Category: Music

When people think the Velvets / Lou Reed, they often think noise and craziness. Some of their best known works, or most infamous works, are scrawled masterpieces, loud and in your face: Sister Ray, Waiting For My Man, Metal Music… However, the Lou and the Velvets also pushed envelopes on the other end of the spectrum, penning some of the greatest subdued songs ever recorded. Here is my top list of soft works of genius:

5) Vanishing Act — Lou Reed

The Raven

This song is really beautiful, arguably the softest song that Lou ever did. It starts out with just single, sustained piano notes. Then, Lou starts singing a repetitive melody very softly in his gruff voice. The effect is incredibly intimate, possibly too much so. I’m not a huge fan of all the spit-y sounds, it sounds like we’re hearing Lou Reed sing from inside his mouth. Also, it really builds at the end, and I’m not really hugely into the sweeping strings at the end. But the meat of this song is incredibly beautiful, fragile, moving.

4) Candy Says — The Velvet Underground

Eponymous

This song is just a gorgeous song with a lilting melody. What needs to be appreciated is that the Velvets blazed their own sound in so many different spectrums. They also blazed their own sound with soft songs, featuring instantly recognizable aspects like the softly chiming clean guitars in high registers, repetitive rhythms and subdued drums. See other great soft velvets songs like ‘Sunday Morning’ and ‘Pale Blue Eyes’.

3) Turning Time Around — Lou Reed

Ecstasy

This song is some late period brilliance with a very intimate feel. It has a really pillow-talk vibe, which is surprisingly not a bad thing! It features some of Lou’s most interesting lyrics, at once tender and poetic, philosophical and personal. And the feeling is gorgeous, it messes with your perception of time, slowing the world down a bit, as befits the title.

2) The Gift — The Velvet Underground

White Light White Heat

This is a strange, captivating and unsettling story about an obsessive romance that ends very badly. It stands out from the Velvets other soft tracks in that the music is supplying jagged and angular ambiance to the weird story happening. Really a singular piece of the Velvet’s canon.

1) Sunday Morning — The Velvet Underground

The Velvet Underground and Nico

This song, the first off of the Velvet’s first album, is a gorgeous swoon through and through, replete with Baroque instrumentation, beautiful pop melody… Simply irresistible, an amazing starting point to one of the most influential albums ever made.

Bachata which literally means “party” is a dance and music style from the Dominican Republic often centered around subjects of heartbreak, romance, and loss. Equivalent to the Blues in the U.S., thematic similarities and resolution are prevalent such as loss of a love and looking for ones self at the bottom of the bottle. The main melody is predominantly played by an electric guitar, which plucks out an eight note pattern. Bachata has had much success in clubs in the last decade. 

This music form had a rough and “nefarious” history. Born in the brothels and bars of the lower class, Bachata shares a common ancestry to Merengue.  Conversely, while the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, was responsible for the overwhelming success of Merengue, the government was also  responsible for the censorship, denigration, and almost extinction of Bachata. Trujillo himself felt Bachata was a backwards, lower art form for  country-people unfit to embolster his nation. After the Trujillo dictatorship ended, censorship feel away and bachata started to flourish again. Yet  high society still resisted its influence; branding bachata as unfit and immoral for society. Irregardless Bachata was still popular amongst the  countryside even as Merengue became highlighted as the Official Music of the country.

Eventually Bachata permeated through the socio-political barriers and is now a popular music style from the Dominican Republic. Pioneers like Luis  Vargas and Antony Santos were part of the first generation of pop stars for bachata. One of the most popular songs in the style of Bachat is Aventura’s  single “Obsesion”, which has had worldwide success.

The dance, by the same name, which accompanies Bachata music is composed of 4 steps with a tap or pop on the 4th beat. The motion is from side to side  with both a closed and open frame (handhold). The proximity of the partners follows the idea that they are “brushing belt buckles”. This can be a much  more intimate dance, and unfortunately has sometimes received a reputation of being “just grinding”. The nature of the dance cause some gyrating motions  yet the natural movements of your hips should not be confused with or compared to “grinding”. In fact your hips should move in unison, i.e. no grinding,  which comes from opposing motion. Cuban Hip Motion, the underlying technique in this dance, is all about shifting your weight by bending and  straightening your knee such that your hip naturally pops. The movement does not come from a focused attempt at popping ones hip from side to side.

The basic step, starts with partners facing each other. The leader extends his left hand holding the followers right hand and completes the frame by  placing his right hand on the followers back, the follower then drapes her hand on his shoulder. This is the known as the frame (for most latin dances).  The couple mirrors each others footwork as such this explanation will come from the leaders point of view. 

The leader steps to his left on 1. On the 2 the leader brings his right foot to meet his left foot. On 3 the leader steps to the left with his left  foot. On the 4 the leader taps his right foot next to his left foot. Next the leader steps to his right on 5. On the 6 the leader brings his left foot  to meet his right foot. On 7 the leader steps to the right with his right foot. On the 8 the leader taps his left foot next to his right foot.

Three things to remember:

1) The follower mirrors the leader’s footwork during these steps.

2) There is no crossing of the legs during the basic, traditionally.

3) Remember to get close “Brushing Belt Buckles”; arms length apart is too far away.

~Continued from Part 1~

As Selena’s popularity grew placing additional demands on the band (e.g. travel), Abraham removed Selena from the 8th grade, drawing immediate unwarranted criticism. Some accused him of violating Child Labor laws while others warned that he was ruining his kids. “They’ll be surrounded by drinking and drugs” and “it’s going to have an effect on them,” the critics incorrectly predicted.[1]

Despite the skeptics, Selena remained unaffected. She continued to have fun and enjoy singing. She kept her down-to-earth personality and refused to snub anyone, believing that “if you treat people good, it [will] come back” in the end.[2] Accordingly, Selena always maintained a great repertoire with her fans and audience.[3] At the same time, she also kept up with her academics and earned a G.E.D. from a Chicago-based Correspondence School at 17.

As Selena was growing into a star, her brother, A.B. III was becoming an accomplished songwriter and producer, after originally taking it up to supply his youngest sister with the quality, original material that the band lacked. One of his first songs, “Dame Un Beso” enjoyed moderate success. Before long, A.B. III supplanted his father as the band’s leading songwriter. In addition, Ricky Vela, another band member also assisted with music composition.

When the band’s second album, “Alpha” was released, it brought Selena her first music honors. She won “Female Vocalist of the Year” at the 1987 West Texas Hispanic Music Awards and KFLZ Awards ceremonies and was voted “Female Vocalist of the Year” and “Performer of the Year” at the Tejano Music Awards. This recognition introduced Selena to two influential people: Rick Trevino, founder of the Tejano Music Awards and Johnny Canales, a television personality on one of the top-rated Spanish shows. Their efforts gave Selena much needed publicity, expanding the horizons for “Selena Y Los Dinos.”

Two more albums, “Preciosa” and “Dulce Amor” were released in 1988 earning Selena greater recognition. With album sales exceeding 20,000, Selena’s name began to spread beyond Texas. Not surprisingly, Selena was a finalist for “Female Vocalist of the Year” for 1988 and “Terco Corazon” and A.B. III were nominated for “Single of the Year” and “Songwriter of the Year,” respectively, at the Tejano Music Awards.

