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Mary Don't You Weep
"Mary Don't You Weep" (alternately titled "O Mary Don't You Weep", "Oh Mary, Don't You Weep, Don't You Mourn", or variations thereof) is a Spiritual that originates from before the American Civil War – thus it is what scholars call a "slave song," "a label that describes their origins among the enslaved," and it contains "coded messages of hope and resistance." It is one of the most important of Negro spirituals. It is listed as number 11823 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The song tells the Biblical story of Mary of Bethany and her distraught pleas to Jesus to raise her brother Lazarus from the dead. Other narratives relate to The Exodus and the Passage of the Red Sea, with the chorus proclaiming ''Pharaoh's army got drown-ded!'', and to God's rainbow covenant to Noah after the Great Flood. With liberation thus one of its themes, the song again became popular during the Civil Rights Movement. Additionally, a song that explicitly chronicles the victories of the Civil Rights ...
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Spiritual (music)
Spirituals (also known as Negro spirituals, African American spirituals, Black spirituals, or spiritual music) is a genre of Christian music that is associated with Black Americans, which merged sub-Saharan African cultural heritage with the experiences of being held in bondage in slavery, at first during the transatlantic slave trade and for centuries afterwards, through the domestic slave trade. Spirituals encompass the "sing songs," work songs, and plantation songs that evolved into the blues and gospel songs in church. In the nineteenth century, the word "spirituals" referred to all these subcategories of folk songs. While they were often rooted in biblical stories, they also described the extreme hardships endured by African Americans who were enslaved from the 17th century until the 1860s, the emancipation altering mainly the nature (but not continuation) of slavery for many. Many new derivative music genres emerged from the spirituals songcraft. Prior to the end of the US ...
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Fisk Jubilee Singers
The Fisk Jubilee Singers are an African-American ''a cappella'' ensemble, consisting of students at Fisk University. The first group was organized in 1871 to tour and raise funds for college. Their early repertoire consisted mostly of traditional spiritual (music), spirituals, but included some songs by Stephen Foster. The original group toured along the Underground Railroad path in the United States, as well as performing in England and Europe. Later 19th-century groups also toured in Europe. In 2002 the Library of Congress honored their 1909 recording of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" by adding it in the List of recordings preserved in the United States National Recording Registry, United States National Recording Registry. In 2008 they were awarded a National Medal of Arts. History The singers were organized as a fundraising effort for Fisk University. The Historically black colleges and universities, historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee, was founded by the Ameri ...
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Burl Ives
Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives (June 14, 1909 – April 14, 1995) was an American musician, actor, and author with a career that spanned more than six decades. Ives began his career as an itinerant singer and guitarist, eventually launching his own radio show, ''The Wayfaring Stranger'', which popularized traditional folk songs. In 1942, he appeared in Irving Berlin's ''This Is the Army'' and became a major star of CBS Radio. In the 1960s, he successfully crossed over into country music, recording hits such as "A Little Bitty Tear" and "Funny Way of Laughin'". Ives was also a popular film actor through the late 1940s and '50s. His film roles included parts in ''So Dear to My Heart'' (1948) and ''Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'' (1958), as well as the role of Rufus Hannassey in ''The Big Country'' (1958), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Ives is often associated with the Christmas season. He did voice-over work as Sam the Snowman, narrator of the classic 1964 Christma ...
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The Soul Stirrers
The Soul Stirrers were an American gospel music group, whose career spans over eighty years. The group was a pioneer in the development of the quartet style of gospel, and a major influence on soul, doo wop, and Motown, some of the secular music that owed much to gospel. Biography The group was formed by (Silas) Roy Crain, launching his first quartet who sang in a jubilee style, in 1926 in Trinity, Texas, United States. In the early 1930s, after Crain moved to Houston, he joined an existing group on the condition that it change its name to "the Soul Stirrers". The name "Soul Stirrers" yields from the description of one of Roy Crain's earlier quartets as "soul-stirring." Among the members of that group was R.H. (Rebert) Harris, who soon became its musical leader. The Soul Stirrers, formed as a jubilee quartet, transformed their sound, influenced by hard gospel singers such as Mahalia Jackson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Rebert Harris, also from Trinity, Texas, brought several cha ...
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James Baldwin (writer)
James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer. He garnered acclaim across various media, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. His first novel, '' Go Tell It on the Mountain'', was published in 1953; decades later, ''Time'' magazine included the novel on its list of the 100 best English-language novels released from 1923 to 2005. His first essay collection, '' Notes of a Native Son'', was published in 1955. Baldwin's work fictionalizes fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures. Themes of masculinity, sexuality, race, and class intertwine to create intricate narratives that run parallel with some of the major political movements toward social change in mid-twentieth century America, such as the civil rights movement and the gay liberation movement. Baldwin's protagonists are often but not exclusively African American, and gay and bisexual men frequently feature prominently in his l ...
