The African Origins of an American Art Form

Jazz Dance ◽  
2014 ◽  
pp. 35-44
Author(s):  
Takiyah Nur Amin
Keyword(s):  
American Art ◽  
Art Form

Broadway in the Box

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Kessler
Keyword(s):  
American Art ◽  
Single Event ◽  
Television Programming ◽  
American Television ◽  
Art Form ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Television Model

Broadway in the Box shines a television-centric light on the cross-industry presence of a seminal American art form. Over seven chapters, it works to unearth, explore, and analyze pockets of over seventy years of television programming that have embraced, nodded toward, and satirized the American musical in its various forms. This concentrated exploration of the genre across American television allows for an explication of America’s shifting and at times wavering feelings toward the musical, its songs, and its stars. Further, examining these texts alongside constantly changing and at times intersecting entertainment industries uncovers forms of symbiosis and synergy that linked the cultural and economic futures of the musical across platforms. In the end, Mitzi Gaynor titillating America in a revealing and bejeweled Bob Mackie dress was not just the seventies being the seventies, but a single event reflecting a larger confluence of Broadway, film, Vegas, ratings, genre, and programming trends within a specific television model. Perhaps in a style similar to various Broadway and film retrospectives, Broadway in the Box takes individual events and brings them together to craft a larger commentary on American entertainments, economics, and industries. Broadway has always been in the box; someone just needed to plug it in to see what was on.

scholarly journals Jazz as a Black American Art Form: Definitions of the Jazz Preservation Act

2010 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
JEFF FARLEY
Keyword(s):  
American Art ◽  
Black Culture ◽  
Cultural Value ◽  
Black American ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Jazz Music ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Book Publishers

Jazz music and culture have experienced a surge in popularity after the passage of the Jazz Preservation Act (JPA) in 1987. This resolution defined jazz as a black American art form, thus using race, national identity, and cultural value as key aspects in making jazz one of the nation's most subsidized arts. Led by new cultural institutions and educational programs, millions of Americans have engaged with the history and canon of jazz that represent the values endorsed by the JPA. Record companies, book publishers, archivists, academia, and private foundations have also contributed to the effort to preserve jazz music and history. Such preservation has not always been a simple process, especially in identifying jazz with black culture and with America as a whole. This has required a careful balancing of social and musical aspects of jazz. For instance, many consider two of the most important aspects of jazz to be the blues aesthetic, which inevitably expresses racist oppression in America, and the democratic ethic, wherein each musician's individual expression equally contributes to the whole. Balanced explanations of race and nationality are useful not only for musicologists, but also for musicians and teachers wishing to use jazz as an example of both national achievement and confrontation with racism. Another important aspect of the JPA is the definition of jazz as a “high” art. While there remains a vocal contingent of critics arguing against the JPA's definitions of jazz, such results will not likely see many calling for an end to its programs, but rather a more open interpretation of what it means to be America's music.

What’s International About International Country Music?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan D. Gibson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Classification System ◽  
American Art ◽  
The United States ◽  
Country Music ◽  
Art Form ◽  
The World ◽  
International Representation

Drawing attention to the increasing study of “international country music,” this chapter attempts to define this field as well as provide a classification system for analyzing the different ways “international” and “country music” have been paired. It challenges the assertion that country music remains a purely American art form by tracing the international roots, international reach, and international representation within American country music and by presenting three different country music case studies in Australia, Brazil, and Canada. These case studies illustrate how national identity and country music are linked in places outside of the United States and how international permutations are often reflections of local, lived experience. Ultimately, this chapter presents alternatively interpreted identity associations with class, gender, race, and politics that are distinctly separate from the Nashville-based American country music industry and that lead to a more complex, multicentered understanding of country music throughout the world.

From quadrille to stomp: the Creole origins of jazz

Popular Music ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Fiehrer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social History ◽  
American Art ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Music ◽  
General Level ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Jazz Music ◽  
Late Nineteenth

The purpose here is at once simple and complex – to show that both academic and popular perceptions of the origins of jazz are wide of the mark, though still sustained by both scholarly and musical communities. On a very general level jazz is construed as a quintessentially Afro—American music form that originated in widely disparate locales across the United States at roughly the same time, and perhaps the only indigenous American art form of world significance. My purpose is not to challenge this vague characterisation in all its particulars, but to elaborate upon a query occasionally broached in social history, namely – what kind of society could have produced the phenomenon of pre-recorded jazz music? I shall suggest that in its early stages, during the late nineteenth century, jazz could not be accurately characterised as even ‘American’.

Country Music Education for Diverse and Inclusive Music Classrooms

2020 ◽  
Vol 107 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-34
Author(s):  
Vincent C. Bates ◽  
Jason B. Gossett ◽  
Travis Stimeling
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Music Teachers ◽  
American Art ◽  
Country Music ◽  
American Music ◽  
General Music ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
Music Classrooms

Despite its rich heritage and enduring popularity, country music has historically been marginalized in American music education, usually in favor of more “high-brow” musical practices. This article explores potential explanations for this imbalance within the context of a general overview of cultural and social considerations and implications related to this important American art form. Finally, we outline practical steps that music teachers can take toward more inclusive and diverse approaches to music teaching and learning to include country music critically and as appropriate to meet students’ needs and interests. These steps include applications within current approaches to band, orchestra, choir, general music, songwriting, and guitar.

The ‘Adult Western’ as an American Art Form

Folklore ◽  
1959 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 460-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Nussbaum
Keyword(s):  
American Art ◽  
Art Form

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Kelly Kessler
Keyword(s):  
American Art ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Sheet Music ◽  
Television Programming ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Broadway Musical ◽  
Road Map ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Primary Focus

Although a twenty-first-century bump in high-profile musical television programming like Glee and The Sound of Music Live! brought television’s relationship to the musical back into the popular cultural consciousness, the Hollywood and Broadway musical had always been part of the American television landscape. This chapter sets up this relationship and creates a road map for the seven-chapter exploration of the small screen’s romance with a foundational American art form. It further contextualizes the work within a broader view of popular music, early forms of musical platform convergence (e.g. Broadway with sheet music sales, radio, and motion pictures), existing scholarship, and the challenges of conducting such a historical study when copies of the primary focus of the research—the programming itself—no longer exist or never existed in re-viewable form.

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