Biographies Of Musicians Research Articles

Биографические аспекты рока

It is necessary to make difference between biography as a history of a person’s life and biography as a retelling of this story made by a professional author. It is this “author’s” biography that is the subject of this article. Turning to biography as a genre, we note that it exists in the environment of other genres and forms: these are various kinds of diaries, chronicles, memoirs, testimonies. It can be based on a collection of interviews, publications from different years, and even correspondence. Among the many biographies, chronicles and biographies of musicians and rock bands, the author selects those in which a bright individuality stands out against the background of parallel and commensurate creative values. The biographies of The Beatles and, in particular, John Lennon, the versatile character of whose creative personality is demonstrated by a vivid example of an “opening” biography, are considered.

НЕВІДОМИЙ АВТОР ВСЕСВІТНЬО ВІДОМОЇ ПІСНІ: БІОГРАФІКА ЯК ВЕКТОР КУЛЬТУРОЛОГІЧНОГО ДОСЛІДЖЕННЯ

The purpose of the article is to analyse the studies on the authorship of the song Hutsulka Ksenia. The research methodology applies theoretical method to cover the issue under the study; hypothetical method to base reasoning on the research studies concerning the authorship of the song; historical method to systematise information in chronological order; as well as comparative analysis and secondary data analysis from reports, journals and other periodicals. Scientific novelty. We have conducted a comprehensive cultural background analysis of studies concerning the authorship of the song Hutsulka Ksenia, and got more accurate biographical data of Ya. Barnych, and R. Savytsky. Conclusions. The article determined that the song Hutsulka Ksenia, 1945, gained popularity and became so close to Ukrainians over time that it was considered folk one for a long time. At the same time, the question of its authorship arose, and in the 1960s, a commission was appointed (where R. Savytsky was a member), which declared R. Savytsky as the author. The article proved that in Soviet times, the biography of musicians and composers directly influenced not only further creative activity but also the authorship credit. So, the biography of R. Savytsky fully corresponded to the ideological attitudes of the then authorities, unlike the biography of Y. Barnych, who lived abroad, his operettas were banned, and the composer’s authorship could negatively affect the ability to perform the song. It should be noted that even today there are disputes over the authorship of the song Hutsulka Ksenia, which are connected in particular with the existence of several similar melodies and modified lyrics. From our point of view, the authorship belongs to Ya. Barnych, which is proved both by the memoirs of his wife Ya. Rubchakovna-Barnych and the research of S. Pushyk, L. Filonenko, and V. Kobal. However, the search for the truth is complicated because of the absence of an interview, letter or any other document, and the question of authorship began to interest researchers after the death of Ya. Barnych only.

Music geography in Russia: non-auratic places and institutionalization “in becoming”

ABSTRACTThis paper focuses on the Tsoi Wall in Moscow, an iconic place on Russia's music map that appeared in Moscow in 1990 in memory of the cult Soviet rock musician Viktor Tsoi, to develop a framework for studying non-auratic music place – that is, places that are not connected with the biographies of musicians or musical events, but emerge directly from the experiences of visitors and fans. These places are constantly negotiated and only lightly formalized, but are nevertheless enduring. To analyze this type of place, we propose a concept of institutionalization “in becoming”. The case of the Tsoi Wall reveals that light formalization (vague and changing positions and rules, and openness to different interpretations of a place and ways of using it) leads to the recognition of the place as a significant one and to its popularity. We put institutionalization “in becoming” in a wider context and juxtapose it with well-studied musical places in Europe and the US.

