As the happy music of the brass band fades into the streets of the French Quarter, with the dancing feet of the second line following, we’ll examine how the music of the New Orleans Jazz Funerals represent a microcosm of the roots of American Music. Through the...
18th and Vine Street wasn’t just an intersection in the black district of Kansas City. It was the center of musical activity in the 20s and 30s, which led to a major reworking of what had become known as American Music. KC was a stopover for traveling bands, and the...
Pianist John Lewis once said, “We got tired of being entertainers, and became the artists we knew ourselves to be.” Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and their fellow musicians of the “BeBop” school emerge in the 1940s, and advance American...
I’m goin’ up north where they say, money grows on trees. I don’t give a doggone if ma black soul leaves COW COW DAVENPORT Back to the sun-drenched cotton fields, where slaves communicated with each other or vented their feelings in formless and...
The old musician joke – How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice a lot. But practice what? If one wants to improvise – to play “by ear” – one needs to know the basic musical language and learn one’s “scales and arpeggios.” Watch, and...
A new musical center (San Francisco) and aesthetic emerges in American pop music, flying in the face of music business conventions and signaling the advent of a new vision of youth culture (“counter-culture”) and a new era for rock music. From Mama Cass...
[ameliabooking]
