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Linda Goss
Linda Goss (born 1947), sometimes known professionally as Mama Linda, is an American storyteller and performer in the African diasporic oral tradition. She is a co-founder of the National Association of Black Storytellers, which works to preserve folk traditions. Early life and education Linda Yvonne McNear was born in Alcoa, Tennessee to Willie and Junior McNear. Her mother was a teacher and her father worked at the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa). She grew up in a large storytelling family, and often cites tales heard from her Granddaddy Murphy and Uncle Buster as her earliest influences. Her mother was a frequent public speaker at Blount County churches and civic events, and Goss learned speaking techniques from her mother's example. From her father, she learned a love of music, particularly jazz, and an appreciation for the way stories can be told through music. In grade school, her teachers wrote on her report cards that she "talks too much". Goss's interest in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alcoa, Tennessee
Alcoa is a city in Blount County, Tennessee, Blount County, Tennessee, United States, south of Knoxville, Tennessee, Knoxville. Its population was 10,978 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It is part of the Knoxville, Tennessee Metropolitan Statistical Area. As its name suggests, Alcoa was the site of a large aluminum smelting plant owned and operated by the Alcoa corporation (Aluminum Company of America). Formerly known as North Maryville, the town was incorporated under its present name in 1919. History Early company town Shortly after the Pittsburgh Reduction Company changed its name to the Aluminum Company of America in 1907, the company began investigating the possibility of establishing a large smelting operation in East Tennessee. The hydroelectric potential of the Little Tennessee River, which exits the mountains about southwest of Alcoa, was one of the primary incentives, as the company's aluminum smelting operation would require massive amounts of electricit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bugle Call
A bugle call is a short tune, originating as a military signal announcing scheduled and certain non-scheduled events on a military installation, battlefield, or ship. Historically, bugles, drums, and other loud musical instruments were used for clear communication in the noise and confusion of a battlefield. Naval bugle calls were also used to command the crew of many warships (signaling between ships being by flaghoist, semaphore, signal lamp or other means). A defining feature of a bugle call is that it consists only of notes from a single overtone series. This is in fact a requirement if it is to be playable on a bugle or equivalently on a trumpet without moving the valves. (If a bandsman plays calls on a trumpet, for example, one particular key may be favored or even prescribed, such as: all calls to be played with the first valve down.) Bugle calls typically indicated the change in daily routines of camp. Every duty around camp had its own bugle call, and since cavalry ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Today (American TV Program)
''Today'' (also called ''The Today Show'' or informally, ''NBC News Today'') is an American news and talk morning television show that airs weekdays from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. on NBC. The program debuted on January 14, 1952. It was the first of its genre on American television and in the world, and after 70 years of broadcasting it is fifth on the list of longest-running United States television series. Originally a weekday two-hour program from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m., it expanded to Sundays in 1987 and Saturdays in 1992. The weekday broadcast expanded to three hours in 2000, and to four hours in 2007 (though over time, the third and fourth hours became distinct entities). ''Today''s dominance was virtually unchallenged by the other networks until the late 1980s, when it was overtaken by ABC's ''Good Morning America''. ''Today'' retook the Nielsen ratings lead the week of December 11, 1995, and held onto that position for 852 consecutive weeks until the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Carter Smith
Mary Carter Smith (1919 – April 24, 2007) was a noted American educator who helped revive storytelling as an educational tool. She graduated from Coppin State University and was a teacher in the Baltimore City Public School system for thirty-one years. Additionally, she was a co-founder of Big Brothers-Big Sisters of Maryland, founding member of Big Brothers-Big Sisters of America, the Arena Players theatre company and the Griots' Circle of Maryland. She hosted a Saturday morning radio program, "Griot for the Young and the Young at Heart" and, in 1983, Mary Smith was named the official Griot of Baltimore City and, in 1991, the official Griot of Maryland. Awards and notable achievements * 1982: co-founded The National Association of Black Storytellers * 1985: awarded the Zora Neale Hurston Award * 1996: Lifetime Achievement Award and The Circle of Excellence Award from the National Storytelling Association * Her image is featured at the National Great Blacks In Wax Museum The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ella Jenkins
Ella Jenkins (born August 6, 1924) is an American folk singer and actress. Dubbed "The First Lady of the Children's Folk Song" by the ''Wisconsin State Journal'', she has been a leading performer of children's music for over fifty years. Her album, ''Multicultural Children's Songs'' (1995), has long been the most popular Smithsonian Folkways release. She has appeared on numerous children's television programs and in 2004, she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Family and personal life Jenkins was born in St. Louis, Missouri and grew up in predominantly lower-middle-class neighborhoods in the south side of Chicago. Although she received no formal musical training, she benefited from her rich musical surroundings. Her uncle Floyd Johnson introduced her to the harmonica and the blues of such renowned musicians as T-Bone Walker, Memphis Slim and Big Bill Broonzy. Her family frequently moved around the south side and, as she moved to different neighborhoods, she learned ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sonia Sanchez