Despite Selena’s growing fame, the Quintanillas’ lifestyle had not changed much. They continued to live on beans and hamburgers and shared just about everything. As a result, they had “Nobody You Know” written at the top of the band’s bus, “Big Bertha’s” front windshield.

Their fortunes, though, changed dramatically when Selena was signed by Jose Behar, the former head of Sony’s Latin music division and creator of the Capitol/EMI Latin label in 1989. The signing came about when Behar and a friend, Mario Ruiz, who became President of EMI Mexico attended the 1989 Tejano Music Awards searching for new talent and discovered Selena. The events went as follows according to the account by Jose Behar:

“…We were standing at the back of the auditorium when we saw her. Mario and I looked at each other like, ‘Wow. This is special.'”

“…I said, ‘It’s interesting. Women don’t sell in the Tejano market.’ And they really hadn’t. Yet I said to myself, ‘This is the crossover act I’m looking for.”[4]

Afterwards, Behar, believing that he had found the next Gloria Estefan, a popular and successful crossover Latin artist went backstage and met and signed Selena after talking to her father. At the time, Behar never imagined how many records Selena would eventually sell.

Despite her signing with Capitol/EMI Latin and her taking “Female Vocalist of the Year” honors at the 1989 and 1990 Tejano Music Awards, and also “Female Entertainer of the Year” at the 1990 Tejano Music Awards, Selena’s first few new releases did little better than her previous ones. However, another breakthrough came in 1991 when she was paired with Alvaro Torres in “Buenos Amigos.” Their video soared to #1 on the Billboard Latin Tracks Chart giving Selena national exposure. An appearance on “Donde Quiero Que Estes” with the Barrio Boyzz, an immensely popular Latin band further enhanced Selena’s rising stature, enabling her to enter the international Latin market with her solo hits, “La Carcacha” and “Como La Flor.”

Johnny Canales then helped make Selena an instant Celebrity in Mexico leading to an offer star in a leading role in a Mexican Soap opera, which she turned down because of its steamy scenes. Though determined to make it big, Selena wasn’t about to sacrifice her principles. She valued her appeal to her broad audience that consisted of young children and grandparents alike.

Performing in skin-tight pants, low-cut bustiers, and shiny outfits was her limit. Unlike many others, Selena did not need to forego her morals for fame. Her natural-born talent was sufficient. In addition, when Johnny Canales compared Selena to Madonna, Whitney Houston, and Janet Jackson, all pop stars, he declared, “I’d say [Selena] was like those people, but better. Those people never sang Tejano. She could do what they do, but it would be hard for them to do what she does.”[5]

Also during this time, the Los Dinos Band was expanding, providing Selena with some of her happiest moments. Pete Astudillo, a Laredo, Texas native and talented artist joined in 1989. Together, he and Selena went on to perform hit duets like “Yo Te Amo” and “Amame, Quiereme.”[6] Accordingly the pair were twice nominated for “Vocal Duo of the Year” at the Tejano Music Awards.

A second great addition was Chris Perez, who briefly joined Los Dinos in 1988, left a year later to try it on his own, and then returned in 1990. Chris was a talented guitarist who eventually became Selena’s husband. They were married on April 2, 1992.

Although Selena’s father initially opposed the marriage, he soon viewed Chris as “a son.”[7] Afterwards, Selena and Chris shared a nearby house, with her parents living next door in one house and her brother, A.B. III and his wife and children in another. Between the three houses there were nine dogs, five of which belonged to Selena, an avid animal lover. Later the pair bought a piece of land a little further away with plans to build a larger house to start a family and run a small farm. Prior to her death, Selena had already picked out the furniture.

As Selena’s career took off, she released two hit albums: “Ven Conmigo” featuring the hit song “Baila Esta Cumbia” in 1990 and “Entre A Mi Mundo” featuring the hit songs “La Carcacha” and “Como La Flor” in 1992. The great success of these albums completed Selena’s transformation from “unknown” to “star.” Then a show featuring Selena, La Mafia, and Emilia Navaira at the Summit in Houston in the summer of 1991 drew more than 9000 people. Next followed “Selena Live” in 1993, which gave the young singer her first Grammy along with three Tejano Awards, opening the door to mainstream pop.

After four years of attempts, Jim Behar, using Selena’s soaring popularity and sales to their advantage, finally convinced EMI’s pop division to give her the crossover chance she had been dreaming of. Prior to 1993, Behar had faced repeated setbacks and had to start over each time when key executives left the Company. As one EMI executive, Nancy Brennan, Vice President of Artist and Repertoire summarized, “All he [Behar] ever talked about was Selena. He was like a broken record, ‘Selena, Selena…'”[8]

Brennan was exposed to Selena when she attended a Billboard Latin Music Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada to see Jon Secada, an immensely popular EMI artist. There, Selena’s opening made a lasting impression. By December 1993, Selena had been signed by EMI’s SBK subsidiary to begin her crossover album, which took a year-and-a-half to produce due to the tedious effort of finding the right songs and producers.

The 1994 “Amor Prohibido” success also added to the crossover delays since Selena was requested to appear everywhere. Nancy Brennan recounted one such episode when had been forced to postpone a recording session: “This is the first time I have ever made a debut album by an artist who was too busy to record for me. How can you tell someone, ‘No I don’t want you to play the Astrodome for 60,000 people; I want you to work on your record.’ Everyone wants her.”[9]

The “Amor Prohibido” album featuring four #1 Latin Singles (title track “Amor Prohibido” “No Me Queda Mas,” “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom,” and “Fotos Y Recuerdos” launched Selena’s greatest year to date. When “Amor Prohibido” came out, it promptly replaced Gloria Estefan’s “Mi Tierra” at #1 on Billboard’s Latin Tracks Charts and even made the top 200 on Billboard’s Pop Charts. It led to six awards at the Tejano Music Awards ceremony attended by more than 45,000 people – “Female Entertainer of the Year,” “Female Vocalist of the Year,” “Orchestra Album of the Year,” Record of the Year,” “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” “Song of the Year,” and “Techno Cumbia, “Crossover Song of the Year.” More than 400,000 copies had sold at the time of Selena’s death less than a year after its release.

Selena also realized two more dreams in 1994. First, she opened a boutique/salon in Corpus Christi called “Selena Etc.” Since childhood, Selena had dreamed of designing clothing and jewelry. Second, she played a bit-role “Don Juan DeMarco,” a film released in early 1995 that starred Marlon Brando and Johnny Depp and offered the potential of leading to greater and perhaps leading roles. Acting had been a recent dream of Selena’s.

With the impending release of Selena’s cross-over album, “Dreaming of You,” her wide-spread fame and rocketing demand, a million-dollar record deal, a Grammy Award, endorsements from sponsors like Coca Cola and her own line of clothing, it seemed like Selena’s meteoric career could only rise higher. By this time, Selena had been named “one of the most successful Latin entertainers in the world” by “Hispanic Business” magazine.

