The Life Story of Louis Armstrong, The Star of Jazz

The song I will be analyzing is the song Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday. The song of Strange Fruit is a song about the lynching of black people in Southern America in the first half of the 20th Century. The majority of lynching victims in the 20th century were African-Americans males. The lyrics [...]

The origin of jazz dance can be traced all the way back to Africa. In Africa, it was custom for natives to dance as a celebration of cycles in life such as birth, puberty, marriage, and death. This was to express their cultural beliefs. Drums, string instruments, chimes, reedpipes, and other [...]

The year 1959 was marked a monumental year in American music history. Many American jazz artists made recordings that influenced society profoundly and left a lasting impact that still is present to this day. Musical experimentation during this year is considered the apogee of American jazz [...]

Jazz is a music genre that has existed for many years. Women in jazz have had a great impact on jazz and the larger music world. Some of the greatest women jazz composers include Mary Lou Williams, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald. These women shaped the way jazz is performed and have had a [...]

Though set in the underworld of thievery, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera codifies a set of Marxist sexual politics in which marriage stands as the great equalizer of desire and power. An often aphoristic overview of the traditional power struggle between men and women frames a world in which [...]

The French epic The Song of Roland (ca. 1100) loudly echoes the feudal values of its time. As it describes the transformation of France into a Christian nation united by loyalties to the king and country, the epic embodies the spirit of loyalty between a lord to his vassal. Although "Aucassin and [...]

Bop jazz divorced itself from its mainstream predecessor when musicians like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk began to emphasize fast tempo and improvisation over the predictable music of the swing era. These renegade musicians valued spontaneity and inspired many listeners. It [...]

From the American Revolution onward, the United States has gained international recognition as a land of hope and equal opportunity. America’s founding fathers imagined the nation to be a place of widespread promise, operating under democratic rule and allowing for social mobility. The notion that [...]

The fairy tale of Bluebeard has fascinated writers, filmmakers, photographers, and artists throughout history and across national boundaries. Coming from the European oral tradition, the first, and most famous, written version is Charles Perrault’s La Barbe Bleue, published in 1697. Developing [...]