prodigalfan said:

Oh, I caught what he said, just decided to ignore it

Rock 'n Roll

"Rock 'N Roll" is a musical genre whose 'golden age' is usually recognized as the decades of the 1950's and 1960's. This musical form had its beginnings in the blues tunes, gospel music, and jazz-influenced vocal music that became popular among African-American audiences after World War II. A new kind of blues, it featured electrically amplified guitars, harmonicas, and drummers that emphasized afterbeats. At the same time, black gospel music grew in popularity. These forms of black popular music were given the label rhythm and blues (R and B) and were played on big-city radio stations. Radio spread this music's appeal from black communities to towns throughout all of the United States. By the mid-1950's such performers as Little Richard, Joe Turner, and Chuck Berry were becoming popular with white audiences. Radio disc jockeys began calling their music rock 'n roll.

Sam Phillips was a white man who genuinely love black music and in 1950 he opened the Memphis Recording Studio. There blues legends B.B. King, Howling' Wolf and Elmore James made some of their first recordings. After first leasing recordings to other labels Phillips began his own label Sun Records in 1952. Phillips often said "If I could only find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a million dollars".

July 5, 1954 was a warm summer night in Memphis, Tennessee. Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore and Bill Black were recording that night at the Sun Records. According to Scotty Moore "we were taking a break, I don't know, we were having Cokes and coffee, and all of a sudden Elvis was singing a song, jumping around and acting the fool, and then Bill picked up the bass and he began acting the fool, too, and you know, I started playing with them. Sam had the door to the control room open- I don't know, he was either editing some tape or doing something - and he stuck his head out and said, "What are you doing?" and we said, "We don't know." "Well back up," he said "try to find a place to start and do it again'"

Rockabilly was invented that night in Memphis. It's rough southern edges were an exciting contrast to the group oriented rhythm and blues produced in the Northern cities. Fading from the scene by the late nineteen fifties, Rockabilly for many remained the "purest" form of rock and roll. Though it only last a few brief years it provided a crucial sound, image and rebellious spirit for rock's initial wave


The term "rock and roll", which was black slang for dancing or sex, appeared on record for the first time in 1922 on Trixie Smith's "My Baby Rocks Me With One Steady Roll". Even earlier, in 1916, the term "rocking and rolling" was used with a religious connotation, in the phonograph record "The Camp Meeting Jubilee" by "Male Quartette." The word "rock" had a long history in the English language as a metaphor for "to shake up, to disturb or to incite". The verb "Roll" was a medieval metaphor which meant "having sex". Writers for hundreds of years have used the phrases "They had a roll in the hay" or "I rolled her in the clover". In 1934 the Boswell Sisters were referring to the rock and roll of waves in their song "Rock and Roll" Country singer Tommy Scott was referring to the motion of a railroad train in the 1951 "Rockin and Rollin'".

Rock and roll appeared at a time when racial tensions in the United States were coming to the surface. African Americans were protesting segregation of schools and public facilities. The "separate but equal" doctrine was nominally overturned by the Supreme Court in 1954, and the difficult task of enforcing this new doctrine lay ahead. This new musical form combining elements of white and black music inevitably provoked strong reactions.

On March 21, 1952 in Cleveland, Alan Freed (also known as Moondog) organized an early rock and roll concert, titled "The Moondog Coronation Ball". The audience and the performers were mixed in race. The evening ended after one song in a near-riot as thousands of fans tried to get into the sold-out venue. The record industry soon understood that there was a white market for black music that was beyond the stylistic boundaries of rhythm and blues. Even the considerable prejudice and racial barriers could do nothing against market forces. Rock and roll was an overnight success in the U.S., making ripples across the Atlantic, and perhaps culminating in 1964 with the British Invasion.

From this early-1950s inception through the early 1960s, rock and roll music also spawned a new dance craze. Teenagers found the irregular rhythm of the backbeat especially suited to reviving the jitterbug dancing of the big-band era. "Sock-hops," gym dances, and home basement dance parties became the rage, and American teens watched Dick Clark's American Bandstand to keep up on the latest dance and fashion styles. From the mid-1960s on, as "rock and roll" yielded gradually to "rock," later dance genres followed, starting with the Twist, and leading up to Funk, disco, house and techno.

THE ONE, THE ONLY.....


BETTY MABRY-DAVIS.....
ROCK/FUNK/FUSION/BLUES

http://www.myspace.com/bettymabrydavis (tribute page)




Betty was a badmammajamma.;an artist way ahead of her time....

Info on Ms. Davis taken from: http://www.musthear.com/r...davis.html

To purchase Ms. Davis' music please read note from http://www.musthear.com/r...davis.html
"NOTICE: THE ONLY AUTHORIZED REISSUE of Betty Davis's music is the forthcoming reissue of Betty Davis and "They Say I'm Different" from "Light in the Attic Records". Any other release or "import" has been illegally licensed, which means Ms. Davis does not see a dime of profits off of her music. Please buy responsibly."






"If Betty were singing today she be something like Madonna, something like Prince, only as a woman. She was the beginning of all that when she was singing as Betty Davis."
--Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography

"The former wife of Miles, Betty Mabry Davis is perhaps the only woman in the world who could rightfully have the following legend tattooed across her rear: THIS ASS INVENTED FUSION. While their marriage only lasted a year (1968-1969), Betty's impact on the immortal jazz trumpeter was tremendous. Her cutting-edge musical tastes and incomparable sense of style were too much for Miles to resist. A self-righteous 23-year old model,Betty conquered the man twice her age with a potent mixture of youth, beauty, and sex. Within a year, she had completely remade Miles in her own youthful image. As she poured herself into him, his playing grew younger, his outlook fresh. She ripped through his closets, tossing out the elegant suits he had worn for years. This was the late '60s, revolution was in the air, and suits were the uniforms of the Establishment. The time had come to get hip, and Betty pointed the way, introducing Miles to the musical and material gods of revolutionary style: Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone.

Anyone with half a grip on the past knows that Miles experienced far more than a wardrobe makeover during his tumultuous Betty year. Deeply influenced by the cosmic rock guitar of Hendrix and the experimental funk of Sly Stone, Miles turned mad genius and unleashed the electrified musical Frankenstein known as Bitches Brew. This monster he created would sadly run amok as fusion lost its soul and became an F word. But for a brief moment during these still glowing days of late '60s Eden, Betty ruled as the mentor-muse for the original man and his music. There are even rumors about an unreleased album of songs that Betty wrote and recorded with Miles and his band.

Betty was fire, and while Miles welcomed the sparks, he knew better than to stay too close for too long. In his autobiography he wrote: "Betty was too young and wild for the things I expected from a woman...Betty was a free spirit, she was raunchy and all that kind of shit." Rumor holds that Miles broke things off because he suspected that his wife was tangled up in a torrid affair with Jimi Hendrix, an infidelity that she has flatly denied to this day. Miles claims that it was he who gave up his good thing in the end, while an old friend of Betty's claims that it was she who got bored, leaving Miles for an unnamed rock star.

It might have been enough if the story ended there, but it certainly did not. As Betty's lyrics attest, she was not a tragic woman beholden to any man. This was a woman with the strength of a Black Panther, a woman in total control, a predatory feline fully aware of the power that her beauty and sexuality gave her over men. On her self-titled 1973 debut album, she declares war on love in her raunchy funk masterpiece, "Anti Love Song." In sharp lines probably directed at her ex-husband, she sings: "No I don't want to love you / 'Cause I know how you are / Sure you say you're right on and you're righteous / But with me I know you'd be right off / Cause you know I could posess your body / You know I could make you crawl / And just as hard as I'd fall for you, boy / You know you'd fall for me harder / That's why I don't want to love you." Belted out in a ferocious over the top style, "Anti Love Song" is the classic bad girl anthem. It was songs like this, along with the album's openning track, "If I'm In Luck I Might Get Picked Up," that solidified her notorious image as a "nasty girl." Unfortunately for Betty, America was not yet ready to embrace a woman with such an explicitly sexual persona. Her outrageously flamboyant image eclipsed her talent. Several of her live shows were boycotted by religious groups and even canceled. Radio steered clear of her unconventional music, judging it too hard for black stations and too black for white ones. Her records didn't sell. Betty vanished from the scene, a rumored victim of a drug overdose. According to several old friends, Betty was very much set against drugs, making this oft-repeated and persistent rumor particularly vicious.

