. The terms folk music, folk song, and folk dance are comparatively recent expressions and they are extensions of the term folklore, which was coined in 1846 by the English antiquarian William Thoms to describe the traditions, customs, and superstitions of the uncultured classes. Traditional folk music also includes most indigenous music, however, despite the assembly of an enormous body of work over some two centuries, there is still no certain definition of what folk music is. Some do not even agree that the term Folk Music should be used, Folk music may tend to have certain characteristics but it cannot clearly be differentiated in purely musical terms. One meaning often given is that of old songs, with no known composers, the fashioning and re-fashioning of the music by the community that give it its folk character. Such definitions depend upon processes rather than abstract musical types, one widely used definition is simply Folk music is what the people sing. For Scholes, as well as for Cecil Sharp and Béla Bartók, Folk music was already. seen as the authentic expression of a way of life now past or about to disappear, particularly in a community uninfluenced by art music and by commercial and printed song. In these terms folk music may be seen as part of a schema comprising four types, primitive or tribal, elite or art, folk. Music in this genre is often called traditional music. Although the term is only descriptive, in some cases people use it as the name of a genre
10.
Woody Guthrie
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He frequently performed with the slogan This machine kills fascists displayed on his guitar. His best-known song is This Land Is Your Land, many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress. Throughout his life Guthrie was associated with United States Communist groups, Guthrie was married three times and fathered eight children, including American folk musician Arlo Guthrie. Guthrie died from complications of Huntingtons disease, a genetic neurological disorder. Guthrie was born in Okemah, a town in Okfuskee County, Oklahoma. His parents named him after Woodrow Wilson, then Governor of New Jersey, Charles Guthrie was an industrious businessman, owning at one time up to 30 plots of land in Okfuskee County. He was actively involved in Oklahoma politics and was a conservative Democratic candidate for office in the county, when Charles was making stump speeches, he would often be accompanied by his son. Charles Guthrie was involved in the 1911 lynching of Laura and Lawrence Nelson, Woody Guthrie wrote three songs about the event and said that his father, Charles, was later a member of the revived Ku Klux Klan. Guthries early family life was affected by fires, including one that caused the loss of his familys home in Okemah. His sister Clara later died in a fire when Guthrie was seven. Guthries mother, Nora, was afflicted with Huntingtons disease, although the family did not know this at the time and it leads to dementia as well as muscular degeneration. She was eventually committed to the Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane, judging from the circumstances of her fathers death by drowning, researchers suspect that George Sherman suffered from the same hereditary disease. When Nora Guthrie was institutionalized, Woody Guthrie was 14 and his father Charley was living and working in Pampa, Texas, to repay his debts from unsuccessful real estate deals. Woody and his siblings were on their own in Oklahoma, they relied on their eldest brother Roy for support, the 14-year-old Woody Guthrie worked odd jobs around Okemah, begging meals and sometimes sleeping at the homes of family friends. According to one story, Guthrie befriended an African-American blues harmonica player named George, before long, Guthrie bought his own harmonica and began playing along with him. In another interview 14 years later, Guthrie claimed he learned how to play harmonica from a friend, John Woods. He seemed to have an affinity for music and easily learned to play by ear. He began to use his musical skills around town, playing a song for a sandwich or coins, Guthrie easily learned old ballads and traditional English & Scots songs from the parents of friends
11.
