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The seguiriya has a bleak character, something that translates into the presence of much complaining and little lyrics. In fact, one way to identify this flamenco style is to pay attention to the achievement of ‘ayes’ that it has.
This tragic element that the seguiriya possesses may be motivated by the belief that it is a style that comes from the plañideras, women who were hired to sing in the wake. Since it was a song of mourning, death is very present in the letters of this style.
It is a song that has the basic values of what is known as the jondo and pure song. His lyrics are of pain, tragic, which reflects the suffering of human relationships, love and death.
From the musical aesthetics of the seguiriya, are inspired many flamenco styles such as dry styles songs (without guitar) or malagueñas, among others.
The origin of the seguiriya has been a real headache for musicologists, but they have come to determine that the metric of this style reverses the order of the compasses of the soleá, that is, 3×4 + 6×8.
more...The famous pillars of gas in the core of the Eagle’s nebula, known also as a star nursery, shooted using narrowband filters in the OIII, SII and Ha at 7nm, but mapped insted of the traditional Hubble Palette, in a OIII+Ha+SII palette (OIII for Red, Ha for Green and SII for Blue), giving a blueish color around the image with the center core in yellows, pushing the contrast between the pillars and the surrounding nebula and gases. The Eagle Nebula (catalogued as Messier 16 or M16, and as NGC 6611, and also known as the Star Queen Nebula and The Spire) is a young open cluster of stars in the constellation Serpens, discovered by Jean-Philippe de Cheseaux in 1745–46. Both the “Eagle” and the “Star Queen” refer to visual impressions of the dark silhouette near the center of the nebula, an area made famous as the “Pillars of Creation” imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. The nebula contains several active star-forming gas and dust regions, including the aforementioned Pillars of Creation. The Eagle Nebula lies in the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way.
Jai Johanny Johanson (born July 8, 1944), frequently known by the stage name Jaimoe, is an American drummer and percussionist. He is best known as one of the founding members of The Allman Brothers Band.
Johanson came up in the R&B world and began drumming at an early age, often accompanied by friend Lamar Williams on bass. Johanson backed soul singers, including a membership in Otis Redding‘s touring band in 1966, and afterward touring with the acclaimed soul duo, Sam & Dave. After joining up with Duane Allman in February 1969, he quickly became the first recruit into Allman’s new group, soon joined by bassist Berry Oakley, fellow drummer Butch Trucks, guitarist Dickey Betts and lastly Allman’s younger brother, singer, organist and pianist Gregg Allman. The group, quickly named after the brothers Allman, began recording demos that April in Macon, Georgia, which became the group’s home base.
more...Johnnie Clyde Johnson (July 8, 1924 – April 13, 2005) was an American pianist who played jazz, blues and rock and roll. His work with Chuck Berry led to his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for breaking racial barriers in the military, as he was a Montford Point Marine – where the African-American unit endured racism and inspired social change while integrating the previously all-white Marine Corps during World War II.
Johnson was born in Fairmont, West Virginia, United States. He began playing the piano in 1928. He joined the United States Marine Corps during World War II and became a member of Bobby Troup‘s all-serviceman jazz orchestra, the Barracudas. After his service, he moved to Detroit and then Chicago, where he sat in with many notable artists, including Muddy Waters and Little Walter.
more...Louis Thomas Jordan (July 8, 1908 – February 4, 1975 Brinkley, AR) was an American saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and bandleader who was popular from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as “The King of the Jukebox“, he earned his highest profile towards the end of the swing era. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an “early influence” in 1987.
Jordan was a talented singer with great comedic flair, and he fronted his own band for more than twenty years. He duetted with some of the biggest solo singing stars of his time, including Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. Jordan was also an actor and a film personality—he appeared in dozens of “soundies” (promotional film clips); the one for “Caldonia” is the most readily available for viewing on various websites. He also made numerous cameos in mainstream features and short films, and starred in two musical feature films made especially for him. He was an instrumentalist who played all forms of the saxophone but specialized in the alto. He also played the piano and clarinet.
Jordan began his career in big-band swing jazz in the 1930s, but he became known as one of the leading practitioners, innovators and popularizers of jump blues, a swinging, up-tempo, dance-oriented hybrid of jazz, blues and boogie-woogie. Typically performed by smaller bands consisting of five or six players, jump music featured shouted, highly syncopated vocals and earthy, comedic lyrics on contemporary urban themes. It strongly emphasized the rhythm section of piano, bass and drums; after the mid-1940s, this mix was often augmented by electric guitar. Jordan’s band also pioneered the use of the electronic organ.
With his dynamic Tympany Five bands, Jordan mapped out the main parameters of the classic R&B, urban blues and early rock-and-roll genres with a series of highly influential 78-rpm discs released by Decca Records. These recordings presaged many of the styles of black popular music of the late 1940s, 1950s and 1960s and exerted a strong influence on many leading performers in these genres. Many of his records were produced by Milt Gabler, who went on to refine and develop the qualities of Jordan’s recordings in his later production work with Bill Haley, including “Rock Around the Clock“.
