Search Results for: music on money
Shine and the Titanic
Religious African Americans saw the sinking of the Titanic as an example of God’s intervention in human affairs, as a divine overriding of the advantages conferred by wealth and mastery of technology. Their secular songs about the disaster either nihilistically … Continue reading
Filed under Black studies, Humor
Doctor Love’s diagnoses
The Zimbabwean singer-songwriter Paul Matavire was widely celebrated for his witty but sharply pointed songs addressing themes of intimacy, romance, and social relations, earning him the nickname Doctor Love. Matavire’s well-calculated social commentary, disseminated through sungura music, continues to hold … Continue reading
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Filed under Humor, Performers, Popular music
Rosie Flores and “Working girl’s guitar”
In an interview, Rosie Flores discussed the title cut of her 2012 album Working girl’s guitar: There’s a friend of mine who does, well, everything. He does bodywork, he’s written books on rolfing, how to play the banjo, and how … Continue reading
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Filed under Performers, Popular music
The Smithsonian Institution’s Object of the Day, October 5, 2019: Elaine Brown’s “Seize the Time” (1969)
The First Songs of the American Revolution On a January evening in 1969, members of the Southern California chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP) congregated in Los Angeles to mourn comrades Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter and John Huggins, two UCLA students who had just been … Continue reading
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Filed under Black studies, Politics
Bali remixed and revisited
In May 2019 Songlines Magazine and the PRS Foundation launched a competition to find the best remix of David Attenborough’s recording of a performance of Balinese gendér wayang, a style of Indonesian gamelan that features a quartet of ten-keyed metallophones. Among the reactions of gamelan enthusiasts was concern that … Continue reading
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Filed under Asia, Curiosities
Louis Jordan and “Caldonia”
In an interview, Louis Jordan recalled the background of his 1945 hit Caldonia: “Caldonia started a long time before I came to New York. There used to be a long, lean, lanky girl in Memphis, Tennessee, where Jim Cannon used … Continue reading
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Filed under Performers, Popular music
Lena Horne’s second act
“I was the first black sex symbol, the first black movie star, and the first black to integrate saloons…I had to take a lot of flak from my own people, and everybody else’s people.” Thus spoke the very … Continue reading
Filed under Performers, Popular music
Reverend Gary Davis and Miss Gibson
One day Manny Greenhill, Reverend Gary Davis’s sometime manager, received a desperate call from Wurlitzer, one of Boston’s most staid and respected music stores. A quavering voice explained that an elderly man, a minister of some sort, had seized … Continue reading
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Filed under Jazz and blues, Performers
Svend Asmussen and Benny Goodman
In 1948 Benny Goodman invited the Danish jazz violinist Svend Asmussen to consider coming to the U.S. to play in his band. Asmussen agreed, but he soon discovered that the U.S. Musicians Union had other ideas. To play in … Continue reading
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Filed under Jazz and blues, Performers