German Music Libraries in the Age of Digital Transformation—Challenges and Perspectives

German Music Libraries in the Age of Digital Transformation—Challenges and Perspectives Verena Funtenberger (bio) The processes of change in the digital society and their consequences for libraries affect also music libraries, even more they seem bundled herein as under a magnifying glass. Attractive new buildings and facilities of recent years such as in Stuttgart, Essen, Nuremberg, Wiesbaden or currently in Detmold cannot hide the fact that this branch of librarianship is facing major challenges. Here too, as the number of loans of physical media decreases, new concepts must be developed and new paths explored. Digital Offerings in Music Libraries Music libraries have already arrived in the digital age. They collect and make accessible not only sheet music, music books and recording media, they digitise their own collections and provide their customers with electronic resources and services available in digital libraries or an institution’s repositories. These are either accessible on the Web free of charge or licensed, meaning access is possible only via the library’s network or by individual subscription. The most extensive digitised music collections can be found in large academic libraries. They are merged in the Virtual Library of Musicology, which will be presented in the next section. Like the majority of library customers, the user interested in music prefers media and information—if possible—in electronic form on a PC, tablet, or smartphone and available at any time and any location. Until now, public libraries have been able to only partially satisfy these requirements. The legal framework for the lending of e-books have not been clarified and the publishers have not been obligated to grant licenses. Meanwhile, the digital German lending platform “Onleihe”, provided in the majority of public libraries offers more music books in electronic format, especially music education titles, biographies of musicians, and introductory literature on musical topics. The deficiency of legal rules and the rigid austerity policy of the states and municipalities have prevented acknowledgment of the changed user behavior. Both conservatory libraries as well as public music libraries lack sufficient funds and technical equipment for database licenses and for the installation of network access. In municipal music libraries the fee-based digital content hardly exceeds the music segments of the established German Web portal Munzinger (https://www.munzinger.de/, accessed 16 December 2016). But even the included remote access to the Naxos Music Libraries—“Classical Music” and “Jazz”—which provides over 100,000 compact disc recordings through streaming technology in high quality sound and with introductions to musical works, cannot be offered in all music libraries. Nothing less than privileged are the customers of the Hamburg Bücherhallen and the City Library of Hannover. They are the first German library [End Page 86] users having access to over nine million songs from all genres from over 28,000 labels and over 15,000 music videos via the American streaming service Freegal Music (http://www.freegalmusic.com/, accessed 16 December 2016). They are even allowed to download three tracks per week. Of course, this offer has its price, and that cost might currently not be within most libraries’ reach. Sheet music collections are also innovating. The International Music Score Library Project, IMSLP (http://imslp.org/, accessed 16 December 2016), or Petrucci Music Library for short, the world’s largest online collection of public domain and freely available scores, has turned into a true competitor for music publishers, music shops, and music libraries. The argument that the partial, badly scanned scores were no serious alternatives to carefully prepared critical score editions seem relevant only for professional musicians and scholars. A small indication may be the response of a music teacher whose student had printed out a Haydn sonata from the Petrucci Music Library. Asked why he did not suggest that he use a critical edition, he commented tersely: “I’m happy if he still plays Haydn at all!” The gaps in the contents of the Petrucci Music Library, for example, contemporary and popular music are filled by large commercial download sheet music platforms like Notafina (https://en.notafina.de/) or Sheet Music Plus (http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/, both accessed 16 December 2016). Licensing models for libraries have not become an issue, because...