Jordan ranks fifth in the list of the most successful African-American recording artists according to Joel Whitburn‘s analysis of Billboard magazine’s R&B chart, and was the most popular rhythm and blues artist with his “jump blues” recordings[5] of the pre-Rock n’ Roll era. Though comprehensive sales figures are not available, he had at least four million-selling hits during his career. Jordan regularly topped the R&B “race” charts and was one of the first black recording artists to achieve significant crossover in popularity with the mainstream (predominantly white) American audience, having simultaneous Top Ten hits on the pop charts on several occasions.
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This is an image of the North America and Pelican nebulae located in Cygnus. This was shot on a full moon with the HaGB technique. The image includes over 3 hours of exposure with minimum amateur and portable equipment. This entire nebulous region occupies over 10 times the surface of the full moon. The North America Nebula (NGC 7000 or Caldwell 20) is an emission nebula in the constellationCygnus, close to Deneb (the tail of the swan and its brightest star). The shape of the nebula resembles that of the continent of North America, complete with a prominent Gulf of Mexico.
Sir Richard Starkey MBE (born 7 July 1940), better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician, singer, songwriter and actor who achieved international fame during the 1960s as the drummer for the Beatles. He occasionally sang lead vocals with the group, usually for one song on each album, including “Yellow Submarine“, “With a Little Help from My Friends” and their cover of “Act Naturally“. He also wrote and sang the Beatles’ songs “Don’t Pass Me By” and “Octopus’s Garden“, and is credited as a co-writer of others.
Starr was afflicted by life-threatening illnesses during childhood, with periods of prolonged hospitalisation. He briefly held a position with British Railbefore securing an apprenticeship as a machinist at a Liverpool equipment manufacturer. Soon afterwards, he became interested in the UK skifflecraze and developed a fervent admiration for the genre. In 1957, he co-founded his first band, the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, which earned several prestigious local bookings before the fad succumbed to American rock and roll around early 1958. When the Beatles formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool group, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. After achieving moderate success in the UK and Hamburg, he quit the Hurricanes when he was asked to join the Beatles in August 1962, replacing Pete Best.
In addition to the Beatles’ films, Starr has acted in numerous others. After the band’s break-up in 1970, he released several successful singles including the US top-ten hit “It Don’t Come Easy“, and number ones “Photograph” and “You’re Sixteen“. His most successful UK single was “Back Off Boogaloo“, which peaked at number two. He achieved commercial and critical success with his 1973 album Ringo, which was a top-ten release in both the UK and the US. He has featured in numerous documentaries, hosted television shows, narrated the first two series of the children’s television programme Thomas & Friends and portrayed “Mr. Conductor” during the first season of the PBS children’s television series Shining Time Station. Since 1989, he has toured with thirteen variations of Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band.
Starr’s playing style, which emphasised feel over technical virtuosity, influenced many drummers to reconsider their playing from a compositional perspective. He also influenced various modern drumming techniques, such as the matched grip, tuning the drums lower, and using muffling devices on tonal rings. In his opinion, his finest recorded performance was on the Beatles’ “Rain“. In 1999, he was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame. In 2011, Rolling Stone readers named him the fifth-greatest drummer of all time. He was inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as a Beatle in 1988 and as a solo artist in 2015, and appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2018 New Year Honours for services to music. In 2020, he was cited as the wealthiest drummer in the world, with a net worth of $350 million.
more...Josef Erich Zawinul (7 July 1932 – 11 September 2007) was an Austrian jazz keyboardist and composer. First coming to prominence with saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, Zawinul went on to play with Miles Davis and to become one of the creators of jazz fusion, a musical genre that combined jazz with rock. He co-founded the groups Weather Report and The Zawinul Syndicate. He pioneered the use of electric piano and synthesizer, and was named “Best Electric Keyboardist” twenty-eight times by the readers of Down Beat magazine.
more...Henry “Hank” Mobley (July 7, 1930 – May 30, 1986) was an American hard bop and soul jazz tenor saxophonist and composer. Mobley was described by Leonard Feather as the “middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone”, a metaphor used to describe his tone, that was neither as aggressive as John Coltrane nor as mellow as Stan Getz, and his style that was laid-back, subtle and melodic, especially in contrast with players like Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. The critic Stacia Proefrock claimed him “one of the most underrated musicians of the bop era.”
Mobley was born in Eastman, Georgia, but was raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey, near Newark. He described himself as coming from a musical family and spoke of his uncle playing in a jazz band.
When he was 16, an illness kept him in the house for several months. His grandmother thought of buying a saxophone to help him occupy his time, and it was then that Mobley began to play. He tried to enter a music school in Newark, but could not, since he was not a resident, so he instead studied music through books at home.
more...Lloyd “Tiny” Grimes (July 7, 1916 – March 4, 1989) was an American jazz and R&B guitarist. He was a member of the Art Tatum Trio from 1943 to 1944, was a backing musician on recording sessions, and later led his own bands, including a recording session with Charlie Parker. He is notable for playing the electric tenor guitar, a four-stringed instrument.
