by | March 30, 2014 · 1:00 am

Tracy Chapman restarts

SONY DSC

Following a wrenchingly poor childhood and a hard-won scholarship, Tracy Chapman was hit by stardom right after graduating from college, when her 1988 self-titled debut album sold 10 million copies.

She had only recently overcome her fear of playing for coffeehouse-sized audiences, and suddenly the machinery of celebrity was bolted around her. Despite her success, she recalled in 2000 that “they weren’t particularly happy times.”

Periods of seclusion followed, but in 1995 she restarted her career on her own terms. “You have to pay attention to the moment and make it the best it can be for you,” she said. “Make it count. I’ve been trying to do that. It’s really made a major difference for me—I’m a happier person.”

This according to “Telling her stories” by Christopher John Farley (Time CLV/8 [28 February 2000] p. 92).

Today is Chapman’s 50th birthday! Above, the singer-songwriter in Bruges in 2009; below, performing one of the songs from her debut album at the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute in 1988, effectively jump-starting the first leg of her career.

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by | March 27, 2014 · 1:00 am

Sarah Vaughan crosses over

Sarah_Vaughan_1946

Aided by her extraordinary voice, technical proficiency, and mastery at adopting multiple performing personas, Sarah Vaughan obscured conventional divisions between jazz and pop, masculinity and femininity, and blackness and whiteness. By transcending these binary oppositions, she crafted a vocal identity that was commercially viable, artistically satisfying, and which undermined racial stereotypes. In so doing, she reconfigured how American audiences understood the black female voice.

In American jazz criticism of the 1940s and 1950s, discourses on vocal timbre became a means to maintain boundaries between style, race, and gender, and anxiety was expressed by critics when a voice did not match the expectations created by the body that produced it or vice versa. Given that Vaughan’s voice was constructed as neither distinctly black nor white, and neither distinctly jazz or pop, this provides some explanation for her dramatic transformation, including plastic surgery, to create a physical appearance appropriate for her voice.

The roles of recording technology, the suburban home, and the contrasting domain of the nightclub all must be considered in terms of the politics of crossover in  Vaughan’s career.

This according to To bebop or to be pop: Sarah Vaughan and the politics of crossover by Elaine M. Hayes, a dissertation accepted by the University of Pennsylvania in 2004.

Today is Vaughan’s 90th birthday! Above, the singer in 1946; below, in 1958.

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by | March 26, 2014 · 1:00 am

Diana Ross and Lady Day

 

The 1972 film Lady sings the blues, starring Diana Ross as the legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday, merits close analysis as a historical marker.

Sidney J. Furie’s film is a crossover text, created to win the sympathies of both white and African American audiences. In its effort to provide for all possible viewer positions, the film negotiates racial, gender, generational, and political issues.

This according to “Strange fruit?: Lady sings the blues as a crossover film” by Gary Storhoff (Journal of popular film and television XXX/2 [summer 2002] pp. 105–113).

Today is Diana Ross’s 70th birthday! Below, her portrayal of Lady Day.

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by | March 23, 2014 · 1:00 am

A new Coleridge-Taylor edition

samuel coleridge-taylor

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor began his only symphony when he was a student of Charles Villiers Stanford, as his major project for the 1895–96 season.

A new edition by John L. Snyder of Coleridge-Taylor’s symphony in A minor, op. 8, includes the finale later added in 1900, as well as the two surviving discarded finales from 1896 and the revision of the slow movement issued in 1901 as Idyll, op. 44 (Middleton: A-R Editions, 2013).

The edition of the symphony is based on the autograph MSS, including autograph parts, now in the Royal College of Music Library and in the British Library. The extensive critical notes document the changes made by the composer, both in the score and in the process of copying parts. Coleridge-Taylor was concerned to make his symphony cyclic and struggled with how to accomplish that most effectively, as evidenced by the three finales.

The Idyll is edited on the basis of a copyist’s score formerly in the Novello rental library and now in the Fleisher Collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Above, Coleridge-Taylor around the time he wrote the symphony; below, a brief tribute to the composer, narrated by his daughter, Avril Coleridge-Taylor.

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by | March 20, 2014 · 1:00 am

Humpback whale songs

humpback-whale

Male humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangeliae) sing long, complex songs in tropical waters during the breeding season.

At any one time all the whales in a population sing the same song, which differs significantly from songs of other populations. The song of each population evolves continuously, progressively, and so rapidly that nonreversing changes can be measured month to month in a singing season.

Such changes, which affect the songs at all levels, seem to arise through improvisation and imitation rather than through accident or as conveyors of information. The greatest amount of change appears when singing is most pervasive and the effort of each singer is most intense.

Rhymelike structures occur in songs that contain much thematic material, perhaps serving as a mnemonic device in the context of a rapidly changing oral culture. Sexual selection may be the driving evolutionary force behind song changing.

This according to “The progressively changing songs of humpback whales: A window on the creative process in a wild animal” by Katharine Payne, an essay included in The origins of music (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000). Below, underwater recordings of humpback whale songs.