Fela: Kalakuta Notes by John Collins

Reviewed by: Fela: Kalakuta Notes by John Collins Graeme Counsel Fela: Kalakuta Notes. By John Collins, with a foreword by Banning Eyre, discography by Ronnie Graham. 2d ed. (Music: Interview.) Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2015. [xii, 330 p. ISBN 9780819575395 (paperback), $24.94; ISBN 9780819575401 (e-book), $19.99.] Music examples, illustrations, chronology, discography, bibliography, appendix, index. Fela Anikulapo Kuti, or “Fela”, as he is known to millions, was one of Africa’s most influential and successful musicians. An uncompromising figure who promoted Pan-Africanism, he elevated music to the status of the voice of the people, declaring that “music is a weapon of the future” (Frank Tenaille, Music Is the Weapon of the Future: Fifty Years of African Popular Music [Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2002], 76). His “weapon” of choice was Afrobeat, a new musical style that he created in the early 1970s. It both challenged authority and set a new musical direction. A challenge in writing about this larger-than-life figure is to separate the myth from reality. Fela attracts the kind of adulation that is the provenance of rock stars, and indeed, in his life he experienced the kind of awful tragedies and miraculous achievements that make for a sensationalist account. Yet Collins presents a scholarly and sober reflection written by one who not only knew him but who was a fellow musician. Few biographies of musicians are written by performers, and here lies one of the great merits of Collins’s text. Fela’s music was sparked by a complex mixture of influences and styles, amidst political upheaval, and it takes a deft hand to provide clarity and depth. Collins is a Professor of Music at the University of Ghana and is one the foremost experts on highlife music. A music archivist, producer, and engineer, he is also a remarkable musician in his own right, having recorded extensively with Ghanaian musicians in the 1970s. This close contact and exposure to African musical styles led to his friendship with Fela, for Ghanaian music was a strong influence on Afrobeat. The early chapters of Collins’s text provide a clear account of the musical milieu that the young Fela Kuti experienced. Fela grew up listening to a wide range of styles, and his Afrobeat had its antecedents in earlier African and African American popular music. As a youth, Fela listened to and sang Christian hymns courtesy of his father and grandfather, who were both Anglican priests. Part of a musical family, his grandfather, Rev. J. J. Ransome-Kuti, recorded over forty songs for Zonophone/EMI in the mid-1920s. Traditional Yoruba music was also pervasive in Fela’s early years, and this music, which both praised and placated local deities, was played on drums such as the dundun and featured call and response vocals, the latter a prominent feature of the Afrobeat style. New recording technologies such as the radio and the 78-rpm disc, coupled with the advent of World [End Page 516] War II, which saw thousands of U.S. and British soldiers arriving on the shores of West Africa, created appetites for jazz and the highlife musical styles that were sweeping Ghana. In the 1960s, Fela brought these influences together and mixed them with soul and funk. This complex fusion of styles is articulated confidently by Collins, who provides insightful contexts and explanations of the local African musical styles. Indeed, his text is significant as it goes beyond presenting a biography of Fela, featuring excellent sections on Ghanaian highlife music and Nigerian apala and juju, for example. Thus, it is a text that contextualizes Fela’s life within the wider sociopolitical developments that were occurring in West Africa and the African diaspora in the 1960s and 1970s. Collins offers a cogent case through interviews with prominent musicians of the era and with those in Fela’s bands. From the text it soon becomes apparent that Afrobeat was much more than a musical style: it was more akin to a musical revolution. It directly challenged governments, promoted Pan-Africanism, and decried the politics of corrupt elites. It celebrated its Africanness while criticizing those who pandered to Western styles and tastes. Afrobeat was unapologetic, and...

Музика як складова біографічного тексту

The role of music in the biography of a musician is analyzed. The focus is on the life of famous composers interpretation via their work and the role of music in structuring, aestheticization, additional semantization of biography. It is indicated that the artist stands out in the context of his time as the center of productive gravity, thus a musician’s biography demonstrates communication of the life and creative ways, distinguishing its major milestones and at the same time emphasizing the individual changes of the artist and those his innovations that defined the image of the era. It goes about the semantization of music by an author-biographer, the desire to articulate the principles of an individual artist (also by reference to the listening to musical works), comprehended as his musical text, with its help. For example, the genre of musician biography is viewed as based on the corresponding biographies of W. A. Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Richard Strauss. It is noted that W. A. Mozart is considered a catalyst for musical biographical writing, for certain events of his life were such that he started to be generally recognized as the prototype of the artist. Biographers of both Mozart and Beethoven are convinced of the efficiency of the biographical method in relation to musical analysis. Richard Strauss’s musical-biographical text is also structured according to the logic of musical thinking. A tendency towards correlation between life and work inherent in the biographies of musicians is also peculiar to the novel which tends to music.