That the record buying public shunned Betty Davis should come as no surprise. She had a much rougher edge to her music than other female funk and soul artists of the '70s. Song for song, Betty Davis is actually one of the most extreme sounding debut records of the decade. Like Bitches Brew, it takes equal parts inspiration from Hendrix and Sly Stone. Future Journey guitarist Neal Schon gives the music its distinctly hard rock Hendrix edge.

The Sly angle is fleshed out by former Family Stone drummer Gregg Errico, who plays on and produces the entire record. Former Sly bassist, Larry Graham adds an even more unmistakable sound with his trademark grooves.

The roster of other musicians playing on this record is impressive: Patryce Banks, Willie Sparks, and Hershall Kennedy of Graham Central Station; Tower of Power horn players Greg Adams and Michael Gillette; and the Pointer Sisters. All these musicians come together to form a flexible and propulsive band, laying down heavy beats behind Neal Schon's dominant lead guitar and Betty's shocking vocals. One critic aptly described their sound as something like a cross between Tina Turner, Funkadelic, and Sly & The Family Stone.

Like all original sounding music, Betty's voice eludes description, and must be heard. A friend was struck by how contemporary it sounded. It's pretty obvious that she was a major influence on Macy Gray. Betty was a powerhouse, pushing her vocal cords to the limit on every performance. She gave it all up, unpredictably alternating between sexy breathiness, moans, and full throated screams. Her voice is not for the feint hearted, as she drags the listener on an fiery tour of her bad-ass soul. This take no prisoners style of singing can sometimes be a bit much to handle. Make no mistake, Betty's brand of black music is not pleasantly soulful, it's ecstatically hard. Many will find it grating and inaccessible in places. Here was a woman capable of projecting sex in a single scream, an unsentimental envelope pusher with the raucous pipes of a banshee. Even on the album's only slow song, "In The Meantime," Betty sings with tongue in cheek sweetness about the dark pleasures in being alone, closing out the record with a promise that she will survive with or without a man.

Way ahead of her time, Betty was the original super freak, a musical extremist who demanded too much from her audience. She came and went with a thunderous roar "--John Ballon
[Edited 6/12/07 15:30pm]
[Edited 6/18/07 18:41pm]

Reggae
1959-1973

If you want to take it back to the beginning, you have to blame it on jazz. One of America's great contributions to musical culture, it swept around the world. Through radio broadcasts and records, Jamaica, then still and British colony, got the fever in the 1940s. Bands sprang up to entertain tourists, like Eric Dean's Orchestra and future giants like trombonist Don Drummond and sax man Tommy McCook learned the licks and honed their chops on the music.

With the advent of the 1950s, American popular music began to fragment. In jazz, be-bop became the new movement. Rhythm and blues, the black style formerly called race music, started coming on strong. The era of the jazz orchestra was slowly fading as music grew harder, stronger, more youthful. That spread to Jamaica, just as it did to other parts of the globe.

R&B was the diet of the sound systems. Fast, raw, and with a thick beat, it played well to both young and old. Sound system owners would travel to the U.S. to buy new records, or have agents ship them over. It was a constant war to have the newest, freshest sounds. A popular disc might be played 15 or 20 times during the course of a dance.

By the mid-50s two sound systems stood head and shoulders above the crowd in Kingston - Duke Reid with the Trojan, and Clement Dodd with Sir Coxsone Downbeat. Competition between them was fierce, and would last well into the next decade, one of the major catalysts for the growth of the Jamaican music industry. The sound systems had no choice but to play American records, because the island simply had no recording facilities. Stanley Motta had made some tapes of the native mento folkloric music, but it wasn't until 1954 that the first label, Federal, opened for business, and even then its emphasis was purely on licensed U.S. material.

The kick start to homegrown Jamaican music came with rock'n'roll. As it became the dominant form in America during the latter half of the 50s, the number of R&B releases dwindled to a trickle - not enough to satisfy the insatiable appetites of the sound systems. Something had to be done.

The sound called ska came into being in 1960. At least, that's one of the stories. Other sources claim 1959. Or 56. Or 61. In other words, almost as many people claim to have invented it as there were producers on the scene. There's no doubt, however, that Jamaicans were ready for something new. The homegrown copies of R&B just didn't have the punch of the originals.

The ska sound swept through Jamaica the way beat music would take over England a few years later, and the number of recording acts proliferated to meet the demand. It offered a start to a numbers of artists whose careers still continue. The Maytals, led by Toots Hibbert, scored a string of hit singles. Ken Boothe.

Ska might not have caught on in America, but in England it was a different story. But Britain, particularly England, had a growing Jamaican population. World War II had left the country decimated, both physically and psychologically. The servicemen who returned came back to a place that needed rebuilding, both in physical plant and infrastructure, to really make it a land fit for heroes. The only way was to import labor, so in 1948 the doors were opened to citizens of the Empire. The money promised was far more than they could have earned in the colonies (although no mention was made of the higher cost of living, or the lack of availability of so many things in a country still living in austerity), that people arrived from all over.

Ska desperately needed to move on. By the summer of 1966 it had been around for more than half a decade, and while the songs had grown in sophistication, the basic rhythm and arrangements hadn't. There was still the defining off-beat emphasis over a walking bass pattern. The rock steady concept brought the new idea ska sought.

The rhythm was experimented with," noted Barrow, "and it was slowed down because of what was happening with the rude boys in the dancehalls. Roy Shirley says he made "Hold Them" in 1965. He could have done it as a slow rhythm, but I don't think it was rock steady. Hopeton Lewis went in to do a ska tune, "Take It Easy," and he couldn't manage it on the rhythm, so he said to play it slow. They played it half-speed, and when it was done, someone said to him, That rock steady, man, that's rockin' steady.' And that's how the name came about. He claims he was before Studio One, Beverley's, everyone with rock steady

The prime time of the style was brief, at least in Jamaica, however. It ran from mid-1966 to the close of 1967 when, according to singer Morgan, "we didn't like the name rock steady, so I tried a different version of "Fat Man" (one of his early hits). It changed the beat again, it used the organ to creep. Bunny Lee, the producer, liked that. He created the sound with the organ and the rhythm guitar. It sounded like ?reggae, reggae' and that name just took off. Bunny Lee started using the world and soon all the musicians were saying reggae, reggae, reggae.'"

Again, it's up in the air as to who really invented reggae, although the first record to bear the name was "Do The Reggae" (or "Reggay") by the Maytals in 1968. According to historian Barrow, it was producer Clancy Eccles who coined the term, taking street slang for a loose woman - streggae - and changing it slightly. The music itself was faster than rock steady, but tighter and more complex than ska, with obvious debts to both styles, while going beyond them both.

Jamaica: the mento



The first Jamaican recording studio opened in 1951 and recorded "mento" music, a fusion of European and African folk dance music. The island was awash in rhythm'n'blues records imported by the so called "sound systems", eccentric traveling dance-halls run by no less eccentric disc-jockeys such as Clement Dodd (the "Downbeat") and Duke Reid (the "Trojan"). The poor people of the Jamaican ghettos, who could not afford to hire a band for their parties, had to content themselves with these "sound systems". The "selectors", the Jamaican disc-jockeys who operated those sound systems, became the real entertainers. The selector would spin the records and would "toast" over them. The art of "toasting", that usually consisted in rhyming vocal patterns and soon evolved in social commentary, became as important as the music that was being played.

In 1954 Ken Khouri started Jamaica's first record label, "Federal Records". He inspired Reid and Dodd, who began to record local artists for their sound system. Towards the end of the 1950s, amateurs began to form bands that played Caribbean music and New Orleans' rhythm'n'blues, besides the local mento. This led to the "bluebeat" groups, which basically were Jamaica's version of the New Orleans sound. They usually featured saxophone, trumpet, trombone, piano, drums and bass.