Sonia Sanchez (born Wilsonia Benita Driver; September 9, 1934) is an American poet, writer, and professor. She was a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement and has written over a dozen books of poetry, as well as short stories, critical essays, plays, and children's books. In the 1960s, Sanchez released poems in periodicals targeted towards African-American audiences, and published her debut collection, ''Homecoming,'' in 1969. In 1993, she received Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and in 2001 was awarded the Robert Frost Medal for her contributions to the canon of American poetry. She has been influential to other African-American poets, including Krista Franklin. Early life Sanchez was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 9, 1934 to Wilson L. Driver and Lena Jones Driver. Her mother died when Sanchez was only one year old, so she spent several years being shuttled back and forth among relatives. One of those was her grandmother, who died when Sanchez was six. The death of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stephen Henderson (literary Scholar)
Stephen E. Henderson (October 13, 1925 – January 7, 1997) was an American professor of African-American literature and culture, whose 1973 book ''Understanding the New Black Poetry: Black Speech and Black Music as Poetic Reference'' is regarded as a seminal work. He is noted for providing the first formal interpretation of militant Black poetry, and, with Vincent Harding and William Strickland, for founding the Institute of the Black World in Atlanta, Georgia. Biography Henderson was born in Key West, Florida. He served two years in the U.S. Army towards the end of the Second World War, and then enrolled at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, where he earned a bachelor's degree in English and sociology with high honors in 1949. He went on to pursue graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin, being awarded a master's degree in English in 1950.Bethel, Kari"Stephen E. Henderson 1925–1997" ''Contemporary Black Biography'', encyclopedia.com. In 1950, he became a professor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brother Blue
Hugh Morgan Hill (July 12, 1921 – November 3, 2009) who performed as Brother Blue, was an American educator, storyteller, actor, musician, and street performer based principally in the Boston area. After serving as First Lieutenant from 1943 to 1946 in the segregated United States Army in World War II and being honorably discharged, he received a BA from Harvard College in 1948 (cum laude in Social Relations), was accepted into the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) before transferring to receive a MFA from the Yale School of Drama and a Ph.D. (Divinity with pastoral sacred storytelling) from the Union Institute, having delivered his doctoral presentation at Boston's Deer Island Prison, accompanied by a 25-piece jazz orchestra, with a video recording for his dissertation committee's further consideration. While performing frequently at U.S. National Storytelling Festivals and flown abroad by organizations and patrons from England to Russia and the Bahamas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Maryland
The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of Maryland. It is also the largest university in both the state and the Washington metropolitan area, with more than 41,000 students representing all fifty states and 123 countries, and a global alumni network of over 388,000. Together, its 12 schools and colleges offer over 200 degree-granting programs, including 92 undergraduate majors, 107 master's programs, and 83 doctoral programs. UMD is a member of the Association of American Universities and competes in intercollegiate athletics as a member of the Big Ten Conference. The University of Maryland's proximity to the nation's capital has resulted in many research partnerships with the federal government; faculty receive research funding and institutional support from many agencies, such ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gladys-Marie Fry
Gladys-Marie Fry (April 6, 1931 – November 7, 2015) was Professor Emerita of Folklore and English at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, and a leading authority on African American textiles. Fry earned her bachelor's and master's degrees from Howard University and her Ph.D. from Indiana University. She is the author of ''Stitched From the Soul: Slave Quilting in the Ante-Bellum South'' and ''Night Riders in Black Folk History''. A contributor or author to 8 museum catalogs, Fry is also the author of a number of articles and book chapters. Fry has also served as the curator for 11 museum exhibitions (including the Smithsonian in Washington, DC) and consultant to exhibits and television programs around the nation. Biography Gladys-Marie Fry was born on April 6, 1931 in Washington, D.C., in the Freedmen's Hospital on the Howard University campus, where her father was Chairman of the Architectural Department. Her father, Louis Edwin Fry Sr., was an eminent architect. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Country Music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, old-time, and American folk music forms including Appalachian, Cajun, Creole, and the cowboy Western music styles of Hawaiian, New Mexico, Red Dirt, Tejano, and Texas country. Country music often consists of ballads and honky-tonk dance tunes with generally simple form, folk lyrics, and harmonies often accompanied by string instruments such as electric and acoustic guitars, steel guitars (such as pedal steels and dobros), banjos, and fiddles as well as harmonicas. Blues modes have been used extensively throughout its recorded history. The term ''country music'' gained popularity in the 1940s in preference to '' hillbilly music'', with "country music" being used today to describe many styles and subgenres. It came to encomp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gospel Music
Gospel music is a traditional genre of Christian music, and a cornerstone of Christian media. The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of gospel music varies according to culture and social context. Gospel music is composed and performed for many purposes, including aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, and as an entertainment product for the marketplace. Gospel music is characterized by dominant vocals and strong use of harmony with Christian lyrics. Gospel music can be traced to the early 17th century. Hymns and sacred songs were often repeated in a call and response fashion, heavily influenced by ancestral African music. Most of the churches relied on hand-clapping and foot-stomping as rhythmic accompaniment. Most of the singing was done a cappella.Jackson, Joyce Marie. "The changing nature of gospel music: A southern case study." ''African American Review'' 29.2 (1995): 185. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. October 5, 2010. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
