Mus 125-1013
Pellegrino
Final Essay
December 10, 2014
Freddy Fender: Chicanos Breakthrough to American Music Growing up in a Hispanic household I was exposed to several forms of music. My Sisters were into the most current hits of Rock, Pop, and Country, but my parents always listened to Mexican music or classic country. One of the most prominent musicians I remember listening to in my childhood was a Chicano artist from Texas named Freddy Fender. His music was something that everyone in my family loved to listen too and is still essential when we have a gathering or a road trip.
Born as Baldemar Huerta in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas (The Official Freddy Fender Website), Freddy Fender grew up in the Barrio, or the “Mexican Ghetto” as
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At the time Freddy and his family were living in a chicken coop that had been turned into a bunkhouse. While recording in Houston he cut a song that contains both English and Spanish lyrics, “Before the Next Teardrop Falls”. This song was soon number one on both the Pop and Country charts of Billboard (The Official Freddy Fender Website). His album hit multiplatinum with the success of not only this song but a remake of “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights, and a few new songs “Secret Love and “You’ll Lose a Good thing”. In 1975 was named Billboards Best Male Artist (The Official Freddy Fender Website) and Huey Meaux was Producer of the year (Fender, Latin Music USA). It was this success that launched a career that would span several decades. Between the years of 1974-1983 he released 21 songs that made it onto the country charts, many of which contained Spanish lyrics. (Fender, Latin Music USA)In the 1990s he broke into the Tex-Mex genre with not one but two Grammy winning groups, The Texas Tornadoes and Los Super Seven. The Texas Tornadoes were known to appeal to audiences that prefer rock and blues. (The Official Freddy Fender …show more content…
The combination of both Spanish and English lyrics in his song created a feeling of unity between my Hispanic heritage and being an American. My family has always spoken in what is knows and Spanglish, a mixture of both languages in not only the same conversation but often the same sentence. I remember spending time with my family listening to his music and enjoying the feel of it. When my Great Grandmother passed away I was only seven years old. With her being gone I no longer saw a reason to speak Spanish, being that she is the only one in the family that did not speak English. I even went as far as telling my mother that I didn’t want to “talk funny like that”, a statement that I regret to this day. Sadly most of the Spanish words that I know came from listening to his music both as a solo artist and with The Texas
Even though the Great Depression was a time of suffering economically, it was also a time for creativity in country music. Wester swing appeared in Texas in the 1930s and quickly spread to other states. The exciting new sound appealed to many teens in the 1920s. By the 1930s they had taken the reels, waltzes, fiddle breakdowns, and other styles they had learned from their elders and combined them with blues, rags, jazz, swing, and pop to create a remarkably diverse and dynamic new sound that would come to be known as Western swing (Hartman, 144).
Some of her better-known sides from the Twenties include “Backwater Blues,” “Taint Nobody’s Bizness If I Do,” “St. Louis Blues” (recorded with Louis Armstrong), and “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” The Depression dealt her career a blow, but Smith changed with the times by adapting a more up-to-date look and revised repertoire that incorporated Tin Pan Alley tunes like “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” On the verge of the Swing Era, Smith died from injuries sustained in an automobile accident outside Clarksdale, Mississippi, in September 1937. She left behind a rich, influential legacy of 160 recordings cut between 1923 and 1933. Some of the great vocal divas who owe a debt to Smith include Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin. In Joplin’s own words of tribute, “She showed me the air and taught me how to fill it.
When it comes to jazz music, there is one name that everyone knows, whether they’ve never listened to jazz before or if they’ve listened to it their whole lives. That name is Louis Armstrong. Armstrong was one of the pioneers of jazz music, from his humble beginnings in one of New Orleans roughest districts, “the Battlefield”, to playing concerts for sold out crowds in Chicago and New York City, Louis left a massive impact on the way America listened to music for a long time. One of his premier tracks, “West End Blues”, left an impact on jazz music, which other musicians would try to emulate for years.
In the text book America’s Musical Landscape by Jean Ferris, the book takes us through the history of the evolution of American music. The book delves into the different time periods of America’s music beginning with early North American music all the way to today’s modern music. Additionally, the book also explains how music, theater and film intertwine to provide some spectacular art. Jean Ferris finishes the book by exploring America’s concert music. Let us now take a closer look into the different time periods brought out in the book.
Although having a Mexican mother and an American father was not always socially acceptable, growing up with a different food taste, having a close-knit family, as well as regularly getting disciplined shaped how I am as a person today. I was dipped into a very different childhood most children did not grow up into.
The Blues appeared as an African-American art form of music . The blues is a part of African-American history. The founders of the blues were the slaves who sang while working . The Blues music was influenced by urban culture, popular music and jazz. The blues began in an area called Delta in the 19th century .