Grimes was born in Newport News, Virginia, United States, and began his musical career playing drums and one-fingered piano. In 1938 he took up the electric four-string tenor guitar. In 1940 he joined the Cats and the Fiddle as guitarist and singer. In 1943 he joined the Art Tatum Trio as guitarist and made a number of recordings with Tatum.
more...Armenian composer and virtuoso musician Jivan Gasparyan (also spelled Djivan Gasparyan), one of the greatest performers of the duduk, passed away on July 6, 2021.
Although Gasparyan was well known in the world music field as a performer of Armenian folk music, he also crossed over into multiple genres and collaborated with numerous distinguished artists, such as Sting, Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno, the Kronos Quartet, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Hossein Alizadeh, Erkan Ogur, Michael Brook, Lionel Richie, Ludovico Einaudi, Hans Zimmer, and Andreas Vollenweider.
more...Two things capture your attention in this spectacular Picture of the Week, which was taken using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3): the two enormous galaxies that flank the left and right sides of the image. The galaxy on the left is a lenticular galaxy, which rejoices in the name of 2MASX J03193743+4137580. The side-on spiral galaxy on the right is more simply named UGC 2665. Both galaxies lie approximately 350 million light-years from Earth, and they both form part of the enormous Perseus galaxy cluster. Perseus is an important figure in Greek mythology, renowned for slaying Medusa the Gorgon — who is herself famous for the unhappy reason that she was cursed to have living snakes for hair. Given Perseus’s impressive credentials, it seems appropriate that the eponymous galaxy cluster is one of the biggest objects in the known Universe, consisting of thousands of galaxies, only a few of which are visible in this image. The wonderful detail in the image is thanks to the WFC3’s powerful resolution and high sensitivity. The WFC3 is sensitive to both visible and infrared light, so those are the wavelengths that are captured in this image. The Perseus supercluster looks very different at other wavelengths. Whilst in this image the spaces between the galaxies appear dark and peaceful, when the X-ray emission is observed the Perseus cluster appears to be burning with bright intense light.
Michael Shrieve (born July 6, 1949) is an American drummer, percussionist, and composer. He is best known as the drummer of the rock band Santana, playing on the band’s first seven albums from 1969 to 1974. At age 20, Shrieve was the second youngest musician to perform at Woodstock. His drum solo during “Soul Sacrifice” in the Woodstock film has been described as “electrifying”, although he considers his drum solo during “Soul Sacrifice” in 1970 at Tanglewood as being better.
Shrieve’s first full-time band was called Glass Menagerie, followed by experience in the house band of an R&B club, backing touring musicians including B.B. King and Etta James. At 16, Shrieve played in a jam session at the Fillmore Auditorium, where he attracted the attention of Santana‘s manager, Stan Marcum. When he was 19, Shrieve jammed with Santana at a recording studio and was invited to join that day.
more...William John Clifton Haley (/ˈheɪli/; July 6, 1925 – February 9, 1981) was a pioneering American rock and roll musician. He is credited by many with first popularizing this form of music in the early 1950s with his group Bill Haley & His Comets and million-selling hits such as “Rock Around the Clock“, “See You Later, Alligator“, “Shake, Rattle and Roll“, “Rocket 88“, “Skinny Minnie“, and “Razzle Dazzle”. His recordings have sold over 60 million records worldwide.
Haley was born July 6, 1925 in Highland Park, Michigan. In 1929, the four-year-old Haley underwent an inner-ear mastoid operation which accidentally severed an optic nerve, leaving him blind in his left eye for the rest of his life. It is said that he adopted his trademark kiss curl over his right eye to draw attention from his left, but it also became his “gimmick”, and added to his popularity.
more...Louie Bellson (born Luigi Paulino Alfredo Francesco Antonio Balassoni on July 6, 1924 – February 14, 2009), known by the stage name Louie Bellson (his own preferred spelling, although he is often seen in sources as Louis Bellson), was an American jazz drummer. He was a composer, arranger, bandleader, and jazz educator, and is credited with pioneering the use of two bass drums.
Bellson was an internationally acclaimed artist who performed in most of the major capitals around the world. Bellson and his wife, actress and singer Pearl Bailey (married from 1952 until Bailey’s death in 1990), had the second highest number of appearances at the White House (only Bob Hopehad more).
Bellson was a vice president at Remo, a drum company. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1985. Bellson was born in Rock Falls, Illinois in 1924, where his father owned a music store. He started playing drums at three years of age. While still a young child, Bellson’s father moved the family and music store to Moline, Illinois. At 15, he pioneered using two bass drums at the same time, a technique he invented in his high school art class. At age 17, he triumphed over 40,000 drummers to win the Slingerland National Gene Krupa contest.
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