/Week 4 Assignment

LHIS-223-015
Professor: Dr. B
Student: Yat Hung Leung (Louis)

B. Terms, Concepts
What is the Gran Ole Opry?
The Grand Ole Opry is a weekly country music stage concert in Nashville, Tennessee
that has presented the biggest stars of that genre. Founded on Nov 28, 1925 by George D.
Hay as a one-hour radio barn dance on WSM, and currently owned and operated by
Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc., it is also among the longest-running radio broadcasts
in history.

C. Quiz, questions about the terms and key concepts from the readings.
1. What does the author in Codes mean by, giving shape and voice to the ideas of
everyday people?
It means people experience music as empowering them to articulate what they may not
have been able to express. These deeper dimensions, sometimes unspoken but a reality,
get at a kind of spiritual, inner experience that music carries.
2. What does songwriter Jackson Brown mean by, harvesting the residue of a life?
It means a person uses a personal narrative to talk about things. It was put in the persons
mind very early on that he should discover yourself and bring that out, and thats what
people would be interested in, what you have inside what you have to say.
3. Who are these people? Woody Guthrie? The Carte family? Jimmy Rodgers? Uncle
Dave Mason?
Woody Guthrie was an American singer-songwriter and folk musician whose music
legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and childrens songs, ballads and
improvised works.
The Carter Family was a traditional American folk music group that recorded between
1927 and 1956. Their music had a profound impact on bluegrass, country, Southern
Gospel, pop and rock musicians as well as on the U.S. folk revival of the 1960s.
Jimmie Rodgers was an American country singer in the early 20
th
century, known most
widely for his rhythmie yodeling. Among the first country music superstars and pioneers,
Rodgers was also known as The Singing Brakeman, The Blue Yodeler and The
Father of Country Music.
Uncle Dave Mason was an American old-time banjo player, singer, songwriter, and
comedian. Known for his chin whiskers, plug hat, gold teeth, and gates-ajar collar, he
gained regional fame as a vaudeville performer in the early 1920s before becoming the
first star of the Grand Ole Opry in the latter half of the decade.

D. Critical Listening
What recording/ performance/ composition struck you, why?
a. Stones in My Passway by Robert Johnson. This tunes talked about the bad conditions
of people in that society. I have pains in my heart. They have taken my appetite. My
enemies have betrayed me. Have overtaken poor Bob at last. By listening to more blues
in that period of time, I could understand more about the society and people especially
African American at that time.
b. Backwater Blues by Bessie Smith. It talked about the flooding of New Orleans in
1927, which destroyed a lot of buildings. When people asked Bessie Smith to sing a song
for the flood, she first said she didnt have anything about the flood. But in the next day,
she has already written the tunes, Backwater Blues, which talked about the flood. It
means Bessie Smith is really a true musician doing music for the society, which reminded
me once again to contribute to the society through music in my future career.
c. Sitting on Top of the World by Bob Wills. This tune has become a standard of
traditional American music. The song has been widely recorded in a variety of different
styles, folk, blues, country, bluegrass, rock, often with considerable variations and/or
additions to the original verses. It is a very good example to talk about the influence of
early music is greatly important to the later music. It also means that music is a fluent
water and connects the history of music and nowadays.
d. Wildwood Flower by The Carter Family. It is a variant of the song Ill Twine Mid the
Ringlets, published in 1860 by composer Joseph Philbrick Webster, who wrote the music,
with lyrics attributed the Maud Irving. The original Carter Family first recorded
Wildwood Flower in 1928 on the Victor label. It is also a great inventions of recording
technology.

E. Films
1. What struck you in the weeks class film(s), define, discuss?
We watched the film about blues this week. It changed my mind to view the style, blues.
Before learning this kind of style before, I thought blues was only a very simple chord
progression. Afterwards, Charlie Parker did a lot of reharmonization and made it better
and more interesting. However, after learning the blues this week, I understood that blues
can be everything. Its some feelings intensely personal. Its secrets. Its freedom and
liberty. If I can understand more about the meaning of blues, I definitely can play it
better.
2. Discover on your own, a YOUTUBE film representing this topic, and or these
representative artists.
This week I watched the film in YouTube, which is called Chicago Blues Documentary
(1972), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzAySaWy9sc. I learnt more about the
history of Chicago Blues. The Chicago blues is a form of blues music indigenous to
Chicago, Illinois. Chicago blues is a type of urban blues. Urban blues evolved from
classic blues as a result of the great depression and developed in the first half of the 20
th

century during the Great Migration, when Black workers moved from the Southern
United States into the industrial cities of the Northern US such as Chicago and Detroit.

G. Write a brief essay on this weeks readings, music, themes as it relates to music style/
artistry.
This week I learnt a lot about the American Tradition in class. Im going to list a few of
what we talked about in class. First of all, it is blues. Blues was created by people who
were in slaves to express their poor conditions in daily lives. In the Great Migration
period, many African American from the South moved to the North. They also brought
the blues to the Northern US such as Chicago and Detroit. Second, it is Freedom. It is the
main tradition of American in my point of view. American is famous of its democracy.
Everyone has the rights to become a candidate of any election, which was not popular in
most of the world. People living in freedom can be more creative or broaden view of
everything because they could do everything they want literally.
Another American Tradition is different Hope and Change. In American, people want
changes regarding to everything in their lives. People have Dreams! The national ethos of
the US, American Dream talks a set of ideals in which freedom includes the opportunity
for prosperity and success, and an upward social mobility achieved through hard work. In
the definition of the American Dream by James Adams in 1931, Life shoud be better
and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or
achievement regardless of social class or circumstances of birth.
Last but not least, different cultures are also one of the American Traditions. Everyone
living in the United States except Native American is an immigrant from different
countries. The first immigrant was Western European. Then the Eastern European and
African also came to the America. Latter on many Latin American and South American
came. And lastly people from East Asia immigrated to America also. We can see very
clearly that the cultural and ethno diversity of America.