1980s in music
For music from a year in the 1980s, go to 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | 89. This article includes an overview of the major trends in popular music in the 1980s; the 1980s saw the emergence of new wave. As disco fell out of fashion in the decade's early years, genres such as post-disco, Italo disco, Euro disco and dance-pop became more popular. Rock music continued to enjoy a wide audience. Soft rock, glam metal, thrash metal, shred guitar characterized by heavy distortion, pinch harmonics and whammy bar abuse became popular. Adult contemporary, quiet storm, smooth jazz gained popularity. In the late 1980s, glam metal became the largest, most commercially successful brand of music in the United States and worldwide; the 1980s are remembered for an increase in the use of digital recording, associated with the usage of synthesizers, with synth-pop music and other electronic genres featuring non-traditional instruments increasing in popularity. During this decade, several major electronic genres were developed, including electro, house and Eurodance, rising in prominence during the 1990s and beyond.
Throughout the decade, R&B, hip hop and urban genres were becoming commonplace in the inner-city areas of large, metropolitan cities. These urban genres—particularly rap and hip hop—would continue their rise in popularity through the 1990s and 2000s. A 2010 survey conducted by the digital broadcaster Music Choice, which polled over 11,000 European participants, revealed that the 1980s is the most favored tune decade of the last 50 years. Reflecting on changes in the music industry during the 1980s, Robert Christgau wrote in Christgau's Record Guide: The'80s: The'80s were above all a time of international corporatization, as one major after another gave it up to media moguls in Europe and Japan. By 1990, only two of the six dominant American record companies were headquartered in the U. S. Bizzers acted locally while thinking globally in re artists/suppliers. After a feisty start, independent labels accepted farm-team status that could lead to killings with the bigs. Cross-promotional hoohah became the rule—the soundtrack album, the sponsored tour, the golden-oldie commercial, the T-shirt franchise, the video as song ad and pay-for-play programming and commodity fetish.
Record executives became less impresarios than arbitragers, speculating in abstract bundles of rights whose physical characteristics meant little or nothing to them. Rock was mere music no longer, it was reconceived as a form of capital itself. Commercial stardom, as measured by music recording sales certifications, replaced artistry as an indication of a musician's significance, according to Christgau. "When art is intellectual property and aura subsume aesthetic substance, whatever that is", he explained. "When art is capital, sales interface with aesthetic quality—Thriller's numbers are part of its experience." The 1980s saw the reinvention of Michael Jackson, the superstardom of Prince, the emergence of Madonna and Whitney Houston, who were all among the most successful musicians during this time. Michael Jackson, along with Prince, was the first African American artist to have his music videos placed in heavy rotation on MTV, with his videos for the songs “Beat It,” and “Billie Jean”. Jackson's Thriller album from 1982 is the best-selling album of all time, selling 25 million copies during the decade.
His other album, 1987’s Bad, has the honour of being the first album in history to have 5 number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100. Its accompanying world tour made history by being the highest-grossing tour by a solo artist in the 1980s, as well as the highest-grossing tour at the time. In addition to being the biggest selling artist of the decade, Jackson had nine number-one singles, more that any other act during the decade, spent the longest time at number one, throughout the 1980s, he won numerous awards, in retrospect such as “Artist of the Decade” and “Artist of the Century.” He was arguably the biggest star of the 1980s. Madonna was the most successful female artist of the decade, her third studio album, True Blue, became the best-selling female album of the 1980s. Other Madonna albums from the decade include Like a Virgin, which became one of the best selling albums of all-time, Like a Prayer, called "as close to art as pop music gets" by Rolling Stone. Madonna was among the first to make them an art form.