The sold-out Astrodome Concert for the Houston Livestock and Rodeo February 1995 with a crowd of 61,000+, at the time, the largest in Astrodome history only strengthened this belief. Yet ironically and almost prophetically, when Selena was asked to speculate on her future during a July 1994 interview, she modestly stated, “I just hope still to be alive, hopefully singing still and later on, maybe 10 years yonder, I hope to have a family by then.”[10]

Four years earlier, Yolanda Saldivar, a self-professed “biggest Selena fan” had come into Selena’s life after persistently requesting to start a fan club in her honor. Although Abraham had initially refused, he eventually gave in when Yolanda agreed to make it “not-for-profit” and donate leftover proceeds to charity. Eventually Yolanda’s relationship with the Quintanillas deepened when Selena named her Operations Manager to handle sales, customer-relations, and “Selena Etc.’s” finances.

At the time, no one saw Saldivar’s dark obsession. Furthermore, no one had been aware that Yolanda had failed to pay off a $5300 student loan, left her nursing job under suspicious circumstances, been turned down by Shelly Lares, a prominent, young Tejano singer to form a “Shelly Lares Fan Club,” and been accused of stealing $9200 from a dermatologist she had worked for.

However, by early 1995, Abraham Quintanilla began to receive complaints from upset fans who reported that they were not receiving the Selena packets, consisting of a T-shirt, baseball cap, cassette/CD, and autographed poster they had paid for in membership dues. Money also began to go missing from the boutiques. With their suspicions growing, the Quintanillas conducted an investigation and discovered that Yolanda had written four checks, including one to herself for $3000 from the Fan Club’s books. Selena’s father then angrily confronted Yolanda who claimed she could explain everything if given some time. Afterwards, Saldivar purchased a .38 caliber gun.

Yet despite the mounting evidence, Selena sent Yolanda to Mexico to assist with opening a “Selena Etc.” boutique in Monterrey. Hopeful that they could remain friends after the confrontation, Selena was willing to give Saldivar the chance she had requested – to “prove her innocence and find the missing papers.”

Then while in Mexico, Yolanda phoned Selena to hysterically report that the car containing the documents had been stolen and that she had been raped. Yet Yolanda refused medical care when she returned to Corpus Christi. Instead, she requested that Selena meet her at the Day’s Inn motel in Corpus Christi. When Selena and her husband arrived, Yolanda failed to produce any documents.

Afterwards, Yolanda called Selena around midnight on the morning of March 31, 1995 claiming that she was suffering from internal bleeding caused by the rape. During the phone conversation, Saldivar pleaded for Selena to return alone, which she did in the morning.

Once there, Selena drove Yolanda to the hospital where she retracted her rape story. Afterwards Selena drove her back to the motel where they both argued after, it is believed, Selena fired her and planned to return a Faberge Egg ring funded by all of the boutique employees, which she had been misled into believing that Yolanda had generously given to her as a gift.

Upon hearing the argument and a gunshot, a maid cleaning a nearby room looked out the window and saw Selena clutching her chest, screaming for help as she fled from Yolanda who clutched the .38 in her right hand, aimed and fired again.

When Selena made it to the lobby, she collapsed, bleeding profusely from her wound. Although the desk clerk locked the door and called 911 for an ambulance, it was too late. Efforts to revive Selena, despite a blood infusion and electric shocks that briefly restarted her heart, were to no avail. She was pronounced dead at 1:05 PM. Afterwards, tens of thousands filed past Selena’s open coffin to pay their last respects as her body lay in state.

Today, nearly 12 years after her death, Selena’s legacy lives on. Despite the tragedy, Selena made the crossover into mainstream and is an icon whose spirit still lives. Reminder’s of Selena’s warmth, generosity, and indelible beauty are all around Corpus Christi. Mirador de la Flor stands along the Gulf shore while a museum dedicated to her career stands only a few miles away. Each year thousands visit Selena’s grave, Mirador de la Flor, and the Selena Museum. Selena memorabilia remains popular with rare autographs going at times for more than a $1000. With her continued fame and popularity, it would not be surprising if the United States Post Office eventually issued a stamp to honor Selena’s enduring legacy.

__________

[1] Rick Mitchell. Interactive Corpus Christi Caller Times Biography. (Houston Chronicle), 1995.

[2] Rick Mitchell. Interactive Corpus Christi Caller Times Biography. (Houston Chronicle), 1995.

[3] Bill Hewitt, et al. People Weekly. (Chicago, April 17, 1995) 49.

[4] Rick Mitchell. Interactive Corpus Christi Caller Times Biography. (Houston Chronicle), 1995.

[5] Rick Mitchell. Interactive Corpus Christi Caller Times Biography. (Houston Chronicle), 1995.

[6] Himilce Novas. Remembering Selena: A Tribute in Pictures and Words. (St. Martin’s Griffin: New York, 1995) 43-44.

[7] Rick Mitchell. Interactive Corpus Christi Caller Times Biography. (Houston Chronicle), 1995.

[8] Rick Mitchell. Interactive Corpus Christi Caller Times Biography. (Houston Chronicle), 1995.

[9] Rick Mitchell. Interactive Corpus Christi Caller Times Biography. (Houston Chronicle), 1995.

[10] Bruce Hagan, Producer; Joshua Kuvin, Editor, et. al. Dateline NBC – Obsession. (April 7, 1995).

Where most articles go wrong with any sort of MySpace tips is that they fail to mention that there are many different accounts for you to join. Two of them are a musician account and a user account. If you are a musician you need the musician account. I may sound smart, but if you don’t then you don’t have access to an extra 3 MP3s to display…which is a lot.

Any way. lets get on with these MySpace tips:

MySpace tips: 1. If you do use games, flashy stuff and big files, it will turn people away, mainly due to the slow loading time from MySpace. If you have to use graphics, don’t let MySpace host them for you, load them up using your own bandwidth this way pictures and larger files will get loaded up that little bit quicker.

Remember these few words for any site:

Short, clean, clear

See if you can invent an identity for your site, certain colours etc. The best sites are ones that you can navigate easily and find what you want quickly. To get the friend, it must be plain as day for them to sign up.

MySpace tips: 2. How many people are registered with MySpace? 106 million…so will of them become your friend? No is the answer and the main reason being not all of them like your music. So we have to find

Like minded downloaders and friends

To do this, MySpace has given us some tools. The first one is the search engine. Click on the drop down bar to reveal: blogs, music interest etc. You can then search for similar artists to yourself.

If you notice further below, the affiliation for networking, allows you to contact record companies and industry people (make sure that “field” is on music).

MySpace tips: 3. To get more friends go to a similar genre artist, and look down to their list of friends comments, and then click on view all. Now if your initial search was right, then these, like minded friends could easily like your music. Also these friends are active Spacers as well as fans of the artist (with the most recent comments being at the top of the page). Just make sure that you contact the friend with the most responsible comments.

MySpace tips: 4. Sometimes though you don’t want a friend that is 3000 miles away, especially if you want to gig. When doing a general search you can find people that are close to your home town, by doing a zip search, or county search. This has some great possibilities as when you start gigging then these people are more likely to come to your venue.