Lead Belly
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Huddie William Ledbetter /ˈhjuːdi/ was an American folk and blues musician notable for his strong vocals, virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the folk standards he introduced. He is best known as Lead Belly, though many releases list him as Leadbelly, he himself wrote it as Lead Belly, which is also the spelling on his tombstone and the spelling used by the Lead Belly Foundation. Lead Belly usually played a guitar, but he also played the piano, mandolin, harmonica, violin. In some of his recordings he sang while clapping his hands or stomping his foot. Lead Bellys songs covered a range, including gospel music, blues about women, liquor, prison life, and racism, and folk songs about cowboys, prison, work, sailors, cattle herding. He also wrote songs about people in the news, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Jean Harlow, Jack Johnson, Lead Belly was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2008. Lead Belly was born Huddie William Ledbetter on the Jeter Plantation near Mooringsport, Louisiana, the 1900 United States Census lists Hudy Ledbetter as 12 years old, born January 1888, and the 1910 and 1930 censuses also give his age as corresponding to a birth in 1888. The 1940 census lists his age as 51, with supplied by wife. However, in April 1942, when Ledbetter filled out his World War II draft registration, he gave his date as January 23,1889. His grave marker bears the date given on his draft registration, Ledbetter was the younger of two children born to Wesley Ledbetter and Sallie Brown. The pronunciation of his name is purported to be HYEW-dee or HUGH-dee and he can be heard pronouncing his name as HUH-dee on the track Boll Weevil, from the Smithsonian Folkways album Lead Belly Sings for Children. His parents had cohabited for several years, but they married on February 26,1888. When Huddie was five years old, the family settled in Bowie County, by 1903, Huddie was already a musicianer, a singer and guitarist of some note. He performed for nearby Shreveport audiences in St. Pauls Bottoms, the 1910 census of Harrison County, Texas, shows Hudy Ledbetter living next door to his parents with his first wife, Aletha Lethe Henderson. Aletha is registered as age 19 and married one year, others say she was 15 when they married in 1908. It was in Texas that Ledbetter received his first instrument, an accordion from his uncle Terrell, by his early twenties, having fathered at least two children, Ledbetter left home to make his living as a guitarist and occasional laborer. Influenced by the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912, Ledbetter wrote the song The Titanic, his first composed on the twelve-string guitar, which later became his signature instrument. Initially played when performing with Blind Lemon Jefferson in and around Dallas, Texas, Johnson had in fact been denied passage on a ship for being black, but it was not the Titanic
12.
Bluegrass music
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Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and a related genre of country music. Settlers from Britain and Ireland arrived in Appalachia during the 18th century and these traditions consisted primarily of English and Scottish ballads—which were essentially unaccompanied narrative—and dance music, such as Irish reels, which were accompanied by a fiddle. Many older bluegrass songs come directly from the British Isles, several Appalachian bluegrass ballads, such as Pretty Saro, Barbara Allen, Cuckoo Bird and House Carpenter, come from England and preserve the English ballad tradition both melodically and lyrically. Others, such as The Two Sisters, also come from England, however, some bluegrass fiddle songs popular in Appalachia, such as Leather Britches, and Pretty Polly, have Scottish roots. The dance tune Cumberland Gap may be derived from the tune that accompanies the Scottish ballad Bonnie George Campbell and this is in contrast to old-time music, in which all instruments play the melody together or one instrument carries the lead throughout while the others provide accompaniment. Breakdowns are often characterized by rapid tempos and unusual instrumental dexterity, there are three major subgenres of bluegrass and one unofficial subgenre. Traditional bluegrass has musicians playing folk songs, tunes with traditional chord progressions, progressive bluegrass groups may use electric instruments and import songs from other genres, particularly rock & roll. Examples include Cadillac Sky and Bearfoot, another subgenre, Bluegrass gospel uses Christian lyrics, soulful three- or four-part harmony singing, and sometimes the playing of instrumentals. Bluegrass music has attracted a following worldwide. Bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe characterized the genre as, Scottish bagpipes and its Methodist and Holiness and Baptist. Its blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound, unlike mainstream country music, bluegrass is traditionally played on acoustic stringed instruments. The fiddle, five-string banjo, guitar, mandolin, and upright bass are often joined by the resonator guitar and this instrumentation originated in rural dance bands and is the basis on which the earliest bluegrass bands were formed. The guitar is now most commonly played with a style referred to as flatpicking, unlike the style of bluegrass guitarists such as Lester Flatt. Banjo players often use the three-finger picking style made popular by such as Don Reno. Fiddlers frequently play in thirds and fifths, producing a sound that is characteristic to the bluegrass style, bassists almost always play pizzicato, occasionally adopting the slap-style to accentuate the beat. A bluegrass bass line is generally a rhythmic alternation between the tonic and dominant of each chord, with walking bass excursions. Instrumentation has been a topic of debate. Traditional bluegrass performers believe the correct instrumentation is used by Bill Monroes band
