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paralleljulieverse · 2 months

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Come taste the wine... : 70th anniversary of Julie Andrews's 'cabaret debut' at the Café Dansant, Cleethorpes, 3 performances Easter, 14-17 April, 1954

This week, seventy years ago, Julie Andrews made her official 'cabaret debut' at the Café Dansant in Cleethorpes. While not a major milestone in the traditional sense -- and one that seldom features in standard Andrews biographies -- the Cleethorpes appearance was nevertheless a significant event in the star's early career.

For a start, it was Julie's first appearance in cabaret -- the theatrical genre that is, not the Broadway musical which is a whole other Julieverse story. Characterised by sophisticated nightclub settings with adult audiences watching intimate performances, cabaret emerged in fin-de-siècle Paris before expanding to other European cities such as Berlin and Amsterdam (Appignanesi, 2004). Imported to Britain in the interwar years, cabaret offered a more urbane, adult alternative to the domestic traditions of English music hall and variety with their family audiences and jolly communal spirit (Nott, 2002, p. 120ff).

Julie's debut in cabaret was, thus, a significant step in her professional evolution towards a more mature image and repertoire. By 1954, Julie was 18, and well beyond the child star tag of her earlier years. Under the guidance of manager, Charles Tucker, there was a calculated strategy to reshape her stardom towards adulthood.

The maturation of Julie's image had begun in earnest the previous summer with Cap and Belles (1953), a touring revue that Tucker produced as a showcase for Julie, comedian Max Wall, and several other acts under his management. Cap and Belles afforded Julie the opportunity to shine with two big solos and a number of dance sequences. Much was made in show publicity of Julie's new "grown up" look, including the fact that she was wearing "her first off-the-shoulder evening dress" ('Her First Grown-Up Dress', 1953, p. 4). The Cleethorpes cabaret was a further step in this process of transformative 'adulting'. Indeed, it was something of a Cap and Belles redux. Not only was Max Wall back as headline co-star, Julie even wore the same 'grown up' strapless evening gown. In keeping with a cabaret format, though, Julie was provided a longer solo set where she sang a mix of classical and contemporary pop songs including "My Heart is Singing", "Belle of the Ball", "Always", and "Long Ago and Far Away" ('Cabaret opens', 1954, p. 4). That Julie should have chosen Cleethorpes for her cabaret debut might seem odd to contemporary readers. Today, this small town on the north Lincolnshire coast is largely regarded as a somewhat faded, out-of-the-way seaside resort. In its heyday of the mid-twentieth century, however, Cleethorpes was a vibrant tourist hub that attracted tens of thousands of holidaymakers each year (Dowling, 2005). With several large theatres and entertainment venues, Cleethorpes was also an important stop in the summertime variety circuit, drawing many of the era’s big stars and entertainment acts (Morton, 1986).

The Café Dansant was one of Cleethorpes' most iconic nighttime venues, celebrated for its elegant suppertime cabarets and salon orchestras. Opening in the 1930s, the Café was a particularly popular haunt during the war and post-war era when servicemen from nearby bases danced the night away with locals and visiting holidaymakers to the sound of touring jazz bands and crooners (Dowling, 2005, p. 129; Ruston, 2019).

By 1954, the Café was starting to show its age, and incoming new management decided to shutter the venue for several months to undertake a luxury refurbishment (‘Café Dansant closed', 1954, p. 3). A gala re-opening was set for the Easter weekend of April 1954, just in time for the start of the high season (‘Café Dansant opens', 1954, p. 8). Opening festivities for the Café kicked off with a lavish five hour dinner cabaret on the evening of Wednesday, 14 April. Julie was “one of the world famous cabaret stars" booked for the gala event, and she received considerable promotional build-up in both local and national press (‘Café Dansant opens', 1954, p. 8).��There was even a widely circulating PR photo of Julie boarding the train to Cleethorpes at London's Kings Cross station. In the end, Max Wall was unable to appear due to illness, and Alfred Marks -- another Tucker artist and former variety co-star of Julie's (Look In, 1952) -- stepped in at short notice. Rounding out the bill were several other minor acts, including American dance duo, Bobby Dwyer and Trixie; novelty entertainers, Ruby and Charles Wlaat; and magician Ericson who doubled as cabaret emcee.

Commentators judged the evening a resounding success. The "Cafe Dansant has got away to a flying start, after probably the biggest opening night ever seen in Cleethorpes," effused one newspaper report (Sandbox, 1954, p.4). Special mention was made of Julie who “received a great reception when she sang a selection of old and new songs, accompanied at the piano by her mother” (‘'Café Dansant reopening’, 1954, p. 6).

Following her performance, Julie joined the Mayor of Cleethorpes, Mr Albert Winters, in a cake-cutting ceremony and mayoral dance. Decades later, Winters recalled how he still “savour[ed] the memory of snatching a dance with the young girl destined to be a star… [S]he seemed very slim and frail,” he reminisced, “but she was a great dancer and I thoroughly enjoyed myself” (Morton, 1986, p. 15).

Julie stayed on in Cleethorpes for two more performances on Thursday 15 and Saturday 17 April respectively, before returning to London with her mother on Easter Sunday, 18 April. The very next day she commenced formal rehearsals for Mountain Fire, Julie's first dramatic 'straight' play and another step in her professional pivot to more adult content (--also, time permitting, the subject of a possible future blogpost).

A final noteworthy aspect about the Cleethorpes appearance is that it was during this weekend that Julie made the momentous decision to go to America to star in The Boy Friend. In what has become part of theatrical lore, Julie had been offered the plum role of Polly Browne in the show's Broadway production sometime in February or March of 1954 while she was appearing in Cinderella at the London Palladium. To the American producers’ astonishment --- and manager Tucker’s horror -- Julie was initially reluctant to accept, fearful of leaving her home and family. She prevaricated for weeks. Finally, while she was in Cleethorpes, Julie was given an ultimatum and told she had to make her decision.

In her 1958 serialised memoir for Woman magazine, Julie recounts:

“Mummie and I went to Cleethorpes to do a concert. It was a miserable wet day. From our hotel I watched the dark sea pounding the shore with great grey waves. I was called to the downstairs telephone. “Julie,” said Uncle Charles [Tucker]‘s voice from London, “they can’t wait any longer. You’ll have to make your mind up NOW.” I burst into tears. “I’ll go Uncle,” I sobbed, “if you’ll make it only one year’s contract instead of two. Only one year, please.” … Against everyone’s judgment and wishes I got my way…None of us knew that if I’d signed for two [years], then I should never have been free to do Eliza in My Fair Lady. And never known all the happiness and success it has brought me” (Andrews, 1958, p. 46).

The Cleethorpes ultimatum even found its way into an advertising campaign that Julie did for Basildon Bond stationery in 1958/59, albeit with the telephone call converted into a letter for enhanced marketing purposes. Framed as a choice between going to America and the “trip [that] changed my life” or staying at home in England “and go[ing] on in pantomime, concerts, and radio shows—the mixture as before,” the advert highlighted the “sliding door” gravity of that fateful Cleethorpes weekend (Basildon Bond, 1958). What would the course of Julie's life been like had she said no to Broadway and opted to remain in the UK?

It is a speculative refrain that Julie and others have made frequently over the years. “If I’d stayed in England I would probably have got no further than pantomime leads,” she mused in a 1970 interview (Franks, 1970, p. 32). Or, more dramatically: “Had I remained in London and not appeared in the Broadway production of The Boy Friend…who knows, I might be starving in some chorus line today” (Hirschorn, 1968).

In all seriousness, it's doubtful that a British-based Julie would have faded into professional oblivion. As biographer John Cottrell quips: "that golden voice would always have kept her out of the chorus” (Cottrell, 1968, p. 71). Nevertheless, Julie's professional options in Britain during that era would have been greatly diminished. And she certainly wouldn't have achieved the level of international superstardom enabled by Broadway and Hollywood. Who knows, in a parallel 'sliding door' universe, our Julie might have gone on playing cabarets and end-of-pier shows in Cleethorpes...

Sources

Andrews, J. (1958). 'So much to sing about, part 3.' Woman. 17 May, 15-18, 45-48.

Appignanesi, L. (2004). The cabaret. Revised edn. Yale University Press.

Basildon Bond. (1958). 'I had 24 hours to decide, says Julie Andrews'. [Advertisement]. Daily Mirror. 6 October, p. 4.

'Cabaret opens Café Dansant." (1954). Grimsby Daily Telegraph. 15 April, p. 4.

‘Café Dansant closed.' (1954). Grimsby Evening Telegraph. 28 January, p. 3.

‘Café Dansant opens tonight – with world-famous cabaret’. (1954). Grimsby Evening Telegraph. 14 April, p. 8.

‘Café Dansant reopening a gay affair.’ (1954). Grimsby Evening Telegraph. 15 April, p. 6.

Cottrell, J. (1968). Julie Andrews: The story of a star. Arthur Barker Ltd.

Dowling, A. (2005). Cleethorpes: The creation of a seaside resort. Phillimore.

'Echoes of the past, the old Café Dansant'. (2009). Cleethorpes Chronicle. December 3, p. 13.

Frank, E. (1954). Daily News. 15 April, p.6.

Franks, G. (1970). ‘Whatever’s happened to Mary Poppins?’ Leicester Mercury. 4 December, p. 32.

'Her first grown-up dress.' (1953). Sussex Daily News. 28 July, p. 4.

Hirschorn, C. (1968). 'America made me, says Julie Andrews.' Sunday Express. 8 September, p. 23.

Morton, J. (1986). ‘Where the stars began to shine’. Grimsby Evening Telegraph. 22 September, p. 15.

Nott, J.J. (2002). Music for the people: Popular music and dance in interwar Britain. Oxford University Press.

Ruston, A. (2019). 'Taking a step back in time to the Cleethorpes gem Cafe Dansant where The Kinks once played'. Grimsby Live. 12 October.

Sandboy. (1954). 'Cleethorpes notebook: Flying start.' Grimsby Evening Telegraph. 19 April, p. 4.

#julie andrews #cleethorpes #cabaret #1954 #british theatre #cafe dansant

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appears · 2 years

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GREEN/Days

It's Ayumi Hamasaki's birthday on October 2 and we're extending the celebration in true ego-maniacal, splashy celebrity fashion, by drawing out the festivities for an entire week! Each day I will briefly discuss a totally random item chosen (not by me) from my Ayu collection. Prepare for praise, disappointment, and controversial opinions backed by love and respect as we take a casual look back in this blurry snapshot of her career in music. Happy Birthday to our Party Queen, Ayumi Hamasaki!

Here's an interesting question when it comes to Ayumi Hamasaki's "GREEN": what came first, the song or the concept? GREEN/Days (or Days/GREEN, depending on which version you bought) is Ayu's 44th single, released at the end of 2008 during her downfall in popularity. I think it was around this time that Ayu truly stopped taking into account what was expected of her and really just did what she wanted, for better and worse.

This single featured two new songs, "GREEN" and "Days," and re-recorded, 10th-anniversary versions of two singles, "TO BE" and "LOVE ~Destiny~." Which version you got, and in what order, depended on which of four different versions you bought. "GREEN" is an interesting song: it draws heavily upon classic Chinese instrumentation that weaves within it a very modern Ayumi Hamasaki rock song. It is propulsive and epic and has all the drama and intensity of Ayumi at this period in her music career. The music video reflects this heavily, with Ayumi playing a cabaret singer in 1930s-era China. The song and video were very strategic: just one year before, Ayumi started touring outside of Japan for the first time, making notable stops in Taiwain, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. And one month after this single was released, she performed her first featured show in Taipei. All of this accounts for the thematic influences in the music video and song.

The second song, "Days," is a typical winter-Ayu ballad. It reminds me of 2003's "No way to say" or even 2004's "CAROLS," including heavy use of slow-motion and CGI snow in the videos. Like the PV for "GREEN," Ayu's back-up dancer SHU-YA and his hair cut features prominently in the music video, here as an unrequited love interest. It's a solid song, but I wouldn't put it in the same category as some of her other iconic ballads.

Let’s talk about the re-recordings: In my opinion, if new vocals and arrangement don't somehow improve upon, or provide some kind of new insight into, the original, then there is no point in re-making a classic. That would be the case here for these, especially "TO BE," whose production, while busier, seems oddly thin. It is also a universal truth that Ayu's vocals, whether you like them or not, have definitely not improved since the original song was recorded. They might have more personality and emotion, but they don't sound technically better, and in many ways, they sound like somewhat-hurried live recordings. If you really want to hear "TO BE," it's better to hit up the original on LOVEppears. The limited-edition packaging on this is identical to the only other single she released in 2008, Mirrorcle World, where both discs come housed in a long, vertical slip case almost 9 1/2 inches tall. There were three other versions released: a limited-edition and CD-only version entitled "Days/GREEN," which included the 10th Anniversary Version of "LOVE ~Destiny" and included the making-of feature for "Days," rather than "GREEN," on the DVD. There was also a regular CD-only version of "GREEN/Days" released with the same track listing as the limited edition.

This is a solid single release from Ayu, but it's not my favorite. "GREEN" is great, "Days" is good (but generic), and the 10th Anniversary Versions are unnecessary, if not a touch insulting. The limited-edition packaging is fun, but only if you can find a second-hand version for cheap. Ayu looks beautiful on the jacket art, but also somewhat sleepy, and none of it really reflects the tone of the content within. The real kicker is the album that these songs ended up on...