Many of her songs topped the Charts around the world, such as: "Like a Virgin", "Papa Don't Preach", "La Isla Bonita" and "Like a Prayer". After her Like a Prayer album release in 1989, Madonna was named artist of the decade by a number of magazines and awards. Whitney Houston was one of the best selling female artists of the decade in the US, behind Madonna and Barbra Streisand, her eponymous debut studio album became the best-selling debut album by a female artist at the time, her sophomore album, became the first by a female debut at No. 1 in the history of the Billboard 200. She became the first and only artist to chart seven consecutive number-one songs on the Billboard Hot 100. Paula Abdul hit it big in 1988, with her debut album Forever Your Girl, she was the first female to have four number one singles
Mix 94.5
Mix 94.5 is a commercial music radio station owned by Southern Cross Austereo in Perth, Western Australia. Despite sharing the'Mix' callsign, it has no relation to the Mix stations in other Australian cities, it is targeted to 25 to 54 year olds. The station began as 6KY, beginning broadcasting on 23 October 1941 on 1210am kHz and would end up at the frequency 1206 kHz; the original building, at 17-19 James Street, East perth, was the first building in Western Australia to be built as a radio station. Consisting of five studios and an auditorium, the station was owned by the Australian Workers' Union. On 1 June 1991, under General Manager Peter Perrin, 6KY became one of two Perth radio stations to convert from the AM to FM bands; the station became known upon conversion to FM as 6KYFM, as 94.5 KYFM, with the official call sign 6JKY, the transition from AM to FM was considered one of the most successful in Australia. The Perth conversion process was in fact the second round of auctions for that city as the first round was unsuccessful, leaving 96FM, the first and only commercial FM station in the city.
The on-air identity was shortened to 94.5FM under the management of well-known Perth broadcaster Gary Roberts and around 1997–1998 adopted the name Mix 94.5. The official call sign is now 6MIX. In September 2005, Mix 94.5 changed its logo from the red mix in the blue ball to the one seen on the right on this page. In March 2007 Mix 94.5 and sister station 92.9 moved from premises at 283 Rokeby Road, Western Australia to a new purpose built broadcast centre at 450 Roberts Road, Subiaco. The switch between Mix 94.5's Rokeby Road studios and the new purpose built broadcast centre in Roberts Road took place at 2pm on 5 March. The first song played was "Friday on My Mind" by The Easybeats, #43 in the "Top 294 Songs For Grown Ups" that Mix 94.5 was playing across the long weekend. In May 2009 the station began broadcasting its signal on Digital Radio as well. Perth was the first Australian city to switch the digital transmitters. 6am-9am: The Big Breakfast with Clairsy, Matt & Kymba 9am-12pm: 9-5 No Repeat Workday with Ross Edwards 12pm-1pm: Ten From Then With Clairsy 1pm-3pm: 9-5 No Repeat Workday & Arvo’s with Pete Curulli 3pm-5pm: The Rush Hour with Pete Currulli 5pm-7pm: The Drive Home with Jane Kennedy & Mick Molloy Mix 94.5's website Southern Cross Austereo's website
Perth
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is named after the city of Perth, Scotland and is the fourth-most populous city in Australia, with a population of 2.04 million living in Greater Perth. Perth is part of the South West Land Division of Western Australia, with the majority of the metropolitan area located on the Swan Coastal Plain, a narrow strip between the Indian Ocean and the Darling Scarp; the first areas settled were on the Swan River at Guildford, with the city's central business district and port both founded downriver. Perth was founded by Captain James Stirling in 1829 as the administrative centre of the Swan River Colony, it gained city status in 1856 and was promoted to the status of a Lord Mayorality in 1929. The city inherited its name due to the influence of Sir George Murray Member of Parliament for Perthshire and Secretary of State for War and the Colonies; the city's population increased as a result of the Western Australian gold rushes in the late 19th century.
During Australia's involvement in World War II, Fremantle served as a base for submarines operating in the Pacific Theatre, a US Navy Catalina flying boat fleet was based at Matilda Bay. An influx of immigrants after the war, predominantly from Britain, Greece and Yugoslavia, led to rapid population growth; this was followed by a surge in economic activity flowing from several mining booms in the late 20th and early 21st centuries that saw Perth become the regional headquarters for several large mining operations located around the state. As part of Perth's role as the capital of Western Australia, the state's Parliament and Supreme Court are located within the city, as is Government House, the residence of the Governor of Western Australia. Perth came seventh in the Economist Intelligence Unit's August 2016 list of the world's most liveable cities and was classified by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network in 2010 as a Beta world city; the city hosted the 1962 Commonwealth Games.
