Download or read book Song of a Nation written by Robert Harris and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The greatest story never told, this formidable and gorgeously written biography documents the amazing and controversial short life of Calixa Lavallée--the composer of "O Canada"--and the tumult of 19th-century North America. He was a composer, a performer, an entrepreneur, and an educator; played pop and classical music; and appeared in his quasi-colonial society, tragically, just ahead of his time. Calixa Lavallee, the French Canadian composer of "O Canada," has a compelling, almost unbelievable personal story. He left home at 12 and worked as a blackface minstrel, travelling throughout the United States for more than a decade; he fought and was injured in the American Civil War in perhaps the most important battle of that war, at Antietam Creek; performed for President Lincoln several times; produced the first opera in Quebec and wrote two of his own; became a leading figure in American music education, representing American music in London; journeyed to Paris to study for two years; tried and failed to create a Quebec national conservatory. And he wrote our national anthem. But Lavallée also represents all the contradictions and confusions of Canadian identity as our country came together in the last half of the nineteenth century. To understand "O Canada," and to understand the man who wrote it, is to return to the Canada of the mid-nineteenth century, a Canada just forming as a nation, bringing together ancient racial hatreds and novel political possibilities, as culture faced culture, religion faced religion, economy faced economy. Calixa Lavallée is the most famous Canadian you have never heard of, living a life and ultimately composing a song that stands the test of time.
Download or read book Songs of America written by Jon Meacham and published by Random House. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A celebration of American history through the music that helped to shape a nation, by Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham and music superstar Tim McGraw “Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw form an irresistible duo—connecting us to music as an unsung force in our nation's history.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin Through all the years of strife and triumph, America has been shaped not just by our elected leaders and our formal politics but also by our music—by the lyrics, performers, and instrumentals that have helped to carry us through the dark days and to celebrate the bright ones. From “The Star-Spangled Banner” to “Born in the U.S.A.,” Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw take readers on a moving and insightful journey through eras in American history and the songs and performers that inspired us. Meacham chronicles our history, exploring the stories behind the songs, and Tim McGraw reflects on them as an artist and performer. Their perspectives combine to create a unique view of the role music has played in uniting and shaping a nation. Beginning with the battle hymns of the revolution, and taking us through songs from the defining events of the Civil War, the fight for women’s suffrage, the two world wars, the Great Depression, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and into the twenty-first century, Meacham and McGraw explore the songs that defined generations, and the cultural and political climates that produced them. Readers will discover the power of music in the lives of figures such as Harriet Tubman, Franklin Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr., and will learn more about some of our most beloved musicians and performers, including Marian Anderson, Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Duke Ellington, Carole King, Bruce Springsteen, and more. Songs of America explores both famous songs and lesser-known ones, expanding our understanding of the scope of American music and lending deeper meaning to the historical context of such songs as “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” “God Bless America,” “Over There,” “We Shall Overcome,” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.” As Quincy Jones says, Meacham and McGraw have “convened a concert in Songs of America,” one that reminds us of who we are, where we’ve been, and what we, at our best, can be.
Download or read book Music Makes the Nation written by and published by Cambria Press. This book was released on with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Struggling to Define a Nation written by Charles Hiroshi Garrett and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2008-10-12 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Identifying music as a vital site of cultural debate, this book captures the dynamic, contested nature of musical life in the United States. It examines an array of genres - including art music, jazz, popular song, ragtime, and Hawaiian music - and well-known musicians, such as Charles Ives, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, and Irving Berlin.
Download or read book A Song for the Horse Nation written by National Museum of the American Indian (U.S.) and published by Fulcrum Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents an illustrated examination of the role of horses in Native American culture and history, providing information on the depiction of horses in tribal clothing, tools, and other objects.
Download or read book American Anthem written by Gene Scheer and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-06-29 with total page 33 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on the song that President Joe Biden quoted in his inaugural address, this picture book celebrates the beauty and diversity of this country and the legacies on which we build our future. As President Joe Biden delivered his inaugural address, he quoted from a song that fully captured his own spirit of service: “The work and prayers of centuries have brought us to this day. What shall be our legacy? What will our children say? Let me know in my heart, when my days are through—America, America, I gave my best to you.” It was a sentiment that spoke not only to our new president’s character, but to the sense of pride in duty and purpose for the sake of a country we hold dear. And it contained a message of quiet patriotism that so many of us hope to share with the next generation. In this new picture book, using the full text of the song President Biden quoted, we do just that. With words that speak to the soul of our nation, and art from twelve different illustrators, all depicting what America means to them, we take readers on a journey through this beautiful country—its history, its struggles, and its dignity—and throughout, we count our own blessings and think about how we can do more to share them with others, and give our best to our country and everyone in it.