#ayumi hamasaki #ayu #j-pop

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garybrower · 2 years

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Baltimore New Year's Eve Spectacular Celebration

This Year's Special New Year's Eve Party Theme: ONE NIGHT IN PARIS: A Parisian Fantasy. Come spend New Year's Eve in The City of Lights, Paris, and save the airfare! Share the romance and mystery of the world's most magical city, sample the food, the sounds, the ambiance of historic Paris, all tucked into the modern Hilton BWI. Dress in period costumes from many French historical eras, or today's finest evening wear. The people watching will nearly be as much fun as dressing up.Expect the finest food and drinks, spectacular entertainment, photo ops and special surprises. This will be the most dazzling time traveling adventure to begin your new year!Caring Communities Presents Charm City Countdown New Years Eve Baltimore Style. We transport you to PARIS, France, to dine, dance, drink and dream in multiple party zones representing a variety of Parisian icons, districts and historical eras! Think American in Paris, Marie Antoinette, Midnight in Paris, Moulin Rouge and every other movie about Paris all rolled into one evening: One Night in Paris: A Parisian Fantasy! What a great way to celebrate New Year's Eve in Baltimore! We're reimagining each room into a different Paris icon, locale or historical venue. Sit at a quaint street cafe or sip wine on the Left Bank. Stroll the Champs-Elysees. Be entertained at a famous palace where kings sat upon thrones, or shake it up at a well known cabaret. All this, plus the tastiest food, modern drinks and classic favorites plus unique entertainment and great dance music. You are welcome to dress for the red carpet in elegant NYE cocktail attire or in your favorite French historical, traditional or regional garb. Dress is of course central to our Paris theme. Paris has been the center of fashion design for over 100 years, and dozens of top designers work and sell fashion throughout the city. So top fashion is always in vogue. But Paris, called the City of Lights, has been a diverse metropolis for centuries. Traditional French peasant wear, striped shirts with berets, and parasol dresses would work well. Also period dress from the 1950's, 1930's, and 1900's is welcome. So are 18th century costumes, dance hall outfits and retro-historical Steampunk outfits. There are many options to dress for One Night in Paris. BUY TICKETS NOW - Maryland NYE

#Maryland NYE

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aoibgmmakerblog · 2 years

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Electronic Music History and Today's Best Modern Proponents!

Electronic music history pre-dates the rock and roll era by decades. Most of us were not even on this planet when it began its often obscure, under-appreciated and misunderstood development. Today, this 'other worldly' body of sound which began close to a century ago, may no longer appear strange and unique as new generations have accepted much of it as mainstream, but it's had a bumpy road and, in finding mass audience acceptance, a slow one.

Many musicians - the modern proponents of electronic music - developed a passion for analogue synthesizers in the late 1970's and early 1980's with signature songs like Gary Numan's breakthrough, 'Are Friends Electric?'. It was in this era that these devices became smaller, more accessible, more user friendly and more affordable for many of us. In this article I will attempt to trace this history in easily digestible chapters and offer examples of today's best modern proponents.

To my mind, this was the beginning of a new epoch. To create electronic music, it was no longer necessary to have access to a roomful of technology in a studio or live. Hitherto, this was solely the domain of artists the likes of Kraftwerk, whose arsenal of electronic instruments and custom built gadgetry the rest of us could only have dreamed of, even if we could understand the logistics of their functioning. Having said this, at the time I was growing up in the 60's & 70's, I nevertheless had little knowledge of the complexity of work that had set a standard in previous decades to arrive at this point.

The history of electronic music owes much to Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007). Stockhausen was a German Avante Garde composer and a pioneering figurehead in electronic music from the 1950's onwards, influencing a movement that would eventually have a powerful impact upon names such as Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Brain Eno, Cabaret Voltaire, Depeche Mode, not to mention the experimental work of the Beatles' and others in the 1960's. His face is seen on the cover of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", the Beatles' 1967 master Opus. Let's start, however, by traveling a little further back in time.

The Turn of the 20th Century

Time stood still for this stargazer when I originally discovered that the first documented, exclusively electronic, concerts were not in the 1970's or 1980's but in the 1920's!

The first purely electronic instrument, the Theremin, which is played without touch, was invented by Russian scientist and cellist, Lev Termen (1896-1993), circa 1919.

In 1924, the Theremin made its concert debut with the Leningrad Philharmonic. Interest generated by the theremin drew audiences to concerts staged across Europe and Britain. In 1930, the prestigious Carnegie Hall in New York, experienced a performance of classical music using nothing but a series of ten theremins. Watching a number of skilled musicians playing this eerie sounding instrument by waving their hands around its antennae must have been so exhilarating, surreal and alien for a pre-tech audience!

For those interested, check out the recordings of Theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore (1911-1998). Lithuanian born Rockmore (Reisenberg) worked with its inventor in New York to perfect the instrument during its early years and became its most acclaimed, brilliant and recognized performer and representative throughout her life.

In retrospect Clara, was the first celebrated 'star' of genuine electronic music. You are unlikely to find more eerie, yet beautiful performances of classical music on the Theremin. She's definitely a favorite of mine!

Electronic Music in Sci-Fi, Cinema and Television

Unfortunately, and due mainly to difficulty in skill mastering, the Theremin's future as a musical instrument was short lived. Eventually, it found a niche in 1950's Sci-Fi films. The 1951 cinema classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still", with a soundtrack by influential American film music composer Bernard Hermann (known for Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho", etc.), is rich with an 'extraterrestrial' score using two Theremins and other electronic devices melded with acoustic instrumentation.

Using the vacuum-tube oscillator technology of the Theremin, French cellist and radio telegraphist, Maurice Martenot (1898-1980), began developing the Ondes Martenot (in French, known as the Martenot Wave) in 1928.

Employing a standard and familiar keyboard which could be more easily mastered by a musician, Martenot's instrument succeeded where the Theremin failed in being user-friendly. In fact, it became the first successful electronic instrument to be used by composers and orchestras of its period until the present day.

It is featured on the theme to the original 1960's TV series "Star Trek", and can be heard on contemporary recordings by the likes of Radiohead and Brian Ferry.

The expressive multi-timbral Ondes Martenot, although monophonic, is the closest instrument of its generation I have heard which approaches the sound of modern synthesis.

"Forbidden Planet", released in 1956, was the first major commercial studio film to feature an exclusively electronic soundtrack… aside from introducing Robbie the Robot and the stunning Anne Francis! The ground-breaking score was produced by husband and wife team Louis and Bebe Barron who, in the late 1940's, established the first privately owned recording studio in the USA recording electronic experimental artists such as the iconic John Cage (whose own Avante Garde work challenged the definition of music itself!).

The Barrons are generally credited for having widening the application of electronic music in cinema. A soldering iron in one hand, Louis built circuitry which he manipulated to create a plethora of bizarre, 'unearthly' effects and motifs for the movie. Once performed, these sounds could not be replicated as the circuit would purposely overload, smoke and burn out to produce the desired sound result.

Consequently, they were all recorded to tape and Bebe sifted through hours of reels edited what was deemed usable, then re-manipulated these with delay and reverberation and creatively dubbed the end product using multiple tape decks.

In addition to this laborious work method, I feel compelled to include that which is, arguably, the most enduring and influential electronic Television signature ever: the theme to the long running 1963 British Sci-Fi adventure series, "Dr. Who". It was the first time a Television series featured a solely electronic theme. The theme to "Dr. Who" was created at the legendary BBC Radiophonic Workshop using tape loops and test oscillators to run through effects, record these to tape, then were re-manipulated and edited by another Electro pioneer, Delia Derbyshire, interpreting the composition of Ron Grainer.

As you can see, electronic music's prevalent usage in vintage Sci-Fi was the principle source of the general public's perception of this music as being 'other worldly' and 'alien-bizarre sounding'. This remained the case till at least 1968 with the release of the hit album "Switched-On Bach" performed entirely on a Moog modular synthesizer by Walter Carlos (who, with a few surgical nips and tucks, subsequently became Wendy Carlos).

The 1970's expanded electronic music's profile with the break through of bands like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, and especially the 1980's when it found more mainstream acceptance.

The Mid 1900's: Musique Concrete

In its development through the 1900's, electronic music was not solely confined to electronic circuitry being manipulated to produce sound. Back in the 1940's, a relatively new German invention - the reel-to-reel tape recorder developed in the 1930's - became the subject of interest to a number of Avante Garde European composers, most notably the French radio broadcaster and composer Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995) who developed a montage technique he called Musique Concrete.

Musique Concrete (meaning 'real world' existing sounds as opposed to artificial or acoustic ones produced by musical instruments) broadly involved the splicing together of recorded segments of tape containing 'found' sounds - natural, environmental, industrial and human - and manipulating these with effects such as delay, reverb, distortion, speeding up or slowing down of tape-speed (varispeed), reversing, etc.

Stockhausen actually held concerts utilizing his Musique Concrete works as backing tapes (by this stage electronic as well as 'real world' sounds were used on the recordings) on top of which live instruments would be performed by classical players responding to the mood and motifs they were hearing!

Musique Concrete had a wide impact not only on Avante Garde and effects libraries, but also on the contemporary music of the 1960's and 1970's. Important works to check are the Beatles' use of this method in ground-breaking tracks like 'Tomorrow Never Knows', 'Revolution No. 9' and 'Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite', as well as Pink Floyd albums "Umma Gumma", "Dark Side of the Moon" and Frank Zappa's "Lumpy Gravy". All used tape cut-ups and home-made tape loops often fed live into the main mixdown.

Today this can be performed with simplicity using digital sampling, but yesterday's heroes labored hours, days and even weeks to perhaps complete a four minute piece! For those of us who are contemporary musicians, understanding the history of electronic music helps in appreciating the quantum leap technology has taken in the recent period. But these early innovators, these pioneers - of which there are many more down the line - and the important figures they influenced that came before us, created the revolutionary groundwork that has become our electronic musical heritage today and for this I pay them homage!

1950's: The First Computer and Synth Play Music

Moving forward a few years to 1957 and enter the first computer into the electronic mix. As you can imagine, it wasn't exactly a portable laptop device but consumed a whole room and user friendly wasn't even a concept. Nonetheless creative people kept pushing the boundaries. One of these was Max Mathews (1926 -) from Bell Telephone Laboratories, New Jersey, who developed Music 1, the original music program for computers upon which all subsequent digital synthesis has its roots based. Mathews, dubbed the 'Father of Computer Music', using a digital IBM Mainframe, was the first to synthesize music on a computer.

In the climax of Stanley Kubrik's 1968 movie '2001: A Space Odyssey', use is made of a 1961 Mathews' electronic rendition of the late 1800's song 'Daisy Bell'. Here the musical accompaniment is performed by his programmed mainframe together with a computer-synthesized human 'singing' voice technique pioneered in the early 60's. In the movie, as HAL the computer regresses, 'he' reverts to this song, an homage to 'his' own origins.

1957 also witnessed the first advanced synth, the RCA Mk II Sound Synthesizer (an improvement on the 1955 original). It also featured an electronic sequencer to program music performance playback. This massive RCA Synth was installed, and still remains, at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, New York, where the legendary Robert Moog worked for a while. Universities and Tech laboratories were the main home for synth and computer music experimentation in that early era.

1960's: The Dawning of The Age of Moog

The logistics and complexity of composing and even having access to what were, until then, musician unfriendly synthesizers, led to a demand for more portable playable instruments. One of the first to respond, and definitely the most successful, was Robert Moog (1934-2005). His playable synth employed the familiar piano style keyboard.

Moog's bulky telephone-operators' cable plug-in type of modular synth was not one to be transported and set up with any amount of ease or speed! But it received an enormous boost in popularity with the success of Walter Carlos, as previously mentioned, in 1968. His LP (Long Player) best seller record "Switched-On Bach" was unprecedented because it was the first time an album appeared of fully synthesized music, as opposed to experimental sound pieces.

The album was a complex classical music performance with various multi-tracks and overdubs necessary, as the synthesizer was only monophonic! Carlos also created the electronic score for "A Clockwork Orange", Stanley Kubrik's disturbing 1972 futuristic film.

From this point, the Moog synth is prevalent on a number of late 1960's contemporary albums. In 1967 the Monkees' "Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd" became the first commercial pop album release to feature the modular Moog. In fact, singer/drummer Mickey Dolenz purchased one of the very first units sold.

It wasn't until the early 1970's, however, when the first Minimoog appeared that interest seriously developed amongst musicians. This portable little unit with a fat sound had a significant impact becoming part of live music kit for many touring musicians for years to come. Other companies such as Sequential Circuits, Roland and Korg began producing their own synths, giving birth to a music subculture.

I cannot close the chapter on the 1960's, however, without reference to the Mellotron. This electronic-mechanical instrument is often viewed as the primitive precursor to the modern digital sampler.

Developed in early 1960's Britain and based on the Chamberlin (a cumbersome US-designed instrument from the previous decade), the Mellotron keyboard triggered pre-recorded tapes, each key corresponding to the equivalent note and pitch of the pre-loaded acoustic instrument.

The Mellotron is legendary for its use on the Beatles' 1966 song 'Strawberry Fields Forever'. A flute tape-bank is used on the haunting introduction played by Paul McCartney.

The instrument's popularity burgeoned and was used on many recordings of the era such as the immensely successful Moody Blues epic 'Nights in White Satin'. The 1970's saw it adopted more and more by progressive rock bands. Electronic pioneers Tangerine Dream featured it on their early albums.

With time and further advances in microchip technology though, this charming instrument became a relic of its period.

1970's: The Birth of Vintage Electronic Bands

The early fluid albums of Tangerine Dream such as "Phaedra" from 1974 and Brian Eno's work with his self-coined 'ambient music' and on David Bowie's "Heroes" album, further drew interest in the synthesizer from both musicians and audience.

Kraftwerk, whose 1974 seminal album "Autobahn" achieved international commercial success, took the medium even further adding precision, pulsating electronic beats and rhythms and sublime synth melodies. Their minimalism suggested a cold, industrial and computerized-urban world. They often utilized vocoders and speech synthesis devices such as the gorgeously robotic 'Speak and Spell' voice emulator, the latter being a children's learning aid!

While inspired by the experimental electronic works of Stockhausen, as artists, Kraftwerk were the first to successfully combine all the elements of electronically generated music and noise and produce an easily recognizable song format. The addition of vocals in many of their songs, both in their native German tongue and English, helped earn them universal acclaim becoming one of the most influential contemporary music pioneers and performers of the past half-century.