Also increase your zip search for surrounding areas. When you do have a gig ready, post in your forum a month before hand, a week and then a day…just to give ample time to everyone.

MySpace tips: 5 MySpace has grown because of the interaction between friends, a sort of pimped blog. So we also must interact. This is the time consuming part and it is also the best way of networking. What you need to do is go around your friends homepages and leave a comment by clicking on the add comment link at the bottom of the page.

Now as we have seen with the send a message weapon, the add a comment can be done right or can be done wrong.

Wrong way (but you see this 80% of the time…it doesn’t work!)

1. = “you rock”!

2. = “see my music on http://www.myspace.com/artist”

Right way

Wow, what a cool tune [name] is. I specifically like the middle part with the drum solo. Also, where did you get that great background from?

Today’s practitioners of what we once called “modern” music are finding themselves to be suddenly alone. A bewildering backlash is set against any music making that requires the disciplines and tools of research for its genesis. Stories now circulate that amplify and magnify this troublesome trend. It once was that one could not even approach a major music school in the US unless well prepared to bear the commandments and tenets of serialism. When one hears now of professors shamelessly studying scores of Respighi in order to extract the magic of their mass audience appeal, we know there’s a crisis. This crisis exists in the perceptions of even the most educated musicians. Composers today seem to be hiding from certain difficult truths regarding the creative process. They have abandoned their search for the tools that will help them create really striking and challenging listening experiences. I believe that is because they are confused about many notions in modern music making!

First, let’s examine the attitudes that are needed, but that have been abandoned, for the development of special disciplines in the creation of a lasting modern music. This music that we can and must create provides a crucible in which the magic within our souls is brewed, and it is this that frames the templates that guide our very evolution in creative thought. It is this generative process that had its flowering in the early 1950s. By the 1960s, many emerging musicians had become enamored of the wonders of the fresh and exciting new world of Stockhausen’s integral serialism that was then the rage. There seemed limitless excitement, then. It seemed there would be no bounds to the creative impulse; composers could do anything, or so it seemed. At the time, most composers hadn’t really examined serialism carefully for its inherent limitations. But it seemed so fresh. However, it soon became apparent that it was Stockhausen’s exciting musical approach that was fresh, and not so much the serialism itself, to which he was then married. It became clear, later, that the methods he used were born of two special considerations that ultimately transcend serial devices: crossing tempi and metrical patterns; and, especially, the concept that treats pitch and timbre as special cases of rhythm. (Stockhausen referred to the crossovers as “contacts”, and he even entitled one of his compositions that explored this realm Kontakte.) These gestures, it turns out, are really independent from serialism in that they can be explored from different approaches.

The most spectacular approach at that time was serialism, though, and not so much these (then-seeming) sidelights. It is this very approach — serialism — however, that after having seemingly opened so many new doors, germinated the very seeds of modern music’s own demise. The method is highly prone to mechanical divinations. Consequently, it makes composition easy, like following a recipe. In serial composition, the less thoughtful composer seemingly can divert his/her soul away from the compositional process. Inspiration can be buried, as method reigns supreme. The messy intricacies of note shaping, and the epiphanies one experiences from necessary partnership with one’s essences (inside the mind and the soul — in a sense, our familiars) can be discarded conveniently. All is rote. All is compartmentalized. For a long time this was the honored method, long hallowed by classroom teachers and young composers-to-be, alike, at least in the US. Soon, a sense of sterility emerged in the musical atmosphere; many composers started to examine what was taking place.

The replacement of sentimental romanticism with atonal music had been a crucial step in the extrication of music from a torpid cul-de-sac. A music that would closet itself in banal self-indulgence, such as what seemed to be occurring with romanticism, would decay. Here came a time for exploration. The new alternative –atonality — arrived. It was the fresh, if seemingly harsh, antidote. Arnold Schonberg had saved music, for the time being. However, shortly thereafter, Schonberg made a serious tactical faux pas. The ‘rescue’ was truncated by the introduction of a method by which the newly freed process could be subjected to control and order! I have to express some sympathy here for Schönberg, who felt adrift in the sea of freedom provided by the disconnexity of atonality. Large forms depend upon some sense of sequence. For him a method of ordering was needed. Was serialism a good answer? I’m not so certain it was. Its introduction provided a magnet that would attract all those who felt they needed explicit maps from which they could build patterns. By the time Stockhausen and Boulez arrived on the scene, serialism was touted as the cure for all musical problems, even for lack of inspiration!

Pause for a minute and think of two pieces of Schonberg that bring the problem to light: Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21 (1912 – pre-serial atonality) and the Suite, Op. 29 (1924 serial atonality). Pierrot… seems so vital, unchained, almost lunatic in its special frenzy, while the Suite sounds sterile, dry, forced. In the latter piece the excitement got lost. This is what serialism seems to have done to music. Yet the attention it received was all out of proportion to its generative power. Boulez once even proclaimed all other composition to be “useless”! If the ‘disease’ –serialism –was bad, one of its ‘cures’ –free chance –was worse. In a series of lectures in Darmstadt, Germany, in 1958, John Cage managed to prove that the outcome of music written by chance means differs very little from that written using serialism. However, chance seemed to leave the public bewildered and angry. Chance is chance. There is nothing on which to hold, nothing to guide the mind. Even powerful musical personalities, such as Cage’s, often have trouble reining in the raging dispersions and diffusions that chance scatters, seemingly aimlessly. But, again, many schools, notably in the US, detected a sensation in the making with the entry of free chance into the music scene, and indeterminacy became a new mantra for anyone interested in creating something, anything, so long as it was new.

I believe parenthetically that one can concede Cage some quarter that one might be reluctant to cede to others. Often chance has become a citadel of lack of discipline in music. Too often I’ve seen this outcome in university classes in the US that ‘teach ‘found (!)’ music. The rigor of discipline in music making should never be shunted away in search of a music that is ‘found’, rather than composed. However, in a most peculiar way, the power of Cage’s personality, and his surprising sense of rigor and discipline seem to rescue his ‘chance’ art, where other composers simply flounder in the sea of uncertainty.

Still, as a solution to the rigor mortis so cosmically bequeathed to music by serial controls, chance is a very poor stepsister. The Cageian composer who can make chance music talk to the soul is a rare bird indeed. What seemed missing to many was the perfume that makes music so wonderfully evocative. The ambiance that a Debussy could evoke, or the fright that a Schonberg could invoke (or provoke), seemed to evaporate with the modern technocratic or free-spirited ways of the new musicians. Iannis Xenakis jolted the music world with the potent solution in the guise of a ‘stochastic’ music. As Xenakis’ work would evolve later into excursions into connexity and disconnexity, providing a template for Julio Estrada’s Continuum, the path toward re-introducing power, beauty and fragrance into sound became clear. All this in a ‘modernist’ conceptual approach!