Perth is divided into 30 local government areas and 250 suburbs, stretching from Two Rocks in the north to Singleton in the south, east inland to The Lakes. Outside of the main CBD, important urban centres within Perth include Joondalup. Most of those were established as separate settlements and retained a distinct identity after being subsumed into the wider metropolitan area. Mandurah, Western Australia's second-largest city, has in recent years formed a conurbation with Perth along the coast, though for most purposes it is still considered a separate city. Indigenous Australians have inhabited the Perth area for at least 38,000 years, as evidenced by archaeological remains at Upper Swan; the Noongar people lived as hunter-gatherers. The wetlands on the Swan Coastal Plain were important to them, both spiritually and as a source of food; the Noongar people know the area. Boorloo formed part of the territory of the Mooro, a Noongar clan, which at the time of British settlement had Yellagonga as their leader.
The Mooro was one of several Noongar Indigenous clans based around the Swan River known collectively as the Whadjuk. The Whadjuk themselves were one of a larger group of fourteen tribes that formed the south-west socio-linguistic block known as the Noongar sometimes called the Bibbulmun. On 19 September 2006, the Federal Court of Australia brought down a judgment recognising Noongar native title over the Perth metropolitan area in the case of Bennell v State of Western Australia FCA 1243; the judgment was overturned on appeal. The first documented sighting of the region was made by the Dutch Captain Willem de Vlamingh and his crew on 10 January 1697. Subsequent sightings between this date and 1829 were made by other Europeans, but as in the case of the sighting and observations made by Vlamingh, the area was considered to be inhospitable and unsuitable for the agriculture that would be needed to sustain a settlement. Although the Colony of New South Wales had established a convict-supported settlement at King George's Sound on the south coast of Western Australia in 1826 in response to rumours that the area would be annexed by France, Perth was the first full-scale settlement by Europeans in the western third of the continent.
The British colony would be designated Western Australia in 1832 but was known informally for many years as the Swan River Colony after the area's major watercourse. On 4 June 1829, newly arriving British colonists had their first view of the mainland, Western Australia's founding has since been recognised by a public holiday on the first Monday in June each year. Captain James Stirling, aboard Parmelia, said that Perth was "as beautiful as anything of this kind I had witnessed". On 12 August that year, Helen Dance, wife of the captain of the second ship, cut down a tree to mark the founding of the town, it is clear that Stirling had selected the name Perth for the capital well before the town was proclaimed, as his proclamation of the colony, read in Fremantle on 18 June 1829, ended "given under my hand and Seal at Perth this 18th Day of June 1829. James Stirling Lieutenant Governor"; the only contemporary information on the source of the name comes from Fremantle's diary entry for 12 August, which records that they "named the town Perth according to the wishes of Sir George Murray".
Murray was born in Perth and was in 1829 Secretary of State for the Colonies and Member for Perthshire in the British House of Commons. The town was named after the Scottish Pert
Blue-collar worker
A blue-collar worker is a working class person who performs manual labor. Blue-collar work may involve skilled or unskilled manufacturing, sanitation, custodial work, textile manufacturing, power plant operations, commercial fishing, pest control, food processing, oil field work, waste disposal, recycling, plumbing, mechanic, warehousing, technical installation, many other types of physical work. Blue-collar work involves something being physically built or maintained. In contrast, the white-collar worker performs work in an office environment and may involve sitting at a computer or desk. A third type of work is a service worker whose labor is related to customer interaction, sales or other service-oriented work. Many occupations blend white, or pink industry categorizations. Blue-collar work is paid hourly wage-labor, although some professionals may be paid by the project or salaried. There is a wide range of payscales for such work depending upon field of experience; the term blue collar was first used in reference to trades jobs in 1924, in an Alden, Iowa newspaper.