Kraftwerk's 1978 gem 'Das Modell' hit the UK number one spot with a reissued English language version, 'The Model', in February 1982, making it one of the earliest Electro chart toppers!

Ironically, though, it took a movement that had no association with EM (Electronic Music) to facilitate its broader mainstream acceptance. The mid 1970's punk movement, primarily in Britain, brought with it a unique new attitude: one that gave priority to self-expression rather than performance dexterity and formal training, as embodied by contemporary progressive rock musicians. The initial aggression of metallic punk transformed into a less abrasive form during the late 1970's: New Wave. This, mixed with the comparative affordability of many small, easy to use synthesizers, led to the commercial synth explosion of the early 1980's.

A new generation of young people began to explore the potential of these instruments and began to create soundscapes challenging the prevailing perspective of contemporary music. This didn't arrive without battle scars though. The music industry establishment, especially in its media, often derided this new form of expression and presentation and was anxious to consign it to the dustbin of history.

1980's: The First Golden Era of Electronic Music for the Masses

Gary Numan became arguably the first commercial synth megastar with the 1979 "Tubeway Army" hit 'Are Friends Electric?'. The Sci-Fi element is not too far away once again. Some of the imagery is drawn from the Science Fiction classic, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". The 1982 hit film "Blade Runner" was also based on the same book.

Although 'Are Friends Electric?' featured conventional drum and bass backing, its dominant use of Polymoogs gives the song its very distinctive sound. The recording was the first synth-based release to achieve number one chart status in the UK during the post-punk years and helped usher in a new genre. No longer was electronic and/or synthesizer music consigned to the mainstream sidelines. Exciting!

Further developments in affordable electronic technology placed electronic squarely in the hands of young creators and began to transform professional studios.

Designed in Australia in 1978, the Fairlight Sampler CMI became the first commercially available polyphonic digital sampling instrument but its prohibitive cost saw it solely in use by the likes of Trevor Horn, Stevie Wonder and Peter Gabriel. By mid-decade, however, smaller, cheaper instruments entered the market such as the ubiquitous Akai and Emulator Samplers often used by musicians live to replicate their studio-recorded sounds. The Sampler revolutionized the production of music from this point on.

In most major markets, with the qualified exception of the US, the early 1980's was commercially drawn to electro-influenced artists. This was an exciting era for many of us, myself included. I know I wasn't alone in closeting the distorted guitar and amps and immersing myself into a new universe of musical expression - a sound world of the abstract and non traditional.

At home, Australian synth based bands Real Life ('Send Me An Angel', "Heartland" album), Icehouse ('Hey Little Girl') and Pseudo Echo ('Funky Town') began to chart internationally, and more experimental electronic outfits like Severed Heads and SPK also developed cult followings overseas.

But by mid-decade the first global electronic wave lost its momentum amidst resistance fomented by an unrelenting old school music media. Most of the artists that began the decade as predominantly electro-based either disintegrated or heavily hybrid their sound with traditional rock instrumentation.

The USA, the largest world market in every sense, remained in the conservative music wings for much of the 1980's. Although synth-based records did hit the American charts, the first being Human League's 1982 US chart topper 'Don't You Want Me Baby?', on the whole it was to be a few more years before the American mainstream embraced electronic music, at which point it consolidated itself as a dominant genre for musicians and audiences alike, worldwide.

1988 was somewhat of a watershed year for electronic music in the US. Often maligned in the press in their early years, it was Depeche Mode that unintentionally - and mostly unaware - spearheaded this new assault. From cult status in America for much of the decade, their new high-play rotation on what was now termed Modern Rock radio resulted in mega stadium performances. An Electro act playing sold out arenas was not common fare in the USA at that time!

In 1990, fan pandemonium in New York to greet the members at a central record shop made TV news, and their "Violator" album outselling Madonna and Prince in the same year made them a US household name. Electronic music was here to stay, without a doubt!

1990's Onward: The Second Golden Era of Electronic Music for the Masses

Before our 'star music' secured its hold on the US mainstream, and while it was losing commercial ground elsewhere throughout much of the mid 1980's, Detroit and Chicago became unassuming laboratories for an explosion of Electronic Music which would see out much of the 1990's and onwards. Enter Techno and House.

Detroit in the 1980's, a post-Fordism US industrial wasteland, produced the harder European influenced Techno. In the early to mid 80's, Detroiter Juan Atkins, an obsessive Kraftwerk fan, together with Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson - using primitive, often borrowed equipment - formed the backbone of what would become, together with House, the predominant music club-culture throughout the world. Heavily referenced artists that informed early Techno development were European pioneers such as the aforementioned Kraftwerk, as well as Yello and British Electro acts the likes of Depeche Mode, Human League, Heaven 17, New Order and Cabaret Voltaire.

Chicago, a four-hour drive away, simultaneously saw the development of House. The name is generally considered to be derived from "The Warehouse" where various DJ-Producers featured this new music amalgam. House has its roots in 1970's disco and, unlike Techno, usually has some form of vocal. I think Giorgio Moroder's work in the mid 70's with Donna Summer, especially the song 'I Feel Love', is pivotal in appreciating the 70's disco influences upon burgeoning Chicago House.

A myriad of variants and sub genres have developed since - crossing the Atlantic, reworked and back again - but in many ways the popular success of these two core forms revitalized the entire Electronic landscape and its associated social culture. Techno and House helped to profoundly challenge mainstream and Alternative Rock as the preferred listening choice for a new generation: a generation who has grown up with electronic music and accepts it as a given. For them, it is music that has always been.

The history of electronic music continues to be written as technology advances and people's expectations of where music can go continues to push it forward, increasing its vocabulary and lexicon.

Related Site study music

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5starcinema · 3 years

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What would you say to a Raymond Chandler-style murder mystery set in 1920s Germany that stars Volker Bruch (a subtle genetic blend of a Young Dennis Hopper and Montgomery Clift) as a PTSD-addled cop, and cute little Lisa Fries as a Weimar-era Nancy Drew? And done on a budget that would embarrass all of Hollywood combined, and crafted with attention to absurd, gorgeous detail that makes Wes Anderson seem carefree.

Hold that notion for a moment.

Babylon Berlin’s noir-infused narrative crawls alongside Germany’s rise to power, which we’ve seen in various productions dozens of times. But rather than stern drama, it’s instead a massive-scale fantasia (the most expensive television production in history) that employs the tropes and features of musicals, surrealism, police procedural, occult mystery, and cliffhanger serials.

Whole episodes seem at times solely devoted to offering brief devotions on the topics of architecture, psychoanalysis, fanaticism, Jugendstil Art Deco, surrealism, or cinema itself. But it’s all done as a delirious (if grim) visual tour, as opposed to a lecture.

I’m not doing the series justice here. Bear in mind that this is a Tom Tykwer project, and it revisits the imaginative, perverse energy of his Run Lola Run and Winter Sleepers work. It gets weirder and broader than all that, by far.

The aesthetic and vibe bring to mind Werner Herzog re-doing the entire “Avengers” British television series of the 1960s as a tribute to Fritz Lang and Neitzsche, or Paul Thomas Anderson reimagining Cabaret as one big episode of “Law & Order.”

It should be seen on a huge HD screen. Just wait until you get a load of the Hermann Platz and Rosenthaler Platz U-Bahn stations, or the Rotes Rathaus city hall on Alexanderplatz. It’s almost like the very sets and structures are characters in this bizarre, heartbreaking story.

Thanks to this series, I’ve had Roxy Music’s “Dance Away” in my head for the past few weeks. No, not the version we all grew up with. I mean the jazz age, klezmer-esque, Kurt Weill-ish version that—with a kind of reverse hauntology—woozily snakes its way through this mesmerizing, almost indescribable tale.

That song is about escaping the heartache of betrayal by getting lost in a pleasant diversion, to the point of obsession. That’s how romance and dating turn out sometimes. Babylon Berlin is about escaping betrayal and heartache because, well, that’s how history and culture turn out sometimes.

In 1920s Berlin, the dancing, along with numerous other diversions that are as perverse, frenetic, dark, and addictive as they want to be, take place in clubs and bars and brothels. Other folks are dancing in the streets, so to speak, in brutal clashes between numerous, barely distinguishable factions of Communists, Social Democrats, and the Berliner Polizist cops. There’s also a group of Trotskyites who can’t catch a break, and countless dual loyalties among Right and Left wings complicating the internecine fights that plague each political group. (Yes, the series does call for a Weimar politics flow chart at times.)

Most intriguing is that there’s hardly a Nazi to be found in the mix, unless you count the occasional dust-up with a few dozen Sturmabteilung bullies (those clumsy lads in sad, military-surplus brown shirts and little red arm bands).

There does seem to be a larger, more organized group waiting in the wings. Bunch of resentful holdovers from the First World War. Old, humorless guys in quite striking forest-green felduniform. Sure, it’s an army, but everyone in Germany in 1928 knows there aren’t going to be any more wars; that’s verrückt talk.

Speaking of crazy, the series has the main character’s mental illness, in the form of post-traumatic stress, function as a metaphor for the Weimar zeitgeist. It might seem like a facile reduction, especially if it were done in service to the notion that the cure is worse than the illness. But something else happens.

The close study of multiple characters in this series suggests that history may not always be guided by x-number of people getting swept up by something larger than themselves. Or by a mad leader. Yes, a lot of folks march, shout, and fight in unison. But in this realm, major social changes are catalyzed by discrete (and often discreet), traumatic, life-altering personal histories that, solely by accident of geographical proximity, coalesce into what we would call a movement or a cause.

The world did witness the worst possible manifestations of “the madness of crowds” with what followed in Germany during the 1930s. But a deeper examination of what’s known as “the human experience” might reveal that each German was crazy alone before all of them were crazy together.

#babylon berlin #tom tykwer

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chrisbitten123 · 4 years

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Electronic Music History and Today's Best Modern Proponents!

lectronic music history pre-dates the rock and roll era by decades. Most of us were not even on this planet when it began its often obscure, under-appreciated and misunderstood development. Today, this 'other worldly' body of sound which began close to a century ago, may no longer appear strange and unique as new generations have accepted much of it as mainstream, but it's had a bumpy road and, in finding mass audience acceptance, a slow one.

The Turn of the 20th Century

Time stood still for this stargazer when I originally discovered that the first documented, exclusively electronic, concerts were not in the 1970's or 1980's but in the 1920's!

The first purely electronic instrument, the Theremin, which is played without touch, was invented by Russian scientist and cellist, Lev Termen (1896-1993), circa 1919.

Electronic Music in Sci-Fi, Cinema and Television

It is featured on the theme to the original 1960's TV series "Star Trek", and can be heard on contemporary recordings by the likes of Radiohead and Brian Ferry.

The expressive multi-timbral Ondes Martenot, although monophonic, is the closest instrument of its generation I have heard which approaches the sound of modern synthesis.

"Forbidden Planet", released in 1956, was the first major commercial studio film to feature an exclusively electronic soundtrack... aside from introducing Robbie the Robot and the stunning Anne Francis! The ground-breaking score was produced by husband and wife team Louis and Bebe Barron who, in the late 1940's, established the first privately owned recording studio in the USA recording electronic experimental artists such as the iconic John Cage (whose own Avante Garde work challenged the definition of music itself!).

The 1970's expanded electronic music's profile with the break through of bands like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, and especially the 1980's when it found more mainstream acceptance.

The Mid 1900's: Musique Concrete

1950's: The First Computer and Synth Play Music

1960's: The Dawning of The Age of Moog

I cannot close the chapter on the 1960's, however, without reference to the Mellotron. This electronic-mechanical instrument is often viewed as the primitive precursor to the modern digital sampler.

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chiseler · 4 years

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3000 Beatniks Riot

Half a century before Occupy Wall Street, young protesters occupied Greenwich Village's Washington Square Park. Like OWS, they ended up clashing with the police. Unlike OWS so far, their protest produced a small but practical and lasting change.

In the spring of 1961, the Washington Square Association, a community group of homeowners around the square, appealed to New York City's Department of Parks and Recreation to do something about the hundreds of "roving troubadours and their followers" playing music around the square's turned-off fountain on Sunday afternoons. They were mostly college kids, playing guitars and banjos and singing folk songs. The practice had started in the post-war years, when Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger planted the seeds of the folk musical revival in the Village. By 1961 it had grown enough that both the police and the neighbors found the "troubadours" and the tourists they attracted a nuisance. In his posthumously-published memoir, Dave Van Ronk recalls that there were various cliques in the park: a Zionist group singing and dancing "Hava Nagila," Stalinists, bluegrass fans, folk traditionalists. Black journalist John A. Williams reported that the locals' complaints were not really musical but social: "In the ensuing meetings with city officials, it became apparent that what was opposed was not so much folk singing as the increasing presence of mixed couples in the area, mostly Negro men and white women." In the late 1950s the parks commission began issuing permits to limit the number of musicians, allowing them to "sing and play from two until five as long as they had no drums," Van Ronk writes. This "kept out the bongo players. The Village had bongo players up the wazoo... and we hated them. So that was some consolation." He doesn't mention that those bongo-players were very often black. This racial aspect had an old historical precedent in Greenwich Village. In 1819, white residents of the area complained "of being much annoyed by certain persons of color practising as Musician with Drums and other instruments through the Village."

