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An Analysis Of Billy Joel's We Didn T Start The Fire

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This essay will look at Ernesto Cardenal as a poet and an activist in the Nicaraguan Revolution, how these two worlds merged together, more importantly how it affects his writing in the context of Epigramas and Hora 0, and whether or not these political works can still be considered poetic. While there is a wealth of poetry today that could be analysed for similar techniques, I have chosen to investigate modern music instead. After all, what is a song but a poem set to music and in today’s culture it is likely to have as broad a reach across varying demographics, if not broader. After graduating from Columbia University in 1947, Cardenal worked with José Coronel Urtrecho translating American poetry into Spanish; and after travelling around …show more content…

The song is composed of brief, rapid fire allusions to more than 100 headline events ranging from 1949, the year Joel was born, and 1989, the year the song was released. The following is the latter half of the final verse, “Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide Foreign debts, homeless Vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz Hypodermics on the shores, China's under martial law Rock and Roller Cola wars, I can't take it anymore” (Joel, 1989) These are the important events chosen by Joel having taken place between 1980 and 1989. Throughout the song there is a global perspective with obvious emphasis on American affairs; as an American songwriter Joel is heavily influenced by his environment. In this time Wheel of Fortune was a hit TV show; Sally Ride was became the first woman in space; it was thought heavy metal and suicide were closely linked; foreign debts led to inflation in the U.S.; veterans of the Vietnam conflict found themselves homeless; AIDS began to spread throughout the world; a highly addictive form of cocaine became prevalent in the U.S.; Bernie Goetz was on trial for shooting four youths in a New York subway; medical waste washed up on the shores of New Jersey; martial law was introduced in China after protests in Tiananmen Square; and of course Coke and Pepsi contend for the cola crown paying celebrities to endorse their respective

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Margaret Dorsey, author of the journal article, Borderland Music as Symbolic Forms of Nationalisms: The Best of the Texas Tornados, Partners, and ¡Viva Luckenbach!, has described the origin of borderland music, in this case, Tejano music as, “Borderland music is an expressive form affiliated with Anglo and Mexicano on both sides of the U.S. border” (Dorsey, 23). In other words, Dorsey asserts that Tejano music is much more complex than simply saying that it combines American and Mexican culture into one and makes it music. “I explore borderland music as a nexus for interpreting issues of Mexicano and Anglo identity formation” (23). Rather she is saying that it combines the ethnicities and the musical characteristics of each to make a statement about identities. Dorsey, happens to be a feminist, thus, viewing Tejano music through a feminist perspective and declaring that there is a complexity when combining national identity from different cultures into a music genre.

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Immigrant from Cuba Speaks His Mind through Poetry Luis Estable’s poems are simple yet thought-provoking and fun to read. Cuban immigrant Luis Estable offers his gift of poetry to America, and what a wonderful gift it is. Over the years, he has written hundreds of pieces of poetry, in styles ranging from free verse to sonnet. Estable covers a wide range of topics and themes, and he conveys different thoughts and emotions between the lines. Such poems are found in his first published book of poetry

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We didn’t start the fire by Billy Joel is a famous American song about what was happening in America and around the world from the forties to the nineties. He starts with the forties talking about Harry Truman and red China, then in the fifties with Richard Nixon who was a big part of the fifties, North Korea, Eisenhower, Elvis Presley, Alabama and the Montgomery bus boycott, Little Rock. Then the sixties with Bob Dylan, the Berlin wall, Malcolm X, JFK blown away when the president was assassinated, Moonshot, with apollo 11 being the first lunar landing. The seventies with the watergate scandal, and Ronald Reagan wins his second presidency. The eighties were about the Homeless vets and AIDS which was making its way on becoming a pandemic.

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“Oranges,” “The Seventieth Year,” and “Avocado Lake,” showcase Soto’s ability to move a reader using an emotional story without the use of rhyme or rhythm. Through Soto’s poetry, he indicates the traits that define Mexican-American community

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In this paper I will focus on the personal history of an artist named Selena Quintanilla. She became famous at a young age due to her singer talents. Moreover, her early exposure in the musical world in the band “Los Dinos” was mainly due to the support of her father. Her participation in “Los Dinos” influenced her to continue her passion for music. I chose Selena Quintanilla as the artist that I will write about due to the great impact her music has in society.

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Therefore, a question arises: how can creation and destruction find reconciliation in the Mexican Revolution? Mariano Azuela’s The Underdogs is often labelled a classic for multiple reasons. The first resides in the quality of Azuela’s writing. Demetrio Macías’ story is epic, in both class

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Anzaldúa was a Mexican American who was a well-known writer and had a major impact on the fields of queer, feminist, and cultural theory. Her most famous work is Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza which includes poems, essays, and short stories. Anzaldúa was no stranger to the use of literary theories in her writing, which is evident in her short story “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” Here, the author uses a combination of feminist, reader-response, and psychoanalytic theory to show the struggle of being oneself when they’re Mexican-American. Through the use of feminist theory, she explains how a female is labeled as an “habladora” when she tries to voice out her opinion about something; reader-response theory provides the reader with an understanding of the struggles of self-identity, which they are able to relate to, especially Mexican-Americans; and lastly, psychoanalytic theory illuminates on her childhood experiences, which could explain why Anzaldúa believes in what she does, such as the idea that Anglo people have tried to tame her tongue—in other words, her language.

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As music continues to grow and change, an increasing number of genres of music are discovered and gain popularity. Despite the different types of music being discovered today, the genres, Pop, R&B/Hip-Hop, and Country have consistently been popular since their discovery. Critics of these types of music argue that the songs do not reflect the “facts of life,” meaning that songs on the top charts for these genres do not have meaning or authenticity. Although there are several critics that disagree, there are songs from each genre that do reflect the “facts of life.” Even though Pop music is the most common type of music the public listens to due to radio airplay and promotion, an overwhelming majority of both critics and listeners claim the Pop music is simply music without meaning.

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