The phrase stems from the image of manual workers wearing blue denim or chambray shirts as part of their uniforms. Industrial and manual workers wear durable canvas or cotton clothing that may be soiled during the course of their work. Navy and light blue colors conceal potential dirt or grease on the worker's clothing, helping him or her to appear cleaner. For the same reason, blue is a popular color for boilersuits; some blue collar workers have uniforms with the name of the business and/or the individual's name embroidered or printed on it. The popularity of the colour blue among manual labourers contrasts with the popularity of white dress shirts worn by people in office environments; the blue collar/white collar colour scheme has socio-economic class connotations. However, this distinction has become blurred with the increasing importance of skilled labour, the relative increase in low-paying white-collar jobs. Since many blue-collar jobs consist of manual labor, educational requirements for workers are lower than those of white-collar workers.
Only a high school diploma is required, many of the skills required for blue-collar jobs will be learned by the employee while working. In higher level jobs, vocational training or apprenticeships may be required, for workers such as electricians and plumbers, state-certification is necessary. With the information revolution, Western nations have moved towards a service and white collar economy. Many manufacturing jobs have been offshored to developing nations which pay their workers lower wages; this offshoring has pushed agrarian nations to industrialized economies and concurrently decreased the number of blue-collar jobs in developed countries. In the United States, blue collar and service occupations refer to jobs in precision production and repair occupations. In the United States, an area known as the Rust Belt comprising the Northeast and Midwest, including Western New York and Western Pennsylvania, has seen its once large manufacturing base shrink significantly. With the de-industrialization of these areas starting in the mid-1960s cities like Cleveland, Ohio.
Due to this economic osmosis, the rust belt has experienced high unemployment and urban blight. Due to many blue-collar jobs involving manual labor and unskilled workers, automation poses a threat of unemployment for blue-collar workers. One study from the MIT Technology Review estimates that 83% of jobs that make less than $20 per hour are threatened by automation; some examples of technology that threaten workers are self-driving cars and automated cleaning devices, which could place blue-collar workers such as truck drivers or janitors out of work. Others have suggested that technological advancement will not lead to blue-collar job unemployment, but rather shifts in the types of work that blue-collar workers do; some foresee computer coding as becoming the blue-collar job of the future. Proponents of this idea view coding as a skill that can be learned through vocational training, suggest that more coders will be needed in a technologically advancing world. Others see future of blue-collar work as humans and computers working together to improve efficiency.
Such jobs would consist of labeling. Blue-collar workers have played a large role in electoral politics. In the 2016 United States Presidential election, many attributed Donald Trump's victories in the states of Ohio and Michigan to blue-collar workers, who overwhelmingly favored Trump over opponent Hillary Clinton. Among white-working class citizens, Trump won 64% of the votes, compared to only 32% for Clinton; this was the largest margin of victory among this group of voters for any presidential candidate since 1980. Many attributed Trump's success among this bloc of voters to his opposition of international trade deals and environmental regulations, two of the largest threats to blue-collar employment. Opponents of this view believe Trump's success with this bloc had more to do with an anti-immigrant and nationalist platform that supports deportation and discourages investment in higher education. "Blue-collar" can be
Guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that has six strings. It is played with both hands by strumming or plucking the strings with either a guitar pick or the finger/fingernails of one hand, while fretting with the fingers of the other hand; the sound of the vibrating strings is projected either acoustically, by means of the hollow chamber of the guitar, or through an electrical amplifier and a speaker. The guitar is a type of chordophone, traditionally constructed from wood and strung with either gut, nylon or steel strings and distinguished from other chordophones by its construction and tuning; the modern guitar was preceded by the gittern, the vihuela, the four-course Renaissance guitar, the five-course baroque guitar, all of which contributed to the development of the modern six-string instrument. There are three main types of modern acoustic guitar: the classical guitar, the steel-string acoustic guitar, the archtop guitar, sometimes called a "jazz guitar"; the tone of an acoustic guitar is produced by the strings' vibration, amplified by the hollow body of the guitar, which acts as a resonating chamber.
The classical guitar is played as a solo instrument using a comprehensive finger-picking technique where each string is plucked individually by the player's fingers, as opposed to being strummed. The term "finger-picking" can refer to a specific tradition of folk, blues and country guitar playing in the United States; the acoustic bass guitar is a low-pitched instrument, one octave below a regular guitar. Electric guitars, introduced in the 1930s, use an amplifier and a loudspeaker that both makes the sound of the instrument loud enough for the performers and audience to hear, given that it produces an electric signal when played, that can electronically manipulate and shape the tone using an equalizer and a huge variety of electronic effects units, the most used ones being distortion and reverb. Early amplified guitars employed a hollow body, but solid wood guitars began to dominate during the 1960s and 1970s, as they are less prone to unwanted acoustic feedback "howls"; as with acoustic guitars, there are a number of types of electric guitars, including hollowbody guitars, archtop guitars and solid-body guitars, which are used in rock music.