Once again, though, the US university milieu took over (mostly under the stifling influence of the serial methodologist, Milton Babbitt) to remind us that it’s not nice to make music by fashioning it through ‘borrowings’ from extra-musical disciplines. Throughout his book, Conversations with Xenakis, the author, Balint András Vargas, along with Xenakis, approaches the evolution of Xenakis’ work from extra-musical considerations. Physical concepts are brought to bear, such as noise propagating through a crowd, or hail showering upon metal rooftops. Some relate to terrible war memories of experiences suffered by Xenakis, culminating in a serious wound. To shape such powerful sounds, concepts akin to natural phenomena had to be marshaled. From the standpoint of the musical classroom, two things about Xenakis are most troubling: one is his relative lack of formal musical training; the other, or flip side, is his scientifically oriented schooling background. In ways no one else in musical history had ever done, Xenakis marshaled concepts that gave birth to a musical atmosphere that no one had ever anticipated could exist in a musical setting. One most prominent feature is a sound setting that emulates Brownian movement of a particle on a liquid surface. This profoundly physical concept needed high-powered mathematics to constrain the movements of the (analogous) sound ‘particles’ and make them faithful to the concept Xenakis had in mind. There is, as a result, a certain inexactitude, albeit a physical slipperiness, to the movement of the sound particles. Nice musical smoothness and transition give way to unpredictable evolution and transformation. This concept blows the skin off traditional concepts of musical pattern setting! Its iridescent shadows are unwelcome in the gray gloom of the American classroom.

In their haste to keep musical things musical, and to rectify certain unwanted trends, the official musical intelligentsia, (the press, the US university elite, professors, etc.) managed to find a way to substitute false heroes for the troubling Xenakis. Around the time of Xenakis’ entry into the musical scene, and his troubling promulgation of throbbing musical landscapes, attendant with sensational theories involving stochastic incarnations, a group of composers emerged who promised to deliver us from evil, with simple-minded solutions erected on shaky intuitional edifices. The so-called ‘cluster’ group of would-be musical sorcerers included Krzysztof Penderecki, Henryk Górecki and Gyorgy Ligeti. These new musical darlings, with their easy methodologies, gave us the first taste of the soon-to-emerge post-modernism that has posed as our ticket to the Promised Land for the last thirty years. It seemed that, just as music finally had a master of the caliber and importance of Bach, Schonberg, Bartok and Varese in the person of one Iannis Xenakis, history and musicology texts seemed not to be able to retreat quickly enough to embrace the new saviors, all the while conspiring against an all embracing creativity found fast, and well-embedded within the turmoil of the stochastic process.

Alas, Xenakis has been exiled from American history, as much as the powers have been able to do so! His competition, those in the intuitive cluster school, became the fixtures of the new musical landscape, because their art is so much easier than that of Xenakis. Ease of composing, of analyzing and of listening are the new bywords that signal success in the music world. Those who extol such virtues herald the arrival and flourishing of post-modernism and all its guises, be it neo-romantic, clustering or eclecticism. The proud cry these days, is “Now we can do about anything we wish.” Better, perhaps, to do nothing than to embrace such intellectual cowardice.

The promise of a return to musical fragrances that walk in harmony and synchronicity with intellectual potency was precious and vital. It should signal the next phase of evolution in the creative humanities. The challenge to write about this potential of a marriage of humanities was overwhelming. No adequate text seemed to exist. So I had to provide one. All that was lacking for a good book was a unifying theme.

Algorithms control the walk of the sounds. Algorithms are schemata that work the attributes of sound to enable them to unfold meaningfully. An algorithm is a step-function that can range from a simple diagram to stochastic or Boolean functions. Even serialism is an algorithm. While they are important, algorithms take second place in importance to the focus of music: its sound. This concentration is given a terminology by composer, Gerard Pape: sound-based composition. Isn’t all music sound based? It’s all sound, after all.

Well, yes, but not really. The point of the term is to highlight the emphasis of the approach being on the sound, rather than on the means used for its genesis. In sound-based composition, one concentrates on a sound, then conjures the way to create it. In serialism, ordering takes precedence over quality. The result often is vapid: empty sound. Directionless pointillism robs music of its vital role, the conjuring of imagery, in whatever guise. The other leading practitioner of sound-based composition is Dr. Julio Estrada. In his composition classes and seminars at UNAM (Universidad National Autonoma de México), he emphasizes the mental formation of an imaginary, sort of an idealized imagery. Then the composer/students are directed to formulate a conspirator sound essence that conveys something of the élan of this imaginary. Only then, once the construct of sound is concocted, is the method of sound shaping in the form of notation employed. Understanding of imagery and of fragrance precedes their specification. This is a sophisticated example of sound-based composition.

A curious, special case arose out of the arcane methods of Giacinto Scelsi, who made explicit what long had been lurking in the background. He posited a ‘3rd dimension’ to sound. He felt that the trouble with the serialists was in their reliance upon two dimensions in sound: the pitch and the duration. For Scelsi, timbre provides a depth, or 3rd dimension, explored only rarely until his groundbreaking work. He devised ways to call for unusual timbres, and evolutions of timbre that resulted in his focusing on the characteristics of, and the transformations between (within!), attributes of single tones. Indeed, his Quattro Pezzi are veritable studies in counterpoint within single tones!

This concept of sound-based composition provided the unifying seed around which a book could be built. It would be one that could salvage something of the first principles of the union of intellectual discipline and a vibrant sound context: that is, music with meaning, challenge, discipline, ambience and something that requires courage and commitment in its conception. Such would be a music that yields special, beautiful, powerful, alluring fruits, which, nonetheless, disclose their secrets only reluctantly, demanding skillful teasing out of their magic.

This epiphany revealed a road by which we could reestablish the Xenakian ideal of musical power attainable primarily through processes that have their basis in the physics and architecture of the world around us. Here was not only the answer, the antidote, if you will, to the rigidities of serialism, but also a cure for the sloppiness of unconstrained chance composition. Here was a way out of the impasse confronting composition in the 1960s. The question should be not what method to use to compose, for that leads only to blind alleys (serialism, chance or retreat), but why compose? What is in the musical universe that can open pathways not yet explored, pathways that reveal something that stir a soul? What is the best way to accomplish that?

If we abandon the search for unique roads and for challenge, we will become the first generation ever in music to proclaim that backwards movement is progress; that less is more. Yet the very apostles of post-modernism will have us believe just that! They hold that the public has rejected modernism; the public has held modernism to be bankrupt. Post-modernists will lure you into the trap that, because of its unmitigated complexity, serialism promised only its demise. “The only road into modernism is sterile complexity; we need to root this out, and return to simplicity. We won’t have a saleable product, otherwise.” This is the thinking that gave us minimalism, the nearest relative to ‘muzak’ one can conjure in art-music. One composer, a one-time avant-gardist, actually apologized for his former modernity, on stage, to the audience, before a performance of his latest post-modern work!

There is an inscription in the halls of a monastery in Toledo, Spain: “Caminantes, no hay caminos, hay que caminar” (pilgrims, there is no road, only the travel). This was a beacon for one of music history’s most courageous pilgrims – a fighter for freedom for the mind, for the body, and for the ear: Luigi Nono. His example could serve us all well. He exposed himself to grave danger as a fighter against oppression of all kinds, not least of all the musical kind. It takes courage to create. It isn’t supposed to be easy! Nothing worthwhile ever is. It would seem to me that Nono’s example serves as the antithesis to that of the previous composer.