Soon the bass became the dominant instrument, and the sound evolved into the "ska". The "ska" beat had actually been invented by Roscoe Gordon, a Memphis pianist, with No More Doggin' (1951). Ska songs boasted an upbeat tempo, a horn section, Afro-American vocal harmonies, jazzy riffs and staccato guitar notes.



Ska
Theophilus Beckford cut the first "ska" record, Easy Snapping, in 1959, but Prince Buster (Cecil Campbell), owner of the sound system "Voice of the People", was the one who, around 1961, defined ska's somatic traits once and forever (he and his guitarist Jah Jerry).

The Wailers, featuring the young Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston, slowed down the beat in Simmer Down (1963). Millie Small's My Boy Lollipop (1964) was the first worldwide ska hit. The charismatic leaders of the ska movement were the Skatalites, a group of veteran ex-jazzmen led by saxophonist Tommy McCook and featuring virtuoso trombonist Don Drummond and tenor saxophonist Rolando Alphonso, that formally existed only between 1964 and 1965 (Ball O' Fire, 1965; Phoenix City, 1966; the instrumental Guns Of Navarone, 1967), but ska's star was Desmond Dekker (Dacres), whose Israelites (1968) launched the even faster "poppa-top", and whose 007 Shanty Town (1967) and Rude Boy Train fueled the mythology of the "rude boy". Ska music was relatively serene and optimist, a natural soundtrack to that age of peace and wealth, somewhat akin to the music of the "swinging London".

Jamaica had become an independent country in 1962, but social problems had multiplied. During the mid Sixties, ska music evolved into "rock steady", a languid style, named after Alton Ellis' hit Rock Steady (1966), that emphasized sociopolitical themes, adopted electric instruments, replaced the horns with the guitars, and promoted the bass to lead instrument (virtually obliterating the drums). In other words, ska mutated under the influence of soul music. Rock steady was identified with the crowd of young delinquents (the "rude boys") who mimicked the British "mods" and the American "punks". Its generational anthems were Judge Dread (1967) by Prince Buster, John Holt's The Tide Is High (1966) by the Paragons, Rivers Of Babylon (1969) by the Melodians. The music took the back seat to the vocal harmonies. This helped bring about the supremacy of vocal groups: Wailers, Paragons, Maytals (the new name of the Vikings of the ska hit Halleluja, 1963), Pioneers, Melodians, Heptones, etc.



Reggae
The word "reggae" was coined around 1960 in Jamaica to identify a "ragged" style of dance music, that still had its roots in New Orleans rhythm'n'blues. However, reggae soon acquired the lament-like style of chanting and emphasized the syncopated beat. It also made explicit the relationship with the underworld of the "Rastafarians" (adepts of a millenary African faith, revived Marcus Garvey who advocated a mass emigration back to Africa), both in the lyrics and in the appropriation of the African nyah-bingi drumming style (a style that mimicks the heartbeat with its pattern of "thump-thump, pause, thump-thump"). Compared with rock music, reggae music basically inverted the role of bass and guitar: the former was the lead, the latter beat the typical hiccupping pattern. The paradox of reggae, of course, is that this music "unique to Jamaica" is actually not Jamaican at all, having its foundations in the USA and Africa.

An independent label, Island, distributed Jamaican records in the UK throughout the 1960s, but reggae became popular in the UK only when Prince Buster's Al Capone (1967) started a brief "dance craze". Jamaican music was very much a ghetto phenomenon, associated with gang-style violence, but Jimmy Cliff's Wonderful World Beautiful People (1969) wed reggae with the "peace and love" philosophy of the hippies, an association that would not die away. In the USA, Neil Diamond's Red Red Wine (1967) was the first reggae hit by a pop musician. Shortly afterwards, Johnny Nash's Hold Me Tight (1968) propelled reggae onto the charts. Do The Reggay (1968) by Toots (Hibbert) And The Maytals was the record that gave the music its name. Fredrick Toots Hibbert's vocal style was actually closer to gospel, as proved by their other hits (54-46, 1967; Monkey Man, 1969; Pressure Drop, 1970).

A little noticed event would have far-reaching consequences: in 1967, the Jamaican disc-jockey Rudolph "Ruddy" Redwood had begun recording instrumental versions of reggae hits. The success of his dance club was entirely due to that idea. Duke Reid, who was now the owner of the Trojan label, was the first one to capitalize on the idea: he began releasing singles with two sides: the original song and, on the back, the instrumental remix. This phenomenon elevated the status of dozens of recording engineers.

Reggae music was mainly popularized by Bob Marley, first as the co-leader of the Wailers, the band that promoted the image of the urban guerrilla with Rude Boy (1966) and that cut the first album of reggae music, Best Of The Wailers (1970); and later as the political and religious (rasta) guru of the movement, a stance that would transform him into a star, particularly after his conversion to pop-soul melody with ballads such as Stir It Up (1972), I Shot The Sheriff (1973) and No Woman No Cry (1974).

Among the reggae vocal groups, the Abyssinians' Satta Massa Gana (1971) is representative of the mood of the era.

In 1972 reggae became a staple of western radio stations thanks to the film The Harder They Come.

Janfriend said:

Maybe I'll go out and get Justin Timberlake's new CD then!

Rap

Rap music originated as a cross-cultural product. Most of its important early practitioners—including Kool Herc, D.J. Hollywood, and Afrika Bambaataa—were either immigrants or first-generation Americans of Caribbean ancestry. Herc and Hollywood are both credited with introducing the Jamaican style of cutting and mixing into the musical culture of the South Bronx. By most accounts Herc was the first DJ to buy two copies of the same record for just a 15-second break (rhythmic instrumental segment) in the middle. By mixing back and forth between the two copies he was able to double, triple, or indefinitely extend the break. In so doing, Herc effectively deconstructed and reconstructed so-called found sound, using the turntable as a musical instrument.

While he was cutting with two turntables, Herc would also perform with the microphone in Jamaican toasting style—joking, boasting, and using myriad in-group references. Herc’s musical parties eventually gained notoriety and were often documented on cassette tapes that were recorded with the relatively new boombox, or blaster, technology. Taped duplicates of these parties rapidly made their way through the Bronx, Brooklyn, and uptown Manhattan, spawning a number of similar DJ acts. Among the new breed of DJs was Afrika Bambaataa, the first important Black Muslim in rap. (The Muslim presence would become very influential in the late 1980s.) Bambaataa often engaged in sound-system battles with Herc, similar to the so-called cutting contests in jazz a generation earlier. The sound system competitions were held at city parks, where hot-wired street lamps supplied electricity, or at local clubs. Bambaataa sometimes mixed sounds from rock-music recordings and television shows into the standard funk and disco fare that Herc and most of his followers relied upon. By using rock records, Bambaataa extended rap beyond the immediate reference points of contemporary black youth culture. By the 1990s any sound source was considered fair game and rap artists borrowed sounds from such disparate sources as Israeli folk music, bebop jazz records, and television news broadcasts.

In 1976 Grandmaster Flash introduced the technique of quick mixing, in which sound bites as short as one or two seconds are combined for a collage effect. Quick mixing paralleled the rapid-editing style of television advertising used at the time. Shortly after Flash introduced quick mixing, his partner Grandmaster Melle Mel composed the first extended stories in rhymed rap. Up to this point, most of the words heard over the work of disc jockeys such as Herc, Bambaataa, and Flash had been improvised phrases and expressions. In 1978 DJ Grand Wizard Theodore introduced the technique of scratching to produce rhythmic patterns


In 1979 the first two rap records appeared: “King Tim III (Personality Jock),” recorded by the Fatback Band, and “Rapper’s Delight,” by the Sugarhill Gang. A series of verses recited by the three members of the Sugarhill Gang, “Rapper’s Delight” became a national hit, reaching number 36 on the Billboard magazine popular music charts. The spoken content, mostly braggadocio spiced with fantasy, was derived largely from a pool of material used by most of the earlier rappers. The backing track for “Rapper’s Delight” was supplied by hired studio musicians, who replicated the basic groove of the hit song “Good Times” (1979) by the American disco group Chic.

