Before Bluegrass (1920s–1946)

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Kip Lornell
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Country Music ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Music Scene ◽  
Musical Interests ◽  
The Hill

This chapter focuses on the country music scene prior to the development of bluegrass. Much of this discussion describes early radio performances, the scattered newspaper accounts of this music, and the few commercial phonograph records made during this period. A few important hillbilly musicians like Jimmie Rodgers and the Hill Billies performed in the District in the 1920s and 1930s. The Stoneman Family and their music exemplify both the migration into Washington, DC, and the music they brought with them. Like many others who moved to the District and nearby suburbs during the first fifty years of the 20th century, most of them came from Virginia or the Carolinas. Most of them also brought their musical interests with them.

“Peculiar ‘Til I D.I.E.”

Flaming? ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 115-148
Author(s):  
Alisha Lola Jones
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Black Male ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Music Scene ◽  
Same Gender ◽  
Male Homosociality ◽  
Shed Light

Focusing on Washington, DC’s gospel go-go music scene in the early 2000s, chapter 4 highlights the role of an understudied popular music in performances of socioculturally preferred black male homosociality. This chapter examines men’s performances against the stereotype of the softer, woman-like, flamboyant male vocalist through research on a percussion-heavy music from Washington, DC called gospel go-go. In essence, the go-go music band is a symbolic composite of perspectives associated with the unmarked male-dominant categories of the musicians’ pit and absentee men, who are talking back, providing musical contestation of the duplicitous preacher and choir director stereotypes. Chapter 4 aims to shed light on the musical and performative properties of male homomusicoenrapture and homosonoenrapture, the same-gender musical and sonic textures and visual dynamics that stimulate intense enjoyment while enveloping and propelling gospel go-go participants.

Capital Bluegrass

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kip Lornell
Keyword(s):  
Metropolitan Area ◽  
Country Music ◽  
Radio Station ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Public Radio ◽  
The Public ◽  
Slow Decline ◽  
General Recognition ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Bluegrass Music

This book documents the history and development of bluegrass music in and around Washington, DC. It begins with the pre-bluegrass period of country music and ends with a description of the local scene near the end of the 2010s. Capital Bluegrass details the period when this genre became recognized locally as a separate genre within country music, which occurred shortly after the Country Gentlemen formed in 1957. This music gained a wider audience during the 1960s, when WAMU-FM began broadcasting this music and the nationally recognized magazine Bluegrass Unlimited was launched in suburban Maryland. Bluegrass flourished during the 1980s with dozens of local venues offering live bluegrass weekly and the public radio station featuring forty hours a week of bluegrass programming. Although it remains a notable genre in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area, by the 1990s bluegrass began its slow decline in popularity. By 2019, the local bluegrass community remains stable, though graying. Despite the creation of both bluegrasscountry.org and the DC Bluegrass Union, it is abundantly clear that general recognition and appreciation for bluegrass locally is well below the heights it reached some thirty-five years earlier.

The Twang Factor in Country Music

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jocelyn R. Neal
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Country Music ◽  
Western Music ◽  
Human Voice ◽  
Music Scene ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Cultural Implications ◽  
The 1950S

The term twang in instrumental and vocal contexts carries powerful associations within country and western music. Revered by some and disdained by others, twang indexes rural traditions, untrained singers, and, consequently the pride in this cultural heritage. This chapter explores the sonic properties of twang in both instruments and the human voice, the cultural implications and reception of twang, and the deemphasis on twang in Nashville’s country music scene in the 1950s. It presents a case study of two contrasting recordings by Jim Reeves (one with liberal use of twang and one without), examines the sonic character of country albums from Ray Charles and Connie Francis, and investigates the contemporary politics of twang in country music.

Gentrification in the United States

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suleiman Osman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
The United States ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
French Quarter ◽  
History Of ◽  
Demographic Impact ◽  
American Cities

Gentrification is one of the most controversial issues in American cities today. But it also remains one of the least understood. Few agree on how to define it or whether it is boon or curse for cities. Gentrification has changed over time and has a history dating back to the early 20th century. Historically, gentrification has had a smaller demographic impact on American cities than suburbanization or immigration. But since the late 1970s, gentrification has dramatically reshaped cities like Seattle, San Francisco, and Boston. Furthermore, districts such as the French Quarter in New Orleans, New York City’s Greenwich Village, and Georgetown in Washington DC have had an outsized influence on the political, cultural, and architectural history of cities. Gentrification thus must be examined alongside suburbanization as one of the major historical trends shaping the 20th-century American metropolis.

Worshiping the Ancestors: Chinese Commemorative Portraits. By Jan Stuart and Evelyn S. Rawski. [Washington, DC and Stanford, CA: Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in association with Stanford University Press, 2001. 216pp. $75.00. ISBN 08047 4262 6.]

2003 ◽  
Vol 173 ◽  
pp. 214-251
Author(s):  
Catherine Bell
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Stanford University ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
Private Collections

This lovely book accompanies a show of ancestor portraits from the mid-15th to the 20th century held at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in 2001. The Sackler's recently acquired collection, supplemented for the show with contributions from the Freer Gallery and private collections, consists of 85 paintings depicting mostly noble and upper-class men and women, probably sold by families caught in the disruptions of the late Qing.

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