I examine music history of the 20th century to find clues as to why certain composers generate more excitement than others. Is it possible that sound-based composition has flourished in an intuitive way from back into the 19th century? Has it been around a while, but just not codified explicitly as such? I feel that is so. To some extent the roots of this idea can be found in the so-called nationalism of such composers as Bartók and Janacek. Nationalism has gotten something of a bad rap due to folksy, cutesy concoctions usually redolent within its environments. But, upon reflection and examination, the more rigorous efforts in nationalistic composition yield tremendous fruits. Note especially Bartók’s highly original devices of twelve-tone tonality (e.g., axis positions and special chords). Less well known, but important as well, are the special folk vocal inflections resident in Janácek’s music. These special qualities spilled over from the vocal to the instrumental writing. So it appears that we can make a strong case for sound-based composition (composition focused on special sound qualities) being rooted in the music by the turn of the 20th century.

The process of creation is the focus; not the glorification of the superficial sounds that only mimic real music. The reinstatement of Xenakis’, Nono’s, Scelsi’s and Estrada’s ideals to preeminence was crucial. The recognition of these trends, in preference to those of the more facile and easily attractive ones espoused by Penderecki, Ligeti and others, had to be ensured. The easy lure of cluster music had to be resisted.

If we don’t make this distinction clear, all that follows is nonsense. Too many people apply modernism to anything that resided in the 20th century that contained a little dissonance. That is a common error. For others, modernism exists in any era – it simply is what’s happening at a given time, and is appropriate as a description for music in that era. This, too, is wrong for its reluctance to confront the creative process.

We mustn’t yield to these impulsive descriptions, for to do so renders the profound efforts of the 20th century meaningless. There is a unifying thread in music that qualifies it to be considered modern, or modernist, and it isn’t just a time frame. Modernism is an attitude. This attitude appears periodically in music history, but it is most effectively understood in the context of creativity, most pronouncedly found late in the 20th century. Modern music is the music composed that results from research into the attributes of sound, and into the ways we perceive sound. It usually involves experimentation; the experimentation yields special discoveries that bear fruit in the act of composition. This distinction is crucial; for even though much cluster music, and some neo-classical music, contains high dissonance, their focus is reactionary. The experimental work of Schonberg, Berg, Webern, Bartok, Varese, and that of some Stravinsky, is forward-looking, in that the music is not a solution unto itself: it provides a template for further work and exploration into that area. Even more so, the works of Cage, Xenakis, Scelsi, Nono and Estrada.

The composers chosen for discussion herein are the ones I consider to be the most exemplary models in the development of sound based composition. They are as follows:

-Janacek (nationalist inflection)

-Debussy (chord-coloration)

-Mahler (expressionism and tone-color melody)

-Ravel (impressionism)

-Malipiero (intuitive discourse)

-Hindemith (expressionism in a quasi-tonal context)

-Stravinsky (octatonic diatonicism)

-Bartok (axial tonality, arch form, golden section construction)

-Schonberg (expressionism, atonality, klangfarbenmelodie))

-Berg (‘tonal’ serialism)

-Webern (canonic forms in serialism, klangfarbenmelodie)

-Varese (noise, timbral/range hierarchies)

-Messiaen (modes of limited transposition, non-retrogradable rhythms, color chords)

-Boulez (special live electronics instruments)

-Stockhausen (pitch/rhythm dichotomy)

-Cage (indeterminacy, noise, live electronics)

-Xenakis (Ataxy, stochastic music, inside-outside time attributes, random walks, granularity, non-periodic scales)

-Nono (near inaudibility, mobile sound, special electronics)

-Lutoslawski (chain composition)

-Scelsi (the 3rd dimension in sound, counterpoint within a single tone)

-Estrada (The Continuum)

There is so much glitter in the world, and so much noise pollution that we are being rendered incapable of reflection and of creative thought. We become mortified at the thought of a little challenge. We are paralyzed when faced with the challenge of keeping our evolutionary legacy in focus. We cannot afford to trade away quality for mediocrity, just because mediocrity is easier and more enticing. This would not be an acceptable social outcome. To live we must thrive. To thrive we cannot rest.

Entertainment is a laudable pursuit in certain settings and times. It cannot be the force that drives our lives. If a composer desires to write entertaining music, that is all right. But that composer must be honest about his or her motives for doing so. Do not write entertainment and then try to con the public by claiming this is great music. It is best to be able to discover the key to the writing of a music that can fulfill a need for tomorrow. By understanding nature, the nature of sound and the human condition, we can write music capable of conveying something essential. That goes beyond entertainment. It fulfills music’s most crucial purpose: providing a teaching role. What better way to go through a learning process than to find oneself doing so while wrapped in a cocoon of beauty? Music can be our best teacher.

It is all right to find beauty in old sources. Even Respighi can be very charming, engaging. It is also just as good to listen to soothing, euphonious music as it is to write such music. But can’t we as composers do better than this? Why can’t we give something besides pleasure to tomorrow? Young composers today are at a crossroads. They can fulfill a vital mission by helping fulfill a tradition that carries on a cultural legacy. Today’s composers must begin to dream; and then compose.

One of my very favourite sub-scenes of music is the interweaving family tree that includes The Pixies, Throwing Muses, The Breeders and Belly. I could write endlessly about any of these bands, even about individual songs, so I am going to try to strictly limit myself to a very potted history and include a few example videos by each band, as well as a diagram that explains a great deal more (well, that’s if you can read it…it’s sharp as a pin on my computer, but the quality doesn’t seem to be so great in Blogger). The diagram, too, could be endless, and there is much that is not incuded…but that should inform a healthy comments debate of additions eh?

Recording during the late 1980s and the 1990s, I believe that these artists, and in particular The Pixies, really added something new to the musical landscape; and they have certainly been very influential on other musicians.

I shall start with The Pixies, as they are probably the best known of the bunch, and are really the ‘daddy’ of this scene (although Throwing Muses were around before The Pixies formed). Headed by Charles Michael Kitridge Thompson IV (!) under the pseudonym Black Francis, they were formed in Boston in 1986. Their full-length debut, Surfer Rosa, recorded by Steve Albini, was released in 1988 (following the release of EP Come On Pilgrim), and was quietly successful, particularly in the UK (more so than in their native US), and won both Melody Maker and Sounds’ Album Of The Year title. They supported fellow Bostonians Throwing Muses on tour early on in their career, which introduced them to industry professionals and the wider public.