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The Fire Next Time
''The Fire Next Time'' is a 1963 non-fiction book by James Baldwin, containing two essays: "My Dungeon Shook: Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation" and "Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region of My Mind". The book's title comes from a couplet in "Mary Don't You Weep", an African-American spiritual: The first essay, written in the form of a letter to Baldwin's 14-year-old nephew, discusses the central role of race in American history. The second essay, which takes up the majority of the book, deals with the relations between race and religion, focusing in particular on Baldwin's experiences with the Christian church as a youth, as well as the Islamic ideas of others in Harlem. The two essays were first respectively published in American magazines in late 1962: "Letter from a Region of My Mind" in ''The New Yorker'', and "My Dungeon Shook" in ''The Progressive''. They were then combined and published in book form in 1963 by Dial Press, a ...
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The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as '' The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national " newspaper of record". For print it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 1896, through a dual-class share structure after its shares became publicly traded. A. G. Sulzberger, the paper's publisher and the company's chairman, is the fifth generation of the family to head the pa ...
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Bridge Over Troubled Water (song)
"Bridge over Troubled Water" is a song by the American folk duo Simon & Garfunkel, released in January 1970 as the second single from their fifth studio album, '' Bridge over Troubled Water'' (1970). It was composed by Paul Simon and produced by Simon & Garfunkel and Roy Halee. "Bridge over Troubled Water" features lead vocals by Art Garfunkel and a piano accompaniment influenced by gospel music, with a "Wall of Sound"-style production. It was the last song recorded for the album, but the first completed. The instrumentation, provided by the Wrecking Crew, was recorded in California, while Simon and Garfunkel's vocals were recorded in New York. Simon felt Garfunkel should sing solo, an invitation Garfunkel initially declined. Session musician Larry Knechtel performs piano, with Joe Osborn playing bass guitar and Hal Blaine on drums. The song won five awards at the 13th Annual Grammy Awards in 1971, including Grammy Award for Record of the Year and Song of the Year. It is Simon ...
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Paul Simon
Paul Frederic Simon (born October 13, 1941) is an American musician, singer, songwriter and actor whose career has spanned six decades. He is one of the most acclaimed songwriters in popular music, both as a solo artist and as half of folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel with Art Garfunkel. Simon was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in the Queens, borough of Queens in New York City. He began performing with his schoolfriend Art Garfunkel in 1956 when they were still in their early teens. After limited success, the pair reunited after an electrified version of their song "The Sound of Silence" became a hit in 1966. Simon & Garfunkel recorded five albums together featuring songs mostly written by Simon, including the hits "Mrs. Robinson", "America (Simon & Garfunkel song), America", "Bridge over Troubled Water (song), Bridge over Troubled Water" and "The Boxer". After Simon & Garfunkel split in 1970, Simon recorded three acclaimed albums over the following five years, all of w ...
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Claude Jeter
Claude A. Jeter (October 26, 1914 – January 6, 2009) was an American gospel music singer. Originally a coal miner from Kentucky, Jeter formed the group that would eventually become one of the most popular gospel quartets of the post-war era – the Swan Silvertones. He was also, at one time, a member of the Dixie Hummingbirds. Early life Jeter was born in Montgomery, Alabama on October 26, 1914. Jeter's father died when he was eight-years-old and he moved to Kentucky with his family, where he later found work in the coal mines in West Virginia as a teenager.Sisario, Ben. "Claude Jeter, Gospel Singer With Wide Influence, Dies at 94", ''The New York Times'', January 10, 2009. p. A28. Career Swan Silvertones He formed the Four Harmony Kings in 1938 with his brother and two fellow coal miners, which was later renamed as the Silvertone Singers. After the group was hired by a radio program based in Knoxville, Tennessee that was sponsored by the local Swan Bakery, they were renamed as ...
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Allmusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the database was first made available on the Internet in 1994. AllMusic is owned by RhythmOne. History AllMusic was launched as ''All Music Guide'' by Michael Erlewine, a "compulsive archivist, noted astrologer, Buddhist scholar and musician". He became interested in using computers for his astrological work in the mid-1970s and founded a software company, Matrix, in 1977. In the early 1990s, as CDs replaced LPs as the dominant format for recorded music, Erlewine purchased what he thought was a CD of early recordings by Little Richard. After buying it he discovered it was a "flaccid latter-day rehash". Frustrated with the labeling, he researched using metadata to create a music guide. In 1990, in Big Rapids, Michigan, he founded ''All Music Guide' ...
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Inez Andrews
Sister Inez Andrews, born Inez McConico (April 14, 1929 – December 19, 2012) and better known as Inez Andrews, was an American gospel singer. Her soaring, wide-ranging voice — from contralto croon to soul-wrenching wail — made her a pillar of gospel music. The ''Chicago Tribune'' stated that "Andrews' throaty contralto made her low notes thunder, while the enormous range of her instrument enabled her to reach stratospheric pitches without falsetto" and that "her dramatic delivery made her a charismatic presence in church and on stage." Andrews started singing in the church as a child and performed gospel music on the road in various gospel groups from the 1940s before joining The Caravans in 1957. Fellow member from The Caravans in the 1950s, Shirley Caesar, once dubbed Andrews "The High Priestess" for her ability to hit high notes, and, in 2013, stated, "there never was and never will be another voice like Inez Andrews." Another early member of the Caravans, Albertina Wal ...
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