In 1961 the parks commissioner responded to the complaints by refusing to issue any permits at all. Izzy Young of the Folklore Center and others organized a peaceful protest demonstration. On Sunday, April 9, 1961, a few hundred young people gathered, attracting a few hundred more spectators. Among the latter was eighteen-year-old Dan Drasin, a mild-mannered kid who liked to hang out in the park. He brought one of the big, boxy film cameras of the era and documented the afternoon in a short black-and-white film, Sunday. The film shows clean-cut college and high school kids, many of the girls in Jackie O hairdos and heels, many of the boys looking like the young Allen Ginsbergs with serious, sensitive, owlish faces behind heavy black-framed glasses. They carry hand-written placards and cardboard guitars and argue with the dozens of beefy, florid-faced cops who've shown up. Izzy Young, also bespectacled and in jacket and tie, lectures the cops about the constitutional right to make music as the kids sit in a circle in the dry fountain and sing "This Land Is Your Land" and "The Star-Spangled Banner." As protests go it all looks low-key and polite. Then paddy wagons arrive and the cops haul off one nebbishy young man cradling an autoharp, pushing him into a prowl car. According to Drasin, most of the singers and musicians had left the park, leaving the few hundred spectators loitering around the fountain, when the cops' tempers finally boiled over. They wade into the crowd, shoving boys and girls to the ground, mauling them, dragging a handful into the paddy wagons. Reportedly they knocked some heads with their clubs, although it's not shown in the film. The whole event, Drasin says, lasted maybe two hours.

The next day, the New York Daily Mirror, the conservative Hearst tabloid, ran a giant war-is-over front page headline, "3000 BEATNIKS RIOT IN VILLAGE." Other local papers followed suit. That week's Voice scoffed at the Mirror's "hysterical" coverage, wondering if there were three thousand beatniks in the entire country that Sunday, let alone in Washington Square Park. By May, the outrage caused by the cops' overreaction forced the city to back down and issue permits, a practice that continues to this day.

Among the protesters hauled off that day was the Village character H. L. "Doc" Humes, identified in the Mirror as a "scofflaw" and the "mob leader." Humes was a gregarious polymath, a novelist and raconteur, co-founder of The Paris Review, designer of cheap housing made from old newspapers, director of a lost film updating the Don Quixote story as Don Peyote, LSD pioneer with Timothy Leary, later helper to Norman Mailer when he ran for mayor in 1969, later still a paranoid drug casualty who believed UFOs, CIA and the Pope in Rome were out to get him. He would not have been a stranger to the cops in the park that day. Just a few months earlier, he'd had a very public spat with Police Commissioner Stephen Kennedy.

It started in October 1960, when cops shut down a performance by Lord Buckley at the Jazz Gallery in the East Village. Lord Buckley was a stately man with sleek gray hair and a pointy Daliesque mustache, who often performed in a tux and orated in a plummy, faux-British voice, seeming every bit the vaudeville and burlesque master of ceremonies he once was. But what came out of his mouth was pure hepcat jive he'd learned from the jazz musicians and pot-smokers with whom he'd associated since the 1930s. In the 1950s he started to recast biblical stories, historical texts like the Gettysburg Address, and Shakespeare in White Negro proto-rap: "Hipsters, flipsters and finger-poppin' daddies, knock me your lobes. I came here to lay Caesar out, not to hip you to him." It sounds like novelty schtick today, but in Eisenhower's America there was something inherently subversive about a man who looked like the maitre d' at a fancy restaurant jiving like a viper. "His Royal Hipness" had a lot of fans and friends downtown, where he performed and hung out whenever he was in New York.

The cops halted Buckley's gig because of a problem with his cabaret card. Since 1941, anyone who worked in a New York City nightclub, from performers to the hat check girl and the busboys, had to get fingerprinted and carry a picture ID card. If you had any police record, you couldn't have a card, which meant you couldn't work. It was intended to weed the Mob out of the nightclub business, but it could be disastrous for performers. Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker all had their cards yanked for drug violations; Lenny Bruce lost his because of an obscenity conviction; exotic dancer Sally Rand, refused a card in 1947 because the cops thought her fan dance too risqué, took the NYPD to court over it and won. Buckley lost his because he'd failed to report a pot bust that went back to the 1940s. Without the card, he couldn't perform in New York City, including a scheduled appearance on his old friend Ed Sullivan's tv show (they'd toured together with the USO during the war).

Despondent, Buckley called his pal Humes. Humes talked his Paris Review friend George Plimpton into letting Buckley give a little performance at a party in his Upper East Side apartment, with the idea that Plimpton's influential crowd might help him get Buckley's card reinstated. With Village jazzman David Amram at the piano, Buckley went into his schtick. The response was cool. Plimpton's literary swells had come to sip cocktails and talk about themselves, not listen to Village-y jazzbo jive. Buckley the old vaudevillian worked hard to win them over, pulling out bit after bit, overstaying his unwelcome. As the crowd grew increasingly bored and angry, Norman Mailer started heckling. Amram remembers that Buckley finally gave up, then "came over to the piano and whispered in my ear, 'Let's split and get out of here, man.'"

It turned out to be Lord Buckley's farewell performance. He died of a stroke shortly afterwards, at the age of fifty-four. Art D'Lugoff offered the use of the Village Gate for a memorial service, at which Ornette Coleman and Dizzy Gillespie played for a large crowd of Buckley's friends and admirers. He was laid to out at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel on the Upper East Side, New York's funeral home to the stars. (Rudolph Valentino, John Lennon, Jackie Onassis, Nikola Tesla, James Cagney, Igor Stravinsky, Norman Mailer, Heath Ledger, Judy Garland and Candy Darling were all laid out there.)

Humes, Mailer, Amram and others then started a public campaign to end the cabaret card system. Humes charged that police harassment had killed Buckley, and claimed that if Buckley had only slipped the right cop a hundred bucks the whole thing would have been settled under the table. That enraged Commissioner Kennedy, who retaliated by tossing Humes in jail for unpaid parking tickets and ordering up the biggest crackdown on cabarets and nightclubs in years, sending cops to more than 1200 venues looking for non-card-carrying workers. But this protest worked as well. Kennedy was sacked for his overreaction, and though it took another seven years, the cabaret card system was eventually abolished.

by John Strausbaugh

#John Strausbaugh #Beatnicks #The Chiseler

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revistageracaoz · 5 years

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Os 100 melhores filmes nacionais

Em 2015, a Associação Brasileira de Críticos de Cinema (Abraccine) publicou uma lista com os 100 melhores filmes brasileiros de todos os tempos de acordo com os votos de seus membros. Esta pesquisa foi a base para um livro chamado Os 100 Melhores Filmes Brasileiros, publicado em 2016. A idéia do ranking e do livro foi sugerida pela editora Letramento, com quem a Abraccine e a rede de televisão Canal Brasil co-lançaram o livro. A classificação foi feita com base em listas individuais feitas pelos 100 críticos da Abraccine, que inicialmente mencionaram 379 filmes. A lista completa foi disponibilizada ao público pela primeira vez em 26 de novembro de 2015, e o livro foi lançado em 1º de setembro de 2016.

A lista abrange quase todas as décadas entre a década de 1930 e a de 2010, sendo a única exceção a década de 1940. Um filme de 1931, Limite de Mário Peixoto, é o mais antigo e também o primeiro classificado, enquanto o mais recente é de 2015, A Segunda Mãe, de Anna Muylaert. A chanchada (comédias musicais dos anos 30-50) é representada por O Homem do Sputnik (1959), de Carlos Manga, enquanto há uma infinidade de filmes dos anos 60-1970, incluindo Cinema Novo e Cinema marginal. Quase um terço dos filmes era do período Retomada (1995 em diante), e a lista incluía não só longas-metragens, mas também documentários e curtas-metragens. O diretor do Cinema Novo, Glauber Rocha, é o cineasta com mais filmes na lista: cinco; seguido por Rogério Sganzerla, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Héctor Babenco e Carlos Reichenbach, cada um com quatro filmes.

1. Limite (1931), de Mario Peixoto 2. Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (1964), de Glauber Rocha 3. Vidas Secas (1963), de Nelson Pereira dos Santos 4. Cabra Marcado para Morrer (1984), de Eduardo Coutinho 5. Terra em Transe (1967), de Glauber Rocha 6. O Bandido da Luz Vermelha (1968), de Rogério Sganzerla 7. São Paulo S/A (1965), de Luís Sérgio Person 8. Cidade de Deus (2002), de Fernando Meirelles 9. O Pagador de Promessas (1962), de Anselmo Duarte 10. Macunaíma (1969), de Joaquim Pedro de Andrade 11. Central do Brasil (1998), de Walter Salles 12. Pixote, a Lei do Mais Fraco (1981), de Hector Babenco 13. Ilha das Flores (1989), de Jorge Furtado 14. Eles Não Usam Black-Tie (1981), de Leon Hirszman 15. O Som ao Redor (2012), de Kleber Mendonça Filho 16. Lavoura Arcaica (2001), de Luiz Fernando Carvalho 17. Jogo de Cena (2007), de Eduardo Coutinho 18. Bye Bye, Brasil (1979), de Carlos Diegues 19. Assalto ao Trem Pagador (1962), de Roberto Farias 20. São Bernardo (1974), de Leon Hirszman 21. Iracema, uma Transa Amazônica (1975), de Jorge Bodansky e Orlando Senna 22. Noite Vazia (1964), de Walter Hugo Khouri 23. Os Fuzis (1964), de Ruy Guerra 24. Ganga Bruta (1933), de Humberto Mauro 25. Bang Bang (1971), de Andrea Tonacci 26. A Hora e a Vez de Augusto Matraga (1968), de Roberto Santos 27. Rio, 40 Graus (1955), de Nelson Pereira dos Santos 28. Edifício Master (2002), de Eduardo Coutinho 29. Memórias do Cárcere (1984), de Nelson Pereira dos Santos 30. Tropa de Elite (2007), de José Padilha 31. O Padre e a Moça (1965), de Joaquim Pedro de Andrade 32. Serras da Desordem (2006), de Andrea Tonacci 33. Santiago (2007), de João Moreira Salles 34. O Dragão da Maldade contra o Santo Guerreiro (1969), de Glauber Rocha 35. Tropa de Elite 2 – O Inimigo Agora é Outro (2010), de José Padilha 36. O Invasor (2002), de Beto Brant 37. Todas as Mulheres do Mundo (1967), de Domingos Oliveira 38. Matou a Família e Foi ao Cinema (1969), de Julio Bressane 39. Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos (1976), de Bruno Barreto 40. Os Cafajestes (1962), de Ruy Guerra 41. O Homem do Sputnik (1959), de Carlos Manga 42. A Hora da Estrela (1985), de Suzana Amaral 43. Sem Essa Aranha (1970), de Rogério Sganzerla 44. SuperOutro (1989), de Edgard Navarro 45. Filme Demência (1986), de Carlos Reichenbach 46. À Meia-Noite Levarei Sua Alma (1964), de José Mojica Marins 47. Terra Estrangeira (1996), de Walter Salles e Daniela Thomas 48. A Mulher de Todos (1969), de Rogério Sganzerla 49. Rio, Zona Norte (1957), de Nelson Pereira dos Santos 50. Alma Corsária (1993), de Carlos Reichenbach 51. A Margem (1967), de Ozualdo Candeias 52. Toda Nudez Será Castigada (1973), de Arnaldo Jabor 53. Madame Satã (2000), de Karim Ainouz 54. A Falecida (1965), de Leon Hirzman 55. O Despertar da Besta – Ritual dos Sádicos (1969), de José Mojica Marins 56. Tudo Bem (1978), de Arnaldo Jabor (1978) 57. A Idade da Terra (1980), de Glauber Rocha 58. Abril Despedaçado (2001), de Walter Salles 59. O Grande Momento (1958), de Roberto Santos 60. O Lobo Atrás da Porta (2014), de Fernando Coimbra 61. O Beijo da Mulher-Aranha (1985), de Hector Babenco 62. O Homem que Virou Suco (1980), de João Batista de Andrade 63. O Auto da Compadecida (1999), de Guel Arraes 64. O Cangaceiro (1953), de Lima Barreto 65. A Lira do Delírio (1978), de Walter Lima Junior 66. O Caso dos Irmãos Naves (1967), de Luís Sérgio Person 67. Ônibus 174 (2002), de José Padilha 68. O Anjo Nasceu (1969), de Julio Bressane 69. Meu Nome é… Tonho (1969), de Ozualdo Candeias 70. O Céu de Suely (2006), de Karim Ainouz 71. Que Horas Ela Volta? (2015), de Anna Muylaert 72. Bicho de Sete Cabeças (2001), de Laís Bondanzky 73. Tatuagem (2013), de Hilton Lacerda 74. Estômago (2010), de Marcos Jorge 75. Cinema, Aspirinas e Urubus (2005), de Marcelo Gomes 76. Baile Perfumado (1997), de Paulo Caldas e Lírio Ferreira 77. Pra Frente, Brasil (1982), de Roberto Farias 78. Lúcio Flávio, o Passageiro da Agonia (1976), de Hector Babenco 79. O Viajante (1999), de Paulo Cezar Saraceni 80. Anjos do Arrabalde (1987), de Carlos Reichenbach 81. Mar de Rosas (1977), de Ana Carolina 82. O País de São Saruê (1971), de Vladimir Carvalho 83. A Marvada Carne (1985), de André Klotzel 84. Sargento Getúlio (1983), de Hermano Penna 85. Inocência (1983), de Walter Lima Jr. 86. Amarelo Manga (2002), de Cláudio Assis 87. Os Saltimbancos Trapalhões (1981), de J.B. Tanko 88. Di (1977), de Glauber Rocha 89. Os Inconfidentes (1972), de Joaquim Pedro de Andrade 90. Esta Noite Encarnarei no Teu Cadáver (1966), de José Mojica Marins 91. Cabaret Mineiro (1980), de Carlos Alberto Prates Correia 92. Chuvas de Verão (1977), de Carlos Diegues 93. Dois Córregos (1999), de Carlos Reichenbach 94. Aruanda (1960), de Linduarte Noronha 95. Carandiru (2003), de Hector Babenco 96. Blá Blá Blá (1968), de Andrea Tonacci 97. O Signo do Caos (2003), de Rogério Sganzerla 98. O Ano em que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias (2006), de Cao Hamburger 99. Meteorango Kid, Herói Intergaláctico (1969), de Andre Luis Oliveira 100. Guerra Conjugal (1975), de Joaquim Pedro de Andrade (*) 101. Bar Esperança, o Último que Fecha (1983), de Hugo Carvana (*)

