history
Iconic moments in music history.
A Song Turned to Protest
“Music is moonlight in the gloomy night of life,” words written by the romantic writer Jean Paul Richter, and they are ever so true. There have been numerous gloomy historical events within America’s 242 years since its establishment. One gloomy event in particular was the Vietnam War, and this war also became known as "America’s First Rock n Roll War." Anti-war songs were almost on every musician’s album, played on every radio, and added fuel to fiery protests against the war all over the nation. There was a musical being preformed on Broadway promoting these ideas against war. Protesters plastered lyrics from anti-war songs on signs as their rally cry. War, any war, can shape and change many things for the people being effected by it, but the Vietnam War, while changing and shaping different things, did something very important: It changed music in the late 60s and early 70s that showed just how powerful music really was and is. This war helped define the rebellious way that is Rock n Roll.
By Catherine Agati7 years ago in Beat
How The Beatles Helped Heal America's Broken Heart. Top Story - February 2019.
Almost everyone that was alive at the time can recall when, where, and what they were doing when President John F. Kennedy was shot riding in his motorcade through the streets of Dallas, Texas.
By Shandi Pace7 years ago in Beat
The Music of B.J. Thomas
This incredible singer who’s had many popular hits is called Billy Joe Thomas, better known to his fans as B.J. Thomas. He’s an American singer who's charted on pop, country, and Christian charts. His most popular hits came out in the 1960s and 1970s.
By Rasma Raisters7 years ago in Beat
Astro-Yardies & Algoriddims: An Introduction to Jamaican Afrofuturism
I have an otherworldly memory from my young boyhood in Kingston, Jamaica. This was in the late 70s, and our family had recently moved there from New York City. I was navigating so many cultural shifts. It was Christmas time (my first without snow), and we were walking through a shopping plaza. Through the crowd, I heard a lively, hypnotic African drum pattern with a staccato flute or "fife," punctuating it. I looked towards the source of the sound and gasped. A small menagerie of bizarre humanoids were dancing by. I gaped at them. One had bull horns on their head, another was a dancing patchwork quilt of whirling multicolored flaps of cloth, and yet another had a horse's head. They were all very colorful, and completely outlandish. No human faces could be seen. Neither I nor my younger sister had context for any of this. These entities seemed to have just danced through a portal from another dimension. My sister and I looked quizzically at each other and shrunk closer to my parents. "What's that?" I asked. "Oh, that's Jonkanoo," Dad said with a smile. That didn't help me understand the surreal scene, but it let me know that this was a known phenomenon that people were familiar with, and it had a name. So I wasn't hallucinating. I looked around and saw other children cautiously stepping back; other smiling adults; and a lot of people just kinda going about their business like nothing unusual was happening. I learned later that Jonkanoo comes from a mixture of Akan (Ghana) and Yoruba (Nigeria) masquerade dance traditions, and is celebrated around Christmas time in Jamaica, as well as other Caribbean countries. But at that moment, I felt like I had been transported through the looking glass into the West African/Jamaican version of "Alice In Wonderland."
By Richard Wright, MA7 years ago in Beat
Memphis Music Legends: Dewey Phillips
In the late 1940s an unassuming young man, straight out of the military, made a move from his hometown Adamsville, TN, to Memphis. The kid with an effervescent southern draw and an in-your-face personality, would almost overnight become the iconoclast of the music world. His keen ear, coupled with his fascination and adoration of what was known as “race music” would change the face of radio and the demographic of listeners forever.
By Virtuosity's NewVMusic 7 years ago in Beat
