Tin Pan Alley

Every year on Valentine’s Day, my school hosts something we call the “Civility Assembly”. In the afternoon, the entire school is called to the auditorium, and are presented with an unscripted, straight-from-the-heart presentation from the staff. This year, the theme was “Home”. A former Wahconah graduate who entered the marines gave a speech about the value of home to him and the results of a staff interview as to “Why Wahconah is Home to Me” was presented, among other things. While there were…

You can trace a variety of different themes through music’s long history, but the one I have chosen to trace and the one I learned the most from is racism. Racism has been an issue in American culture from the very beginning, as shown through history and the horrible issue of slavery. Racism also shows its presence in music as well. Before taking this class, I had never thought about the implications that race had in the musical world besides the obvious use of slang and references to race in…

Modernism and the cold war can be regarded as the twin shaping forces on cultural production in the 1950s. When some ardent practitioners tried to move beyond modernist art, others retreated from it, but it remained the defining aesthetic paradigm of the decade. As historical mode modernism became institutionalised in the 1950s as established by the Nobel laureate trio comprising the modernist writers Faulkner, Eliot and Hemingway. Kitsch and modernism were deeply entangled during the period.…

Numerous stories of swing musicians are dominated by ethnic, racial, and gendered situations; stories that played an important role in the development of swing. Examples include Artie Shaw’s childhood years on the Lower East Side of New York City where he spent time with migrant children from Eastern Europe and Trummy Young’s youth in the Yamacraw section in Savannah, Georgia where the community that he grew up in was dominated by blacks, Italians, and Chinese. As a decisive player in the…

1. Give a brief definition of the following: a rhythm b. beat c. melody d. harmony a. rhythm: As an element of music, rhythm describe how is the song organized in patterns to create certain form of music. b. beat: It is the basic unit of time with which the rhythm of the song is measured, as a pulse. Also it can be used to refer the fundamental rhythmic organization. c. melody: It is the organization of notes of different pitches. d. harmony: It refers to the organization of chords used…

The Jazz Age, also known as the Roaring Twenties, was a remarkable event that began to occur after World War I had ended. Jazz music came from the South and it became one of the most popular genres of music in America’s history. The rhythm in jazz music helped many people compose new cultural ideals about the American life. As jazz was making its way into the music business, people became inspired by this new genre. After most people observed jazz music’s increasing popularity, for the first…

attitudes. The changes in spending due to economic growth harbored an egotism that underscored much of what was seen on the Broadway stage in the 1920s. From 1920-1930, Broadway produced more musicals than any other ten-year period, with grossing figures for new musicals and revues reaching unprecedented heights. After the Armistice of 1918, the pleasure-seeking, prohibition-despising, boom-rich American public enabled the musical theatre to revel in a decade of luxury and wastefulness and…

co-written by Richard and Robert Sherman (Kamp). While Robert Sherman died a few years ago, Richard is still alive. But without Robert, Richard would not be where he is today. So to start out, the Sherman brothers were the sons of the famous Tin Pan Alley singer Al Sherman (Harvey). This means Richard and Robert both grew up with music being a big part of their lives. During his college years, Richard wanted to compose music while Robert wanted to be a writer. Their father dared them to…

As something new and you haven’t experience before, you’ll never know what you are capable of. The power of a human is from themselves; their hands, their body, their mind. We all have the capability of either sticking to what we are comfortable with, or we can take on the challenge of something new. Hip-hop dancing has been my solid ground where I stood over the course of eight years. As I grow, I want to start learning how I can transcend my skills and discover something new. As part of my…

understanding discrimination he witnessed for not singing and performing white was the fact that he was also quite a poor southern, achieving fame the wrong way and not rising through the traditional routes taken by many songwriters and performers such as Tin Pan Alley route. He was seen as a sexual threat from the south so much so that Hillbilly music today remains a freely used pejorative word and genre of music. His Sun recordings were mainly R&B and gospel songs recorded with a country mix.…