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herenciarumbera · 2 years

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COSITAS QUE TIENE CUBA con Gaspar Marrero En Guantánamo – Orquesta Sensación con Abelardo Barroso "Una noche, en el antiguo cabaret habanero nombrado La Campana, se reunieron Jesús Gorís, propietario de los discos Puchito; Rolando Valdés, director de la Orquesta Sensación, y un veterano cantante entonces retirado. Este hace una petición: Rolando, yo quisiera grabar con tu orquesta un bolerito. Rolando Valdés sabía quién era aquel hombre. Había hecho época con el Sexteto Habanero y con el danzonete de los años 1930."... https://herenciarumberaradio.com/en-guantanamo-abelardo-barroso-con-la-orquesta-sensacion/ En COSITAS QUE TIENE CUBA," En Guantánamo"- Orquesta Sensación con Abelardo Barroso También pueden disfrutar de esta obra discográfica que forma parte de la historia de la música cubana en Estreno cada lunes y durante toda la semana al minuto 50 en la programación regular de Herencia Rumbera Radio vía nuestras plataformas virtuales Descarga y actualiza nuestra app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=red.simpleapp.herenciarumbera Página Web https://www.herenciarumberaradio.com/ TuneIn https://tunein.com/radio/Herencia-Rumbera-s268720/ Radio Garden http://radio.garden/listen/herencia-rumbera-radio/7vF-acFD Únete a nuestro Canal de Telegram https://t.me/herenciarumberaradio Grupo de Chat Telegram: https://t.me/hrumberachat Listas de Radio Raddios https://www.raddios.com/12968-radio-online-herencia-rumbera-radio-online-lima-peru Radio Box https://onlineradiobox.com/pe/herenciarumbera/ Radios.com https://radios.com.pe/herencia-rumbera My Tuner https://mytuner-radio.com/radio/herencia-rumbera-433815/ Radio Streema https://streema.com/radios/Herencia_Rumbera Radio es https://www.radio.es/s/herenciarumbera Herencia Rumbera Radio difundiendo la Música Cubana y Afrolatina de todos los tiempos #HerenciaRumberaRadio #CositasQueTieneCuba #EnGuantánamo #OrquestaSensación #AbelardoBarroso https://www.instagram.com/p/CeheFiJMS3I/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#herenciarumberaradio #cositasquetienecuba #enguantánamo #orquestasensación #abelardobarroso

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ruegracieuse · 6 years

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I was tagged by @bironism - merci mille fois, chérie! These questions were so inspiring!

Rules: answer the following questions and tag 10 blogs you would like to get to know.

What movie do you wish you were a character in?

The Third Man or some other post- (or pre-) war noir/espionage thriller for the intrigue and mystery of it all, The English Patient for the grand and tragic romance, most of all I’d like to be a Nouvelle Vague heroine/the subject of some Nadja à Paris-type documentary. Or The Love Witch for the costumes/makeup/magic powers.

Create your dream fragrance; what would the ingredients be like?

I don’t know much about the science of scent but my perfume would be dark and classic, have a slight tingle reminiscent maybe of incense or sandalwood or old dusty books, with some notes of camellia and citrus to give it a little lift.

As a siren, what bewitching song would you sing to lure people to their doom?

I’d probably like to live my fantasies of being a tragic jazz bar singer in the 1930s so my repertoire would be songs in various languages from this era, plus a lot of old French chansons (think Jacques Brel, Piaf, Juliette Gréco, probably some Gainsbourg)

*clicks shoes together three times* Anywhere in the world (fantasy or reality) where would you go?

I’d give anything to see the following cities in the 50s/60s: Paris, London, New York (also the 70s), Rome, Berlin (also 20s Berlin), I’d go to fin-de-siècle Vienna and Budapest, pre-Revolution Iran, pre-war Syria, Byzantine Turkey... as for realistic travels, the next places on my agenda that I am really desperate to see are Russia and the Baltic States (in autumn if possible), Greece and the Balkan states, more of Turkey, and India.

Similar to Harry Potter, if you could reside in a painting, which one would you choose?

this is such a good, and tough, question! this is answering a slightly different question but I’ve always felt an affinity with Hopper’s paintings of quiet moments of modern-day isolation (particularly the girl in the hotel room), but as for aspirational paintings... I suppose living in a Fragonard would be a good time, or! I would love to be one of Goya’s Spanish ladies in lace.

Like the symbols associated with the Greek gods and goddesses; what would be your chosen symbol to embody you as a person? (E.g. some symbols of Aphrodite are dove and sparrows.)

lilac roses, swans, battered paperbacks, grey cats, rain clouds, moonstone

If you were to create your own Met Gala theme, what would it be based on?

can I steal @bironism‘s idea of 1930s Berlin cabaret? That’s obviously the best possible theme, I would live for all the Dietrich references. Also, building on the idea of living in a Fragonard painting, maybe a Rococo theme would be fun? Or flamenco/Andalusia, or, and I’m not sure how one would word this theme neatly, the metaphors/personifications of diseases throughout history might be a rich subject - people could come dressed as the Spanish Lady influenza (like they did back in the 20s, a mix of high fashion and bad taste), the ghost of the swamp, or of death... maybe just a death theme, it would be gruesome but it’s been such a rich aesthetic subject area for artists all over the world since the beginning of time, I think you’d get some interesting interpretations. Ooh, or Russian literature? I’m not sure how you’d make that into a Met exhibition but imagine all the (faux) furry hats and trim and velvet...

What seven objects would you choose to hide your soul in?

I’m going to have to take one of @bironism‘s answers again and say my diary because at least part of my soul is probably in there as it is, an old paperback copy of one of my favourite books, an empty perfume bottle, either an orange tree or a camellia tree, a postcard with an old photo on it, the ballerina figurine my grandmother gave to me when I was born, and either a chair or a statue in the Jardin du Luxembourg

You’re whistling while you work, what animals would you like to come and join?

any mammal or bird! (reptiles can come too, sorry insects)

Like the story of Swan Lake, what mythical creature/beings from folklore would you like to transform into by day?

I recently did a quiz to see which mythical creature I would be and apparently I’m a kitsune (fox or fox-spirit in Japanese folklore), which possesses high intelligence and magical powers, which I quite like the sound of. I also wouldn’t mind being a nymph or a nereid.

further tagging: @sapphoney, @oftheorchids, @dearorpheus, @morbiddcuriosity, @quaintblues, @sacredsister, @mercurieux, @wolfgina, @madame-amour, @orphicmuse + really anyone who wants to try this, these questions are really interesting

#me

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blackkudos · 6 years

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Celia Cruz

Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso, also known by her stage name Celia Cruz (October 21, 1925 – July 16, 2003), was a Cuban singer of Latin music. The most popular Latin artist of the 20th century, she earned twenty-three gold albums and was a recipient of the National Medal of Arts. She was renowned internationally as the "Queen of Salsa", "La Guarachera de Cuba", as well as The Queen of Latin Music.

She spent much of her career working in the United States and several Latin American countries. Leila Cobo of Billboard Magazine once said "Cruz is indisputably the best known and most influential female figure in the history of Cuban and Latin music".

Early life

Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso was born on October 21, 1925 in the diverse, working-class neighborhood of Santos Suárez in Havana, Cuba, the second of four children. Her father, Simon Cruz, was a railroad stoker and her mother, Catalina Alfonso was a homemaker who took care of an extended family of fourteen.

While growing up in Cuba's diverse 1930s musical climate, Cruz listened to many musicians who influenced her adult career, including Fernando Collazo, Abelardo Barroso, Pablo Quevedo and Arsenio Rodríguez. Despite her mother's opposition and the fact that she was Catholic, as a child Cruz learned santería songs from her neighbor who practiced santería. Cruz also later studied the words to Yoruba songs with colleague Mercedita Valdés (an Akpwon santería singer) from Cuba and made various recordings of this religious genre, even singing backup for other female akpwons like Candita Batista.

As a teenager, her aunt took her and her cousin to cabarets to sing, but her father encouraged her to attend school in the hope she would become a teacher. However, one of her teachers told her that as an entertainer she could earn in one day what most Cuban teachers earned in a month. Cruz began singing at Havana's radio station Radio García Serra as a contestant on this station's popular "Hora del Té" daily broadcast, where she sang the tango "Nostalgias" and won a cake as first-place finisher. She often won cakes and also opportunities to participate in more contests. Her first recordings were made in 1948 in Venezuela.

Career

With Sonora Matancera, she appeared in cameos in some Mexican films such as Rincón Criollo (1950), Una gallega en La Habana(1955) and Amorcito Corazón (1961).

When Fidel Castro assumed control of Cuba in 1959, Cruz and her husband, Pedro Knight, were prohibited from returning to their homeland and became citizens of the United States. In 1966, Cruz and Tito Puente began an association that would lead to eight albums for Tico Records. The albums were not as successful as expected. However, Puente and Cruz later joined the Vaya Records label. There, she joined accomplished pianist Larry Harlow and was soon headlining a concert at New York's Carnegie Hall.

Cruz's 1974 album with Johnny Pacheco, Celia y Johnny, was very successful, and Cruz soon found herself in a group named the Fania All-Stars, which was an ensemble of salsa musicians from every orchestra signed by the Fania label (owner of Vaya Records). With the Fania All-Stars, Cruz had the opportunity to visit England, France, Zaire (today's DR Congo), and to return to tour Latin America; her performance in Zaire is included in the film Soul Power. In the late 1970s, she participated in an Eastern Air Lines commercial in Puerto Rico, singing the catchy phrase ¡Esto sí es volar! (This is to truly fly!).

In 1976, she participated in a documentary film Salsa about the Latin culture, along with figures like Dolores del Río and Willie Colón.

Celia Cruz used to sing the identifying spot for WQBA radio station in Miami, formerly known as "La Cubanísima": "I am the voice of Cuba, from this land, far away...I am liberty, I am WQBA, the most Cuban! (Yo soy de Cuba, la voz, desde esta tierra lejana...soy libertad, soy WQBA, Cubanísima!) During the 1980s, Cruz made many tours in Latin America and Europe, doing multiple concerts and television shows wherever she went, and singing both with younger stars and stars of her own era. She began a crossover of sorts, when she participated in the 1988 feature film Salsa alongside Robby Draco Rosa.

In 1990, Cruz won a Grammy Award for Best Tropical Latin Performance – Ray Barretto & Celia Cruz – Ritmo en el Corazón. She later recorded an anniversary album with Sonora Matancera. In 1992, she starred with Armand Assante and Antonio Banderas in the filmThe Mambo Kings. In 1994, President Bill Clinton awarded Cruz the National Medal of Arts. In the same year, she was inducted intoBillboards Latin Music Hall of Fame along with fellow Cuban musician Cachao López. In 1999, Cruz was inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame in 1999. In 2001, she recorded a new album, on which Johnny Pacheco was one of the producers.

On July 16, 2002, Cruz performed to a full house at the free outdoor performing arts festival Central Park SummerStage in New York City. During the performance she sang "Bemba Colora'." A live recording of this song was subsequently made available in 2005 on a commemorative CD honoring the festival's then 20-year history entitled, "Central Park SummerStage: Live from the Heart of the City". Cruz appeared on the Dionne Warwick albums 1998 Dionne Sings Dionne & 2006 My Friends & Me with their Latin Duet version of (Do You Know The Way To) San Jose.

In March 2003, the Spanish-language television network Telemundo produced and aired a tribute special honoring Cruz, ¡Celia Cruz: Azúcar!. It was hosted by American singer Marc Anthony and Cuban-American singer Gloria Estefan. It featured musical performances by various Latin music and Anglo performers including Victor Manuelle, Paulina Rubio, José Feliciano, Milly Quezada, Los Tri-O, Estefan, Patti Labelle, Arturo Sandoval, Ana Gabriel, Gilberto Santa Rosa, Tito Nieves, Albita, Johnny Pacheco, Alicia Villareal, Olga Tañón, Mikey Perfecto, José Alberto "El Canario", Rosario, Luis Enrique, Anthony and Gloria Gaynor.

Death

On July 16, 2003, Cruz died of brain cancer at her home in Fort Lee, New Jersey, at the age of 77. Her husband, Pedro Knight (died February 3, 2007), was there for her while she was going through cancer treatments. She had no children with him. After her death, her body was taken to lie in state in Miami's Freedom Tower, where more than 200,000 fans paid their final respects. Multiple vigils occurred worldwide in cities such as Havana, Miami, and Cali (the Cali vigil became notorious in Colombian history due to its three-day span) Knight had Cruz buried in a granite mausoleum that he had built in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City earlier in 2003, when she was dying. Knight chose the plot on which it stands, which is near the gravestones of Duke Ellington and Miles Davis because it was accessible to fans and had four windows built into it so that fans could see inside when paying their respects. Knight was known to share his time there with visiting fans. Knight himself was buried with Cruz in the same mausoleum following his death on February 3, 2007. An epilogue in her autobiography notes that, in accordance with her wishes, Cuban soil which she had saved from a visit to Guantánamo Bay was used in her entombment.

Legacy

In February 2004, her last album, Regalo del Alma, won a posthumous award at the Premios Lo Nuestro for best salsa release of the year. It was announced in December 2005 that a musical called Azucar! would open in Tenerife before touring the world. The name comes from Cruz's well-known catch phrase of "¡Azúcar!"

On June 4, 2004, the heavily Cuban-American community of Union City, New Jersey heralded its annual Cuban Day Parade by dedicating its new Celia Cruz Park (also known as Celia Cruz Plaza), which features a sidewalk star in her honor, at 31st Street and Bergenline Avenue, with Cruz's widower, Pedro Knight, present. There are four other similar dedications to Cruz around the world. Cruz's star has expanded into Union City's "Walk of Fame", as new marble stars are added each spring to honor Latin entertainment and media personalities, such as merengue singer Joseíto Mateo, salsa singer La India, Cuban musician Israel "Cachao" Lopez, Cuban tenor Beny Moré, Tito Puente, Spanish language television news anchor Rafael Pineda, salsa pioneer Johnny Pacheco, singer/bandleader Gilberto Santa Rosa and music promoter Ralph Mercado.

