In my research paper I will be discussing two very famous African American artists named Beverly Buchanan and Carrie Mae Weems. I will also be discussing the women 's biographies, artwork, artstyles, and who influenced them to become artists. In terms of artwork, I will be discussing the techniques, characteristics and the media they use to make up their work individually.…
In the late 1930's, during the Harlem Renaissance, when Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God was written, the sounds of jazz and blues music filled the air (Hurston). Revolutionary artists such as Duke Elington, Teddy Wilson and Bessie Smith became household names as African-Americans began to develop a reputation for themselves as musicians (Blackburn). Among these artists was Billie Holiday, "the first popular jazz singer to move audiences with the intense, personal feeling of classic blues, changing the art of American pop vocals forever (Billie)." It was not only musicians who were participating in this renaissance, there where painters, activists and…
Benny Goodman really drew my attention after watching the film about him in Jazz class a few weeks ago. I was very surprised to see that his instrument of choice was the clarinet. I didn’t think the clarinet t was that influential in the musical world until I learned more about Benny.…
In 1935, Holiday’s singing career got a big push when she landed a recording contract after singing some popular hits like “What a Little Moonlight Can Do” and “Miss Brown to You.” She recorded numerous master tracks that ultimately became the foundation of early American jazz. Later in 1937, Holiday joined Count Basie followed by Artie Shaw in 1938. Billie Holiday became one of the first black women to accompany a white orchestra; this was a very impressive accomplishment of her…
In the blossoming era of the blues only three short years after it went mainstream the “Empress of the Blues” began her career. She was a strong black woman with a rags-to riches story who was able to rise from performing on the streets to be the most successful blues singer in her era. Her music and life is filled with sex and violence and while many blues singers have come and gone, very few ever made such an impact with such a short career as she did.…
Well it don 't mean a thing all you got to do is sing” (Sing).…
Ella Fitzgerald, also known as “The First Lady of Song” or “Lady Ella”, was an extraordinary singer highly known in the Harlem Renaissance for her joyful scat singing. Born in Virginia then moving to New York, Fitzgerald grew up during the 1920s and got her breakthrough in the early 1930s. She joined an orchestra/band and produced her first number one single, “A-Tisket, A-Tasket”. Fitzgerald’s contributions to the Harlem Renaissance included her various styles of singing; style of singing that include swing and traditional pop. Fitzgerald is shaped into the woman that she once was through her background, accomplishments, challenges and hardships; she also leaves a legacy that would continue on to influence many generations to come.…
The Jazz Age was a cultural movement that began around 1918, post WWI. It was born in New Orleans but later spread around the world, it was a beautiful mixture of jazz and march banding styled music and was often played by African-Americans. It was the first time that people began to move to the cities rather than in rural areas. It was the first time that African American were given the opportunity to progress in a society that failed them since the ending our slavery. After the war, new trends began to surface, for example: dancing, music, fashion, theater and all the other arts in an attempt to help ease the post-war feeling of the nation.…
The “Globalization of Jazz” is occurred when musicians from all around the world that were assimilating bebop and post-bop styles into the music of their culture in interesting and creative ways and creating new hybrid styles. Jazz had absorbed musical influences from other cultures and the reciprocal absorption of jazz into other parts of the world was…
Jazz was created from African Americans and evolved more and more over time. White people in the middle-class came to enjoy the music. This helped combine the ideals of African Americans with the White people of America.…
America in the 1920s saw many instances of drastic change, impacting the lives of many Americans. The Roaring Twenties brought about many new inventions, wealth, and a new outlook on the common American lifestyle. With these new times came new influences and much change to the musical industry of jazz. This investigation will study the evolution of jazz music in the rapidly changing times of America in the 1920s and how the new American lifestyle and optimistic times influenced the music. Two sources that are used in this investigation are Jazz from its Origins to the Present by Lewis Porter, Michael Ullman, and Edward Hazell, and Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History by William Howland Kenney and published in 1993, which will be evaluated for their origins, purposes, values and limitations.…
Today's music varies from classic, hip hop, R&B, pop, indie, country, etc. During the 1700’s there was mostly classical and baroque music, there was no diversity in music. People weren't able to access music whenever they wanted, they needed a vinyl player, or buy tickets to the theatre, or on the radio. With our current advanced technology we can access music anywhere and anytime. “Today more sophisticated distinctions and viewpoints pervade a nearly chaotic explosion of research into the manner in which all kinds of music, from the earliest notated pieces of chant to the works of the Romantic composers, should be performed.” “The Performance of Early Music in America.”…
Jazz is one of the musical genres that represent America. It had a combination of influences from Africa and Europe. When Africans were brought to the United States as slaves, they brought their music and culture with them. Samuel A. Floyd Jr. stated “…particular musical tendencies were brought with Africans to the New World…and spread throughout African-derived populations in the United States, eventually becoming an integral part of the music we know as jazz.” African slaves used musical expression for social purpose in the 1800s; they sang songs when they are working or they played drums. The immigration of Europeans started in the seventeenth century. They brought the instrumentations, the tonality, the chords, and the form into the United…
The Jazz music of the Big Band Era was the pinnacle of more than thirty years of melodic advancement. Jazz was so creative and diverse that it could truly clear the world, changing the melodic styles of about each nation. Enormous band Jazz that makes the feet tap and the heart race with fervor that it is perceived with almost every kind of music. The melodic and social upset that achieved Jazz was an immediate consequence of African-Americans seeking after vocations in expressions of the human experience taking after the United States common war. As slaves African-Americans has learned couple of European social conventions. With more opportunity to seek after vocations in expressions of the human experience and conveying African imaginative customs to their work, African-Americans changed music and move, in the U.S., as well as everywhere throughout the world. For after the war, African American artists and performers…
New York City was the cultural center of the U.S. and was the jazz center as well. Most of the city’s black jazz musicians lived in Harlem, which had been the creative focal point of…