(Guitar, vocals, 1902–88) The son of a musician, Eddie James House Jr. was born in Riverton, Mississippi. House was preaching sermons by his mid-teens and travelled widely in the 1920s. He did not learn guitar until the age of 25, but soon thereafter was torn between his faith and his love of the blues. After killing ...
of drugs consumed in Chicago at this time, the claim was probably a reflex defence. It was the drug ecstasy, however, that helped kick off the acid house scene in the UK and Europe, as it grew from a few people wielding a 303 in Chicago to the most important youth movement in the UK since punk. ...
Disco had successfully been portrayed in the backlash as un-American, of questionable sexuality, lacking the substance and resonance of rock. In underground clubs, however, house music constituted a mutation of the sound, concentrating its energies on the synthetic noises and elements of repetition that were common in many disco cuts. House music derived its name from ...
Tech-house is dancefloor-friendly, but it takes its cues from reggae, dub, breaks, electro and even two-step sources, as well as using funky techno and US house as its dancefloor basis. Long before tech-house was a recognized sound, Detroit producers such as Octave One (with their 430 West label), Blake Baxter and Kevin Saunderson were experimenting ...
, American producers like Murk, the Latin-tinged Masters At Work or labels such as Strictly Rhythm were early exponents of tribal house. The first wave of early 1990s progressive house in the UK, meanwhile, was largely centred around acts like Spooky and The Drum Club or others on William Orbit’s Guerilla label or Leftfield’s Hard Hands imprint. The ...
A small free-reed instrument, the harmonica, or mouth organ, is placed between the lips and moved to and fro to reach the rows of channels which house vibrating reeds, played by blowing into it. The arrival of the Chinese sheng in Europe in the eighteenth century encouraged a great deal of experimentation with free-reed instruments. In 1821 ...
routed. At the mixer, the engineer can control the relative levels of different sounds; position sounds within the stereo (or surround) field and apply effects. Racks of additional equipment house various sound processing devices, such as delays and reverb units, the creative application of which play such an important part in the recording process. Introduction | Electric & ...
Berlioz’s characteristic ‘instrument’ was the orchestra. While makers had sought to improve different woodwind instruments, Berlioz set himself the task of advancing the orchestra as his favourite instrument. He was always keen to know about the latest developments in instrument-making and performance technique, and made last-minute changes to his Traite général d’instrumentation (‘General Treatise on Instrumentation’) in response to ...
blues guitar players. The 1930s were a crucial period in the development of the blues, for it was then that early Mississippi Delta blues performers Charley Patton, Son House and Robert Johnson travelled throughout the southern states, singing about their woes, freedom, love and sex to community after community. Johnson, who allegedly made a pact ...
test of time. A catch-all term, ‘dance music’ has come to refer to any derivation of electronic music designed for dancing. The metronomic 120 beats per minute boom-boom-boom of house music – resembling the speed of the human heartbeat – is the standard, and this has been accelerated or morphed according to taste at different times. Most electronic music ...
Europe as the decade ended. Inspired by Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles’ DJing in Chicago’s Music Box club, producers, including Larry Heard and Phuture, started to make house music. House music also provided the basis for the techno sound that came from Detroit during the same period. The first wave of Detroit techno producers – Derrick May, ...
even though the long term would see them forced to concede the war. Still, the era that coincided with Cold War crises and President Kennedy’s tenure in the White House was not just about soapy ballads and itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikinis. It was also about the classic, three-minute pop songs that were being turned out ...
opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, as has often been suggested. Nor was it commissioned by the Khedive of Egypt to mark the opening of the Cairo Opera House that same year. It happened that the French Egyptologist, Auguste Mariette, keeper of monuments to the Egyptian government, suggested the opera to the Khedive as a suitable ...
First performed at the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden on 1 December 1951, this adaptation of Herman Melville’s short story saw E. M. Forster writing large portions of prose while Eric Crozier focused on the dramatic execution. Accordingly, Billy Budd was one of the most meticulously researched and well-written librettos of any Benjamin Britten opera. Typically for ...
Boris Godunov, the only project out of nine that Mussorgsky completed himself, has been cited as the great masterpiece of nineteenth-century Russian opera – with its thrilling crowd scenes, historic panorama and the chilling power of its principal character. Boris was unusual in having its chief male role written for a bass voice and for the ‘sung prose’ ...
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