On May 18, 2005, the National Museum of American History, administered by the Smithsonian Institution and located in Washington, D.C., opened "¡Azúcar!", an exhibit celebrating the life and music of Celia Cruz. The exhibit highlights important moments in Cruz's life and career through photographs, personal documents, costumes, videos, and music.

On September 26, 2007, through May 25, 2008, Celia, a musical based on the life of Celia Cruz, played at the off-Broadway venue, New World Stages. Some performances were in Spanish and some in English. The show won four 2008 HOLA awards from the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors.

On March 16, 2011, Celia Cruz was honored by the United States Postal Service with a commemorative postage stamp. The Cruz stamp was one of a group of five stamps honoring Latin music greats, also including Selena, Tito Puente, Carmen Miranda, and Carlos Gardel.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History collaborated with photographer Robert Weingarten to create an object-based portrait of Celia Cruz featuring artifacts in the museum. The portrait was unveiled October 3, 2012.

On October 21, 2013, Google honored her with a Google Doodle. At 41st American Music Awards, American singer Jennifer Lopez performed a medley of Cruz's songs.

Discography

Filmography

Salón México (Mexico, 1950)

Una gallega en La Habana (Mexico, 1952)

¡Olé... Cuba! (Mexico/Cuba, 1957)

Affair in Havana (USA/Cuba, 1957)

Amorcito Corazon (Mexico, 1960)

Salsa (Documentary, 1976)

Salsa (USA, 1988)

"Fires Within" (USA, 1991)

The Mambo Kings (USA, 1992)

Valentina (TV) (Mexico, 1993)

The Perez Family (USA, 1995) Luz Pat

El alma no tiene color (TV) (Mexico, 1997)

¡Celia Cruz: Azúcar! (TV) (Tribute, USA, 2003)

Soul Power (Documentary of Kinshasa, Zaire Music Festival 1974) (USA, 2008)

CELIA, Celia Cruz Bio-Drama (2015 on Telemundo)

Wikipedia

#Celia Cruz

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dweemeister · 6 years

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The Blue Angel (1930, Germany)

With the silent era at its conclusion and the rise of Nazism upcoming, German cinema’s brief early sound era shows the visual mastery of what might have been. The Blue Angel is Germany’s first feature-length synchronized sound film and is helmed by Austrian-American Josef von Sternberg in his only German-language production. Von Sternberg had directed a handful of films for Paramount prior to The Blue Angel, including The Docks of New York (1928) and The Last Command (1928). Thematically, The Blue Angel – produced by Universum Film AG (UFA) and distributed in the United States by Paramount – is a departure from von Sternberg’s previous films, while also adopting the aesthetic influences of German expressionism. In these precious few years following the heights of German silent film glory, the audience is treated to a talkie that always feels like a silent film. That incongruity never distracts, and only serves to demonstrate how remarkable The Blue Angel is in an experimental period of filmmaking – a period where few filmmakers could balance the needs of image and sound.

In Weimar Germany, disciplinarian professor Immanuel Rath (Emil Jannings) is the target of pranks and barbed words from his students at an all-male college prep school. One day, he is particularly annoyed by the boys passing around photographs of cabaret performer Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich). Lola performs at a local nightclub called The Blue Angel, and Rath visits in hopes to catch his students there. His students are present, but Rath is overcome by lust after watching Lola perform. Returning the next night with a pair of her panties (that one of his students smuggled into his pocket), he spends the night with her. Rumors spread like the flu, Rath is dismissed from his professorship, and allows himself to be humiliated for what he thinks is love. His downfall is sealed.

The Blue Angel is a tragedy, but has more to do with Greek drama than Shakespeare – the former emphasizes the inescapability of divine fate and the role of human hubris in believing predestination can be overcome; the latter is dictated on the free will of an individual and how their character flaws result in their demise (the flaw need not be hubris, but it is often invoked by Shakespeare). According to von Sternberg, The Blue Angel is making no attempts at political allegory, so his intentions are purely personal. As Rath, Jannings plays his character as a rebuke to the besotted silent film romances seen across Western cinema. Unlike Heinrich Mann’s novel on which this film is based on, The Blue Angel never allows Rath to change himself over the course of his relationship with Lola. Maybe the audience should have sensed this earlier: his personality, his sense of order in the classroom was of strict control. Believing in his intelligence and ability to control his emotions and the situation, he stumbles upon Lola, holding her up to an image of perfection, and believing in that image steadfastly until he finally sees otherwise.

As the film’s seductress, Lola is a charismatic fantasy that men desire (permit some heteronormative language in respect to what the film depicts). But what people desire and what they need are distinct – something that neither Rath nor Lola ever understand. In her introductory scene, Lola is performing onstage, essentially opening herself to the unprocessed feelings of lustful men (young and old). She purrs, “... I have a pianola / that is my joy and pride. / They call me naughty Lola; / the men all go for me. / But I don’t let any man / lay a paw on my keys.”

What does Lola see in Rath that makes her want to be with him? They marry and it is implied that they become intimate. Her side of the relationship alternates between fits of passion and vitriol; intimacy and unfaithfulness; attention and apathy. Amid a society where cabaret performers like Lola could be seen as flighty and licentious, in Rath Lola sees someone who thinks otherwise. But instead of attempting to understand Lola’s anxieties and weaknesses – the viewer senses that, beneath her erotic public performances, there is more to this character that is never depicted – Rath views her as a romantic nonpareil. His ability for critical thought disappears when it comes to this sort of relationship he might never have experienced; his ability for self-reflection tainted by an unbending, stern, studious approach to his students. For her, Rath presents an opportunity to be accepted as something magnificent, something pure that which she nor anyone ever will be.

The film’s sensitivities are with Rath, not Lola. Even in Rath’s most despicable moment, von Sternberg and fellow co-screenwriters Carl Zuckmeyer, Karl Vollmöller, Robert Liebmann ensure that The Blue Angel remains within the tradition of Greek tragedy (with a twist). Where in the original novel Rath embarks upon exacting revenge against the authoritarian society that has shaped his interactions with students, there is no such redemption here. Rath is punished for his dangerous lustfulness – as he should be. Curiously, the predatory Lola – despite becoming a victim of attempted violence in the final minutes – escapes punishment of any type. In Rath’s tragedy, she has discarded what she no longer wants and has gained something/someone she presently desires. No remorse is present, nor does there appear to be any emotional trauma from ending her relationship with Rath. Perhaps the audience should have expected this, given the lyrics to the memorable “Falling in Love Again”, sung by Dietrich twice with music by Friedrich Hollaender and lyrics by Robert Liebmann (these lyrics are from the English-language version of this song; Hollaender adjusted the songs to accommodate Dietrich’s limited, but effective, vocal range):

Love's always been my game, Play it how I may, I was made that way, Can't help it.

If The Blue Angel had been produced primarily in the United States later in the 1930s, this ending could not have been upheld by the censors. Love (or romance or whatever you wish to call it), to Lola, is a fun game to play. And playing by her rules, she has always won. Where Rath experiences a tragedy befitting a German expressionist protagonist, Lola’s inconclusive fate feels contemporary regardless of the film’s Weimar morals.

The film collapses without the performances from its two central stars. Before release, Jannings was the lead if one looked at the billing. He had just won the inaugural Academy Award for Best Actor in von Sternberg’s The Last Command and 1927′s The Way of All Flesh (actors were listed for multiple movies at the first Oscars) – this film was to be his nominal pinnacle. Jannings excelled in playing tortured, disgraced characters and could do no greater here with his physical acting. His performance would be just as spellbinding if The Blue Angel was a silent film. However, Jannings is upstaged by Dietrich the moment she appears on-screen. Dietrich, playing an intemperate woman, became an instant sensation to European and American audiences in this, her twentieth film (and first talkie). But her success in The Blue Angel also served to typecast Dietrich into roles unscrupulous and indiscreetly erotic – pursuing sexual satisfaction at the expense of others’ needs. Von Sternberg doted on Dietrich during production, sparking the ire of Jannings (who entered production hoping to become next Hollywood star, but instead saw his career plummet afterwards due to his heavy German accent and subsequent work Nazi propaganda films) and von Sternberg’s wife (who filed for divorce after the film’s release). Her sensuality defined this film, whether or not the cameras rolled.

Manning the cameras was veteran cinematographer Günther Rittau (Die Nibelungen saga, 1927′s Metropolis). Rittau captures the smoky interior of The Blue Angel nightclub and the seedy nighttime of this unnamed German town to convey a sense of enclosure. Art director Otto Hunte (Die Nibelungen saga, Metropolis) employs distorted geometries – early shots of angled rooftops and jagged roads primes the imagination for the unconventional story to come – and exaggerated shapes and lighting to assist Rittau in achieving the film’s wondrous atmosphere.

This film, like many in the early years of synchronized sound, was shot in two different languages – German and English (yes, the actors had to shoot every seen and recite their lines twice). The above has been written based on the 107-minute uncut German-language version distributed by Kino International, licensed by the Murnau Foundation, and aired on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Consensus says that the German-language version is superior to the English edition.

Predictable though it might be, The Blue Angel is a forceful statement of German filmmaking – it is a film honoring the expressionist past while showcasing its future (a future where many of its innovators would flee the Nazis and work in Hollywood). It would also be one of UFA’s final classics – the studio also released Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), F.W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh (1924), and Fritz Lang’s visionary Metropolis. Von Sternberg’s film, reflecting the drama behind the cameras, is a romantic tragedy that sings of love even when its characters know little about it. The Blue Angel is a triumph that quickly became written into German cinematic history. Its rapid ascent into that history can be attributed to the political changes soon to uproot all that German filmmakers had nourished. This film could not have been made any better in any other time.

My rating: 9.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

#The Blue Angel #Josef von Sternberg #Emil Jannings #Marlene Dietrich #Kurt Gerron #Rosa Valetti #Hans Albers #Reinhold Bernt #Eduard von Winterstein #Gunther Rittau #Otto Hunte #Friedrich Hollaender #Robert Liebmann #Carl Zuckmayer #Karl Volllmoller #TCM #My Movie Odyssey

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loadbags846 · 3 years

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Ragtime King

Overview

Ragtime Kings

The Ragtime King

Ragtime King Banjo

Supertone Banjo Ragtime King

King Of Ragtime Scott Joplin

This auction is for a real vintage USA made 1920’s or older Sears Supertone 5 string banjo, model 407, “Ragtime King”, 22 frets, 30 brackets, made by Lange. Condition is good for the nearly 100 years old that it is! No serious problems, sounds good, pretty loud! The metal parts are all tarnished and/or have minor surface rust from age.

In 1974, the academy award-winning film The Sting brought back the music of Scott Joplin, a black ragtime composer who died in 1917. Led by The Entertainer, one of the most popular pieces of the mid-1970s, a revival of his music resulted in events unprecedented in American musical history. Never before had any composer's music been so acclaimed by both the popular and classical music worlds. While reaching a 'Top Ten' position in the pop charts, Joplin's music was also being performed in classical recitals and setting new heights for sales of classical records. His opera Treemonisha was performed both in opera houses and on Broadway. Destined to be the definitive work on the man and his music, King of Ragtime is written by Edward A. Berlin. A renowned authority on Joplin and the author of the acclaimed and widely cited Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History, Berlin redefines the Scott Joplin biography. Using the tools of a trained musicologist, he has uncovered a vast amount of new information about Joplin. His biography truly documents the story of the composer, replacing the myths and unsupported anecdotes of previous histories. He shows how Joplin's opera Treemonisha was a tribute to the woman he loved, a woman other biographers never even mentioned. Berlin also reveals that Joplin was an associate of Irving Berlin, and that he accused Berlin of stealing his music to compose Alexander's Ragtime Band in 1911. Berlin paints a vivid picture of the ragtime years, placing Scott Joplin's story in its historical context. The composer emerges as a representative of the first post-Civil War generation of African Americans, of the men and women who found in the world of entertainment a way out of poverty and lowly social status. King of Ragtime recreates the excitement of these pioneers, who dreamed of greatness as they sought to expand the limits society placed upon their race.

Image Credit: The “Scott Joplin 1911, The King of Ragtime Composers” portrait featured in this post came from NYPL’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, via the following Black History Month post: Slices of the Tenderloin #3: Scott Joplin. However you enjoy it, whether by playing it yourself on your instrument of choice or listening to others perform it, be sure to crank up.

Destined to be the definitive work on the man and his music, King of Ragtime is written by Edward A. A renowned authority on Joplin and the author of the acclaimed and widely cited Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History, Berlin redefines the Scott Joplin biography. Using the tools of a trained musicologist, he has uncovered a vast.

Origins of Ragtime Music. Ragtime developed in African American communities throughout the.

Henry King, Director: The Song of Bernadette. For more than three decades, Henry King was the most versatile and reliable (not to mention hard-working) contract director on the 20th Century-Fox lot. His tenure lasted from 1930 to 1961, spanning most of Hollywood's 'golden' era. King was renowned as a specialist in literary adaptations (A Bell for Adano (1945), The Sun Also Rises (1957)).

The following book review by Jeffrey Chappell appeared in Piano & Keyboard Magazine, November/December 1994 issue.

Scott Joplin was a quiet, serious man who composed some of the liveliest, happiest music ever written. The unprecedented standard of excellence that he set and maintained earned ragtime world-wide renown. After the publication of “Maple Leaf Rag” he became known for the rest of his life as “The King of Ragtime.”

Ragtime fell into obscurity with the advent of World War I and with new developments in jazz forms. Its revival commenced in the 1940’s and gathered a momentum that peaked in the 1970’s, establishing its solid place in the repertoire. Contributing to this momentum was the 1950 publication of Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis’ book, “They All Played Ragtime.” This was the first biography of Joplin, and was accepted as the definitive text on its subject.

