PASSPORT TO MUSIC
INTRODUCTION We are a group of young people from diverse backgrounds across Birmingham, whose passion is music. Music is the one factor that ties our journey together. It allows us to express our individuality whilst uniting us together as a group. Our journey through the access to music course has taught us about different styles of music as well as developing our own skills through performance and production. Just like us, music is diverse and interchanging and it is our aim through this booklet to spread musical awareness and create open mindedness, appreciation and respect to the music we hear today and its historical background.
- Shaqeem, Bethany, Sabrina, Amy-Marie, Kate and Tia POPULAR STYLES Rock Heavy Metal Pop Mento Hip Hop Euro Pop Electronica Reggae Rap Ska Blues Calypso Jazz
KEY ARTISTS The Beatles Elvis Presley Madonna Blondie Michale Jackson Bob Dylan Giorgio Moroder BB King Jimi Hendrix Radiohead Janis Joplin Billie Holiday Sex Pistols
The United Kingdom has a long and varied musical history, with a great deal of impact and influence on the world. This is in part due to cultural similarities and a shared language with former and current Commonwealth countries particularly with the United States but also due to a history of embracing disparate musical styles from across the world and exporting them across the globe. The early part of the 20th Century saw the UK influenced by American music, primarily Rock and Roll and the Blues, with young British acts covering popular US tracks. As the UK scene developed, the 1960s heralded the ‘British Invasion’ with acts like the Beatles, The Who and The Rolling Stones achieving global popularity and an influential place in the development of music around the world. Following this, the growth of Pop and Rock music catalysed a UK-US collaboration, with trans-Atlantic genres being exchanged and exported back and forth The 1970s saw the rise of Rock, with Led Zeppelin, a band heavily influenced by US Blues acts such as Muddy Waters and Skip James, achieving huge success across both countries. Running parallel and counter to this was the Punk scene in New York, with acts such as the The Ramones, The New York Dolls and The Stooges, who owed a debt to the mod youth movement and beat group influences of acts like The Kinks and the early work of The Who. This scene was subsequently exported back to the US in the form of The Sex Pistols and The Clash.
USA In the 20th Century, American popular music achieved great international acclaim, with rural Blues music and Jazz crisscrossingi continents and influencing musical styles around the world. Rock and Roll music in the 1950s quickly became the country’s premier export. The music scene in the US is exemplified by the fusion of different styles, creating new musical horizons. Elvis Presley drew on Gospel, Soul, Rock and Roll, Jazz and many others to create a style that transcended borders and gave birth to a legion of imitators. In addition to this, the American Folk scene became influential, particularly with the rise of Bob Dylan as a cultural pioneer. Dylan’s influence was enormous, encompasses acts as diverse as Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young and the Velvet Underground, being rivalled only be the Beatles for cultural impact. The West and East Coast of the USA came to prominence at the end of the 20th Century, as Rap and Hip Hop burst onto the music scene. The style consisted of two main sub-genres, artists situated in the West Coast, such as NWA, Snoop Dog and Tupac and artists from the East Coast, such as Run-DMC, Public Enemy, the Notorious B.I.G. The genre as a whole was dominated by a rivalry between the two groups, although both could trace their origins to the 1970s and the streets of South Bronx through DJs such as Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaata.
The European music scene is enormously diverse, with over 50 countries on the continent and each with a distinct musical heritage, stretching back across the centuries. During the 20th and 21st centuries, the most popular musical styles across the continent have been Europop, Euro Disco and Electronic Music. After winning the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974, ABBA became one of the most commercially successful acts in the history of pop music, topping the charts throughout the world from 1975 to the early 80s and achieving over 380 million album sales worldwide. Eurodisco came to prominence in the 1970s and the term was used to describe non-UK based dance acts like Boney M, Dschingis Khan, Cerrone and Teach-In. Whilst each had great successes across the continent and in their own countries it wasn’t until the early 80s that the scene began to have an influence beyond European shores. Although Italian in origin, Giorgio Moroder began a record label in Munich in the 1970s and merged the use Electronic music and Eurodisco, producing albums for the likes of Donna Summer, The Three Degrees and Sparks. Moroder’s influence continues to this day, in particular with acts like Daft Punk and Air
. The origins of Caribbean music is bound up with the history of the slave trade. In the latter part of the 19th Century colonial ancestors were predominantly from Africa, Western Europe and India. They brought with them the musical genres that hailed form the areas and over time the styles fused together and created a musical melting pot. In addition, North American influences in the guise of Pop, Hip Hop and Rap began to have an effect on the direction of Caribbean music, as well as the rise of Latino culture The divisions between styles in the Caribbean are not hard and fast and each island has it’s own particular style, which often shares commonalities with other genres across the islands. Jamaica is renowned in particular for Reggae music, which originated in the late 1960s. The most famous exponent of this was Bob Marley, who used Reggae as a means in which to critique the difficult situations many Jamaicans found themselves in and in doing so, crossed the cultural divide and appealed to a mass audience. Reggae was preceded by the Ska movement in the 1950s and was subsequently exported, in particular to the UK. In the late 1970s the English 2 Tone revival was developed and made popular by bands such as The Specials, Madness and Bad Manners, influenced heavily by Jamaican Ska. These bands began influencing other acts in the US throughout the 1980s, early pioneers being the Uptones and The Toasters. The mid 90s saw an explosion of popularity as Ska Punk crossed the divide into mainstream popular music with acts like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Rancid.
“Music is expression. Music is diverse. Music is unique. Music is fun. Music has a past. Music has a future. Just like music you are and have all these things! Keep it real and Just Do You!!!” - Shaqeem, Bethany, Sabrina, Amy-Marie, Kate and Tia
CHECK OUT THESE TRACKS AND TICK OFF THE ONES YOU LISTEN TO RADIOHEAD - “CREEP” THE BEATLES - “HELP” BOB MARLEY - “REDEMPTION SONG” ELVIS PRESLEY - “JAILHOUSE ROCK” SKIP JAMES - ‘DEVIL GOT MY WOMAN” BOB DYLAN - “HURRICANE” LEE SCRATCH PERRY - “ROASTFISH AND CORNBREAD” LED ZEPPELIN - “BABE I’M GONNA LEAVE YOU” AFRIKA BAMBAATA - “PLANET ROCK” N.W.A - “EXPRESS YOURSELF” DAFT PUNK - “AROUND THE WORLD” JIMI HENDRIX - ”LITTLE WING” GIORGIO MORODER - “FROM HERE TO ETERNITY” BB KING - “3 O’CLOCK BLUES” BABA BROOKS - “INDEPENDENCE SKA” KRAFTWERK - “TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS” SUGARHILL GANG -”RAPPERS DELIGHT”
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