Download or read book O Say Can You Hear written by Mark Clague and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2022-06-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Editors' Choice The fascinating story of America’s national anthem and an examination of its powerful meaning today. Most Americans learn the tale in elementary school: During the War of 1812, Francis Scott Key witnessed the daylong bombardment of Baltimore’s Fort McHenry by British navy ships; seeing the Stars and Stripes still flying proudly at first light, he was inspired to pen his famous lyric. What Americans don’t know is the story of how this everyday “broadside ballad,” one of thousands of such topical songs that captured the events and emotions of early American life, rose to become the nation’s one and only anthem and today’s magnet for controversy. In O Say Can You Hear? Mark Clague brilliantly weaves together the stories of the song and the nation it represents. Examining the origins of both text and music, alternate lyrics and translations, and the song’s use in sports, at times of war, and for political protest, he argues that the anthem’s meaning reflects—and is reflected by—the nation’s quest to become a more perfect union. From victory song to hymn of sacrifice and vehicle for protest, the story of Key’s song is the story of America itself. Each chapter in the book explores a different facet of the anthem’s story. In one, we learn the real history behind the singing of the anthem at sporting events; in another, Clague explores Key’s complicated relationship with slavery and its repercussions today. An entire is chapter devoted to some of the most famous performances of the anthem, from Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock to Roseanne Barr at a baseball game to the iconic Whitney Houston version from the 1991 Super Bowl. At every turn, the book goes beyond the events to explore the song’s resonance and meaning. From its first lines Key’s lyric poses questions: “O say can you see?” “Does that banner yet wave?” Likewise, Clague’s O Say Can You Hear? raises important questions about the banner; what it meant in 1814, what it means to us today, and why it matters.
Download or read book Country Music written by Dayton Duncan and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rich and colorful story of America's most popular music and the singers and songwriters who captivated, entertained, and consoled listeners throughout the twentieth century--based on the upcoming eight-part film series to air on PBS in September 2019 This gorgeously illustrated and hugely entertaining history begins where country music itself emerged: the American South, where people sang to themselves and to their families at home and in church, and where they danced to fiddle tunes on Saturday nights. With the birth of radio in the 1920s, the songs moved from small towns, mountain hollers, and the wide-open West to become the music of an entire nation--a diverse range of sounds and styles from honky tonk to gospel to bluegrass to rockabilly, leading up through the decades to the music's massive commercial success today. But above all, Country Music is the story of the musicians. Here is Hank Williams's tragic honky tonk life, Dolly Parton rising to fame from a dirt-poor childhood, and Loretta Lynn turning her experiences into songs that spoke to women everywhere. Here too are interviews with the genre's biggest stars, including the likes of Merle Haggard to Garth Brooks to Rosanne Cash. Rife with rare photographs and endlessly fascinating anecdotes, the stories in this sweeping yet intimate history will captivate longtime country fans and introduce new listeners to an extraordinary body of music that lies at the very center of the American experience.
Download or read book Star Spangled Banner written by Francis Scott Key and published by . This book was released on 1907 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Empire of Song written by Dafni Tragaki and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2013-07-11 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is more than a musical event that ostensibly “unites European people” through music. It is a spectacle: a performative event that allegorically represents the idea of “Europe.” Since its beginning in the Cold War era, the contest has functioned as a symbolic realm for the performance of European selves and the negotiation of European identities. Through the ESC, Europe is experienced, felt, and imagined in singing and dancing as the interplay of tropes of being local and/or European is enacted. In Empire of Song: Europe and Nation in the Eurovision Song Contest, contributors interpret the ESC as a musical “mediascape” and mega-event that has variously performed and performs the changing visions of the European project. Through the study of the cultural politics of the ESC, contributors discuss the ways in which music operates as a dynamic nexus for making national identities and European sensibilities, generating processes of “assimilation” or “integration,” and defining the celebrated notion of the “European citizen” in a global context. Scholars in the volume also explore the ways otherness and difference are produced, spectacularized, challenged, or even neglected in the televised musical realities of the ESC. For the contributing authors, song serves as a site for constituting Europe and the nation, on- and offstage. History and politics, as well as the constant production of European subjectivities, are sounded in song. The Eurovision song is a shifting realm where old and new states imagine their pasts, question their presents, and envision ideal futures in the New Europe. Essays in Empire of Song adopt theoretical and epistemological orientations in their exploration of “popular music” within ethnomusicology and critical musicology, questioning the idea of “Europe” and the “nation” through and in music, at a time when the European self appears more fragmented, if not entirely shattered. Bringing together ethnomusicology, music studies, history, social anthropology, feminist theory, linguistics, media ethnography, postcolonial theory, comparative literature, and philosophy, Empire of Song will interest students and scholars in a vast array of disciplines.
Download or read book Sweet Freedom s Song written by the late Robert James Branham and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002-03-28 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although it isn't the official national anthem, America may be the most important and interesting patriotic song in our national repertoire. Sweet Freedom's Song: "My Country 'Tis of Thee" and Democracy in America is a celebration and critical exploration of the complicated musical, cultural and political roles played by the song America over the past 250 years. Popularly known as My Country 'Tis of Thee and as God Save the King/Queen before that this tune has a history as rich as the country it extols. In Sweet Freedom's Song, Robert Branham and Stephen Hartnett chronicle this song's many incarnations over the centuries. Colonial Americans, Southern slaveowners, abolitionists, temperance campaigners and labor leaders, among others, appropriated and adapted the tune to create anthems for their own struggles. Because the song has been invoked by nearly every grassroots movement in American history, the story of America offers important insights on the story of democracy in the United States. An examination of America as a historical artifact and cultural text, Sweet Freedoms Song is a reflection of the rebellious spirit of Americans throughout our nations history. The late Robert James Branham and his collaborator, Stephen Hartnett, have produced a thoroughly-researched, delightfully written book that will appeal to scholars and patriots of all stripes.