In his preface to “King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era”, author Edward A. Logo design inspiration. Berlin makes clear the necessity of producing a new biography of Joplin. He honors the accomplishments of Blesh and Janis but points out that they were untrained in formal historical research. Much has been added to what was known about Joplin since their book appeared, but Berlin’s own investigations have yielded a significant wealth of new material. As such, “King of Ragtime” represents the best available current knowledge of this subject.

Some know Joplin only as the composer of “The Entertainer” and “Maple Leaf Rag”; they may even have heard his opera “Treemonisha.” These readers will be fascinated to learn about Irving Berlin’s alleged plagiarism of a tune from “Treemonisha” in his “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”; about Joplin’s first opera, “A Guest of Honor”; and about the origin of the terms “ragtime” and “Tin Pan Alley.” The chapter called “The Maple Leaf Rag, 1899-1900” will engross them with its step-by-step recounting of the creation, publication, and sensational reception of Joplin’s signature piece. They may be surprised to find that, in spite of the advanced level of difficulty of his piano pieces, Joplin himself was not always highly regarded as a pianist.

Ragtime Kings

The specialists will be richly rewarded as well. The origins of titles of pieces are ascertained; attributions of collaborative compositions are sorted out; and the chapter called “Freddie, 1904” tells of the existence of a previously unknown second wife. An entire page is devoted to the conflicting information about Joplin’s date and place of birth. Minute details of all kinds are provided, from the price of admission to a Fancy Dress Calico Ball in Sedalia, Missouri in 1898 to the address of Barron Wilkins’ older brother’s cabaret in Harlem in 1914.

Enhancing the author’s clear writing style and organization are numerous illustrations, including photographs of Joplin and other ragtime writers, street maps of places that he lived, musical examples, and newspaper advertisements. These appear throughout the book as their subject is mentioned in the text, which is satisfyingly convenient for the reader.

All but one of the musical examples were typeset for the book. The exception is a photocopy of one page of the printed score of “Treemonisha”, and it is startling. To indicate the sound of women crying, Joplin invented a graphic notation that one would expect of avant-garde composers decades later.

The one known existing letter written by Joplin, an application for copyright for “A Guest of Honor,” is among the illustrations in the book. As interesting as it is to see his actual handwriting, one would wish that a page or two of his music manuscript had been shown. The author relates hearsay reports of a trunk of manuscripts being lost during the “A Guest of Honor” tour; and in his final chapter traces the hair-raising saga of the manuscripts left by Joplin after his death as they shifted hands again and again before being lost. But is every one of them lost? Where are the ones that he sold to publishers? Do any exist in the Library of Congress? The author does not say.

The book also has a sub-text which appears periodically as inserts in a typeface different from that of the main text. This provides background information about side issues such as prostitution in Sedalia, minstrelsy, and theater segregation. One ongoing series compares passages in Joplin’s piano rags to nearly-identical passages in the works of his imitators.

Filezilla server service. In the main text, the author finds that Joplin himself recycled some musical material. Analysis shows that “The Cascades,” “Gladiolus Rag,” “Leola,” and “Sugar Cane” were based on the “Maple Leaf Rag” model. In each case, however, new elements were developed, giving every rag its own appealing identity.

Berlin’s methods of detection and deduction are impressive: no statement or source goes without rigorous cross-referencing and confirmation. Previously accepted “facts” are brought into question and reinterpreted. In his quest to present all the available information, the author at times produces material worthy of a reference book. An early chapter describes Sedalia, Missouri in 1883 as “a good-sized, thriving town.” The ensuing paragraph lists the exact number of public schools, private schools, churches, secret and benevolent societies, paramilitary organizations, newspapers, banks and loan associations, and saloons; as well as the number, names, and racial makeup of baseball teams that formed later on. This is much more than most people would ever want to know about Sedalia, Missouri. Curiously, the other main Joplin residences, St. Louis and New York, are not afforded the same exhaustive treatment.

The Ragtime King

As painstakingly complete as is this volume of research, one finishes the book feeling strangely out of touch with Joplin’s interior life. We know his addresses and what pieces he composed when he lived at each of them with some degree of certainty. But his attitudes about life and his own experience of living it can only be deduced from what others said about him. This is no fault of the author: there are no known surviving diaries or personal correspondence. Joplin’s own words occupy a total of half a page in this book, and most of those are excerpts from his music instruction pamphlet, “School of Ragtime.”

Ragtime King Banjo

Blesh’s writings provided earthier, if perhaps apocryphal, anecdotes. He relates that a friend of Joplin complained at lunch that having to wait for a phone call allowed his fried eggs to get cold. Joplin said, “Look, Sam, if they’re good hot, they’re good cold.” This shows a man with a sense of humor as well as a sense of practicality.

From other reports we can tell that Joplin had a reticent manner. He spoke seldom and softly, but with a refined pronunciation and vocabulary that impressed those whom he met. He was regarded as a kind, pleasant, modest, and inspiring man. Nonetheless, he knew that what he produced was of excellent quality, and in an enterprising way sought the acceptance that he believed was deserved by him and his music.

The excerpts from “School of Ragtime” present Joplin’s defence of ragtime as a music with staying power and high class. He responds to the scurrilous perception of ragtime as being light and trashy by distinguishing it from lesser kinds of music, and by asserting that genuine ragtime was endorsed by cultured musicians. He goes on to admonish players of ragtime to be scrupulously exact with rhythm and tempo when playing “Joplin ragtime.”

Supertone Banjo Ragtime King

This shows a man who was meticulous about his work, who knew how good he was at it, and who took pride in it. It also shows how he struggled to gain respect. Joplin met with opposition to his chosen art form throughout his life. The fact that Joplin was black does not account for all of this opposition, since the black clergy crusaded against his music. Ragtime was seen as degenerate and even dangerous to the moral health of the nation. It was, in fact, music that was performed frequently in brothels. Joplin’s reaction to all of this was an apparent rejection of organized religion, although he was not an atheist, and he seems never to have been married in a religious ceremony. He believed that education was the key to the advancement of Afro-Americans.

King Of Ragtime Scott Joplin

Joplin died of syphilis in 1917 at the age of 49. At the time, he was at work on his “Symphony No. 1.” Among the lost manuscripts supposedly was a piano concerto. Blesh and Janis saw some of the manuscripts; one was “Pretty Pansy Rag”, which Blesh said was unfinished, although Berlin reports that a pupil of Joplin had studied it with him. Will we ever get to hear “Pretty Pansy Rag”? Only time and future research will tell. As Berlin notes more than once, many questions remain unanswered. Until they are answered, we can safely say that “King of Ragtime” is the benchmark in Joplin research.

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ultra-maha-us · 3 years

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Electric Music Record and Today's Most useful Modern Promoters!

Electronic music history pre-dates the stone and throw era by decades. Most of us weren't actually with this world when it began its often obscure, under-appreciated and misunderstood development. Nowadays, that'other worldly'human body of noise which began close to a century before, might no further seem odd and distinctive as new decades have accepted a lot of it as conventional, but it's had a rough road and, to locate mass audience acceptance, a gradual one.

Several artists - the current supporters of electric music - produced an interest for analogue synthesizers in the late 1970's and early 1980's with trademark songs like Gary Numan's discovery,'Are Friends Electrical?'.It absolutely was in that era that they turned smaller, more accessible, more user-friendly and cheaper for many of us. In this informative article I will try to track that history in simply digestible chapters and offer types of today's best contemporary proponents.

To my mind, this was the start of a new epoch. To generate electric music, it absolutely was no further required to possess usage of a roomful of engineering Guitar String Tree in a facility or live. Hitherto, this was only the domain of musicians the kind of Kraftwerk, whose system of electric tools and custom created gadgetry the rest of us can only have imagined, even if we will realize the logistics of their functioning. Having said that, during the time I was growing up in the 60's & 70's, I nonetheless had little understanding of the difficulty of work that had collection a standard in previous years to arrive only at that point.

The history of electric music owes much to Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007). Stockhausen was a German Avante Garde composer and a groundbreaking figurehead in electric music from the 1950's onwards, influencing a movement that will ultimately have a robust affect upon titles such as for instance Kraftwerk, Tangerine Desire, Head Eno, Cabaret Voltaire, Depeche Style, as well as the fresh work of the Beatles'and others in the 1960's. His face is observed on the cover of "Sgt. Pepper's Unhappy Spirits Club Group", the Beatles'1967 grasp Opus. Let us start, but, by touring a little further back time.

The Change of the 20th Century

Time stood however because of this stargazer when I formerly unearthed that the initial recorded, exclusively electric, concerts weren't in the 1970's or 1980's however in the 1920's!

The first simply electric instrument, the Theremin, which is played without touch, was created by Russian scientist and cellist, Lev Termen (1896-1993), circa 1919.

In 1924, the Theremin created its concert debut with the Leningrad Philharmonic. Interest developed by the theremin attracted audiences to concerts staged across Europe and Britain. In 1930, the prestigious Carnegie Corridor in New York, skilled an efficiency of traditional music using only a series of five theremins. Seeing several qualified artists enjoying that eerie sounding instrument by waving their hands about its antennae should have been therefore exhilarating, unique and strange for a pre-tech audience!

For anyone involved, check out the tracks of Theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore (1911-1998). Lithuanian created Rockmore (Reisenberg) caused its creator in New York to perfect the instrument throughout its early years and turned its most acclaimed, excellent and recognized artist and representative for the duration of her life.

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kokania0 · 4 years

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Electronic Music History and Today's Best Modern Proponents!

Electronic music history pre-dates the rock and roll years by decades. Most of us were not even on this areas when it began its often obscure, under-appreciated and misunderstood development. Today, this 'other worldly' herdsman of sound which began close to a century ago, may no longer appear strange and unique as new appointment have accepted much of it as mainstream, but it's had a bumpy rising and, in prognosis mob designation acceptance, a slow one.

Many musicians - the modern backer of electronic singing - developed a luster for analogue synthesizers in the late 1970's and early 1980's with signature songs like Gary Numan's breakthrough, 'Are Friends Electric?'. It was in this age that these pole became smaller, more accessible, more exploiter friendly and more affordable for loads of us. In this article I will tests to phantom this history in easily digestible endings and withdrawal model of today's best modern proponents.

To my mind, this was the beginning of a new epoch. To create electronic music, it was no longer necessary to have entrees to a roomful of technology in a senate or live. Hitherto, this was solely the crew of artists the ambition of Kraftwerk, whose daybook of electronic instruments and cocaine built gadgetry the extent of us could only have dreamed of, even if we could understand the logistics of their functioning. Having said this, at the time I was maturing up in the 60's & 70's, I nevertheless had little uptake of the experience of handling that had synopsis a predecessor in previous decades to arrive at this point.

The history of electronic music owes much to Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007). Stockhausen was a German Avante Garde copier and a pioneering figurehead in electronic singing from the 1950's onwards, influencing a occurrences that would eventually have a powerful look upon nickname such as Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Brain Eno, Cabaret Voltaire, Depeche Mode, not to remark the experimental crannies of the Beatles' and others in the 1960's. His cover-up is seen on the lid of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", the Beatles' 1967 expert Opus. Let's start, however, by traveling a little further back in time.

The Turn of the 20th Century

Time stood still for this stargazer when I originally discovered that the first documented, exclusively electronic, observance were not in the 1970's or 1980's but in the 1920's!

The first purely electronic instrument, the Theremin, which is played without touch, was invented by Russian scientists and cellist, Lev Termen (1896-1993), circa 1919.

In 1924, the Theremin made its concert debut with the Leningrad Philharmonic. Interest generated by the theremin drew appointee to exactness staged across Europe and Britain. In 1930, the prestigious Carnegie Hall in New York, experienced a possession of classical singing using nothing but a plan of ten theremins. Watching a amounts of skilled musicians playing this eerie sounding medium by glimmering their hands around its feeler must have been so exhilarating, surreal and group for a pre-tech audience!

For those interested, team out the recordings of Theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore (1911-1998). Lithuanian born Rockmore (Reisenberg) worked with its researcher in New York to perfect the hindrance during its early era and became its herdsman acclaimed, brilliant and recognized comedian and spout throughout her life.

In retrospect Clara, was the first celebrated 'star' of genuine electronic music. You are unlikely to discovery more eerie, yet beautiful aspect of classical singing on the Theremin. She's definitely a longing of mine!

Electronic Music in Sci-Fi, Cinema and Television

Unfortunately, and due mainly to problem in aptitude mastering, the Theremin's future as a musical stipulation was shot lived. Eventually, it found a nook in 1950's Sci-Fi films. The 1951 cinema classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still", with a soundtrack by influential American film music copier Bernard Hermann (known for Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho", etc.), is rich with an 'extraterrestrial' score using two Theremins and other electronic flight melded with acoustic instrumentation.

Using the vacuum-tube oscillator technology of the Theremin, French cellist and radio telegraphist, Maurice Martenot (1898-1980), began composition the Ondes Martenot (in French, known as the Martenot Wave) in 1928.

Employing a order and familiar fingerboard which could be more easily mastered by a musician, Martenot's obstacle succeeded where the Theremin failed in beings user-friendly. In fact, it became the first successful electronic medium to be used by copier and orchestras of its energy until the gift day.

It is featured on the topic to the original 1960's TV cell "Star Trek", and can be heard on contemporary recordings by the say of Radiohead and Brian Ferry.

The expressive multi-timbral Ondes Martenot, although monophonic, is the closest medium of its legislature I have heard which approaches the sound of modern synthesis.

"Forbidden Planet", released in 1956, was the first major commercial section cinema to feature an exclusively electronic soundtrack... aside from introducing Robbie the Robot and the stunning Anne Francis! The ground-breaking score was produced by husband and spouses squad Louis and Bebe Barron who, in the late 1940's, established the first privately owned booking boldness in the USA booking electronic experimental artists such as the iconic John Cage (whose own Avante Garde boldness challenged the definition of singing itself!).

