Anglophone Songs about HIV/AIDS

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Jones
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
Aids Activism ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Protest Songs ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Song Lyrics ◽  
Diverse Groups ◽  
Hiv Aids

This essay focuses on English-language popular songs about HIV/AIDS and offers a five-part typology based not on sonic markers of musical genre but instead on lyric content. Its central argument is that song lyrics carry important political messages and constitute a significant and under-studied contribution to the broader culture of arts-based HIV/AIDS activism. In AIDS-themed elegies, protest songs, pedagogical songs, confessional songs, and a small category of songs in bad taste, songwriters and performers translate the official scientific, medical, and political discourses of HIV/AIDS into vernacular speech idioms. In doing so, ideas and ideologies about HIV/AIDS transcend generic boundaries to effectively reach broad and diverse groups of listeners with varying beliefs, attitudes, and stakes in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

To Make the Wounded Whole

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Royles
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Drug Users ◽  
Medical Professionals ◽  
Nation Of Islam ◽  
Black America ◽  
Black Feminists ◽  
Aids Activism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global Work ◽  
Hiv Aids

In the decades since it was identified in 1981, HIV/AIDS has devastated African American communities. Members of those communities mobilized to fight the epidemic and its consequences from the beginning of the AIDS activist movement. They struggled not only to overcome the stigma and denial surrounding a “white gay disease” in Black America, but also to bring resources to struggling communities that were often dismissed as too “hard to reach.” To Make the Wounded Whole offers the first history of African American AIDS activism in all of its depth and breadth. Dan Royles introduces a diverse constellation of activists, including medical professionals, Black gay intellectuals, church pastors, Nation of Islam leaders, recovering drug users, and Black feminists who pursued a wide array of grassroots approaches to slow the epidemic's spread and address its impacts. Through interlinked stories from Philadelphia and Atlanta to South Africa and back again, Royles documents the diverse, creative, and global work of African American activists in the decades-long battle against HIV/AIDS.

scholarly journals Invectives as a linguistic manipulation in the song discourse (on the example of compositions from “Eurovision” song contest)

Litera ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 98-105
Author(s):  
Dmitry Aleksandrovich Knyazkov
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Italian Language ◽  
Multimodal Discourse ◽  
Eurovision Song Contest ◽  
Verbal Component ◽  
Song Lyrics ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Poetic Composition

The subject of this research is the abusive language (invectives) prohibited by the rules of the International Song Contest “Eurovision”. The goal consists in substantiating the role of obscene language as a linguistic manipulation in song discourse of “Eurovision” contest. The tabooed words and expressions represent a wide array of lexical units for research by modern linguistic science based on the materials of various voice compositions. Using the lyrics of songs that participated in “Eurovision” and made top 10 chart, the author determined those that contain invectives. The scientific novelty consists in the first ever analysis of song lyrics that contained the lexical units of abusive language prohibited by the rules of “Eurovision”. It was determined that the compositions of multimodal discourse contain various invectives in verbal component. The authors of songs for “Eurovision” apply different linguistic manipulations to influence the live voting and ensure a spot in the finals for their composition. This is directly related to increase in the number of participating countries; therefore, the structure and content of verbal component of a musical-poetic composition of Eurovision plays an important role. Despite the prohibition by rules of the context to use tabooed lexicon in song lyrics, the author was able to identify certain violations in the English-language and Italian-language compositions. The conclusion is made that invectives in the song discourse are effective linguistic manipulations that enhance suggestive semantics of speech act, since all compositions made it to the top 10.

Carols and Music Since 1900

2020 ◽  
pp. 328-345
Author(s):  
Todd Decker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Cold Weather ◽  
Santa Claus ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Song Lyrics ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Holiday Celebrations

This chapter defines and describes a core repertory of seventy-five Christmas songs that have been frequently recorded for popular consumption in the United States since 1900. Song titles in the repertory enjoy an enduring presence on the Billboard charts and on twenty-first-century streaming platforms. While traditional Christian carols from before 1900 survive in this repertory, secular popular songs introduced between 1942 and 1965 dominate. Christmas narratives, whether religious (birth of Jesus) or secular (arrival of Santa Claus; holiday celebrations set in cold weather), provide consistent points of reference for carol and song lyrics respectively. In some cases, Christmas songs have added new characters (Frosty the Snowman; the Little Drummer Boy) to a season centred on stories. Popular Christmas songs also explore the varied temporal nature of this holiday as event, season, and annual recurrence.

scholarly journals People Prefer Simpler Content When There Are More Choices: A Time Series Analysis of Lyrical Complexity in Six Decades of American Popular Music

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael E. W. Varnum ◽  
Jaimie Krems ◽  
Colin Morris ◽  
Igor Grossmann
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Time Series Analysis ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Real World ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Song Lyrics ◽  
American Popular Music ◽  
Information Landscape ◽  
First Time