Perceived as novel by many white Americans, “Rapper’s Delight” quickly inspired “Rapture” (1980) by the new-wave band Blondie, as well as a number of other popular records. In 1982 Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock” became the first rap record to use synthesizers and an electronic drum machine. With this recording, rap artists began to create their own backing tracks rather than simply offering the work of others in a new context. A year later Bambaataa introduced the sampling capabilities of the emulator synthesizer on “Looking for the Perfect Beat” (1983).

Sampling brought into question the ownership of sound. Some artists claimed that by sampling recordings of a prominent black artist, such as funk musician James Brown, they were challenging white corporate America and the recording industry’s right to own black cultural expression. More problematic was the fact that rap artists were also challenging Brown’s and other musicians’ right to own, control, and be compensated for the use of their intellectual creations. By the early 1990s a system had come about whereby most artists requested permission and negotiated some form of compensation for the use of samples. Some commonly sampled performers, such as funk musician George Clinton, released compact discs (CDs) containing dozens of sound bites specifically to facilitate sampling. One effect of sampling was a newfound sense of musical history among black youth. Earlier artists such as Brown and Clinton were celebrated as cultural heroes and their older recordings were reissued and repopularized. By the late 1990s, however, licensing samples had become so costly that many rappers began to create backing tracks and sounds from scratch instead.


During the mid-1980s, rap moved from the fringes to the mainstream of the American music industry as white musicians began to embrace the new style. In 1986 rap reached the top ten on the Billboard pop charts with “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)” by the Beastie Boys and “Walk This Way” by Run-DMC and Aerosmith. Known for incorporating rock music into its raps, Run-DMC became one of the first rap groups to be featured regularly on MTV (Music Television). Also during the mid-1980s, the first female rap group of consequence, Salt-N-Pepa, released the singles “The Show Stoppa” (1985) and “Push It” (1987); “Push It” reached the top 20 on Billboard’s pop charts.

In the late 1980s a large segment of rap became highly politicized, resulting in the most overt social agenda in popular music since the urban folk movement of the 1960s. The groups Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions epitomized this political style of rap. Public Enemy came to prominence with their second album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988), and the theme song “Fight the Power” from the motion picture Do the Right Thing (1989), by African American filmmaker Spike Lee. Proclaiming the importance of rap in black American culture, Public Enemy’s lead rapper, Chuck D, referred to it as the “black CNN” (Cable News Network).

Alongside the rise of political rap came the introduction of gangsta rap, which attempts to depict an outlaw lifestyle of sex, drugs, and gang violence in inner-city America. In 1988 Straight Outta Compton, the first major album of gangsta rap, was released by the Southern California rap group Niggaz with Attitude (N.W.A). Songs from the album generated an extraordinary amount of controversy for their violent images and inspired protests from a number of organizations, including the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation). However, attempts to censor gangsta rap only served to publicize the music and make it more attractive to both black and white youths. N.W.A became a platform for launching the solo careers of some of the most influential rappers and rap producers in the gangsta style, including Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, and Eazy-E.

In the 1990s rap became increasingly eclectic, demonstrating a seemingly limitless capacity to draw samples from any and all musical forms. A number of rap artists have borrowed from jazz, using samples as well as live music. Some of the most influential jazz-rap recordings include Jazzamatazz (1993), an album by Boston rapper Guru, and “Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)” (1993), a single by the British group US3. In the United Kingdom, jazz-rap evolved into a genre known as trip-hop, the most prominent artists and groups being Tricky and Massive Attack. As rap became increasingly part of the American mainstream in the 1990s, political rap became less prominent while gangsta rap, as epitomized by the Geto Boys, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Biggie Smalls (The Notorious B.I.G.), Tupac Shakur, and Puff Daddy (P. Diddy) grew in popularity. In the late 1990s some rappers—such as Master P in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Puff Daddy in New York City—became entrepreneurs as well, starting highly successful record labels as well as myriad spin-off companies. Popular rappers as the 21st century began included Jay-Z, Ja Rule, Eve, Eminem, Outkast, and Mystikal.

Since the mid-1980s rap music has greatly influenced both black and white culture in North America. Much of the slang of hip-hop culture, including such terms as dis, fly, def, chill, and wack, have become standard parts of the vocabulary of a significant number of young people of various ethnic origins. Many rap enthusiasts assert that rap functions as a voice for a community without access to the mainstream media. According to advocates, rap serves to engender self-pride, self-help, and self-improvement, communicating a positive and fulfilling sense of black history that is largely absent from other American institutions. Political rap artists have spurred interest in the Black Muslim movement as articulated by minister Louis Farrakhan, generating much criticism from those who view Farrakhan as a racist. Gangsta rap has also been severely criticized for lyrics that many people interpret as glorifying the most violent and misogynistic (woman-hating) imagery in the history of popular music. The style’s popularity with middle-class whites has been attacked as vicarious thrill-seeking of the most insidious sort. Critics note that violence has been more than just a popular subject for rap lyrics; Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls were both gunned down in separate gang-style killings in 1996 and 1997. Defenders of gangsta rap argue that the music is a legitimate form of artistic expression and accurately portrays life in inner-city America. Whatever one’s stance on these issues, rap music inarguably has carved out a space for the expression of inner-city black culture that is unprecedented in American history.

Rap originated in the mid-1970s in the South Bronx area of New York City. The rise of rap in many ways parallels the birth of rock and roll in the 1950s. Both originated within the African American community and both were initially recorded by small, independent record labels and marketed almost exclusively to a black audience. In both cases, the new style gradually attracted white musicians, a few of whom began performing it. For rock and roll it was a white singer from Mississippi, Elvis Presley, who broke into the Billboard magazine popular music charts. For rap it was a white group from New York, the Beastie Boys, and the hit song “Walk This Way” (1986), a collaboration of the black rap group Run-DMC and the white hard-rock band Aerosmith. Soon after 1986, the use of samples and declaimed vocal styles became widespread in the popular music of both black and white performers, significantly altering previous notions of what constitutes a legitimate song, composition, or musical instrument.

A rap group typically consists of at least one rapper and a disc jockey (DJ); two or more rappers are common. In groups with two, the rappers generally serve as foils for one another, alternating or completing lines and verses in a seamless pattern. The rap often uses a call-and-response format typical of much African American music. The wordplay in a rap is rooted in African and African American verbal games, known as the dozens and signifying. Precursors of rap who drew upon the same wordplay traditions include the Jamaican toasters (DJs, also known as dub artists, who talk over recorded music) of the late 1960s and 1970s, African American radio DJs from the 1940s through the 1970s, and black American poets of the 1960s including the Last Poets and the Watts Prophets. Rap vocals typically emphasize lyrics and wordplay over melody and harmony, achieving interest through rhythmic complexity and variations in the timing of the lyrics. Lyric themes can be broadly categorized under three headings: those that concern human relationships, those that chronicle and often embrace the so-called gangsta lifestyle of the inner cities, and those that address contemporary political issues or aspects of black history.

Underpinning the rapper’s vocals is the separately recorded musical accompaniment, known as a backing track. In general, backing tracks for rap recordings emphasize rhythmic accompaniment and timbre (quality of tone) rather than harmony. Furthermore, many rap songs lack chord changes altogether, influenced in part by the highly rhythmic style of R&B music called funk. Originally a DJ created backing tracks by playing two records, switching back and forth between them in a technique known as cutting and mixing. Occasionally the DJ mixed one recording over another so that both were heard simultaneously. Other techniques used in early recordings were scratching (rotating a vinyl record backward and forward by hand to create rhythmic sound effects) and quick mixing (combining short sound bites to create a sound collage).

In 1982 computer-generated sound from synthesizers, including programmable drum machines, began to be used along with snippets from preexisting recordings. With the arrival of digital technology in 1983, sampling began to replace the turntable style of cutting and mixing. With sampling, DJs were able to access precise digital sound bites and reconstruct them into new sound patterns or collages. Sampling eventually facilitated the layering of found sound (sound that exists prior to and independently from its use by the rap artist), enabling rappers such as Public Enemy to place seven or eight samples on top of each other. In conjunction with sampling and programmed beats, a number of rap artists, including Run-DMC and Gang Starr, sometimes used live musicians in creating backing tracks.