I would describe their sound as alternative, guitar-based surf punk. Their albums displayed a wide range of song styles and The Pixies seemed to have a really novel, original and unique way of doing things. Strange sound collages crash against surreal imagery on subjects as diverse as UFOs, Mose Allison, incest and biblical references, and the albums are peppered by lyrics in Spanish as well as in English. These lyrics are often ‘spacey’ or violent, yet it is clear that their author is eloquent and articulate. Their use of volume and dynamics is also of note, with quiet, lazy, restrained sections contrasting with loud hell-for-leather, beat-the-crap-out-of-your-guitar choruses, and guttural growlings interspersed with sweet, almost falsetto, tunefulness. They were of particular influence on the grunge music scene of the early 1990s (Nirvana claimed, in interview, to have been trying to emulate their sound with Smells Like Teen Spirit), and have been cited by many, including David Bowie, U2 and Radiohead, as one of their favourite bands.

Black Francis, now rechristened Frank Black, has since been prolific, both solo and with his band Frank Black And The Catholics.

And so, before we move on, here are a couple of interesting tidbits for you…

The song Debaser (from the album Doolittle – which was provisionally titled Whore) was inspired by the film Un Chien Andalou, by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali…anyone that has seen this film will remember the eyeball-slicing scene vividly! The song Ana (from Bossanova) is an acrostic – the first letters of each of its six lines spelling out S-U-R-F-E-R.

Divinyl’s tip for best introductory album = Doolittle.

Throwing Muses were formed in 1983 by Kristin Hersh and her step-sister Tanya Donelly. They self-released a set of demos (The Doghouse Cassette) in 1984, also releasing a self-titled EP later that year. Their debut album proper (again eponymous) was released in 1986. Muses were the first American act to be signed to British record label 4AD, which has housed all of these key bands, as well as lots of other great artists. 4AD is also responsible for one of my favourite compilation albums, which came free with the magazine Uncut in 1998 and features Lush, His Name Is Alive, Dead Can Dance, Lisa Germano, Mojave 3, Red House Painters and others. (Check out their website for a fuller overview of their artists/releases.)

Hersh has an extremely distinctive vocal style and the lyrics are quirky, sung over tempo shifts and catchy guitar hooks. This is still somewhat anguished ‘alternative rock’ (e.g. lots of references to mental illness in their lyrics – Hersh suffers from bipolar disorder and is compelled to write by auditory hallucinations which ‘force’ songs upon her), but it is tuneful, poppy and accessible. Hersh continues to record solo today – a more acoustic sound and stunning songwriting – and also, in 2003, formed the power rock trio 50 Foot Wave. She has been kind enough to share free-to-download mp3s from her solo career, as well as songs from Throwing Muses and 50 Foot Wave at her website Throwing Music.

Divinyl’s tip for best introductory album = Limbo.

Best introductory Kristin Hersh album = Hips And Makers (which was co-produced by Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye).

Kim Deal of The Pixies formed The Breeders (taking the name from the teenage band of she and twin sister Kelley, also in this incarnation – the word being one which homosexuals use to refer to heterosexual people) with Throwing Muses’ (with whom they had been on tour) guitarist Tanya Donelly and bassist Josephine Wiggs of Perfect Disaster. Formed in 1989 and releasing their first full album, Pod, in 1990, this was a much more girl-based sound, where angular guitar-playing and feedback are complemented by the melodic singing voices of both Deal and Donelly (don’t get me wrong, these women can howl too!). They were signed to 4AD after Ivo Watts-Russell heard their demo, and their debut was recorded (again by Steve Albini, with whom Deal had worked when she was in The Pixies) in only one week. And so to a fact, before we leave The Breeders – with their album Title TK (2002), they heralded the “all wave” philosophy of recording analogue instruments and vocals and eschewing computer technology and digital recording techniques.

Divinyl’s tip for best introductory album = Last Splash.

Whilst The Breeders are still going (or at least haven’t officially split – the last album they released was Title TK), Tanya Donelly (the most ‘capped’ in this pantheon) left in 1991 to form…

Belly. Who were a much more chart- and MTV-friendly band who fit nicely into the division of early 90s indie rock that also included groups such as Lush, Echobelly and Dubstar. Belly are, in my opinion, under-appreciated. Their first EP, Slow Dust, was released in 1992 and reached number one on the British indie chart. There followed two albums – Star in 1993 and King in 1995. And that was it (but it was enough to garner Grammy nominations)…unless you count a (great) album mixing ‘best of’/B-sides and rareties not released until 2002. Their sound was much more ‘pop’ than their sibling bands, at times dreamy, at times thrashy, the lyrics still replete with weird, haunting and surreal imagery. They had their biggest success with the single Feed The Tree.

Donelly continues to work as a solo artist and has made some lovely songs; however, in my opinion, her solo efforts have varied widely in quality – it’s all a bit hit-and-miss. You can visit her website, where there are free downloadable demos from Belly’s album Star and also from her solo catalogue.

Divinyl’s tip for best introductory album – Star. And by Tanya Donelly as a solo artist – Whiskey Tango Ghosts.

N.B. All still images original by Divinyl.

The urban style of Latino music known as Reggaeton, a lively mix of traditional Latin styles and R&B, Hip Hop and Electronica, is really taking off in the United States. It makes sense, then, that numerous popular American rappers and R&B artists are recording collaborations with these up-and-coming Reggaeton artists.

Here is a short playlist featuring some of the best songs. This list can be useful for those interested in musical fusion as well as an entry point for rap fans to become familiar with a new genre of music that is becoming increasingly popular.

1. Daddy Yankee featuring Snoop Dogg – Gangsta Zone Daddy Yankee is a Latin Grammy Award winner and is both one of reggeaton’s pioneers as well as one of the hottest artists today. This song gives off a hard, street vibe and features a great verse by West Coast rapper Snoop Dogg.

2. Wisin y Yandel featuring 50 Cent – Mujeres en el Club Reggaeton duo Wisin and Yandel are one of the most active collaborators with artists in other genres, as they have recorded songs with numerous big names in Hip Hop, R&B as well as Pop. The beat has the feel of a 50 Cent song and the controversial rapper from South Jamaica, Queens delivers a characteristic verse.

3. Don Omar featuring Juelz Santana – Conteo The “Don” of Puerto Rican Reggaeton music is immensely popular and this song features a verse by Harlem native Juelz Santana. Juelz Santana’s father was Dominican, and he uses a few Spanish sentences in the song.

4. Daddy Yankee featuring Young Buck and Lloyd Banks – Rompe (Remix) Rompe is one of Daddy Yankee’s most popular singles, and he recorded a remix featuring the two G-Unit members. It is an upbeat, high energy song and has been used as the walk-up music of several Latino MLB players.

5. Wisin y Yandel featuring T-Pain – Imaginate This song represents the slower, more R&B influenced style of Wisin y Yandel, and it features T-Pain, complete with his characteristic Auto-Tune audio pitch adjuster.

This list will only get you started in the exciting world of Reggaeton, so be on the lookout for more collaborations, and expect many more in the near future.

The moody, haunting sound of slide or bottleneck guitar has become ever more popular in film soundtracks, television advertising and TV programmes. Think of the film Paris Texas and you will recall the eerie, plaintive sound of Ry Cooder’s famous accompanying soundtrack.

