Kronos Quartet Performing Three from Its Fifty for the Future Initiative, Including the World Premiere of New Work by Anna Meredith
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AN ANALYSIS of the MUSICAL INTERPRETATIONS of NINA SIMONE by JESSIE L. FREYERMUTH B.M., Kansas State University, 2008 a THESIS S
AN ANALYSIS OF THE MUSICAL INTERPRETATIONS OF NINA SIMONE by JESSIE L. FREYERMUTH B.M., Kansas State University, 2008 A THESIS submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree MASTER OF MUSIC Department of Music College of Arts and Sciences KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY Manhattan, Kansas 2010 Approved by: Major Professor Dale Ganz Copyright JESSIE L. FREYERMUTH 2010 Abstract Nina Simone was a prominent jazz musician of the late 1950s and 60s. Beyond her fame as a jazz musician, Nina Simone reached even greater status as a civil rights activist. Her music spoke to the hearts of hundreds of thousands in the black community who were struggling to rise above their status as a second-class citizen. Simone’s powerful anthems were a reminder that change was going to come. Nina Simone’s musical interpretation and approach was very unique because of her background as a classical pianist. Nina’s untrained vocal chops were a perfect blend of rough growl and smooth straight-tone, which provided an unquestionable feeling of heartache to the songs in her repertoire. Simone also had a knack for word painting, and the emotional climax in her songs is absolutely stunning. Nina Simone did not have a typical jazz style. Critics often described her as a “jazz-and-something-else-singer.” She moved effortlessly through genres, including gospel, blues, jazz, folk, classical, and even European classical. Probably her biggest mark, however, was on the genre of protest songs. Simone was one of the most outspoken and influential musicians throughout the civil rights movement. Her music spoke to the hundreds of thousands of African American men and women fighting for their rights during the 1960s. -
Strange Fruit
Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com Strange Fruit antithetical to the South's purported values. The poem thus SUMMARY forcefully argues that no society can call itself civil and also be capable of acts like lynching; the South can’t be an idyllic The trees in the southern United States hang heavy with an “pastoral” place if black people’s corpses swing in the breeze. unusual fruit. These trees have blood on their leaves and at According to the poem, notions of progress and civilization are their roots. The dead bodies of black lynching victims sway nothing but hollow lies if such racism is allowed to thrive. back and forth in the gentle southern wind; these bodies are the strange fruit that hang from the branches of poplar trees. And, importantly, this racist hatred affects the entire tree—which becomes covered in blood “on the leaves” “at Picture the natural beauty and chivalry of the American South, and the root.” Just as a tree must suck up water from the ground where corpses hang with swollen eyes and contorted mouths. and spread it all the way through its branches, the poem implies The sweet, fresh smell of magnolia flowers floats on the air, that the "blood" shed by racism works its way through until suddenly interrupted by the smell of burning flesh. humanity. Lynching is thus a failure of humanity that results in Crows will eat the flesh from these bodies. The rain will fall on the rotting of the human family tree. them, the wind will suck them dry, and the sun will rot them. -
![European Journal of American Studies, 11-2 | 2016, « Summer 2016 » [En Ligne], Mis En Ligne Le 11 Août 2016, Consulté Le 08 Juillet 2021](https://docslib.b-cdn.net/cover/0640/european-journal-of-american-studies-11-2-2016-%C2%AB-summer-2016-%C2%BB-en-ligne-mis-en-ligne-le-11-ao%C3%BBt-2016-consult%C3%A9-le-08-juillet-2021-770640.webp)
European Journal of American Studies, 11-2 | 2016, « Summer 2016 » [En Ligne], Mis En Ligne Le 11 Août 2016, Consulté Le 08 Juillet 2021
European journal of American studies 11-2 | 2016 Summer 2016 Édition électronique URL : https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/11535 DOI : 10.4000/ejas.11535 ISSN : 1991-9336 Éditeur European Association for American Studies Référence électronique European journal of American studies, 11-2 | 2016, « Summer 2016 » [En ligne], mis en ligne le 11 août 2016, consulté le 08 juillet 2021. URL : https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/11535 ; DOI : https:// doi.org/10.4000/ejas.11535 Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 8 juillet 2021. Creative Commons License 1 SOMMAIRE The Land of the Future: British Accounts of the USA at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century David Seed The Reader in It: Henry James’s “Desperate Plagiarism” Hivren Demir-Atay Contradictory Depictions of the New Woman: Reading Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence as a Dialogic Novel Sevinc Elaman-Garner “Nothing Can Touch You as Long as You Work”: Love and Work in Ernest Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden and For Whom the Bell Tolls Lauren Rule Maxwell People, Place and Politics: D’Arcy McNickle’s (Re)Valuing of Native American Principles John L. Purdy “Why Don’t You Just Say It as Simply as That?”: The Progression of Parrhesia in the Early Novels of Joseph Heller Peter Templeton “The Land That He Saw Looked Like a Paradise. It Was Not, He Knew”: Suburbia and the Maladjusted American Male in John Cheever’s Bullet Park Harriet Poppy Stilley The Writing of “Dreck”: Consumerism, Waste and Re-use in Donald Barthelme’s Snow White Rachele Dini The State You’re In: Citizenship, Sovereign -