In 1989, the single "Parents Just Don't Understand", by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince went platinum and won the first ever Rap Grammy - an award that was boycotted by nominees because it wasn't going to be televised at the time
[Edited 6/13/07 23:44pm]

THE LATE, GREAT...JIMI HENDRIX
ROCK/PSYCHEDLIC/BLUES/R&B

The Jimi Hendrix Experience
ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAMER -Induction Year: 1992
Jimi Hendrix Official website: www.jimihendrix.com (for more info and music)





"Jimi Hendrix was one of rock's few true originals. He was one of the most innovative and influential rock guitarists of the late '60s and perhaps the most important electric guitarist after Charlie Christian. Jimi Hendrix's influence figures prominently in the playing style of rockers ranging from Robin Trower to Living Colour's Vernon Reid to Stevie Ray Vaughan. A left-hander who took a right-handed Fender Stratocaster and played it upside down, Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source."--from www.rollingstone.com


"Jimi Hendrix expanded the range and vocabulary of the electric guitar into areas no musician had ever ventured before. Many would claim him to be the greatest guitarist ever to pick up the instrument. At the very least his creative drive, technical ability and painterly application of such effects as wah-wah and distortion forever transformed the sound of rock and roll. Hendrix helped usher in the age of psychedelia with his 1967 debut," Are You Experienced?," and the impact of his brief but meteoric career on popular music continues to be felt.

More than any other musician, Jimi Hendrix realized the fullest range of sound that could be obtained from an amplified instrument. Many musical currents came together in his playing. Free jazz, Delta blues, acid rock, hardcore funk, and the songwriting of Bob Dylan and the Beatles all figured as influences. Yet the songs and sounds generated by Hendrix were original, otherworldly and virtually indescribable. In essence, Hendrix channeled the music of the cosmos, anchoring it to the earthy beat of rock and roll.

Hendrix was born Johnny Allen Hendrix on November 27th, 1942, in Seattle (his name was changed to James Marshall Hendrix four years later). He acquired his first guitar at age 16 and joined a group, the Rocking Kings, a year later. Following an abortive stint in the Army, he hit the road with a succession of club bands and as a backup musician for such rhythm & blues artists as Little Richard, the Isley Brothers, Jackie Wilson, the Impressions and Sam Cooke. In 1966 he was discovered by Chas Chandler, the former Animals bassist, while performing at New York’s Cafe Wha? with his group, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames. Chandler became Hendrix’s manager and brought him to England, where he absorbed the nascent psychedelic movement, changed the spelling of his first name “Jimi” and formed a trio with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell.


The Jimi Hendrix Experience recorded three landmark albums - "Are You Experienced?", "Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland" - in a year and a half. Hendrix’s theatrical, incendiary performances at the Monterey Pop and Woodstock festivals, including the ceremonial torching of his guitar at Monterey, have become part of rock and roll legend. Under extreme pressure due to a combination of nonstop work, sudden celebrity and drug-taking, the trio broke up in early 1969. Hendrix commenced work on a projected double album and debuted a new trio, Band of Gypsies, at the Fillmore East on New Year’s Eve 1969. Hendrix performed his last concert at the Isle of Fehmarn, Germany on September 6, 1970 (though he joined Eric Burdon and War on stage on September 16 at Ronnie Scott’s in London). On September 18, he died from suffocation, having inhaled vomit due to barbiturate intoxication.

In the wake of Hendrix’s death, a flood of posthumous albums - everything from old jams from his days as an R&B journeyman to live recordings from his 1967-1970 prime to previously unreleased or unfinished studio work - hit the market. There have been an estimated 100 of them, including "Voodoo Soup (1995)", an attempt to reconstruct "First Ray of the New Rising Sun" - the album Hendrix was working on at the time of his death - from tapes, notes, interviews and song lists.”--info from R&R Hall of Fame website
[Edited 6/14/07 13:27pm]
[Edited 6/18/07 18:35pm]

CHARLIE CHRISTIAN
ELECTRIC JAZZ GUITARIST
1916-1942
info from www.classicjazzguitar.com




"Charlie Christian (1916 - 1942) is probably the best known of the early electric jazz guitarists and probably the one about whom the least is known. His jazz guitar origins have been traced to Oklahoma and Kansas City and it is known that he played throughout the Midwest in the 1930's. Musicians like Oscar Pettiford and Mary Osborne remembered hearing and meeting Charlie Christian. Pettiford said he met Charlie in Minneapolis and Osborne remembers hearing Charlie playing in a Bismarck, North Dakota night club.

It was John Hammond who, after hearing Charlie play in 1939, decided to introduce him to his brother-in-law Benny Goodman. The legend says Goodman rejected the idea of hearing Charlie play and that he finally heard him only because Lionel Hampton snuck Charlie into a the night club where Goodman was playing and set him up on the band stand. When Goodman saw him there he finally listened to him for the first time. Charlie played Rose Room with Hampton and Artie Bernstein. Shortly after that the Benny Goodman Sextet recorded Flying Home with Charlie Christian on guitar.

For the next three years Charlie Christian played with the Benny Goodman orchestra and small combos. Charlie also made most of his recordings with the Benny Goodman units. These are the recordings most commonly found today on the Columbia label. There are also some recordings of Charlie playing live at Minton's in New York. These recordings were made by Jerry Newman, a fan who hung around Minton's recording the artists who performed there. These recordings of Charlie Christian, along with recordings of Dizzy Gilespie and others ended up on the Vox and Esoteric labels. The Benny Goodman small combo recordings remain the definitive Charlie Christian.


When Charlie Christian died in 1942 he left a legacy of jazz guitar that influenced every jazz guitar player of his period and those that followed. Some of the most renowned guitarists of the last half of this century have acknowledged the influence of Charlie Christian."
[Edited 6/18/07 18:35pm]

Afronomical said:

DeFord Bailey was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in '05,

"Finally".

StarMon said:

Good. And it's still a damn shame it took that damn long.

Janfriend said:

He forgot to mention Yolanda Adams, Fred Hammond, Walter Hawkins, Stevie Wonder just a few of the most influential and more popular writers and performers from my era. I would have said p but his music is more personal.

myfavorite said:

The purpose wasn't to mention everyone you know and like, but legends and pioneers and not even all of those, just well known ones

IKE AND TINA TURNER
ROCK & ROLL/BLUES










"There was a time when the Ike and Tina Turner Revue was one of the hottest, most durable, and potentially most explosive of all R&B ensembles. Fronted by Tina, with one of the rawest, most sensual and impossibly dynamic voices in Black music, the Ike And Tina Revue was an ensemble that dripped musical discipline while manifesting nearly unbearable tension, eventually giving way to wave upon wave of catharsis. The Ike and Tina Turner Revue were rivaled only by James Brown and The Fabulous Flames in terms of musical spectacle.





Ike Turner was born November 5, 1931 in Clarksdale, MS. Starting to play the piano at five, Ike Turner began his musical career at eleven as a piano accompanist to Sonny Boy Williamson and Robert Nighthawk. By 1945 as a teenager he was a disc jockey on radio station WROX in Clarksdale, Mississippi. In 1951, he joined a R&B group The Kings of Rhythm and in that year he made a lasting contribution to the music by playing piano on Jackie Brenston's "Rocket 88," which is often cited as one of the very first rock and roll records. Turner learned guitar shortly afterwards, and backed up other R&B artists at Sun Records in the early '50s. Throughout the decade, the guitarist and piano player was a prolific session player contributing to records by blues legends Elmore James, Howlin' Wolf, and Otis Rush.