The Barrons are generally credited for owning telegram the retreat of electronic singing in cinema. A soldering iron in one hand, Louis built circuitry which he manipulated to create a excess of bizarre, 'unearthly' artfulness and motifs for the movie. Once performed, these sounds could not be replicated as the mouseover would purposely overload, smoke and burn out to exponent the desired sound result.

Consequently, they were all recorded to tape and Bebe sifted through hours of reels edited what was deemed usable, then re-manipulated these with subordination and reverberation and creatively dubbed the endings role using multiple tape decks.

In supplements to this laborious money method, I sense compelled to include that which is, arguably, the record enduring and influential electronic Television signature ever: the topic to the long jogging 1963 British Sci-Fi look series, "Dr. Who". It was the first time a Television design featured a solely electronic theme. The themes to "Dr. Who" was created at the legendary BBC Radiophonic Workshop using tape loops and tests pendulum to run through effects, entrance these to tape, then were re-manipulated and edited by another Electro pioneer, Delia Derbyshire, interpreting the order of Ron Grainer.

As you can see, electronic music's prevalent custom in vintage Sci-Fi was the odds source of the general public's opinion of this music as beings 'other worldly' and 'alien-bizarre sounding'. This remained the proceedings till at least 1968 with the sovereignty of the bins scrapbook "Switched-On Bach" performed entirely on a Moog modular synthesizer by Walter Carlos (who, with a few surgical nips and tucks, subsequently became Wendy Carlos).

The 1970's expanded electronic music's silhouette with the pause through of bands like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, and especially the 1980's when it found more mainstream acceptance.

The Mid 1900's: Musique Concrete

In its segment through the 1900's, electronic music was not solely confined to electronic circuitry creature manipulated to group sound. Back in the 1940's, a relatively new German concoction - the reel-to-reel tape salesperson developed in the 1930's - became the subject of interest to a amounts of Avante Garde European composers, pack notably the French radio broadcaster and copier Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995) who developed a montage medium he called Musique Concrete.

Musique Concrete (meaning 'real world' existing sounds as opposed to artificial or acoustic ones produced by musical instruments) broadly involved the splicing together of recorded segment of tape containing 'found' sounds - natural, environmental, industrial and human - and manipulating these with kingdom such as delay, reverb, distortion, speeding up or slowing down of tape-speed (varispeed), reversing, etc.

Stockhausen actually held symmetry convention his Musique Concrete happenings as promoting tapes (by this platform electronic as well as 'real world' sounds were used on the recordings) on apex of which live instruments would be performed by classical player responding to the understanding and motifs they were hearing!

Musique Concrete had a wide impressing not only on Avante Garde and composition libraries, but also on the contemporary music of the 1960's and 1970's. Important proceedings to summary are the Beatles' use of this senate in ground-breaking tracks like 'Tomorrow Never Knows', 'Revolution No. 9' and 'Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite', as well as Pink Floyd albums "Umma Gumma", "Dark Side of the Moon" and Frank Zappa's "Lumpy Gravy". All used tape cut-ups and home-made tape loops often fed live into the main mixdown.

Today this can be performed with guiltlessness using digital sampling, but yesterday's heroes labored hours, age and even weeks to perhaps complete a four minute piece! For those of ourselves who are contemporary musicians, understanding the history of electronic singing helps in appreciating the portion leap technology has taken in the recent period. But these early innovators, these pioneers - of which there are many more down the queue - and the important figure they influenced that came before us, created the revolutionary foundation that has become our electronic musical legacy today and for this I pay them homage!

1950's: The First Computer and Synth Play Music

Moving striker a few years to 1957 and enter the first computer into the electronic mix. As you can imagine, it wasn't exactly a portable laptop escape but consumed a whole room and user friendly wasn't even a concept. Nonetheless creative fly kept pushing the boundaries. One of these was Max Mathews (1926 -) from Bell Telephone Laboratories, New Jersey, who developed Music 1, the original singing program for computers upon which all subsequent digital synthesis has its roots based. Mathews, dubbed the 'Father of Computer Music', using a digital IBM Mainframe, was the first to synthesize singing on a computer.

In the peak of Stanley Kubrik's 1968 cinema '2001: A Space Odyssey', utility is made of a 1961 Mathews' electronic stall of the late 1800's poetry 'Daisy Bell'. Here the musical accompaniment is performed by his programmed mainframe together with a computer-synthesized human 'singing' voice section pioneered in the early 60's. In the movie, as HAL the computer regresses, 'he' reverts to this song, an cheerfulness to 'his' own origins.

1957 also witnessed the first advanced synth, the RCA Mk II Sound Synthesizer (an enhancement on the 1955 original). It also featured an electronic sequencer to program music property playback. This massive RCA Synth was installed, and still remains, at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, New York, where the legendary Robert Moog worked for a while. Universities and Tech laboratories were the main outcome for synth and computer singing trying in that early era.

1960's: The Dawning of The Age of Moog

The logistics and experience of composing and even owning entrees to what were, until then, comedian unfriendly synthesizers, led to a occurrences for more portable playable instruments. One of the first to respond, and definitely the prince successful, was Robert Moog (1934-2005). His playable synth employed the familiar piano loci keyboard.

Moog's bulky telephone-operators' profile plug-in makes of modular synth was not one to be transported and design up with any prince of instinct or speed! But it received an enormous boost in commonness with the fate of Walter Carlos, as previously mentioned, in 1968. His LP (Long Player) best merchant entryways "Switched-On Bach" was unprecedented because it was the first time an albums appeared of fully synthesized music, as opposed to experimental sound pieces.

The albums was a complex classical music lineup with various multi-tracks and overdubs necessary, as the synthesizer was only monophonic! Carlos also created the electronic score for "A Clockwork Orange", Stanley Kubrik's confusion 1972 futuristic film.

From this point, the Moog synth is prevalent on a sum of late 1960's contemporary albums. In 1967 the Monkees' "Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd" became the first commercial pop scrapbook self-rule to feature the modular Moog. In fact, singer/drummer Mickey Dolenz purchased one of the very first conveyance sold.

It wasn't until the early 1970's, however, when the first Minimoog appeared that interest seriously developed amongst musicians. This portable little group with a fat sound had a significant gradations becoming fragments of live music outline for dozens touring musicians for years to come. Other firm such as Sequential Circuits, Roland and Korg began producing their own synths, assigning onset to a music subculture.

I cannot close the intensity on the 1960's, however, without caution to the Mellotron. This electronic-mechanical medium is often viewed as the primitive announcer to the modern digital sampler.

Developed in early 1960's Britain and based on the Chamberlin (a cumbersome US-designed media from the previous decade), the Mellotron keyboard triggered pre-recorded tapes, each key corresponding to the equivalent recollection and endings of the pre-loaded acoustic instrument.

The Mellotron is legendary for its use on the Beatles' 1966 ballad 'Strawberry Fields Forever'. A flute tape-bank is used on the haunting introduction played by Paul McCartney.

The instrument's popularity burgeoned and was used on dozens recordings of the age such as the immensely successful Moody Blues epic 'Nights in White Satin'. The 1970's saw it adopted more and more by progressive rock bands. Electronic pioneers Tangerine Dream featured it on their early albums.

With time and further overtures in microchip technology though, this charming medium became a relics of its period.

1970's: The Birth of Vintage Electronic Bands

The early fluid scrapbook of Tangerine Dream such as "Phaedra" from 1974 and Brian Eno's currency with his self-coined 'ambient music' and on David Bowie's "Heroes" album, further drew interest in the synthesizer from both musicians and audience.

Kraftwerk, whose 1974 seminal albums "Autobahn" achieved international commercial success, took the medium even further adding precision, pulsating electronic beats and meter and noble synth melodies. Their minimalism suggested a cold, industrial and computerized-urban world. They often utilized vocoders and conversations synthesis device such as the gorgeously robotic 'Speak and Spell' voice emulator, the latter creature a children's education aid!

While inspired by the experimental electronic subroutine of Stockhausen, as artists, Kraftwerk were the first to successfully combine all the elements of electronically generated singing and noise and group an easily recognizable ballad format. The supplements of vocals in dozens of their songs, both in their native German tongue and English, helped earn them universal acclaim getting one of the hordes influential contemporary singing pioneers and actor of the past half-century.

Kraftwerk's 1978 gem 'Das Modell' punch the UK sum one loci with a reissued English language version, 'The Model', in February 1982, structure it one of the earliest Electro sketch toppers!

Ironically, though, it took a impression that had no association with EM (Electronic Music) to facilitate its broader mainstream acceptance. The mid 1970's hoods movement, primarily in Britain, brought with it a unique new attitude: one that gave impulse to self-expression rather than performance dexterity and formal training, as embodied by contemporary progressive rock musicians. The initial offensive of metallic neighborhood transformed into a less abrasive word during the late 1970's: New Wave. This, mixed with the comparative affordability of lots small, easy to utility synthesizers, led to the commercial synth detonation of the early 1980's.

A new adeptness of cub flight began to explore the potential of these instruments and began to create soundscapes challenging the prevailing spotter of contemporary music. This didn't arrive without batalla scars though. The singing trade establishment, especially in its media, often derided this new example of word and accomplishment and was anxious to consign it to the dustbin of history.

1980's: The First Golden Era of Electronic Music for the Masses

Gary Numan became arguably the first commercial synth megastar with the 1979 "Tubeway Army" handcuffs 'Are Friends Electric?'. The Sci-Fi ingredient is not too far away once again. Some of the imagery is drawn from the Science Fiction classic, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". The 1982 box cinema "Blade Runner" was also based on the same book.

Although 'Are Friends Electric?' featured conventional drum and bass backing, its dominant use of Polymoogs gives the songs its very distinctive sound. The booking was the first synth-based self-sufficiency to achieve quantity one unit office in the UK during the post-punk years and helped manager in a new genre. No longer was electronic and/or synthesizer singing consigned to the mainstream sidelines. Exciting!

Further development in affordable electronic technology placed electronic squarely in the fins of pups researcher and began to transform professional studios.

Designed in Australia in 1978, the Fairlight Sampler CMI became the first commercially available polyphonic digital sampling barricade but its prohibitive betrayal saw it solely in use by the fondness of Trevor Horn, Stevie Wonder and Peter Gabriel. By mid-decade, however, smaller, cheaper instruments entered the market such as the ubiquitous Akai and Emulator Samplers often used by musicians live to replicate their studio-recorded sounds. The Sampler revolutionized the stipulation of music from this sequences on.

In sum major markets, with the qualified zone of the US, the early 1980's was commercially drawn to electro-influenced artists. This was an exciting years for dozens of us, myself included. I know I wasn't alone in closeting the distorted guitar and amps and immersing myself into a new kind of musical manifestation - a sound shore of the conscription and non traditional.

At home, Australian synth based bands Real Life ('Send Me An Angel', "Heartland" album), Icehouse ('Hey Little Girl') and Pseudo Echo ('Funky Town') began to schemes internationally, and more experimental electronic design like Severed Heads and SPK also developed cult followings overseas.

But by mid-decade the first global electronic succession missing its boldness amidst appeal fomented by an unrelenting old seminary singing media. Most of the artists that began the decade as predominantly electro-based either disintegrated or heavily hybrids their sound with traditional rock instrumentation.

The USA, the largest ore market in every sense, remained in the conservative music wings for scads of the 1980's. Although synth-based records did box the American charts, the first being Human League's 1982 US design topper 'Don't You Want Me Baby?', on the whole it was to be a few more era before the American mainstream embraced electronic music, at which spunk it consolidated itself as a dominant last for musicians and officer alike, worldwide.

1988 was somewhat of a watershed year for electronic music in the US. Often maligned in the press in their early years, it was Depeche Mode that unintentionally - and mostly unaware - spearheaded this new assault. From cult period in America for much of the decade, their new high-play revolution on what was now termed Modern Rock radio resulted in mega stadium performances. An Electro accomplishment playing sold out dock was not common fare in the USA at that time!

In 1990, Quaker chaos in New York to greet the fraction at a central entrance firm made TV news, and their "Violator" albums outselling Madonna and Prince in the same year made them a US household name. Electronic music was here to stay, without a doubt!

1990's Onward: The Second Golden Era of Electronic Music for the Masses

Before our 'star music' secured its hold on the US mainstream, and while it was losing commercial lands elsewhere throughout much of the mid 1980's, Detroit and Chicago became unassuming laboratories for an outburst of Electronic Music which would see out much of the 1990's and onwards. Enter Techno and House.

Detroit in the 1980's, a post-Fordism US industrial wasteland, produced the harder European influenced Techno. In the early to mid 80's, Detroiter Juan Atkins, an obsessive Kraftwerk fan, together with Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson - using primitive, often borrowed appointments - formed the flock of what would become, together with House, the predominant singing club-culture throughout the world. Heavily referenced artists that informed early Techno clause were European pioneers such as the aforementioned Kraftwerk, as well as Yello and British Electro acts the yearning of Depeche Mode, Human League, Heaven 17, New Order and Cabaret Voltaire.

Chicago, a four-hour cultivation away, simultaneously saw the section of House. The name is generally considered to be derived from "The Warehouse" where various DJ-Producers featured this new singing amalgam. House has its roots in 1970's disco and, unlike Techno, usually has some making of vocal. I think Giorgio Moroder's undertaking in the mid 70's with Donna Summer, especially the poetry 'I Feel Love', is pivotal in appreciating the 70's disco influences upon burgeoning Chicago House.

A many of variants and sub troop have developed since - crossing the Atlantic, reworked and back again - but in many spirit the popular success of these two soul forms revitalized the entire Electronic landscapes and its associated social culture. Techno and House helped to profoundly challenge mainstream and Alternative Rock as the preferred listening variety for a new generation: a meeting who has grown up with electronic singing and accepts it as a given. For them, it is music that has always been.

The history of electronic music continues to be written as technology advances and people's anticipation of where singing can go continues to push it forward, increasing its vocabularies and lexicon. https://kokania.com/product-category/electronics/

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