The Field Guide to Sponsored Films
THE FIELD GUIDE TO SPONSORED FILMS by Rick Prelinger National Film Preservation Foundation San Francisco, California Rick Prelinger is the founder of the Prelinger Archives, a collection of 51,000 advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur films that was acquired by the Library of Congress in 2002. He has partnered with the Internet Archive (www.archive.org) to make 2,000 films from his collection available online and worked with the Voyager Company to produce 14 laser discs and CD-ROMs of films drawn from his collection, including Ephemeral Films, the series Our Secret Century, and Call It Home: The House That Private Enterprise Built. In 2004, Rick and Megan Shaw Prelinger established the Prelinger Library in San Francisco. National Film Preservation Foundation 870 Market Street, Suite 1113 San Francisco, CA 94102 © 2006 by the National Film Preservation Foundation Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Prelinger, Rick, 1953– The field guide to sponsored films / Rick Prelinger. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-9747099-3-X (alk. paper) 1. Industrial films—Catalogs. 2. Business—Film catalogs. 3. Motion pictures in adver- tising. 4. Business in motion pictures. I. Title. HF1007.P863 2006 011´.372—dc22 2006029038 CIP This publication was made possible through a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. It may be downloaded as a PDF file from the National Film Preservation Foundation Web site: www.filmpreservation.org. Photo credits Cover and title page (from left): Admiral Cigarette (1897), courtesy of Library of Congress; Now You’re Talking (1927), courtesy of Library of Congress; Highlights and Shadows (1938), courtesy of George Eastman House. -
Billie Holiday, “Strange Fruit” (1939)
Billie Holiday, “Strange Fruit” (1939) “Strange Fruit” was written by Abel Meeropol, a white English teacher from New York City, as a protest against the horrors of lynching. Lynching was a practice that involved mob-style execution without trial, most often by hanging, and almost exclusively of African Ameri- cans. Thousands of African Americans were lynched between the end of the Civil War and the 1960s. In spite of the efforts of anti-lynching crusaders such as Ida B. Wells beginning in the 1880s, lynching was never directly addressed by the federal government until the Justice for Lynching Act was passed on December 19, 2018, making lynching a federal crime. Jazz great Billie Holiday recorded “Strange Fruit” in 1939. Her recording company, Columbia Records, re- fused to release it, fearing the response in the South. So Holiday released the al- bum with the Commodore label, where it would go on to become her best-sell- ing record. With its harsh indictment of the Jim Crow south, the song enjoyed a revival during the Civil Rights movement, and has been covered by numerous artists in the years since. Lyric Excerpt Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees Pastoral scene of the gallant south The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh Then the sudden smell of burning flesh Here is fruit for the crows to pluck For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop Here is a strange and bitter crop. -
“I Know That We the New Slaves”: an Illusion of Life Analysis of Kanye West’S Yeezus
1 “I KNOW THAT WE THE NEW SLAVES”: AN ILLUSION OF LIFE ANALYSIS OF KANYE WEST’S YEEZUS A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE MASTER OF ARTS BY MARGARET A. PARSON DR. KRISTEN MCCAULIFF - ADVISOR BALL STATE UNIVERSITY MUNCIE, INDIANA MAY 2017 2 ABSTRACT THESIS: “I Know That We the New Slaves”: An Illusion of Life Analysis of Kanye West’s Yeezus. STUDENT: Margaret Parson DEGREE: Master of Arts COLLEGE: College of Communication Information and Media DATE: May 2017 PAGES: 108 This work utilizes an Illusion of Life method, developed by Sellnow and Sellnow (2001) to analyze the 2013 album Yeezus by Kanye West. Through analyzing the lyrics of the album, several major arguments are made. First, Kanye West’s album Yeezus creates a new ethos to describe what it means to be a Black man in the United States. Additionally, West discusses race when looking at Black history as the foundation for this new ethos, through examples such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nina Simone’s rhetoric, references to racist cartoons and movies, and discussion of historical events such as apartheid. West also depicts race through lyrics about the imagined Black male experience in terms of education and capitalism. Second, the score of the album is ultimately categorized and charted according to the structures proposed by Sellnow and Sellnow (2001). Ultimately, I argue that Yeezus presents several unique sounds and emotions, as well as perceptions on Black life in America. 3 Table of Contents Chapter One -
