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Jazz and Its Importance to American History
The history of Jazz in America
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‘After Midnight’ makes you feel as if you were living in Harlem during the 30s. BY VANESSA FARIA The by-gone era of 1920s and 30s, jam-packed with illicit alcohol, street cars and loud noises, are often remembered as a time when music was more important than content. If that is true, then "After Midnight" is definitely a product of its time. After midnight is an effervescent new Lincoln center jazz venue performed at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. The production will mimic the highly acclaimed musical, Cotton Club Parade by inviting special celebrities to take the stage, starring American idol winner Fantasia Barrino, Emmy nominee Dulé Hill and Tony winner Adriane Lenox. It was an era when swing was big in Harlem, after Midnight is a jazz medicine you can’t afford to miss. The play is made up of 17-string orchestra and a chorus of about 25 vocalists and dancers. The play features brilliant talent, with more than 25 songs from the peak of the jazz era; which varies from “Zaz Zuh Zaz” to “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.” Through the play we’re going back to the heyday of the ...
Rachel Perkins hybrid musical drama One Night the Moon set in the 1930’s Australian outback and Malala Yousafzai’s ‘speech to the UN’ in 2013 were composed to raise awareness and reveal truths of multiple perspectives, representing the voice of the unheard and disempowered in juxtaposition to the dominant and powerful. Both Perkins and Yousafzai challenge societal expectations of their context, advocating for all voices to be heard and for the potential unity between cultures and races through education and shifts in paradigm.
The concert is performed by the Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. The video of this concert is 90 minutes in length. The concert was an ensemble of various Dave Brubeck arrangements utilizing various jazz techniques and styles with mainly the following instruments: bass, piano, trumpet, trombone, tenor sax, soprano sax, clarinet, bass clarinet, alto sax, flute, piccolo, baritone sax, drum, and tambourine. The performance included these 15 pieces: “Unsquare Dance”, “Three to Get Ready”, “The Duke”, “Cassandra”, “Strange Meadowlark”, “Who Will Take Care of Me?”, “It’s a Raggy Waltz”, “Tokyo Traffic”, “Take Five”, “Lost Waltz”, “Upstage Rhumba”, “In Your Own Sweet Way”, “Fast Life”, “Bluette”, and “Blue Rondo a la Turk”. The performance highlights the versatile, influential and extraordinary life’s work of Dave Brubeck.
The last night of their high school began with a borrowed Impala car. The audience experiences relationship woes, a sock hop, a mysterious blonde, and pranks on the cops. More importantly, as the movie goes on, daring street races, run-ins with greasers, vandalizing, and booming rock ‘n’ roll replace the happy atmosphere. The movie orchestrates many storylines and is full of fashionable nostalgia, music and vivacity of the night. The movie also crafted scenes with risky antics, using contemporary music to spectacularly enhance the tenor of the
Interview footage of her colleagues, fellow musicians, and friends such as Annie Ross, Buck Clayton, Mal Waldron, and Harry “Sweets” Edison look back on their years of friendship and experiences with the woman they affectionately call “Lady”. Their anecdotes, fond memories, and descriptive way of describing Holiday’s unique talent and style, show the Lady that they knew and loved. The film also makes interesting use of photographs and orignal recordings of Holiday, along with movie footage of different eras. With the use of these devices, we get a feel for what Holiday’s music meant for the audience it reached. The black and white footage from the thirties of groups of people merrily swing dancing, paired with a bumptious, and swingin’ number Billie Holiday performed with Count Basie called “Swing Me Count”, makes one wonder what it might have been like to actually be there. To wildly swing dance to the live vocals of Billie Holiday must have been an amazing experience, as this film demonstrates.
In both “Sonny’s Blues” and “The Weary Blues”, music serves as a form of catharsis; in “SB” Sonny is able to escape his troubled life, and in “WB” the Negro man expresses his sadness about his difficult life. The portrayal of music differs in that it’s more of a joyful presence in “SB” but a grim and depressing one in “WB”.