The loud, amplified sound and sonic power of the electric guitar played through a guitar amp has played a key role in the development of blues and rock music, both as an accompaniment instrument and performing guitar solos, in many rock subgenres, notably heavy metal music and punk rock. The electric guitar has had a major influence on popular culture; the guitar is used in a wide variety of musical genres worldwide. It is recognized as a primary instrument in genres such as blues, country, folk, jota, metal, reggae, rock and many forms of pop. Before the development of the electric guitar and the use of synthetic materials, a guitar was defined as being an instrument having "a long, fretted neck, flat wooden soundboard, a flat back, most with incurved sides." The term is used to refer to a number of chordophones that were developed and used across Europe, beginning in the 12th century and in the Americas. A 3,300-year-old stone carving of a Hittite bard playing a stringed instrument is the oldest iconographic representation of a chordophone and clay plaques from Babylonia show people playing an instrument that has a strong resemblance to the guitar, indicating a possible Babylonian origin for the guitar.
The modern word guitar, its antecedents, has been applied to a wide variety of chordophones since classical times and as such causes confusion. The English word guitar, the German Gitarre, the French guitare were all adopted from the Spanish guitarra, which comes from the Andalusian Arabic قيثارة and the Latin cithara, which in turn came from the Ancient Greek κιθάρα. Which comes from the Persian word "sihtar"; this pattern of naming is visible in setar and sitar. The word "tar" at the end of all of these words is a Persian word that means "string". Many influences are cited as antecedents to the modern guitar. Although the development of the earliest "guitars" is lost in the history of medieval Spain, two instruments are cited as their most influential predecessors, the European lute and its cousin, the four-string oud. At least two instruments called "guitars" were in use in Spain by 1200: the guitarra latina and the so-called guitarra morisca; the guitarra morisca had a rounded back, wide fingerboard, several sound holes.
The guitarra Latina had a narrower neck. By the 14th century the qualifiers "moresca" or "morisca" and "latina" had been dropped, these two cordophones were referred to as guitars; the Spanish vihuela, called in Italian the "viola da mano", a guitar-like instrument of the 15th and 16th centuries, is considered to have been the single most important influence in the development of the baroque guitar. It had six courses, lute-like tuning in fourths and a guitar-like body, although early representations reveal an instrument with a cut waist, it was larger than the contemporary four-course guitars. By the 16th century, the vihuela's construction had more in common with the modern guitar, with its curved one-piece ribs, than with the viols, more like a larger version of the contemporary four-course guita
AC/DC
AC/DC are an Australian rock band formed in Sydney in 1973 by Scottish-born brothers Malcolm and Angus Young. Their music has been variously described as hard rock, blues rock, heavy metal, however the band themselves describe their music as "rock and roll". AC/DC underwent several line-up changes before releasing their first album, High Voltage, in 1975. Membership subsequently stabilised around the Young brothers, singer Bon Scott, drummer Phil Rudd, bass player Mark Evans. Evans was replaced by Cliff Williams in 1977 for the album Powerage. In February 1980, a few months after recording the album Highway to Hell, lead singer and co-songwriter Bon Scott died of acute alcohol poisoning; the group considered disbanding but stayed together, bringing in Brian Johnson as replacement for Scott. That year, the band released their first album with Johnson, Back in Black, which they dedicated to Scott's memory; the album launched them to new heights of success and became one of the best selling albums of all time.