Spoken Word & Poetry for Civil Rights
Spoken Word & Poetry for Civil Rights Maya Angelou: Still I Rise An empowering performance about the struggle to overcome prejudice and injustice. It is one of Maya Angelou's most successful poems. Nikki Giovanni: In The Spirit of Martin Nikki Giovanni gained initial fame in the late 1960s as one of the foremost authors of the Black Arts Movement. Influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement of the period, her early work provides a strong, militant African-American perspective, leading one writer to dub her the "Poet of the Black Revolution". Leah Green: Change Spoken word artist and student Leah Green’s poem called "Change," about civil rights, equality and American democracy. This poem was written and performed shortly after the inauguration of Barack Obama. Crystal Valentine: "Black Privilege" (strong language) Crystal Valentine is a writer, activist, and educator. A recent graduate of NYU, Crystal is the three-time Grand Slam champion of NYU’s poetry contest. She was also the 2015 NYC youth poet laureate and the 9th ranked woman poet in the world by Way of the Woman of the World Poetry Slam. For more civil rights poetry and spoken word: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/146367/poetry-and-the-civil-rights-movement Songs for Civil Rights Mahalia Jackson: We Shall Overcome This song was made as a protest song, and became a staple song during the Civil Rights Movement. The song derived from a previous gospel song by Charles Albert Tindley. Billie Holiday: Strange Fruit This song is performed most famously by Billie Holiday, who first sang and recorded it in 1939. -
UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations
UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Facing Jazz, Facing Trauma: Modern Trauma and the Jazz Archive Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/79v6m6c0 Author Singleton, Tyfahra Danielle Publication Date 2011 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Facing Jazz, Facing Trauma: Modern Trauma and the Jazz Archive By Tyfahra Danielle Singleton A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature and the Designated Emphasis in Film Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Judith Butler, Chair Professor Chana Kronfeld Professor Linda Williams Fall 2011 Facing Jazz, Facing Trauma: Modern Trauma and the Jazz Archive Copyright © 2011 by Tyfahra Danielle Singleton Abstract Facing Jazz, Facing Trauma: Modern Trauma and the Jazz Archive by Tyfahra Danielle Singleton Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature University of California, Berkeley Professor Judith Butler, Chair ―Facing Jazz, Facing Trauma‖ posits American jazz music as a historical archive of an American history of trauma. By reading texts by Gayl Jones, Ralph Ellison, Franz Kafka; music and performances by Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday; the life, art and films of Josephine Baker, and the film The Jazz Singer (1927), my goal is to give African American experiences of trauma a place within American trauma studies and to offer jazz as an extensive archive of testimony for witnessing and for study. Initially, I explore the pivotal historical moment where trauma and jazz converge on a groundbreaking scale, when Billie Holiday sings ―Strange Fruit‖ in 1939. -
Facing Jazz, Facing Trauma: Modern Trauma and the Jazz Archive
Facing Jazz, Facing Trauma: Modern Trauma and the Jazz Archive By Tyfahra Danielle Singleton A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature and the Designated Emphasis in Film Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Judith Butler, Chair Professor Chana Kronfeld Professor Linda Williams Fall 2011 Facing Jazz, Facing Trauma: Modern Trauma and the Jazz Archive Copyright © 2011 by Tyfahra Danielle Singleton Abstract Facing Jazz, Facing Trauma: Modern Trauma and the Jazz Archive by Tyfahra Danielle Singleton Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature University of California, Berkeley Professor Judith Butler, Chair ―Facing Jazz, Facing Trauma‖ posits American jazz music as a historical archive of an American history of trauma. By reading texts by Gayl Jones, Ralph Ellison, Franz Kafka; music and performances by Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday; the life, art and films of Josephine Baker, and the film The Jazz Singer (1927), my goal is to give African American experiences of trauma a place within American trauma studies and to offer jazz as an extensive archive of testimony for witnessing and for study. Initially, I explore the pivotal historical moment where trauma and jazz converge on a groundbreaking scale, when Billie Holiday sings ―Strange Fruit‖ in 1939. This moment illuminates the fugitive alliance between American blacks and Jews in forming the historical testimony that is jazz. ―Strange Fruit,‖ written by Jewish American Abel Meeropol, and sung by Billie Holiday, evokes the trauma of lynching in an effort to protest the same. -
LIBRARY of CONGRESS MAGAZINE MARCH/APRIL 2015 Poetry Nation