Analysis of 7 O'Clock News/Silent Night by Simon and Garfunkel In expressive arts we are studing the topics the 60’s. We listened to the song “7 O'clock News/Silent Night” Simon and Garfunkel. In 1956, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel were juniors at Forest Hills High School in New York City. They began playing together as a group called Tom and Jerry, with Simon as Jerry Landis and Garfunkel as Tom Graph, so called because he always liked to track hits on the pop charts.
Baldwin, James. “Sonny’s Blues.” The Jazz Fiction Anthology. Ed. Sascha Feinstein and David Rife. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2009. 17-48.
Dancing in the Dark examines some of the hidden anxiety of the era which ironically can be found through some of its most familiar productions at that time. The first section of his book focuses on the eras large scale poverty in realist fiction and poetry that portrays the people living paycheck to paycheck. These were
The story “Sonny’s Blues” By James Baldwin is about a jazz musician and his brother in 1950’s Harlem. The story centers on Sonny who uses jazz music as an escape from his depression. James Baldwin captures the art of jazz during this time period. The themes in this short story are perhaps varied, but all of them revolve around some form of suffering. One theme shows how music can promote change and understanding within relationships. A second theme reveals suffering caused by guilt. Yet another theme references the results of suffering brought about by searching for ones’ identity and how that leads to misunderstanding. There are also subthemes concerning racism and poverty.
Jazz is referred as “America’s classical music,” and is one of North America’s and most celebrated genres. The history of Jazz can be traced back to the early era of the 20th century of the U.S. “A History of Jazz” presents From Ragtime and Blues to Big Band and Bebop, jazz has been a part of a proud African American tradition for over 100 years. A strong rhythmic under-structure, blue notes, solos, “call-and response” patterns, and
Jonathon Levine’s The Night Before is a raunchy holiday comedy headed by Seth Rogen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Anthony Mackie. The film opens with the funeral of the parents of Gordon-Levitt’s Ethan, where he’s surrounded by his two best friends: Rogen’s Isaac and Mackie’s Chris. The grief over losing both his parents gives way to a new holiday tradition: for the next fourteen years, the three go out every Christmas Eve and party it up by performing karaoke, playing a Kanye song on a giant piano in the floor (a la Tom Hanks in Big) and search for an invite to the holy grail of holiday parties: the Nutcracker Ball. On what is supposed to be their last night out (considering that Chris is now a famous football player and Isaac is about to welcome a baby with his wife, hilariously portrayed by Jillian Bell), Ethan finds himself in possession of three tickets to the Ball. What ensues is hilarious, vulgar, and
Jazz is a treasure to American culture, which originally came from New Orleans of South part of America in 19th century. It’s a special music because it contains changeable rhythm and improvisational performance. But what makes jazz so special in 1920s is that Jazz could not only be performed by an individual but also could be performed by a group of people. This music performance style shows important things about American society and culture itself.
Jazz, the “purest expression of American democracy; a music built on individualism and compromise, independence and cooperation” has had a great impact on American life since the early 1900s (Burns, 2009). When jazz first emerged on the scene, it immediately made a profound impact on all individuals who experienced it. It didn’t matter who you were. This being said, jazz was especially life changing for the African American population. It opened the door of opportunity for this group of people, and they quickly grasped onto this chance before it could disappear. The development of jazz can be viewed as a reaction to American life because it worked as a form of expression, placed an emphasis on collaboration,
Teachout, Terry. "John Hammond's jazz." Commentary 122.3 (2006): 55+. Academic OneFile. Web. 16 Nov. 2011.
During the 1940’s, the world found itself dealing with World War II and in the United States ,a huge African culture movement swept throughout the north-eastern states. One specific artist that captivated the “Nightlife” of African Americans during that era was Archibald Motley Jr. He painted a series of paintings that involved African Americans and their culture. In the painting, “Nightlife” we see a group of African Americans dancing at a club/bar, enjoying life, and swaying their hips to the music. Perhaps, in this painting, Motley wanted his public to notice the breakthrough, blacks had during the 1940’s and wanted to show how music took their mind on a different stroll apart from the troubling issues the world was dealing with. Archibald wanted the world to notice the dynamic and exciting Negro culture.