The band's next album, For Those About to Rock We Salute You, was their first album to reach number one in the United States. The band fired Phil Rudd as drummer in 1983, Simon Wright filled his place until quitting in 1989, being in turn replaced by Chris Slade; the band experienced a commercial resurgence in the early 1990s with the release of The Razors Edge. Phil Rudd returned in 1994; the band's studio album Black Ice, released in 2008, was the second highest-selling album of that year, their biggest chart hit since For Those About to Rock reaching No.1 on all charts worldwide. The band's line-up remained the same until 2014 with Malcolm Young's retirement due to early-onset dementia and Rudd's legal troubles. In 2016, Johnson was advised to stop touring due to worsening hearing loss, Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose stepped in as the band's vocalist for the remainder of that year's dates. Long-term bass player and background vocalist Cliff Williams retired from the band at the end of their 2016 Rock or Bust World Tour.
The group has not disbanded and unconfirmed reports of a new album continue to circulate. AC/DC have sold more than 200 million records worldwide, including 71.5 million albums in the United States, making them the tenth highest-selling artist in the United States and the 14th best selling artist worldwide. Back in Black has sold an estimated 50 million units worldwide, making it the third highest-selling album by any artist, the highest-selling album by any band; the album has sold 22 million units in the US, where it is the sixth-highest-selling album of all time. AC/DC ranked fourth on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock" and were named the seventh "Greatest Heavy Metal Band of All Time" by MTV. In 2004, AC/DC ranked No. 72 on the Rolling Stone list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". Producer Rick Rubin, who wrote an essay on the band for the Rolling Stone list, referred to AC/DC as "the greatest rock and roll band of all time". In 2010, VH1 ranked AC/DC number 23 in its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time".
Brothers Malcolm and George Young were born in Glasgow, Scotland living at 6 Skerryvore Road in the Cranhill area. The Big Freeze of 1963 was the worst winter on record in Scotland with snow eight feet deep. A TV advertisement at the same time offered assisted travel for families for a different life in Australia. Fifteen members of the Young family left Scotland by plane in late June 1963. Before moving into a house at 4 Burleigh Street in the suburb of Burwood they stayed at Villawood Migrant Hostel in Nissen huts, where George Young met and became friends with another migrant, Dutchman Harry Vanda. George was the first to learn to play the guitar, he became a member of one of Australia's most successful bands of the 1960s. Malcolm followed in George's footsteps by playing with a Newcastle, New South Wales, band called the Velvet Underground, their older brother Alex Young chose to remain in Britain to pursue musical interests. In 1967, Alex formed and played bass in the London-based band Grapefruit—initially called "The Grapefruit"—with three former members of Tony Rivers and the Castaways, John Perry, Geoff Swettenham, Pete Swettenham.
Malcolm and Angus Young developed the idea for the band's name after their sister, Margaret Young, saw the initials "AC/DC" on a sewing machine. "AC/DC" is an abbreviation meaning "alternating current/direct current" electricity. The brothers felt that this name symbolised the band's raw energy, power-driven performances of their music. "AC/DC" is pronounced one letter at a time, though the band are colloquially known as "Acca Dacca" in Australia. The AC/DC band name is stylised with a high voltage sign separating the "AC" and "DC" and has been used on all studio albums, with the exception of the international version of Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. In November 1973, Malcolm and Angus Young formed AC/DC and recruited bassist Larry Van Kriedt, vocalist Dave Evans, Colin Burgess, ex-Masters Apprentices drummer. Pushing hard for the band's success were Australia's roadie Ray Arnold and his partner Alan Kissack. Gene Pierson booked the band to play at Chequers nightclub on New Year's Eve, 1973. By this time, Angus Young had adopted his characteristic school-uniform stage outfit.
The idea was his sister. Angus had tried other costumes: Spider-Man, Zorro, a gorilla, a parody of Superman, named Super-Ang. In its early days, most members of the band dressed in some form of satin outfit. On stage, Evans was replaced by the band's first manager, Dennis Laughlin, ori
Satyr
In Greek mythology, a satyr known as a silenos, is a male nature spirit with ears and a tail resembling those of a horse, as well as a permanent, exaggerated erection. Early artistic representations sometimes include horse-like legs, but, by the sixth century BC, they were more represented with human legs. Comically hideous, they have mane-like hair, bestial faces, snub noses and are always shown naked. Satyrs were characterized by their ribaldry and were known as lovers of wine, music and women, they were companions of the god Dionysus and were believed to inhabit remote locales, such as woodlands and pastures. They attempted to seduce or rape nymphs and mortal women alike with little success, they are sometimes shown engaging in bestiality. In classical Athens, satyrs made up the chorus in a genre of play known as a "satyr play", a parody of tragedy and was known for its bawdy and obscene humor; the only complete surviving play of this genre is Cyclops by Euripides, although a significant portion of Sophocles's Ichneutae has survived.