More posts about animals and music are here.

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by | March 18, 2014 · 1:00 am

Goth belly dance

Snake_edited-1

Goth belly dance or raqs gothique—a term coined from the Arabic raqs sharqi (dance of the East)—fuses the already Westernized interpretative dance style of the Middle East with Goth subculture.

This new experimental dance involves different musics (from goth rock to world music), altered costuming, and new performance settings. Although rooted in belly dance and its ties to colonialism, Goth belly dance transforms Orientalism and embodies decolonization as process and product.

This according to “Raqs gothique: Decolonizing belly dance” by Tina Frühauf (TDR: The drama review LIII/3 [fall 2009] pp. 117-138). Above, Maiiah with her snake, Maharet (photo by Pryor Dodge; click to enlarge); below, the late JeniViva Mia performs.

Related article: Subversive belly dancing

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by | March 15, 2014 · 1:00 am

Sly Stone and the Sanctified Church

 

Sly and the Family Stone played a crucial role in introducing black church aesthetics to popular music audiences in the late 1960s.

Sylvester Stewart (a.k.a. Sly Stone) introduced secular audiences to what James Cleveland called the Sanctified Church through his own personal experiences in the black Pentecostal church.

In the foreground of Stone’s work are the recording Stand! (1969), particularly the single I want to take you higher. The band’s demographic—black and white, men and women—and the message that everyone needs to work together in harmony all represent the epitome of post-Civil Rights culture.

This according to “Sly Stone and the sanctified church” by Mark Anthony Neal, an essay included in The funk era and beyond: New perspectives on black popular culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

Today is Sly Stone’s 70th birthday! Below, a performance of I want to take you higher from 1969.

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by | March 13, 2014 · 1:00 am

The Jenkins Orphanage Band

Jenkins Orphanage Band

The Jenkins Orphanage Band was an important institution in early 20th-century Charleston, South Carolina.

Founded in the 1890s by Rev. Daniel Jenkins, the orphanage’s vocational training included printing, bread making, shoe repairs, and music—bands, choirs, and singers.

Programs from 1914, the year that the boys’ brass band performed at the Anglo-American exhibition in London, indicate that the group worked long hours performing popular works by Irving Berlin and John Philip Sousa, as well as classical works by Verdi and Offenbach.

This according to “The Jenkins Orphanage Bands”, an unsigned article in Black Europe (Hambergen: Bear Family Productions, 2013). Above and below, the boys’ brass band in 1928.

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by | March 10, 2014 · 1:00 am

Miriam Gideon’s “Fortunato”

 

In 1958 Miriam Gideon (1906–1996) completed her only opera: Fortunato, based on the eponymous tragicomic farce by the Spanish playwrights Serafín and Joaquín Álvarez Quintero (1871–1938 and 1873–1944, respectively).

Although Gideon’s opera has never received a full performance and has only been available until now in a marginally legible autograph copy of the piano-vocal score, it may be regarded as a central work within the composer’s style and oeuvre and an important American operatic work of the 1950s.

Fortunato: An opera in three scenes (1958) (Middleton: A-R Editions, 2013) includes the fully edited piano-vocal score along with a substantial introductory essay by the editor, Stephanie Jensen-Moulton, which summarizes Gideon’s compositional activity during the post–World War II years, her most active period. The essay also provides a context for the opera by examining attitudes toward women composers in the U.S. in the 1950s and by placing the work’s main themes into dialogue with recently discovered personal writings by the composer.

A supplement includes Gideon’s full orchestration of Fortunato’s first scene, recently discovered among the composer’s personal papers, which she may have intended as a sample to be pitched to television networks.

Alas, there are no recordings of Fortunato; below, another example of Gideon’s vocal writing—Bömischer Krystall from 1988.

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by | March 8, 2014 · 1:00 am

C.P.E. Bach’s Empfindsamer Stil

CPEBach-1773

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Heilig (W.217) is closely akin to his keyboard writing in that the presence of many different, not necessarily closely related, musical ideas drives the piece more than a specific form. Seemingly random choices of key, texture, voicing, and text placement all have a purpose: to make the listener feel something, not just hear it.

The choral sections illustrate the quick tonal shifts and changing of harmonic rhythm that are a large part of C.P.E. Bach’s Empfindsamer Stil, which is customarily thought of in terms of his keyboard writing. Heilig is a part of that tradition which would later become the Sturm und Drang of Haydn and the inspiration for the Romantic generation. This according to “Elements of Empfindsamkeit in the Heilig Wq. 217 (H.778) of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach” by Brian E. Burns (Choral journal XLVI/9 [March 2006] pp. 10–23).

Today is C.P.E. Bach’s 300th birthday! Above, a pastel portrait of the composer from 1773 drawn by his godson Johann Philipp Bach (click to enlarge); below, a performance of Heilig by the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and the RIAS Kammerchor.

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