Wybrane Aspekty Badań Narracyjnych W Kontekście Analizy Biografii Muzycznych / Selected Aspects Of Narrative Studies In The Context Of Analysis Of Biographies

The article shows selected problems of contemporary narrative studies. They are a special type of qualitative analyses characteristic of many humanistic disciplines: e.g. sociology, psychology, or pedagogy. They may also apply to musical issues, inter alia biographical studies in the broad sense. In Polish literature on the subject there are many publications concerning different aspects of the life, creative work, and artistic and pedagogical activities of persons connected with art, culture, and music education. The article stresses that the specificity of the facts and phenomena learned in that way is the subjective character of their transmission. The experiences and reflection contained in the collected utterances and descriptions show an inner dialogue – the world of unspecifi ed, immeasurable and variable phenomena dependent not only on external conditions but also on inner, personal standards. This makes it possible to analyze musical biographies in a new way. In light of the theoretical and methodological discussion presented in the article, biography and narrative appear to be a special type of methodological approach that uses different kinds of relationships and covers many areas associated with the study of musicians, their activities, development, and career. The narrative approach is a valuable source of unique information on the biographies of musicians. It is also a worthwhile way of learning about socio-cultural changes concerning awareness of and thinking about the profession of musician and music education.

Early Musical Development of Selected African American Jazz Musicians in Indianapolis in the 1930s and 1940s

I propose, by way of definition that creativity is the reaction of the human spirit to the variety of its experiences; a reaction expressed through forms and structures (which may be tonal, verbal, written, visual or physical).... Significantly the creative fruit is determined by, and is as unique as, the intensity of the experiences and the quality of the response. --Mari Evans (1) Introduction Indianapolis, a city of approximately 365,000 in 1930, was home to nearly 45,000 African Americans who lived, worked, worshipped, and learned in a close-knit segregated community. For these citizens, it was a city of contradictions. Members of the Ku Klux Klan dominated positions of power in city and state government, (2) racial tension was high, and neighborhoods, parks, businesses, and schools were segregated. Yet a spirit of hope and optimism prevailed in the African American community. Indianapolis poet Mari Evans wrote, Black folk were firmly convinced that with hard work and a 'good' disposition the future was theirs for the taking. (3) As was the case in many other Northern cities, the growing African American community in Indianapolis was a result, in part, of the Migration, which Peretti defined as both the physical movement of blacks from plantations to Northern cities after 1900 and the intellectual and cultural adventurousness to which this movement gave rise. He proposed that the Great Migration profoundly altered the values, daily goals, and self-expression of blacks. (4) Music was an integral part of the lives of many African Americans--in their homes, schools, and churches. Centrally located with ready access to train and air travel, Indianapolis was a frequent stop for vaudeville acts, traveling shows, and nationally famous musicians and bands. The city offered a particularly rich musical environment for those who were interested, and many were interested. Musicians who have since distinguished themselves in the field of jazz, such as David Baker, Erroll Grandy, Slide Hampton, Freddie Hubbard, J.J. Johnson, Virgil Jones, Wes Montgomery, Larry Ridley, Melvin Rhyne, and Jimmy Spaulding, are among those whose early musical development took place in Indianapolis. What variety of experiences coalesced for these young African Americans in Indianapolis in the 1930s and 1940s and came to creative fruition through the form and structure of jazz? How did they acquire the necessary technical skills and musical knowledge? What factors contributed to their early musical development? Methodology Interviews were conducted with ten African American jazz musicians who developed musically in Indianapolis in the 1930s and 1940s. Previous research studies; transcripts of interviews; biographies of musicians; primary sources such as public records and archives from city government and public schools; and ethnographic, sociological, and historical writings provided data which complemented and corroborated information from the interviews and also supplied contextual information. Themes To illuminate the events and practices contributing to the development of young African American jazz musicians in Indianapolis in the 1930s and 1940s, the results of this investigation have been categorized into three overarching themes: formal music education, informal music education, and the contributing political, social, and cultural environment. Formal music study through the public schools, as well as private instruction by individuals and institutions, provided young players with technical skills and a strong musical knowledge base. Informal music education, which occurred through exposure to musical families, participation in jam sessions and big bands, and access to radio, recordings, and live performances, offered a highly charged creative environment for experimentation. The social, political, and cultural conditions that existed in Indianapolis for young African Americans supported the growth of jazz and jazz musicians. …

