|
Brer Soul
''Brer Soul'' is the debut studio album of Melvin Van Peebles. Released in 1968, the album introduced Van Peebles as a recording artist, following his work as an independent filmmaker, playwright and novelist. It is notable for its use of sprechgesang, a vocal style which lies between speaking and singing. Unlike later albums, which are more varied in style, ''Brer Soul'' features an experimental spoken word style, with soul jazz instrumentation. Van Peebles' unconventional songwriting style has since been cited as an influence on hip hop music and rapping. Background While living in France, Van Peebles began to write plays in French which were intended to express the ghetto's turmoil and pathos. Van Peebles used the sprechgesang vocal style in these plays as a form he could tell stories in. This style formed the basis of his debut as a recording artist, ''Brer Soul'', which was categorized as a spoken word album. Style ''Brer Soul'' features Van Peebles delivering spoken ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Melvin Van Peebles
Melvin Van Peebles (born Melvin Peebles; August 21, 1932 – September 21, 2021) was an American actor, filmmaker, writer, and composer. He worked as an active filmmaker into the 2000s. His feature film debut, ''The Story of a Three-Day Pass'' (1967), was based on his own French-language novel ' and was shot in France, as it was difficult for a black American director to get work at the time. The film won an award at the San Francisco International Film Festival which gained him the interest of Hollywood studios, leading to his American feature debut '' Watermelon Man'', in 1970. Eschewing further overtures from Hollywood, he used the successes he had so far to bankroll his work as an independent filmmaker. In 1971, he released his best-known work, creating and starring in the film ''Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song'', considered one of the earliest and best-regarded examples of the blaxploitation genre. He followed this up with the musical, '' Don't Play Us Cheap'', based on hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hans Conried
Hans Georg Conried Jr. (April 15, 1917 – January 5, 1982) was an American actor and comedian. He was known for providing the voices of George Darling and Captain Hook in Walt Disney's ''Peter Pan'' (1953), Snidely Whiplash in Jay Ward's ''Dudley Do-Right'' cartoons, Professor Waldo P. Wigglesworth in Ward's ''Hoppity Hooper'' cartoons, was host of Ward's "Fractured Flickers" and Professor Kropotkin on the radio and film versions of ''My Friend Irma''. He also appeared as Uncle Tonoose on Danny Thomas' sitcom ''Make Room for Daddy'', and twice on ''I Love Lucy''. Early life Conried was born on April 15, 1917, in Baltimore, Maryland to parents Edith Beryl (née Gildersleeve) and Hans Georg Conried. His Connecticut-born mother was a descendant of Pilgrims, and his father was a Jewish immigrant from Vienna, Austria. He was raised in Baltimore and in New York City. He studied acting at Columbia University and went on to play major classical roles onstage. Conried worked in radio be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hipster (1940s Subculture)
240px, The "classic quintet": Charlie Parker, Tommy Potter, Miles Davis">Tommy_Potter.html" ;"title="Charlie Parker, Tommy Potter">Charlie Parker, Tommy Potter, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, and Max Roach performing at Three Deuces in New York City. Photograph by William P. Gottlieb (August 1947), Library of Congress. Hipster or hepcat, as used in the 1940s, referred to aficionados of jazz, in particular bebop, which became popular in the early 1940s. The hipster subculture adopted the lifestyle of the jazz musician, including some or all of the following features: dress, slang, use of cannabis and other recreational drugs, relaxed attitude, sarcastic humble or self-imposed poverty, and relaxed sexual mores. History The words ''hep'' and ''hip'' are of uncertain origin, with numerous competing theories being proposed. In the early days of jazz, musicians were using the ''hep'' variant to describe anybody who was "in the know" about an emerging, mostly African-American subcultu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stream Of Consciousness (narrative Mode)
In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator. The term was coined by Daniel Oliver in 1840 in ''First Lines of Physiology: Designed for the Use of Students of Medicine,'' when he wrote, Better known, perhaps, is the 1855 usage by Alexander Bain in the first edition of ''The Senses and the Intellect'', when he wrote, "The concurrence of Sensations in one common stream of consciousness–on the same cerebral highway–enables those of different senses to be associated as readily as the sensations of the same sense". But it is commonly credited to William James who used it in 1890 in his ''The Principles of Psychology''. In 1918, the novelist May Sinclair (1863–1946) first applied the term stream of consciousness, in a literary context, when discussing Dorothy Richardson's novels. '' Pointed Roofs'' (1915), the first work in Richardson's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. (April 22, 1922 – January 5, 1979) was an American jazz upright bassist, pianist, composer, bandleader, and author. A major proponent of collective improvisation, he is considered to be one of the greatest jazz musicians and composers in history,See the 1998 documentary ''Triumph of the Underdog'' with a career spanning three decades and collaborations with other jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Herbie Hancock. Mingus' compositions continue to be played by contemporary musicians ranging from the repertory bands Mingus Big Band, Mingus Dynasty, and Mingus Orchestra, to the high school students who play the charts and compete in the Charles Mingus High School Competition. In 1993, the Library of Congress acquired Mingus' collected papers—including scores, sound recordings, correspondence and photos—in what they described as "the most important acquisition of a manuscript collection relating to jaz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Darius James