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINE MARCH/APRIL 2015 poetry nation INSIDE Rosa Parks and the Struggle for Justice A Powerful Poem of Racial Violence PLUS Walt Whitman’s Words American Women Poets How to Read a Poem WWW.LOC.GOV In This Issue MARCH/APRIL 2015 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINE FEATURES Library of Congress Magazine Vol. 4 No. 2: March/April 2015 Mission of the Library of Congress The Power of a Poem 8 Billie Holiday’s powerful ballad about racial violence, “Strange Fruit,” The mission of the Library is to support the was written by a poet whose works are preserved at the Library. Congress in fulfilling its constitutional duties and to further the progress of knowledge and creativity for the benefit of the American people. National Poets 10 For nearly 80 years the Library has called on prominent poets to help Library of Congress Magazine is issued promote poetry. bimonthly by the Office of Communications of the Library of Congress and distributed free of charge to publicly supported libraries and Beyond the Bus 16 The Rosa Parks Collection at the Library sheds new light on the research institutions, donors, academic libraries, learned societies and allied organizations in remarkable life of the renowned civil rights activist. 6 the United States. Research institutions and Walt Whitman educational organizations in other countries may arrange to receive Library of Congress Magazine on an exchange basis by applying in writing to the Library’s Director for Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington DC 20540-4100. LCM is also available on the web at www.loc.gov/lcm. -
Race and the Democratic Aesthetic: Jefferson, Whitman, and Holiday on the Hopeful and the Horrific (Draft)
Race and the Democratic Aesthetic: Jefferson, Whitman, and Holiday on the Hopeful and the Horrific (Draft) Melvin L. Rogers Assistant Professor Emory University 561 S. Kilgo Circle 214 Bowden Hall Atlanta, GA 30322 [email protected] Western Political Science Association Annual Meeting Panel: Political Theory and Aesthetics Hollywood, CA March 28-30 Introduction They [citizens of Wisconsin and Missouri] had never heard of Billie Holiday, let alone “Strange Fruit.” … They had never heard anything remotely like this. … I remember one girl just broke down and started sobbing. I was propagandizing, spreading the word. It made an impact on people. For the first time in their lives it made them think about the lynching victims as humans, as people.1 Southern trees bear strange fruit Blood on the leaves Blood at the root Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees Pastoral scene of the gallant south2 America’s history is marked by a striking image—black bodies swinging in the southern breeze. Abel Meeropol—a Jewish American—first articulated the line in his 1937 published poem, “Bitter Fruit,” after viewing Lawrence Beitler’s graphic and horrific photo depicting the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith (figure 1). Although Meeropol eventually put the words to music, it was jazz singer Billie Holiday’s haunting rendition of the song, now titled “Strange Fruit,” first recorded in 1939 that made it a classic.3 The shift from bitter to strange marks an important transition in understanding the meaning of lynching in America. For Meeropol’s use of bitter captures the unsavory quality of the image—an image whose bitterness would otherwise make it an unfit subject for human consumption. -
STRANGE FRUIT Strange Fruit
Running head: STRANGE FRUIT Strange Fruit: Poetry, Communists, and the Anti-lynching Movement Jennifer M. Ortiz Marylhurst University STRANGE FRUIT Strange Fruit: Poetry, Communists, and the Anti-lynching Movement The American Communist Party, the anti-lynching movement, a Jewish schoolteacher and Billie Holiday are an unlikely compendium of people and events; but in 1939 their paths intersected, creating a legacy that would continue to express itself some twenty-five years later. This convergence illustrates the ability of activities, circumstances, and ideologies to ferment social change and influence a movement. While the elements of this list have overlapping characteristics, such as overcoming oppression, they collectively did not form a movement themselves. Rather, it was the result of “common consciousness” that made is possible for this varied cross section of American culture to traverse (Freeman & Johnson, 1999). The American Communist Party (CPUSA) was firmly entrenched in New York at the turn of the 20th century. With Eastern European Jews as its largest ethnic group, the CPUSA was an instrumental influence to the American labor movement and unionization, especially within the garment industry (Holmes, 2007). After WWI, the rise of anti- immigrant, anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic fervor cast the CPUSA as “pariahs” to the American public (Holmes, 2007). However, American Jews empathized with the party’s members -- possibly from the party’s platform, which emphasized equality as crucial to the working class. This sentiment was an important value to the many Marx-influenced eastern European immigrants. (Johnson, 2008). In 1930, after much internal debate about the issue of African American inequality, the CPUSA leadership placed emphasis on the “liberation of the Negro race from all white oppression” (Johnson, 2008, p.