Ike also backed a host of obscure R&B artists in his early years, occasionally issuing discs under his name. Not much of a singer, both his own records and the ones he contributed to and/or produced often showcased his stinging, bluesy licks, and the best of his solo outings tended to be his instrumentals





Then Ike became a talent scout and producer for Modern Records, ostensibly "discovering" B.B. King and Howlin' Wolf. Around 1954, he moved to East St. Louis, Missouri where he became a rhythm and blues star with The Rhythm Kings. In 1959 in East St. Louis, he met Anna Mae Bullock. Anna was just eighteen and still in high school when she joined the group as a singer. Later she changed her name to Tina Turner. Ike added Tina to their group's horn section and also added some backup singers in 1957. They recorded a demo of "A Fool in Love" in late 1959; by the autumn of 1960 the record was a number two R&B hit on Sue Records. "I Idolize You," "It's Gonna Work Out Fine," "Poor Fool," and "Tra La La La La" all quickly followed, giving the Turner's five Top Ten R&B hits in two and a half years. Tina was the star and the group was renamed The Ike and Tina Turner Revue




Tina became pregnant by Ike's saxophone player (her first son, Raymond), moved into Ike's house, began a relationship with Ike, and eventually gave birth to Ike's baby. They were married in a quickie Tijuana ceremony, which turned out to be illegal, since Ike never bothered to divorce his first wife.







In 1961 Ike and Tina released many singles including "It's Gonna Work Out Fine," which made them major stars in England. Soon the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, dominated by Tina's gyrating, prancing, and her thrilling voice, had crossed over from R&B to become a top pop-rock act with hit singles like "River Deep Mountain High," "Want To Take You Higher," "Nutbush City Limits," and "The Midnight Special." Ike and Tina reached worldwide popularity when they opened for the Rolling Stones in 1969. All expectations were filled in 1971 with "Proud Mary," a number four hit which became the capstone of Ike & Tina's Revue.



Ike Turner had many problems when he was off the stage. A drug addict, he abused his wife and children both mentally and physically. Ike's complete dominance over her life had become too much for Tina, and after an unsuccessful suicide attempt, she walked out on him in 1975, with nothing more than thirty-six cents and a gas station credit card.







Later he would be arrested for drugs and battery. During this time he recorded two solo albums in his own studio, and he wrote a book called Taking Back My Life. He also remade "I'm Blue (The Gong Song)" with Billy Rogers.

Many thought Tina would disappear without Ike's musical muscle. Tina relinquished almost all claims for compensation, deciding her complete freedom from Ike was more important than the money. In debt, she briefly lived on food stamps before climbing her way back up by working in small-time nightclub six days a week.

After her divorce from Ike Tina celebrated her new-found freedom in 1975 with a role in the film version of the Who's Tommy. Playing the Acid Queen. She recorded only occasionally later in the decade but resurfaced in the mid-'80s first teaming with a Heaven 17 project named BEF on a remake of the Temptations' "Ball of Confusion." That same year she signed a solo contract with Capitol Records. Her first single, a cover of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together," hit the Top 30 early in 1984. Second single "What's Love Got to Do with It" became one of the year's biggest hits, spending three weeks at number one. Her album Private Dancer included two more Top Ten singles, the title track and "Better Be Good to Me." With another movie role in 1985 (Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome), she found a number-two hit with its theme, "We Don't Need Another Hero." She embarked on the twenty-five-country Break Every Rule tour in 1987, breaking box-office records around the globe.Her next big hit followed in 1986 ("Typical Male"), after which Tina began to decline, still charting occasionally and selling respectably with each album.





"I,Tina," the entertainer's best-selling autobiography, became the basis of the 1993 hit movie "What's Love Got to Do With It. "

Following an extended period of relative silence Tina Turner once again got ready to strut her stuff on stage. In 1997, Tina embarked on her first North American tour in six years; proving her staying power, Turner's tour proved to be the seventh most popular draw of 1997, earning $24.8 million.

Ike and Tina Turner were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991" ----Jackie Brenson and Ike Turner
[Edited 6/18/07 12:19pm]

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Exactly. It seems if some would start their own thread about how we shouldn't draw color lines.

Afronomical said:

Me, too.

JonnyApplesauce said:

I heard Chuck on the Tom Joyner show one morning and he sounded really good.

PurpleJedi said:

You ain't right.

UNDISPUTED "QUEEN OF SOUL"
ARETHA FRANKLIN













"Aretha Franklin is one of the giants of soul music, and indeed of American pop as a whole. More than any other performer, she epitomized soul at its most gospel-charged. Her astonishing run of late-'60s hits with Atlantic Records--"Respect," "I Never Loved a Man," "Chain of Fools," "Baby I Love You," "I Say a Little Prayer," "Think," "The House That Jack Built," and several others--earned her the title "Lady Soul," which she has worn uncontested ever since. Yet as much of an international institution as she's become, much of her work--outside of her recordings for Atlantic in the late '60s and early '70s--is erratic and only fitfully inspired, making discretion a necessity when collecting her records.

Franklin's roots in gospel ran extremely deep. With her sisters Carolyn and Erma (both of whom would also have recording careers), she sang at the Detroit church of her father, Reverend C.L. Franklin, while growing up in the 1950s. In fact, she made her first recordings as a gospel artist at the age of 14. It has also been reported that Motown was interested in signing Aretha back in the days when it was a tiny start-up. Ultimately, however, Franklin ended up with Columbia, to which she was signed by the renowned talent scout John Hammond.

Franklin would record for Columbia constantly throughout the first half of the '60s, notching occasional R&B hits (and one Top Forty single, "Rock-a-bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody"), but never truly breaking out as a star. The Columbia period continues to generate considerable controversy among critics, many of whom feel that Aretha's true aspirations were being blunted by pop-oriented material and production. In fact there's a reasonable amount of fine items to be found on the Columbia sides, including the occasional song ("Lee Cross," "Soulville") where she belts out soul with real gusto. It's undeniably true, though, that her work at Columbia was considerably tamer than what was to follow, and suffered in general from a lack of direction and an apparent emphasis on trying to develop her as an all-around entertainer, rather than as an R&B/soul singer.

When Franklin left Columbia for Atlantic, producer Jerry Wexler was determined to bring out her most soulful, fiery traits. As part of that plan, he had her record her first single, "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)," at Muscle Shoals in Alabama with esteemed Southern R&B musicians. In fact, that was to be her only session actually at Muscle Shoals, but much of the remainder of her '60s work would be recorded with the Muscle Shoals Sound Rhythm Section, although the sessions would actually take place in New York City. The combination was one of those magic instances of musical alchemy in pop: the backup musicians provided a much grittier, soulful, and R&B-based accompaniment for Aretha's voice, which soared with a passion and intensity suggesting a spirit that had been allowed to fly loose for the first time.

In the late '60s, Franklin became one of the biggest international recording stars in all of pop. Many also saw Franklin as a symbol of Black America itself, reflecting the increased confidence and pride of African-Americans in the decade of the civil rights movements and other triumphs for he Black community. The chart statistics are impressive in and of themselves: ten Top Ten hits in a roughly 18-month span between early 1967 and late 1968, for instance, and a steady stream of solid mid-to-large-size hits for the next five years after that. Her Atlantic albums were also huge sellers, and far more consistent artistically than those of most soul stars of the era. Franklin was able to maintain creative momentum, in part, because of her eclectic choice of material, which encompassed first-class originals and gospel, blues, pop, and rock covers, from the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel to Sam Cooke and the Drifters. She was also a fine, forceful, and somewhat underrated keyboardist.

Franklin's commercial and artistic success was unabated in the early '70s, during which she landed more huge hits with "Spanish Harlem," "Bridge Over Troubled Water," and "Day Dreaming." She also produced two of her most respected, and earthiest, album releases with Live at Fillmore West and Amazing Grace. The latter, a 1972 double LP, was a reinvestigation of her gospel roots, recorded with James Cleveland & the Southern California Community Choir. Remarkably, it made the Top Ten, counting as one of the greatest gospel-pop crossover smashes of all time.