The Performing Arts in Colonial American Newspapers, 1690-1783. Text Data Base and Index

Performing Arts in Colonial American Newspapers, 1690-1783: Text Database and Index. By Mary Jane Corry, Kate Van Winkle Keller, and Robert M. Keller. New York: University Music Editions, 1997. UMEl0ICD. $99. CD-ROM for Windows or DOS. Requires 18 MB hard-disk space, VGA monitor. Writing in December 1953 issue of Notes about Oscar Sonneck, the young American musical Columbus who determined upon returning to United States after twenty-five years in Europe to lay foundation for correct and adequate historical presentation of music in early America by an exhaustive investigation of primary sources, Otto Kinkeldey pointed out that the American pioneer in this musical field had a decidedly harder task than his European forerunners (Notes 11 [1953]: 26). Municipal and church records, when locatable, were terse on matters musical; biographies of musicians were few; music journals, for colonial period, were nonexistent. Indeed, Sonneck found only one that covered any appreciable period of time--the ordinary weekly and later daily newspapers. Kinkeldey continued: These, in their advertising columns or among their news items, would occasionally--very occasionally--print... a brief reference to something musical--the notice of a concert or theatrical p erformance with music, a music teacher's announcement of a school, a music dealer or publisher advertising his wares. The harvesting of these scattered grains was no inconsiderable task, and Sonneck spent two years combing through all available American newspapers published to 1800 (ibid., 27). But results of that harvest were rich, and are still consulted today: A Bibliography of Early Secular American Music (1905), Early Concert-Life in America (1907), and Early Opera in America (1915). Returning many decades later to same regular source that Sonneck consulted--early American newspapers--a small army of dedicated researchers emerges not with a scholarly monograph such as Sonneck's but with a stunningly vast array of primary-source material that surely will serve as basis for many monographs to come. item under review is remarkable product of an equally remarkable project. Over a period of five years, Mary Jane Corry (project director), Kate Van Winkle Keller (director of technology), Robert M. Keller (computer consultant), and fourteen other people--Linda Bierling, Susan Cifaldi, John Cuthbert, David Hildebrand, Barbara Lambert, Rosamond McGuinness, Sharon McKinley, Geoffrey Miller, Zaide Pixley, Susan Pregger, Arthur F. Schrader, Marilyn Smiley, John Wagner, and Edythe Walmer--read every issue they could locate of every newspaper published in colonial America (50,719 issues and 4,523 supplements of 162 newspaper titles), searching for references to music, dance, and theat er. They found 54,411 reports, advertisements, stories, ... announcements ...; allusions, metaphors, song lyrics, and other representations of performing (I quote from a flyer for CD-ROM), which they copied with painstaking care. These transcriptions were then keyed into a database and exhaustively indexed, producing a general index file of 235,676 records and a first-line index of every poem and lyric collected, containing 12,061 records. Thanks to marvels of electronic technology, all of this information, and more, is available on a single CD-ROM, and it is a wondrous tool, absolutely indispensable for anyone doing any serious research in performing arts of America's colonial period. Here is an example of what one can find in this labyrinth of research possibilities. It has long been known that fiddle was a special instrument of black male slaves in early America. This CD-ROM makes clear extent of these slaves' involvement with instrument. A search of database for negro or mulatto near fiddle or fiddler or violin (near, in this case, means within twenty words' distance of any of transcribed items; this default setting can be changed to anywhere between ten and thirty words' distance) brings up names of hundreds of slaves--almost all of them runaways identified as fiddlers--as they appear in advertisements placed by their owners. …

"Baptie's Biography of Musicians"

"Baptie's Biography of Musicians"

Baptie's "Biography of Musicians"

Baptie's "Biography of Musicians"

Baptie's "Biography of Musicians"

Baptie's "Biography of Musicians"

"Baptie's Biography of Musicians"

"Baptie's Biography of Musicians"

Baptie's "Biography of Musicians"

Baptie's "Biography of Musicians"