Her song, “Mississippi Goddam,” (written about the assassination of civil rights leader, Medgar Evers) was her first protest song, soon following with “Four Women,” and “Young, Gifted and Black.” However, she was reluctant to write protest songs at first, as shown in her autobiography, ‘I Put A Spell On You.’ She wrote, “How can you take the memory of a man like Medgar Evers and reduce all that he was to three and a half minutes and a simple tune? That was the musical side of it I shied away from; I didn’t like ‘protest music’ because a lot of it was so simple and unimaginative it stripped the dignity away from the people it was trying to celebrate. But the Alabama church bombing and the murder of Medgar Evers stopped that argument and with ‘Mississippi Goddam,’ I realized there was no turning back.”
Alondra Tavares Chestnut ALWG Comparative Analysis 13 April 2023 “Permanent Red” by Ryan Caraveo is a song published in 2022 that expresses how angry he is and allows himself to be consumed and brainwashed by his anger. He goes on to explain how his anger had caused him to have outbursts rooted in his anger. A Long Way Gone is a memoir of a boy soldier written by Ismael Beah.
I decided to write a letter from news anchor, Christine Lund, to the artist of the song “Dirty Laundry”, Don Henley. The song “Dirty Laundry” describes mass media sensationalism, specifically in terms of celebrities and how serious news events are reported. Christine Lund was an actual reported at the time the song was written. She was even speculated to be an inspiration for the song. I chose to write letter from her to Henley because I wanted to try to gain the news anchors perspective of the issues addressed in the song.
The greatest white female rock singer of the 1960s, Janis Joplin was also a great blues singer, making her material her own with her wailing, raspy, supercharged emotional delivery. First rising to stardom as the frontwoman for San Francisco psychedelic band Big Brother & the Holding Company, she left the group in the late '60s for a brief and uneven (though commercially successful) career as a solo artist. Although she wasn't always supplied with the best material or most sympathetic musicians, her best recordings, with both Big Brother and on her own, are some of the most exciting performances of her era. She also did much to redefine the role of women in rock with her assertive, sexually forthright persona and raunchy, electrifying on-stage
However, she was a victim or at least that is how she viewed herself until music came into her
”In this quote, Sandra considered how African Americans have been separated from their individuality and defined in different thought-up categories. There was an idea that African American music and culture was something it was not, based on stereotypes and prebuilt paradigms. It was also a prominent form of expression and communication, and was regrettably ignored and pushed down throughout history. As a result of this there was an absence of normalized representation of African American identity. Almost all recorded information didn’t fully incorporate Black people’s perspectives.
She dabbles in the real problem of why people "judge books by their covers". I wish to show my audience that changing stereotypes like the one Amy Tan had to overcome starts with changing the way we think as a society. We must teach our children to think differently if we wish to see real change. Most bias stem from childhood, and while in school. Even some teachers are biased without knowing it.
Amy Winehouse is a legend and the music she created was incredible. She sung in the styles of Jazz, Soul, Blues and reggae which made her popular to many audiences and instantly she was different from the rest. In this essay I intend to give you a brief overview on Amy’s background and then I will explore Amy Winehouse’s Vocal and musical influences such as Sarah Vaughan who was an American Jazz singer and many more. Once I’ve covered that topic I will go on to discuss her appeal to a contemporary audience. The resources I will be using are Websites based on Amy Winehouse’s musical influences, Her documentary and books such as ‘’Amy Amy Amy the Amy Winehouse story by Nick Johnstone’’ Amy was a Jewish girl who was born in England.
In 1964 world famous Motown singer Sam Cooke released a “A change is going to come.” This song included rhythmic melodies and soulful sounding lyrics, but this song contained and obviously deeper undertone of race relations in America. It sounds as a description of Cooke’s life up until this time and how he believes with the tide of civil rights activist a change was evidently going to eventually come. In this song Cooke chooses his lyrics in an ambiguous way to leave it to interpretation. These questions of the lyrical choice center on the American identity and who Cooke was referring to.
Over the course of human history, music has been an integral part of life. Music’s impact can be seen in every facet of the world today and it is a way to express feelings, tell a story, or prove a point. It can bring people together and can transcend communities, cultures, and ideologies. Although many do not realize it, music has had a profound impact on all human lives, and the lives of all others that have since died. Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come’ is a song that defined a generation while bringing the oppression and injustice that African Americans experienced, on a daily basis, to the forefront of society.
This paper analyzes the song “Coat of Many Colors” written by and sung by Dolly Parton. Born on January 19, 1946 the fourth child of 12 to a farmer and a stay at home mom. Her family grew up “dirt poor” (Zahn, ?) on a farm and experienced the struggles faced by many during this era. The song was written based on a personal experience from her youth when her mother stitched together a coat for her to wear from pieces of rags they had been given. Parton’s purpose is to get her audience to see that “One is only poor, only if they choose to be” (50-51) and that we all rich if we change the way we look at what makes us rich.
There have been many protest songs in the United States; the freedom of speech has contributed to powerful music and protest words that are written in song. The song that will be discussed throughout this essay is “American Idiot” by Green day. This song speaks volume about the uneducated “America” and puts emphasis on the destruction that reality television is making on the United States of America. Listening to the unspoken word and read between the lies, for that then you will understand. The song “American Idiot” was released during the 2004 presidential election, where George W. Bush was selected into office for the second term as President of the United States of America (source).
Roar Teaches Kids to Stand up for Themselves In the song, ¨Roar¨ by Katy Perry, the singer talks about standing up for herself. The artist is trying to tell us that we shouldn’t let others get to us, and that we are strong enough to fight back against the people who want to tear us down. She is also saying that even if we feel helpless and useless, we aren’t. We have a fighter inside of us and we are powerful.