Franklin had a few more hits over the next few years--"Angel" and the Stevie Wonder cover "Until You Come Back to Me"--being the most notable--but generally her artistic inspiration seemed to be tapering off, and her focus drifting toward more pop-oriented material. Her Atlantic contract ended at the end of the 1970s, and since then she's managed to get intermittent hits -- "Who's Zooming Who" and "Jump to It" are among the most famous -- without remaining anything like the superstar she was at her peak. Many of her successes were duets, or crafted with the assistance of newer, glossier-minded contemporaries such as Luther Vandross. There was also another return to gospel in 1987 with One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism.

Critically, as is the case with many '60s rock legends, there have been mixed responses to her later work. Some view it as little more than a magnificent voice wasted on mediocre material and production. Others seem to grasp for any excuse they can to praise her whenever there seems to be some kind of resurgence of her soul leanings. Most would agree that her post-mid-'70s recordings are fairly inconsequential when judged against her prime Atlantic era. The blame is often laid at the hands of unsuitable material, but it should also be remembered that -- like Elvis Presley and Ray Charles -- Franklin never thought of herself as confined to one genre. She always loved to sing straight pop songs, even if her early Atlantic records gave one the impression that her true home was earthy soul music. If for some reason she returned to straight soul shouting in the future, it's doubtful that the phase would last for more than an album or two. In the meantime, despite her lukewarm recent sales record, she's an institution, assured of the ability to draw live audiences and immense respect for the rest of her lifetime, regardless of whether there are any more triumphs on record in store." -- Richie Unterberger
[Edited 6/19/07 7:47am]

Getting into world music now...

African Influences in Cuban Music

There was a fundamental difference in their treatment depending on the national identity of the masters; Dutch and English on one side or Spanish-Portuguese on the other.

The Dutch and the English had no history or experience with slavery and did not know how to deal with it. They viewed the slaves as creatures that had to be stripped of all their cultural accoutrements, such as language, religion, and customs. They thought the slaves should be trained immediately in European ways. In other words, they had to be culturally neutered.

As their economic system in the beginning consisted mostly of small plantations, the master could keep his eye on the slave and force a quick conversion.

On the other hand, the Spanish and Portuguese knew about slavery. There had been African slaves on the Iberian Peninsula before Columbus and their dances and customs were known to the Spaniards and the Portuguese masters. They had learned that the slaves were happier and worked better if they were allowed to keep their own music and dances.

Also, the great plantation systems of the Spanish and Portuguese leaders needed huge concentrations of slaves and it was difficult to enforce individual control on each one.

Religion also made a significant difference. The Dutch and English settlers, being Protestant and very fundamentalist, demanded that the slaves be stripped of their beliefs and trained totally in the faith of their masters. The Spanish and Portuguese, and to a certain extent the French, were more tolerant of the slave's belief system and allowed them to keep a considerable part of their own customs and religions.

When the slaves finished their daily labor and during their half-day off on Sundays, they were locked in their common barracks and there, through oral tradition, kept alive their customs and beliefs. While in the English and Dutch colonies, the slaves were literally stripped of their language and memories in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, the slaves reconstructed a great part of their culture through oral communications.

Africans from different regions played an important role and contributed to the development of Cuban music. Some of the most influential included the Yoruba from Nigeria, the Mandinga from Sudan, and the Bantu from the Congo, the Ewe-Fon and the Fanti-Ashanti of present-day Dahomey.

Although African drums were not brought with the slaves when they were transported, the Africans recreated these instruments with materials found on the island, making adjustments along the way. With slight differences, they were similar to their African counterparts. These consisted mainly of drums, shakers and bells.

Some of the African musical traditions that survive and flourish to this day in Cuban music are: 1) call and response singing in which a voice is followed by another voice or a choral response, 2) polymeter in which different meters are played simultaneously, 3) polyrhythms in which different parts are superimposed and, 4) pentatonic and non-western scales, especially with improvised vocal lines.


At the beginning of the XVI century, when the Spanish started importing African slaves into Cuba, the Yorubas of West Africa had a very elaborate religious liturgy and a religious culture older than Christianity. The center of Yoruba religion was music itself. They had a complex liturgy of songs, dances and chants dedicated to a pantheon of several dozen gods and saints or "orishas." The Yorubas for use in their religious rituals developed many instruments. For example, the making of a batá or a religious drum, begins with a ceremony performed before the cutting down of the tree.

As mentioned before, because of the nature of the extensive plantations that existed primarily in Cuba and Brazil where there were large number of slaves and minimal supervision in the "barrancón,' the compounds were the slaves were kept after their labors, the African traditions were kept alive.

Another factor was that the catholic church had a policy that conversion of non-believers should be a gradual thing and native beliefs be incorporated into the peoples liturgy, as opposed to the protestant ethic of Anglo America where the goal was to obliterate the original culture and replace it with the master's version of Christianity.

Thus in Cuba the original orishas were transformed and blended with Spanish saints. Thus Chango became St. Barbara, Obatalá became The Virgin of Mercy (La Virgen de la Caridad, Patron Saint of Cuba), and Babalú Allé became St. Lazarus and so on.


So it came to pass that the African religions were conserved in Cuba: not only that of the Yoruba but also the Congo and Carabalí. Throughout the centuries in the 'barrancones" and "cabildos" a complex religion consisting of ritual, songs and dances were kept alive.

Meanwhile, colonizing agents, mainly English and French were busy taking over the African continent and destroying their cultural heritage and their way of life. Thus it is interesting to note that much of the ancient African religions are better preserved in Cuba and Brazil than in Africa itself!

In 1791, an event occurred in Haiti that would forever change the course of Cuban music history: the overthrow of the French masters by African slaves. The French colonists fled Haiti with some of their slaves and established themselves in what was then known as the province of Oriente on the easternmost part of the island of Cuba.

There they built huge coffee plantations and in a short time, by virtue of their economic power, became a force in local affairs. Santiago de Cuba was then, and is now, the second largest city in the country. The French masters became a part of its high society.

The French also brought with them dances such as the gavotte and saraband, the contradanza or danza Francesa, a salon dance based on French country dancing which had found considerable popularity among the French middle class. This dance was played with European musical instruments, but often the musicians they used were blacks or mulattoes.

Of course, drums were not used at these dances at this time, as they were thought to be a "lower" kind of musical instrument reserved for African slaves and not for European or upper class ears. It is interesting to note that even though the drums became the center of Afro-Ciban music in the 20th century, as late as the 1950s drummers and percussionists were still the lowest paid musicians in the Cuban orchestras! It is a good example of lingering cultural attitudes and prejudices.

The black and mulatto musicians in the French orchestras that played the danza Francesa, often plucked the violins like a percussion instrument with plenty of pizzicato in their playing. The resultant rhythm owes its vitality to the "cinquillo," a rhythm element clearly of African origin. The cinquillo can be found in the bata-rhythms of the Santeria cults as well as in Haitian voodoo.


As an interesting footnote, two of the most famous black violin players of the 19th century, Brindis de Sala and Joseito White, became internationally famous violinists.

White, born in 1837, was the composer of the fine dance called "La Bella Cubana," a masterpiece of early Cuban music and it is still played today. De Salas was called "the Cuban Paganini." He became a musician of the German court , was even made a baron and decorated with the Legion of Honor! He played all the European courts from St. Petersburg to Paris and was admired wherever he went.

He had a life of great contrasts, however, and died cold, hungry and penniless in Buenos Aires in 1911. That city, just a few years before, had been filled with admirers and presented De Salas with a Stradivarius violin.
[Edited 6/20/07 23:23pm]

The term "Afro-Cuban" is confusing to many, in particular since Cuban music already contains a mixture of African and European (mostly Spanish) roots. Why, then, call some Cuban music Afro-Cuban? Mainly as a way to emphasize the increased amount of African elements present in many of the island's rhythms and dances. These Africanisms tend to be present in varying degrees wherever Africans were brought as slaves, and include: call-and-response vocals (where a lead vocal alternates with a fixed, repetitive chorus), polyrhythm (layers of rhythms in a complex structure), syncopation (an emphasis on the up-beats of off-beats within a musical phrase) and improvisation (from variation to full-blown solos).