... all as a society can benefit from today. Such as, studying his literature, reading his autobiography, and looking up to him as a role model. Rodriguez is an educated man with a very good grasp on what life and the American society expect from all of us. Speak our language if you're going to live in our country. If one chooses not to make any sacrifice needed to accomplish the basic skills needed to learn English then your chances of belonging and succeeding will not happen easy. While our heritage and culture may remain forever tied to and expressed in our native or "home" language, only through the dominant language of our country (English in most cases) can we achieve a place in society that gives us a feeling that we belong amongst everyone else. The only way we can truly become a part of our community and fit in is to dominate the current spoken language.
I thought Tejano could not be born anywhere else but in Texas because after all that is the meaning of Tejano-Texan in Spanish. I have lived in South Texas all my life, which means that I grew up in an isolated Hispanic community. Although I was not a Tejano music fanatic, I related to the music and understood the words well. Tejano was not popular worldwide at the time but I held my favorites. I knew that as Mexican-Americans that this music was a blend of cultures.
He had exposure to several different genres growing up in his St. Louis, MO hometown. He heard country from the whites, rhythm & blues (R&B) from mostly blacks, even Latin music. His family environment set him up well for future success while growing up in a middle class home in the middle of the Great Depression of the 1930s. His parents sun...
The 1920’s and The Jazz Singer Roaring Twenties refers to the decade of 1920 when society flourished culturally and economically. This was when new technologies such as the automobile and telephone were being introduced and when artistically, it was booming. Hollywood was growing at a rapid pace because the newly established art form of entertaining, the movie, was a huge success. Movies are a respectable mode of entertainment and are relatively cheap. In 1927, Alan Crosland’s The Jazz Singer emerged as a trend setter and the new model for movies forever changed.
Since before I was born, my Hispanic heritage played a huge role in who I am and what I have achieved. My great-grandfather immigrated to this country with the desire to provide his family with a better future than his own. My grandpa grew up in Texas on the boarder of Mexico and traveled to Blue Island, Illinois as migrant crop worker. This desire passed down by my grandparents and my great-grandparents has played a tremendous role in propelling me to where I am today. Each generation sought to make the the lives of their children better than their own. My grandma received the opportunity to live in the country of opportunity from her father, and my grandpa paid for my mom to get an education. My mother pushed me to do my best in school and
...new right away I could relate it since English is my second language. In this poem there is a combination of the two languages I know, English and Spanish, which then converts into a new language Spanglish. Many Latino teenagers and children, like me, speak English at work and school and speak Spanish mostly when they are at home. Therefore, the way we Latino people speak is almost like the way Ms. Valdez wrote this poem. This poem is also a reality in the lives of those who migrate to the United States. Many immigrants see that everything is different and new. They also see that they have to slowly adapt to the new environment. Through Gina’s choice of words and imagery, she makes the Latino audience feel more serene with the American Language and culture. All of the humor, imagery, and similes used in this poem made this poem much more enjoyable and relatable.
The black population has fought hard to get where they are in today’s society in terms of their courage, beliefs and faith to accomplish what they have done in the fields of politics and music. They have been affective in the field of politics by having leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther king Jr., Malcolm x and Nelson Mandela lead them to a civil right society where everyone was treated equally. And they have also been part of the revolution of music in terms of how many categories they have invented and taken over. In the field of politics, their leaders led their community in different ways that at the end; their work paid off. They won each and every battle they had to fight. But the most important battle they had to face was to influence their people to do right things and help them achieve goals in life. They made them believe in themselves in every way, that they could do whatever they were capable of doing.
To help me understand and analyze a different culture, I watched the film Selena. The film tells the life story of the famous singer Selena Quintanilla-Pérez. Not only does it just tell personal stories from her life, it also gives insight to the Mexican-American culture. Her whole life she lived in the United States, specifically in Texas, but was Hispanic and because of that both her and her family faced more struggles than white singers on the climb to her success. Even though the film is a story about a specific person, it brought understanding into the culture in which she lived. Keeping in mind that these ideas that I drew about the Mexican-American culture is very broad and do not apply to every single person in the culture, there were very obvious differences in their culture and the one that I belong. Mexican-American culture identifies with their family rather than individualized or spiritual identities and the culture has gone through significant changes because of discrimination and the changing demographics of the United States.
People have often wondered if music has always been around. Well, to answer that question I did some research to find out where our music originated. Our first reliable music records came from the Greeks and the Romans. Americans musical history is very short when compared to Japan, India, Africa, and China. We don't know much about our history until about 590-604 A.D. when people began to write music down, the first music that was written down was songs sung in churches.