Thursday, November 11, 2010
7:09 AM | 
Posted by
Anonymous
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady. Reggae is based on a rhythmic style characterized by accents on the off-beat, known as the skank. Reggae is normally slower than both ska and rocksteady. Reggae usually accents the second and fourth beat in each bar, with the rhythm guitar also either emphasising the third beat or holding the chord on the second beat until the fourth is played. It is mainly this "third beat", its speed and the use of complex bass lines that differentiated reggae from rocksteady, although later styles incorporated these innovations separately. Reggae developed from rocksteady music in the 1960s. The shift from rocksteady to reggae was illustrated by the organ shuffle, which was pioneered by Bunny Lee and was featured in the transitional singles "Say What You're Saying" (1967) by Clancy Eccles, and "People Funny Boy" (1968) by Lee "Scratch" Perry. The Pioneers' 1967 track "Long Shot Bus' Me Bet" has been identified as the earliest recorded example of the new rhythm sound that became known as reggae. Early 1968 was when the first genuine reggae records were released: "Nanny Goat" by Larry Marshall and "No More Heartaches" by The Beltones. American artist Johnny Nash's 1968 hit "Hold Me Tight" has been credited with first putting reggae in the American listener charts. Around that time, reggae influences were starting to surface in rock music. An example of a rock song featuring reggae rhythm is 1968's "Ob-La-Di , Ob-La-Da." by The Beatles. Notable Jamaican producers who were influential in the development of ska into rocksteady and reggae include: Coxsone Dodd, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Leslie Kong, Duke Reid, Joe Gibbs and King Tubby. Chris Blackwell, who founded Island Records in Jamaica in 1960, relocated to England in 1962, where he continued to promote Jamaican music. He formed a partnership with Trojan Records, founded by Lee Gopthal in 1968. Trojan released recordings by reggae artists in the UK until 1974, when Saga bought the label. The 1972 film The Harder They Come, starring Jimmy Cliff, generated considerable interest and popularity for reggae in the United States, and Eric Clapton's 1974 cover of the Bob Marley song "I Shot the Sheriff" helped bring reggae into the mainstream. By the mid 1970s, reggae was getting radio play in the UK on John Peel's radio show, and Peel continued to play reggae on his show throughout his career. What is called the "Golden Age of Reggae" corresponds roughly to the heyday of roots reggae.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed the perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock. They created fast, hard-edged music, typically with short songs, stripped-down instrumentation, and often political, anti-establishment lyrics. Punk embraces a DIY (do it yourself) ethic, with many bands self-producing their recordings and distributing them through informal channels.
By late 1976, bands such as the Ramones, in New York City, and the Sex Pistols and The Clash, in London, were recognized as the vanguard of a new musical movement. The following year saw punk rock spreading around the world, and it became a major cultural phenomenon in the United Kingdom. For the most part, punk took root in local scenes that tended to reject association with the mainstream. An associated punk subculture emerged, expressing youthful rebellion and characterized by distinctive styles of clothing and adornment and a variety of anti-authoritarian ideologies.
By the beginning of the 1980s, faster, more aggressive styles such as hardcore and Oi! had become the predominant mode of punk rock. Musicians identifying with or inspired by punk also pursued a broad range of other variations, giving rise to post-punk and the alternative rock movement. By the turn of the century, pop punk had been adopted by the mainstream, with bands such as Green Day and The Offspring bringing the genre widespread popularity.
Emo (pronounced /ˈiːmoʊ/) is a style of rock music typically characterized by melodic musicianship and expressive, often confessional lyrics. It originated in the mid-1980s hardcore punk movement of Washington, D.C., where it was known as "emotional hardcore" or "emocore" and pioneered by bands such as Rites of Spring and Embrace. As the style was echoed by contemporary American punk rock bands, its sound and meaning shifted and changed, blending with pop punk and indie rock and encapsulated in the early 1990s by groups such as Jawbreaker and Sunny Day Real Estate. By the mid 1990s numerous emo acts emerged from the Midwestern and Central United States, and several independent record labels began to specialize in the style.Emo broke into mainstream culture in the early 2000s with the platinum-selling success of Jimmy Eat World and Dashboard Confessional and the emergence of the subgenre "screamo". In recent years the term "emo" has been applied by critics and journalists to a variety of artists, including multiplatinum acts and groups with disparate styles and sounds.
In addition to music, "emo" is often used more generally to signify a particular relationship between fans and artists, and to describe related aspects of fashion, culture, and behavior.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Many love songs are addressed directly to the person being admired. This means that a girl's name often appears in the title. Some well-known examples are "Maria" (from "West Side Story"), "Amanda" (Boston), "Michelle" (The Beatles), "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" (Stephen Foster) and "Layla" (Derek and the Dominos, although the girl to which the music refers to is Pattie Boyd). It seems that songs sung from the girls point of view, with a man's name in the title, are less frequent. In 1964 Cilla Black had a hit with "You're MY World". Unusually, the song does not specify the sex of the singer. In the same year it was a hit for Harry Secombe. He did not need to change any of the words to make it refer to a man's love of a woman. The Crystals had a hit with "Then He Kissed Me". It was a simple matter for the Beach Boys to change a few words, and this became "Then I Kissed Her", also a hit. Other examples of songs with girls names in the title are "Annie's Song" (John Denver), "Peggy Sue" (Buddy Holly), "Hey There Delilah" (Plain White T's) and "Sherry" (The Four Seasons).
Some historical or local names for a sweetheart often appear in the title. For example "My Old Dutch" (Albert Chevalier) contains the cockney rhyming slang word "Dutch" = "Duchess of Fife" = "Wife". Robert Burns' "John Anderson, My Jo" has the word "Jo" (18th century word for a sweetheart). Love songs in the first person are quite rare before the middle of the nineteenth century, but it is not known why this should be.
Changes in style mean that few songs survive more than fifty years, but there are exceptions. Al Jolson had a hit with "You Made Me Love You (I Didn't Want to Do It)". It is better known in the film version by Judy Garland. "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" (Friedman, Whitson) dates from 1910, and is still quite familiar. "I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby" (McHugh, Fields) has become a jazz standard. Cole Porter wrote many witty love songs. The best known one is possibly "I've Got You Under My Skin (song)". "You're Driving Me Crazy" (Walter Donaldson) has the jaunty feel of the 1920s, and is almost synonymous with Americans dancing the Charleston. Other songs that have survived from the 1920s included "The Very Thought of You" (Ray Noble), "All of Me (song)" (Marks, Simmons) and the country and western song "Confessin'" (Daugherty, Neiberg, Reynolds).
There have been fewer easy listening singers since the 1980s. Hits include "Hello" (Lionel Richie), "I Know Him So Well" (Rice, Andersson, Ulvaeus) and "Nothing Compares 2 U" (Prince/Sinéad O'Connor). Kenny Rogers, who is famous for recording many love songs, had some of his biggest hits in the 1980s with "Through the Years", "You Decorated My Life" and "Lady". In 1989, The Cure's greatest hit "Lovesong" reached number 2 in USA. From the 1990s we have Bryan Adams' "Everything I Do", "Iris" by The Goo Goo Dolls or "Truly Madly Deeply" by Australian band Savage Garden. SWV made their signature song "Weak" in 1992. During the boy band boom of the 90s, bands like Take That and Boyzone had hits with such songs.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)