We generally divide Cuban music into two general areas: folkloric and popular. African-derived folklore in Cuba developed both on the sacred as well as secular level, and some of the secular forms—such as the conga and the rumba—certainly appear more African than Spanish. Popular forms, such as the son, seem to have an equal mixture of African and Spanish influences, so that the son could be classified as Creole. And other forms, such as trova, evolved primarily from Spanish country music and have less African elements. However, some trova styles such as the bolero and the guajira wound up within the repertoire of groups regarded as Afro-Cuban or Creole.

Perhaps the best evidence pointing to the adaptation of the term Afro-Cuban has to do with the contributions of Cuban ethnographer Fernando Ortiz, who meticulously chronicled and categorized virtually all of the island's African-derived forms and undid years of previously Negrophobic musicology by authors who categorically denied that Cuban music had any African influences. Therefore, the term Afro-Cuban can be seen as a tribute to those African slaves and their descendents who unknowingly and knowingly formed part of Cuba's music history

^^Very interesting article Janfriend:(excuse my above double post)

Janfriend said:

...and with that being said...

The late, great" MONGO SANTAMARIA
Latin Percussionist, Band Leader



Born: Born: April 7, 1917 in Havana, Cuba
Died: 1-Feb-2003


Nicknamed by his father with the Senegalese word for 'tribal chief', Mongo Santamaria, aka Ramón Santamaría, began his musical training on the violin, but switched to drums and percussion while still in his teens. Having dropped out of school to pursue the life of a professional musician in Havana, Mongo relocated to Mexico as part of a dance troupe before emigrating to New York in 1950, where he worked with leading Latin ensembles such as those of Perez Prado and Tito Puente. He stayed with Puente's band for over six years, building a reputation for himself through his energetic drum duels with the bandleader. During this period he recorded the album Changó, which Mongo would later regard as one of his best efforts.

In 1957, Santamaria joined up with vibraphonist Cal Tjader for the next three years, relocating to California where the band recorded a series of albums for Fantasy Records. While still working with Tjader, Santamaria continued his own recording career through the same label. The second of these albums, 1959's Mongo, included Afro-Blue: a song that would become not only one of his most popular compositions, but a jazz standard as well. After making the journey in 1960 to record Our Man In Havana in Cuba with local musicians he left Tjader and formed his own Cuban-jazz ensemble, its first recorded offering Sabroso! being released in 1962.

Santamaria returned to New York shortly afterwards, assembling another group and signing with Riverside Records. The following year he released Watermelon Man, a song presented to him by pianist Herbie Hancock while he was sitting in on one of Santamaria's shows in the Bronx; the single subsequently climbed to number ten in the popular charts. Fueled by the record's success, the percussionist continued to explore its blend of Latin, jazz and pop music well into the 1970s. A more lucrative contract with Columbia was landed in 1965, but it was with the Vaya label that the percussionist would win his first Grammy award (for the 1977 album Amancer).

In the 1980s a stronger jazz element become evident in Santamaria's music, with notable jazz musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie occasionally appearing with his band. He remained an active performer into the 1990s, and continued to record after his retirement from live work -- even releasing another album with his former label Fantasy in 1995. In 2003, he died of a stroke in a Miami hospital.
[Edited 6/21/07 10:21am]

Salsa

By the 30's, the popularity of son and mambo had spread to Puerto Rico where musicians incorporated the style with their own. As Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians emigrated to the US, especially New York, they took that style with them, forming Cuban/Puerto Rican son conjuntos.


In the late 30's, Arsenio Rodríguez (one of Cuba's greatest musician and composer) began reconnecting son with its African roots. Through his many innovations in style and instrumentation, Rodríguez expanded the son sound to emphasize or reincorporate many of the African elements which many of the earlier son conjuntos had either omitted or simplified.

He synthesized and maintained the integrity of African and Spanish elements. Some of his innovations were:

adapting the guaguancó to the son style;
adding a cowbell and conga to the rhythm section;
expanding the role of the tres as a solo instrument;
introducing a montuno section for melodic solos.
His style became known as "son montuno" and formed the basis of the mambo craze in the 40's, influencing Latin popular music in New York for years to follow.

Most music critics claim that despite these musical roots, what we know recognize as salsa today, originated in New York City nightclubs in the years following World War II, an evolution of the era's big band tradition. The first great salsa musician was Tito Puente, who, after a stint with the U.S. Navy, studied percussion at New York's Juilliard School of Music. He went on to organize his own band, Puente's Latin Jazz Ensemble, which has been heard by audiences around the world. One critic said that the music is what results when the sounds of big band jazz meet African-Caribbean rhythms. Others critics say that salsa is a combination of fast Latin music that embraces the rumba, mambo, cha-cha-cha, and merengue.


However, salsa is not just evolved from traditional Puerto Rican or Cuban music. Many jazz artists began interacting with Cuban music as far back as the early 1900's. Some of those interactions resulted in Juan Tizol's composition "Caravan" for Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie's "Night in Tunisia". These mixed Afro-Cuban elements with Middle Eastern titles. Other interactions reflect the inclusion of Afro-Cuban percussion instruments into bebop jazz. This kind of interaction also includes those of Jerry Gonzalez' Fort Apache Band, where Bud Powell's compositions, such as "Parisian Thoroughfare", mixed with a strong rumba-based rhythm section.

Another important antecedent of salsa is the mambo. The structure of mambo, which is a fusion of big band jazz and Afro-Cuban rhythmic organization, has become the basic format for many New York salsa bands. An opening melody is followed by a "coro" backing improvisations sung by the "sonero" (soloist), followed by a mambo section, which features the trumpet and reed sections calling and responding to each other.

By including bongos and congas from the conjuntos and timbales from charanga orchestras which played danzon, salsa shows the evolution of the Afro-Cuban rhythm section. Charangas also became part of the New York sound, incorporating trumpets from conjuntos and violins from charangas.

While salsa has many roots and its primary exponents are Puerto Rican, the Cuban son is clearly the primary foundation of salsa. Certain Cuban conjuntos, such as Arsenio Rodriguez and Chapottin, provided much of the inspiration for the sound of some the New York bands in the mid-60's, including Orchesta Harlow and Johnny Pachecho.

The jazz and rhythm and blues genres contributed the trap drum, featured in the mid-1960's bugalu style. Some songs show a direct connection to son montuno. Pete Rodriquez' mid-60s release of "Micaela" is a re-work of the song "Micaela me boto" recorded by Cuba's Chapottin and Miguel Cuni. By the late 1960s, bugalu evolved into more of a Latin-soul sound. Thus, the interaction between Latin music and R&B went both ways, with Latin percussion being assimilated into R&B while R&B assisted the evolution of Latin music.

Another major component of salsa is the ritual music associated with the practice of santeria, including their use of "bata" drums. These are heard in Orquesta Harlow's "Silencio", on their "Salsa" album. Yoruba drums, melodies, and rhythms were also included into salsa, as in the music of Irakere and Los Papines.

Finally, many stylistic features came from the Puerto Rican bomba and plena music genres. Cesar Concepcion orchestrated plena songs for many big bands in the 1940s, while Rafael Cortijo and Ismael Rivera reintroduced and popularized bomba and plenas in the 1950's. Recent albums also show the use of the plena rhythm, such as those of Willie Colon. Rafael Cortijo's "Maquina de Tiempo" contains musical styles from plenas, bomba, Puerto Rican aquinaldos and jazz.

The King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin. Maybe the most important American composer.

Very informative thread

Janfriend said:

my instinct is to let those comments and that nodding head of janfriend make me go

but then it's like

and then

Every month in my car and house and iPod could be dubbed black music month. i dont often think of the fact that 8/10 of my fave musical artists are black unless i am reminded by people that want to make race a thing all the time, especially when it comes to music...if feeling the need to label things as 'black' or 'white' and letting political correctness dictate who should be allowed to listen to what or truly understand a song or an artist or an album, go ahead...happy 'black music' month

badujunkie said:

No one is talking about what someone is or isn't allowed to listen to. If you have an issue about black music month, feel free to start a thread about it in p&r
[Edited 6/25/07 0:07am]