Virgin Blue

Popular culture deals with people's lifestyle, attitudes and activities that are prevailing in a given society. Post World War II in Australia for some it was a time of certainty, prosperity, rising income, improved lifestyle. For others, it was a decade of oppression, censorship, prejudice, discrimination, hatred. The 1950s and 1960s were the decades in which the horrors of war were forgotten, and Australia launched itself into a whole new era. This response will describe the changes in…

Living a life faced with adversity it is truly remarkable the lasting impact Billy Strayhorn was capable of having on the development of jazz. He is acknowledged for being an exceptional pianist, composer, arranger and possessing one of the greatest compositional voices in the 20th century. He was truly an under appreciated revolutionary force decades ahead of his time, even while being the first closeted then out black gay man in a particularly homophobic environment of an all black male jazz…

How many people move to Hollywood and actually become famous from singing, this is a song with a character named Eddie and the song was made by Tom Petty. After arriving in Hollywood California at the age of 18. He got a tattoo and he met a girl who taught him guitar, and so the sky was the limit for him.”Into the Great Wide Open”, a story by Tom Petty, explains the life of a rockstar, using a changing tone, in a believable way. “Into the Great Wide Open” tells the rise and fall of Eddie, a…

years, including a very wide range of music, making it very difficult to define. Jazz makes good use of improvisation, and the swing note, as well as many aspects of harmony, American popular music, the brass band, and African musical elements such as blue notes and ragtime. Although the origins and basis of jazz originally came from within the black neighborhoods of the United States, different cultures have contributed their own experience to the jazz experience as well. Many respected people…

Jimi Hendrix’s cover of Bob Dylan’s, “All Along the Watchtower,” was a greater success than the original begging the question: since the songs are lyrically identical, which musical techniques boosted Hendrix’s cover to the top charts? Among these techniques are choice of instrument and tonal variations between the two songs. Hendrix preserves and arguably adds on to the original meaning behind the song through these variations in musical technique. Hendrix faced the risk of appearing…

Over the rainbow is an important song to America. This is an important song to America because it has deep roots to Americas history. There are many updated versions of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. One of the most famous versions is the one with the ukulele by Israel K. Somewhere Over The Rainbow is a ballad, with music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E.Y. Harburg. It was written for the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz. It was sung by actress Judy Garland in her starring role as Dorothy Gale. The song…

They’ll call it a mystery, but we’re gonna call it Victory. We’ll be writing history, it’s gon be victory. This stanza, from the featured track ‘I See A Victory’ in the movie Hidden Figures, gives a basic overview of the theme. Hidden Figures a non-fiction novel by Margot Lee Shetterly, follows the stories of three black women who aided the U.S in the victory of the space race. It follows the stories of Dorothy Vaughan, Katherine G. Johnson, and Mary Jackson, who each contributed in their own…

field hollers and ring shouts. African slaves used blues music for their religion and pray god within songs and their instruments. Over time, blues music and gospel emerged within oral tradition of African American culture in black community churches and they started to use blues music in the worship of God and the base music of the religious expression. “In the early to middle 1930s, the first notes of gospel blues—a blend of sacred texts and blues tunes—were heard in Protestant black churches…

1. American society drastically changed after World War 1 and during the 1920’s. The era in the 1920s were known as the “Jazz Age”, despite the different racial groups jazz became a popular form of music, even got accepted to white Americans. Every weekend a variety of people would go into club like Cotton located in Chicago and, listen to jazz performed by African Americans. As the same token as, the commercial radio. The airwaves became the medium to hear their news and entertainment. Its…

The lasting effect on losing artists such as Buddy Holly, Little Richard, and Elvis, along with the problems in the personal lives of Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis, on American Pop Culture was that the music that was put out was no longer driven, or controlled, by these big rock ‘n’ roll stars, or the smaller independent producers who helped promote the music. The larger mainstream record companies who disliked and distrusted rock ‘n’ roll instead produced and sold music that was bland and…