Song lyrics are rich in meaning. In recent years, the lyrical content of popular songs has been used as an index of shifting norms, affect, and values at the cultural level. One remarkable, recently-uncovered trend is that successful pop songs have increasingly simple lyrics. Why? We test the idea that increasing lyrical simplicity is linked to a widening array of novel song choices. To test this Cultural Compression Hypothesis (CCH), we examined six decades of popular music (N = 14,661 songs). The number of novel song choices predicted greater lyrical simplicity of successful songs. This relationship was robust, holding when controlling for critical ecological and demographic factors and also when using a variety of approaches to account for the potentially confounding influence of temporal autocorrelation. The present data provide the first time series evidence that real-world cultural transmission may depend on the amount of novel choices in the information landscape.

scholarly journals Why are song lyrics becoming simpler? a time series analysis of lyrical complexity in six decades of American popular music

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. e0244576
Author(s):  
Michael E. W. Varnum ◽  
Jaimie Arona Krems ◽  
Colin Morris ◽  
Alexandra Wormley ◽  
Igor Grossmann
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Ecological Factors ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Pathogen Prevalence ◽  
Song Lyrics ◽  
American Popular Music ◽  
Information Landscape ◽  
Do So

Song lyrics are rich in meaning. In recent years, the lyrical content of popular songs has been used as an index of culture’s shifting norms, affect, and values. One particular, newly uncovered, trend is that lyrics of popular songs have become increasingly simple over time. Why might this be? Here, we test the idea that increasing lyrical simplicity is accompanied by a widening array of novel song choices. We do so by using six decades (1958–2016) of popular music in the United States (N = 14,661 songs), controlling for multiple well-studied ecological and cultural factors plausibly linked to shifts in lyrical simplicity (e.g., resource availability, pathogen prevalence, rising individualism). In years when more novel song choices were produced, the average lyrical simplicity of the songs entering U.S. billboard charts was greater. This cross-temporal relationship was robust when controlling for a range of cultural and ecological factors and employing multiverse analyses to control for potentially confounding influence of temporal autocorrelation. Finally, simpler songs entering the charts were more successful, reaching higher chart positions, especially in years when more novel songs were produced. The present results suggest that cultural transmission depends on the amount of novel choices in the information landscape.

scholarly journals Patterns of Emotional Displays in Campaign Messages during the 2019 European Parliamentary Election in Lithuania

Intersections ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kiryl Kascian ◽  
Viktor Denisenko
Keyword(s):  
Public Image ◽  
Parliamentary Election ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
Emotional Displays ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Campaign Messages ◽  
Emotional Aspects ◽  
Political Groups

The 2019 European Parliament (EP) election in Lithuania was a second-order event significantly affected by domestic political developments and agendas. As with all previous EP elections, it attracted a minimal level of public attention in Lithuania, creating challenges and opportunities for Lithuanian political groups to effectively reach their electorates. This article focuses on the emotional display patterns of the campaign messages of political parties during the 2019 European Parliamentary campaign in Lithuania. To this end, it applies Lasswell’s model of commu-nication to assess printed media- and social-network-based campaign materials. Findings confirm that emotional messages dominated the communication of the political groups to their voters, and show the extremely broad spectrum of political messages that were used to arouse emotions. The study indicates that the concept of Europe remains distant and abstract to voters in Lithuania. Politicians’ messages to voters overwhelmingly appealed to the European context when addressing domestic agendas, thereby exploiting the emotional aspects of domestic political discourses in Lithuania and the perception of the EU in the country. Finally, the study demonstrates that the personification of political strategies involving politicians’ charisma, public image, and expressivity were key elements in terms of the election outcome.

scholarly journals Cardiovascular Disease in Blacks with HIV/AIDS in the United States: A Systematic Review of the Literature

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine U Oramasionwu ◽  
Jonathan M Hunter ◽  
Carolyn M Brown ◽  
Gene D Morse ◽  
Kenneth A Lawson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cardiovascular Disease ◽  
English Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Original Research ◽  
Medline Search ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Immunodeficiency Syndrome ◽  
Hiv Aids

Objectives: Blacks in the United States bear a disproportionate burden of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). It has been demonstrated that HIV/AIDS itself and HIV/AIDS-related therapies may predispose patients to early onset of CVD. It is also possible that Black patients may be at greater risk for this interaction. Thus, the objective of this literature review was to identify and critically evaluate disparities in CVD between Black and White patients with HIV/AIDS. Design: A MEDLINE search (January 1, 1950 to May 31, 2010) was performed to identify original research articles published in the English language. The search was limited to articles that evaluated race-based disparities for CVD among patients with HIV/AIDS. Results: Of the five publications included in this review, a CVD diagnosis was the primary focus for only three of the studies and was a secondary objective for the remaining two studies. Two studies concluded that Blacks were more likely than Whites to have a CVD diagnosis at time of hospital admission, whereas, the other three studies did not detect any race-based disparities. Conclusions: Few studies have addressed the issue of Black race, HIV/AIDS, and CVD, highlighting the need for future research in this area.

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