Download or read book My Country Tis of Thee written by Kate Shoup and published by Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2019-07-15 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the "Star Spangled Banner" became America's national anthem in 1931, another song filled that bill: "My Country 'Tis of Thee." This patriotic hymn, which celebrated America's history and natural beauty, was written by Baptist minister Samuel Francis Smith in 1831. Since then, it has been beloved by millions of Americans. It even played an important role in the civil rights movement. This book introduces today's schoolchildren to this important historical song using easy-to-read sheet music, vivid photographs, primary sources, and key facts, and glossaries.
Download or read book May We Forever Stand written by Imani Perry and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2018-02-02 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twin acts of singing and fighting for freedom have been inseparable in African American history. May We Forever Stand tells an essential part of that story. With lyrics penned by James Weldon Johnson and music composed by his brother Rosamond, "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was embraced almost immediately as an anthem that captured the story and the aspirations of black Americans. Since the song's creation, it has been adopted by the NAACP and performed by countless artists in times of both crisis and celebration, cementing its place in African American life up through the present day. In this rich, poignant, and readable work, Imani Perry tells the story of the Black National Anthem as it traveled from South to North, from civil rights to black power, and from countless family reunions to Carnegie Hall and the Oval Office. Drawing on a wide array of sources, Perry uses "Lift Every Voice and Sing" as a window on the powerful ways African Americans have used music and culture to organize, mourn, challenge, and celebrate for more than a century.
Download or read book America The Beautiful The Stirring True Story Behind Our Nation s Favorite Song written by Lynn Sherr and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2001-10-17 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We've all sung it a thousand times, and most of us know at least the first verse by heart. "America the Beautiful" has been called a hymn, a prayer, even the "national heartbeat set to music." Numerous proposals and half a dozen bills in Congress have tried to replace our national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," with this more lyrical, less militaristic song. But who knows the story behind the song? In America the Beautiful, Lynn Sherr tells the story of Katharine Lee Bates, a poet and pioneering young English professor at the newly established Wellesley College, who penned "America the Beautiful" at age 33, as she gazed over the glorious panorama from the top of Pike's Peak, Colorado. The poem, published two years later on July 4, 1895, struck a chord. Americans embraced it and immediately set it to music, trying out at least 74 different melodies. There were even Mexican, Canadian, and Australian versions. Analyzing the lyrics of "America the Beautiful" and the story of Katharine Lee Bates's unusual life, Lynn Sherr opens a window onto the shifting world of late 19th century America. She explores the lingering impact of the Civil War and the dramatic developments in commerce and technology, which shaped the American Century and the popularity of one brilliant, stirring song.
Download or read book Songs of the Gorilla Nation written by Dawn Prince-Hughes, Ph.D. and published by Crown. This book was released on 2004-03-09 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This is a book about autism. Specifically, it is about my autism, which is both like and unlike other people’s autism. But just as much, it is a story about how I emerged from the darkness of it into the beauty of it.” In this elegant and thought-provoking memoir, Dawn Prince-Hughes traces her personal growth from undiagnosed autism to the moment when, as a young woman, she entered the Seattle Zoo and immediately became fascinated with the gorillas. Having suffered from a lifelong inability to relate to people in a meaningful way, Dawn was surprised to find herself irresistibly drawn to these great primates. By observing them and, later, working with them, she was finally able to emerge from her solitude and connect to living beings in a way she had never previously experienced. Songs of the Gorilla Nation is more than a story of autism, it is a paean to all that is important in life. Dawn Prince-Hughes’s evocative story will undoubtedly have a lasting impact, forcing us, like the author herself, to rediscover and assess our own understanding of human emotion.
Download or read book The Psalter Reclaimed written by Gordon Wenham and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2013-02-28 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most respected Old Testament scholars of our time introduces us to the history of scholarship on the Psalter and provides hermeneutical guidelines for interpreting the book— making accessible to us the transforming messages of the Psalms.
Download or read book Tears of Longing written by Christine Yano and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2002-07-01 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enka, a sentimental ballad genre, epitomizes for many the nihonjin no kokoro (heart/soul of Japanese). To older members of the Japanese public, who constitute enka’s primary audience, this music—of parted lovers, long unseen rural hometowns, and self-sacrificing mothers—evokes a direct connection to the traditional roots of “Japaneseness.” Overlooked in this emotional invocation of the past, however, are the powerful commercial forces that, since the 1970s, have shaped the consumption of enka and its version of national identity. Informed by theories of nostalgia, collective memory, cultural nationalism, and gender, this book draws on the author’s extensive fieldwork in probing the practice of identity-making and the processes at work when Japan becomes “Japan.”