Darius James (aka Dr. Snakeskin, born 1954) is an African-American author and performance artist. He is the author of ''That's Blaxploitation: Roots of the Baadasssss 'Tude (Rated X by an All-Whyte Jury)'', an unorthodox, semi-autobiographical history of the blaxploitation film genre, and '' Negrophobia: An Urban Parable'', a satirical novel written in screenplay form. His work is influenced by the Voodoo religion. James lives in Hamden, Connecticut. He appeared in the 2006 film ''Black Deutschland''. He co-wrote and appeared in a feature-length film released in 2013, ''The United States of Hoodoo''. Books * ''That's Blaxploitation: Roots of the Baadasssss 'Tude (Rated X by an All'Whyte Jury)'' * ''Negrophobia: An Urban Parable'' * ''Voodoo Stew'' (German/English), Verbrecher Verlag Berlin, 2004 * ''Froggie Chocolate's Christmas Eve / Froggie Chocolates Weihnachtsabend'' (German/English), Verbrecher Verlag Berlin, 2005 See also *Closet screenplay Related to closet drama, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gil Scott-Heron
Gilbert Scott-Heron (April 1, 1949 – May 27, 2011) was an American Jazz poetry, jazz poet, singer, musician, and author, known primarily for his work as a spoken-word performer in the 1970s and 1980s. His collaborative efforts with musician Brian Jackson (musician), Brian Jackson featured a musical fusion of jazz, blues, and soul music, soul, as well as lyrical content concerning social and political issues of the time, delivered in both rapping and melismatic vocal styles by Scott-Heron. His own term for himself was "bluesologist", which he defined as "a scientist who is concerned with the origin of the blues".Onstage at the Black Wax Club in Washington, D.C. in 1982, Scott-Heron cited Harlem Renaissance writers Langston Hughes, Sterling Allen Brown, Sterling Brown, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen and Claude McKay as among those who had "taken the blues as a poetry form" in the 1920s and "fine-tuned it" into a "remarkable art form".Gil Scott-Heron in a live performance in 1982 wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Last Poets
The Last Poets are several groups of poets and musicians who arose from the late 1960s African-American civil rights movement's black nationalism. The name is taken from a poem by the South African revolutionary poet Keorapetse Kgositsile, who believed he was in the last era of poetry before guns would take over. The original users of that name were the trio of Abiodun Oyewole, Gylan Kain, and David Nelson. The versions of the group led by Jalaluddin Mansur Nuriddin and Umar Bin Hassan had the largest impact on popular culture. The Last Poets were one of the earliest influences on hip-hop music. Critic Jason Ankeny wrote: "With their politically charged raps, taut rhythms, and dedication to raising African-American consciousness, the Last Poets almost single-handedly laid the groundwork for the emergence of hip-hop." The British music magazine ''NME'' stated, "Serious spokesmen like Gil Scott-Heron, The Last Poets, and later Gary Byrd, paved the way for the many socially committ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beat (music)
In music and music theory, the beat is the basic unit of time, the pulse (regularly repeating event), of the ''mensural level'' (or ''beat level''). The beat is often defined as the rhythm listeners would tap their toes to when listening to a piece of music, or the numbers a musician counts while performing, though in practice this may be technically incorrect (often the first multiple level). In popular use, ''beat'' can refer to a variety of related concepts, including pulse, tempo, meter, specific rhythms, and groove. Rhythm in music is characterized by a repeating sequence of stressed and unstressed beats (often called "strong" and "weak") and divided into bars organized by time signature and tempo indications. Beats are related to and distinguished from pulse, rhythm (grouping), and meter: Metric levels faster than the beat level are division levels, and slower levels are multiple levels. Beat has always been an important part of music. Some music genres such as fu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisationa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blind Lemon Jefferson
Lemon Henry "Blind Lemon" Jefferson (September 24, 1893 – December 19, 1929)Some sources indicate Jefferson was born on October 26, 1894. was an American blues and gospel singer-songwriter and musician. He was one of the most popular blues singers of the 1920s and has been called the "Father of the Texas Blues".Dicaire, David (1999). ''Blues Singers: Biographies of 50 Legendary Artists of the Early 20th Century''. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company. pp. 140–144. . Due mainly to his high-pitched voice and the originality of his guitar playing, Jefferson's performances were distinctive. His recordings sold well, but he was not a strong influence on younger blues singers of his generation, who could not imitate him as easily as they could other commercially successful artists. Charters, Samuel (1977). ''The Blues Makers''. New York: Da Capo Press. . Later blues and rock and roll musicians, however, did attempt to imitate both his songs and his musical style. Biogra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African-American Music
African-American music is an umbrella term covering a diverse range of music and musical genres largely developed by African Americans and their culture. Their origins are in musical forms that first came to be due to the condition of slavery that characterized the lives of African Americans prior to the American Civil War. Slavery and other impositions such as the Jim Crow laws shaped the world view of African Americans. Some of the globally most popular music types today, such as rock and roll, funk, jazz, rap, blues, hip-hop, and rhythm and blues were developed from the worldview of the African Americans who created and influenced these genres. It has been said that "every genre that is born from America has black roots." White slave owners sought to completely subjugate their slaves physically, mentally, and spiritually through brutal and demeaning acts. African Americans used music to counter this dehumanization. White Americans considered African Americans separate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