The origins of the slide style of playing guitar can be traced to a one-stringed instrument that originates from West Africa. This ultra-basic musical instrument developed, in America, into what is called a diddley-bow. This is a single-stringed instrument, usually home made, consisting of a wire stretched between two screws or pegs along a length of wood. The string is plucked while the pitch is established using a piece of bone, metal or glass. Some diddley-bows were made by attaching the single-string to the wall of a shack or house. Lonnie Pitchford, a Mississippi bluesman, was well known for demonstrating his diddley-bow which used two nails hammered into a beam that formed part of his front porch. The headstone of his grave is designed with a playable diddley-bow on its side.

It was in the Mississippi Delta region that the African influences on American music really took hold. Many emancipated slaves moved to the area after the American civil war bringing with them their love for rhythm, dance and accessible musical instruments, one of which was the diddley-bow.

Many have speculated that the Mississippi Delta is the birthplace of the blues. The first documented blues tune was heard by WC Handy in either 1895 or1903 while at the train station in the town of Tutwiler, Mississippi. He is reported to have witnessed a poor black man in ragged clothes and worn out shoes playing a guitar by pressing a knife against the strings to vary the pitch, very much like Hawaiin guitarists would use steel bars. The tune the man played was a haunting and melancholy melody that made quite an impression upon WC Handy.

It was during the 1890s that some well known American folk-blues tunes are thought to have originated including “Joe Turner Blues” and “Frankie and Johnnie”. One well known exponent of the style who originated at this time was Charley Patton. His precise birth date is unknown but thought to have been between 1885 and 1892. He learned his musical skills from the people around him including one Henry Sloan who was a fellow resident of the Dockery plantation in Ruleville, Mississippi. Some say that Henry Sloan is actually the mysterious black slide guitar player who’d been heard at the train station in Tutwiler by WC Handy.

It wasn’t until 1929 that Patton was discovered by H.C. Spier, the white talent scout who famously auditioned notable blues performers in the back of his furniture store in Jackson Mississippi. In June of that year he recorded 14 tracks for Paramount records including the well known blues classics “Pony Blues,” “Banty Rooster Blues,” “Bo Weavil Blues,” “Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues” and “A Spoonful Blues”. Pony Blues with Banty Rooster went on to sell 10,000 copies making Patton a significant star for Paramount records.

Another fantastically influential blues man who made recordings for Paramount records in 1930 was Son House. His distinctive playing style, which featured a strong, repetitive, hypnotic rhythm, was to be enormously influential in forthcoming decades. His guitar playing was accompanied by his unique vocals which were derived from the laments and hollers of the chain gangs, probably influenced by the time he’d spent in jail after allegedly killing a man.

No discussion of the blues and bottleneck guitar playing would be complete without mentioning Robert Johnson, probably the most famous of the many influential Delta Blues men. He made a host of landmark recordings between 1936 and 1937 and his guitar playing skills and song writing talents have influenced countless thousands of blues and rock-and-roll artists in the decades since his untimely death at the age of only 27.

The bottleneck or slide guitar style is synonymous with the blues. It is a style of playing that enables notes to tremble, to sound uncertain, to sound like the human voice or someone crying. It’s a style of playing that doesn’t require any fancy or expensive equipment making it immediately accessible and appealing. The slide guitar sound is immediately engaging but at the same time can evoke feelings of sadness and melancholia. Slide guitar is what the blues is all about.

Don’t you hate going to a party and being the one who doesn’t know how to dance? Well it’s time to kick the shyness and learn how to dance duranguense! Duranguense gained popularity during the early 2000s and continues to top the Regional Mexican music charts to this day. Duranguense is a very fast and driven dance so find a song you like (Por Tu Amor – Alacranes Musical) and let’s get to learning.

The fun part is that you can dance duranguense by yourself of with a partner. We will start by dancing by ourselves. Simply stand as you normally would and move your hips to the beat. Your feet should take a quick step each time your hips move to one side and another step when they move to the other side. You can find the beat by listening to the bass, which is the low pitched sound that you will hear bouncing back and forth. Your body will almost feel like it is doing the same thing. Some people hold their arms lower and more relaxed, but most usually hold them up at their sides or at their chest.

When dancing with a partner you must be aware of the different roles that guys and girls play. Guys will be the leaders. The couple will hold hands, usually the guy’s left and the girl’s right but it doesn’t really matter. The guy will have his other arm wrapped around her back and near her waist, while the girl will have her unoccupied hand or arm on the guy’s shoulder.

A lot of beginners say the hardest part is staying on beat late into the song when you might be tired and lose your rhythm. Only with practice can you pick up the skill of always staying on beat at such a fast tempo.

Guys remember you are the leader so be sure to take your girl around at a smooth and comfortable pace. Girls you get the easy part and just follow his lead.

Every city and region has a slightly different style of dancing duranguense, from Chicago, to Los Angeles, to the Texas Panhandle. Pay attention, practice, and if you still need more help then take a look at some YouTube videos. You will know how to dance duranguense in no time.

When choosing the most memorable entertainment for parties, first take a look at what kind of party or event it is. Depending on the event, such as weddings, there are wedding entertainment ideas and for corporate events, there are corporate event ideas.

To make it simpler, you can divide the types of entertainment into a group. Remember, entertainment for parties and events can be considered an amusing type of activity from very passive to very interactive. For instance, group classifications are: children, group, public, private or corporate. You want to find the right entertainment for the specific group you would like to entertain for the event.

Here are some examples:

Public Entertainment

When you walk through the park or subway station in any big city, you can probably see a large range of public entertainers amusing the city’s bystanders and passers-by for any amount of money. There are all sorts of public entertainers from Jazz musicians, a violin soloist to mimes. Public entertainers flock to bigger cities because there are a large number of concentrated people in an area to hopefully make some kind of wage. On the other hand, once you make your nominal donation, you can enjoy the gifts these talented public entertainers have to offer.

Corporate Entertainment

Corporate entertainment is aimed specifically at corporate events, award ceremonies and product launches, and is usually private and by invite only. Corporate events can run the gambit scale-wise, from very intimate to thousands of people. Forcorporate event ideas, think about including live speakers or even consider booking live music for corporate picnics and charity functions.

Adult Entertainment

Adult Entertainment is not only referring to the sex industry but can involve entertainment that adults might enjoy, like live concerts, sports, theater and even other activities that might be also appealing and appropriate for kids such aswedding entertainment ideas.

Live Entertainment

Live entertainment can be broad-including all ages and encompassing many varieties of entertainment. For example, music concerts, arena sports, musical theater, plays, live talk shows and seminars-practically any other activity that are aimed to bring large groups of people together and be amused. They can be for wedding entertainment ideas to corporate event ideas.

Child Entertainment

Entertaining kids is a fine balance between mental stimulation and physical activities. That’s why clowns, magicians and puppets are usually the most popular, coupled with games and races. They can be quite enjoyable for adults as well. Live music is also a hit at children’s parties for both young and old alike.

So when considering what kind of entertainment for parties or events, it is simply a matter of matching up the type of entertainment, with the type of audience or group to suit their tastes! Drawing people together with live music is almost always a sure hit! Book your live music today. Call an entertainment professional to help you choose what type of band or DJ you’d like to feature at your party or event!