Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday Essay Example for Free

Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday Essay Bill Crow’s Jazz Anecdotes is a thought-provoking, often amusing collection of stories from within jazz’s inner circles, told by and about some of the genre’s leading figures. While not a history of jazz, it gives readers some insights to how jazz artists worked, lived, bonded, and coped with an America in which many were still outsiders. The book’s forty-three chapters (expanded from the original 1990 edition) describe the life jazz musicians shared, offering insights into a rather exclusive, unconventional circle of performing artists. The numerous anecdotes are categorized by chapters, gathering related tales and moving from a general overview of jazz life to anecdotes about individuals, like Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, and Benny Goodman. Essentially, Crow creates a context in which jazz musicians lived, and then places individual musicians within it, giving readers a better understanding of how they functioned in this rarified climate. For example, the volume opens with â€Å"Wild Scenes,† which Crow says describes how â€Å"the individuality of jazz musicians combines with the capricious world in which they try to make a living† (Crow 3). The brief chapter sets the stage for the rest of the book, giving glimpses of the unconventional world jazz musicians inhabited (which explains to some degree their relationship to society at large). â€Å"The Word ‘Jazz’† contains attempts to explain the origins of the genre’s name, and â€Å"Inventions† offers accounts of how certain innovations occurred (such as Dizzy Gillespie’s distinctive bent trumpet), giving the reader a sense of history though the work is not an orthodox history per se. Many of the stories contained in Jazz Anecdotes convey the musicians’ camaraderie and warmth toward each other, as well as each other’s idiosyncrasies. Others convey how difficult and often arbitrary the jazz lifestyle often was. â€Å"Hiring and Firing† demonstrates how unstable many musicians’ careers were, rife with disputes over money or dismissals for their personal quirks. (For example, Count Basie fired Lester Young for refusing to participate in recording sessions occurring on the 13th of any month. ) â€Å"Managers, Agents, and Bosses† offers a glimpse into the seamier underside of jazz, where dishonest managers and mobsters often trapped jazz performers in unfair contracts or worse. Though jazz musicians appear to inhabit a special world, Crow does not discuss jazz in a social vacuum, tying it to social phenomena like race relations. In â€Å"Prejudice,† the tales take a more serious tone by showing how black jazz artists faced abundant racism, particularly in the South. However, Crow notes that â€Å"Jazz helped to start the erosion of racial prejudice in America . . . [because] it drew whites and blacks together into a common experience† (Crow 148). Jazz artists dealt with racism in various ways – Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday stood up to it while Zutty Singleton accepted it. Meanwhile, even white musicians like Stan Smith angered both races – whites for performing with blacks, and blacks for â€Å"intruding on their music† (Crow 152). The final chapters focus on individual artists, illustrating the greats’ personalities. Louis Armstrong emerges as earthy and good-hearted; Bessie Smith as strong and willful but ultimately self-destructive; Fats Waller is an impish pleasure-seeker given to excellent music but poor business decisions; and Benny Goodman as gifted but tight-fisted and controlling. Taken as a whole, Jazz Anecdotes offers a look at jazz’s human side, including its foibles, genius, camaraderie, crookedness, and connection to an American society from which it sometimes stood apart. Its legendary figures are depicted as gifted, devoted artists who enjoyed hedonism, companionship, and particularly independence. If any single thing stands out in this book, it is the latter; for the figures in this work, jazz meant creativity and freedom, which they pursued with equal vigor and vitality. Crow, Bill. Jazz Anecdotes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday. (2016, Aug 28).

Technology and its Backlashes Speech or Presentation

Technology and its Backlashes - Speech or Presentation Example Russell and Bone further stated that modern technology, although sometimes not the direct cause of the impending eradication of humanity, is definitely the means that humans will use in pushing their causes that will ultimately end the existence of man (24). The earth, as humans know it today, has been much influenced by numerous scientific inventions (Haven 109). The influence that science has over man’s social lives, infrastructures, tools, food, and many others is a solid evidence of the veracity of this statement. For example, fossil fuel and computer technology are part of the world’s daily existence (Haven 135). Fossil fuel is necessary in water purification process, communication, manufacturing industry, electricity, road construction, food processing, and other things necessary for the regular flow of daily living (Haven 137 and Milne 36). Subsequently, computer technology is essential not only in the above-mentioned processes, but also in other areas of human l ives, like social or work aspects (Milne 43). Since fossil fuel and computer technology are examples of science, it is thus not an exaggeration to suppose that humankind is highly likely dependent on the advances of today’s technology. ... One major example is the two world wars during the past century. Conflicts between nations resulted in the death of millions of people by means of using artillery or bombs. Who could forget the City of Hiroshima destroyed by just one atomic bomb? If this massive damage was possible over six decades ago, how much more possible is it to cause larger damages now with man’s latest technology? (Russell and Bone 41) Obviously, the question now is not whether man can eradicate his own specie or not, but when would he decide to do it. However, several people would argue that science has done more good than bad, particularly when one would look at the health solutions made available by the latest technology, curing diseases that were previously thought of as terminal. Yet, upon further evaluation, several of these diseases, which cures depend on science, are by-products of science in the first place (Milne 68). This is not to say though that progress is a bad thing. However, man should have a realistic viewpoint on what he brings upon himself. Just the fact that both health and armaments fall under the top three largest businesses in the world (Barrie 6) presents a clear picture of the path that man’s existence takes. The changing environment caused the extinction of dinosaurs, and man is faced with the same concern. The difference however is that the present change in environment is man-made (Russell and Bone 10). Nevertheless, the same failure to adapt that caused dinosaurs to become extinct will also cause man a similar fate. The massive changes man creates in nature deplete the sources at a faster rate than can be recovered (Burroughs 121). An obvious proof of this is the pollution problem that science cannot control,