In mythology, the satyr Marsyas is said to have challenged the god Apollo to a musical contest and been flayed alive for his hubris. Though superficially ridiculous, satyrs were thought to possess useful knowledge, if they could be coaxed into revealing it; the satyr Silenus was the tutor of the young Dionysus and a story from Ionia told of a silenos who gave sound advice when captured. Over the course of Greek history, satyrs became portrayed as more human and less bestial, they began to acquire goat-like characteristics in some depictions as a result of conflation with the Pans, plural forms of the god Pan with the legs and horns of goats. The Romans identified satyrs with their native nature spirits fauns; the distinction between the two was lost entirely. Since the Renaissance, satyrs have been most represented with the legs and horns of goats. Representations of satyrs cavorting with nymphs have been common in western art, with many famous artists creating works on the theme. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, satyrs have lost much of their characteristic obscenity, becoming more tame and domestic figures.
They appear in works of fantasy and children's literature, in which they are most referred to as "fauns". The etymology of the name satyr is unclear, several different etymologies have been proposed for it, including a possible Pre-Greek origin; some scholars have linked the second part of name to the root of the Greek word θηρίον, meaning "wild animal". This proposal may be supported by the fact. Another proposed etymology derives the name from an ancient Peloponnesian word meaning "the full ones", alluding to their permanent state of sexual arousal. Eric Partridge suggested that the name may be related to the root sat-, meaning "to sow", proposed as the root of the name of the Roman god Saturn. Satyrs are indistinguishable from silenoi, whose iconography is identical. According to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, the name "satyr" is sometimes derogatorily applied to a "brutish or lustful man"; the term satyriasis refers to a medical condition in males characterized by excessive sexual desire.
It is the male equivalent of nymphomania. According to classicist Martin Litchfield West and silenoi in Greek mythology are similar to a number of other entities appearing in other Indo-European mythologies, indicating that they go back, in some vague form, to Proto-Indo-European mythology. Like satyrs, these other Indo-European nature spirits are human-animal hybrids bearing equine or asinine features. Human-animal hybrids known as Kiṃpuruṣas or Kiṃnaras are mentioned in the Rāmāyaṇa, an Indian epic poem written in Sanskrit. According to Augustine of Hippo and others, the ancient Celts believed in dusii, which were hairy demons believed to take human form and seduce mortal women. Figures in Celtic folklore, including the Irish bocánach, the Scottish ùruisg and glaistig, the Manx goayr heddagh, are part human and part goat; the lexicographer Hesychius of Alexandria records that the Illyrians believed in satyr-like creatures called Deuadai. The Slavic lešiy bears similarities to satyrs, since he is described as being covered in hair and having "goat's horns, ears and long clawlike fingernails."Like satyrs, these similar creatures in other Indo-European mythologies are also tricksters, mischief-makers, dancers.
The lešiy was believed to trick travelers into losing their way. The Armenian Pay were a group of male spirits said to dance in the woods. In Germanic mythology, elves were said to dance in woodland clearings and leave behind fairy rings, they were thought to play pranks, steal horses, tie knots in people's hair, steal children and replace them with changelings. West notes that satyrs and other nature spirits of this variety are a "motley crew" and that it is difficult to reconstruct a prototype behind them. Nonetheless, he concludes that "we can recognize recurrent traits" and that they can be traced back to the Proto-Indo-Europeans in some form. On the other hand, a number of commentators have noted that satyrs are similar to beings in the beliefs of ancient Near Eastern cultures. Various demons of the desert are mentioned in ancient Near Eastern texts, although the iconography of these beings is poorly-attested. Beings similar to satyrs called śě’îrîm are mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible.
Śĕ’îr
