Popular Music Essays

Search paper Pinnacles of Perfection: Phish and the Evolution of Jamming For as much as I love Phish, there is so much music I hadn’t heard until I decided to write this paper. It was almost impossible for me to have lots of experience with all the different periods of jamming they had. I decided […]

What do we know about the psychedelic music in the sixties? Robert Fontenot, (Fontenot, 2007) tells us, “When I talk about psychedelic rock, I don’t mean hippie music (like Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, etc.) at all, I mean the all-too-few records produced be teenage bands in the short time between their discovery of hallucinogenic drugs […]

All Blues is a member of pieces from ‘Kind of Blue’. There are five pieces, entitled All Blues, Blue in Green, So What, Freddy Freeloader and Flamenco Sketches. The recording features Miles Davis on trumpet, Julian ‘Cannonball’ Adderley on alto sax, John Coltrane on tenor sax, and a rhythm section made up from Paul Chambers, […]

Tupac Shakur the Tragic figure Tupac was born in New York City, where he attended a prestigious Baltimore School of the Arts as a teenager that helped him launch his tragic career. Later on moved to Oakland California were the gangster rap started. He started out as a second-string rapper and dancer for Digital Underground, […]

Dangdut is a genre of Indonesian popular music that is partly derived from Arabic, Indian, and Malay folk music. It developed in the 1970s among working class Muslim youth, but especially since the late 1990s has reached a broader following in Indonesia. A dangdut band usually consists of a lead singer backed by four to […]

Originally from Marcy Houses housing project in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City,[9] Jay-Z was abandoned by his father Adnes Reeves and shot his brother in the shoulder for stealing his jewelry[10] when he was twelve years old. [11] Jay-Z attended Eli Whitney High School in Brooklyn, along with rapper AZ, until […]

It is common to hear hip-hop and rap music played on local radio stations these days, but have you ever really taken the time to listen to some of the lyrics? You might be shocked at what is really being said behind those catchy rhythms. Lots of hip-hop and rap songs that are sung by […]

CARIBBEAN MUSIC Introduction: Caribbean music originated from the Caribbean Islands, also known as the West Indies, and is a mixture of West African and European predominantly Spanish influences. The music has its origin when West African slaves were brought to Caribbean Island. They composed music with the help of percussion instruments like drums, bells and […]

Thelonious Monk “You know anybody can play a composition and use far-out chords and make it sound wrong. It’s making it sound right that’s not easy. ” This quote spoke by Thelonious Monk himself represents his whole career into two sentences. He was widely considered one of the most influential jazz piano musicians. What is […]

In the 1960’s there were many cultural changes in music. Rock and roll has been around for decades and has inspired many artists around the world such as The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, The Eagles, Pink Floyd, The Who, and The Monkees. One of the great rock and roll bands that influenced new […]

Elements of Music Project The two songs I am analyzing are by the same artist. The artist is DJ Shadow and the songs are entitled “Building Steam with a Grain of Salt” and “Midnight in a Perfect World. ” These songs are from his first album “Endtroducing…,” which was written in 1996. Shadow’s music has […]

The Real Life of T. I. Rap music has become popular among teens since the 1990s. Teens listen to rap because they like the beat and lyrics. Many teens in inner cities relate to rap music because it shows life in the real world. The successful reality rapper, T. I. aka Clifford Harris, has risen […]

For instance, they had taught me that “when life throws oh lemons, make lemonade” . Perhaps you are wondering what SONS had did or faced in the past? Well, let me tell you the secret. First of all, there is an incident called the black ocean occurred in the Dream Concert. Dream concert is a […]

‘The new Beatles’ that’s what they’re called, I’m talking about One Direction (1D), the new popular boy band that make the heart of most girlsbeat out of their chest. But can you say 1D are the new Beatles? They have similarities but because the Beatles were popular before the members of 1D were even born […]

Reggae is the musical genre of the island of Jamaica. Reggae originated in the early 1960’s from its precursor’s ska, rocksteady, and dub. It’s origins can be found in African, Caribbean, and rhythm and blues music of America. Reggae is often associated with the religion of Rastafarianism which spread throughout the world by the music […]

Reggae is a genre that developed from numerous musical styles. It is rooted in the music of black slaves transported from Ghana by the Spanish in the 15th century. They created a unique style of music that was popular as mento in Jamaican folk music from centuries and changed in the 1960s and 70s, in […]

Stevie Wonder is a much-beloved American icon and an indisputable genius not only of R&B but popular music in general. Although not being able to see, he found out his talent in music as a child and went on making this in his life. Maybe his natural musical talent and a little help of his […]

Enrique Miguel Iglesias Preysler was born on May 8, 1975 in Madrid, Spain. He is better known as Enrique Iglesias; a Spanish singer, songwriter and actor. Enrique is the third and youngest child of the Spanish singer Julio Inglesias. His mother Isabel Preysler, a magazine journalist, later divorced his father in 1978. The following year, […]

In order for one to understand the genre of Hip-hop, one must know the origination, the changes over the years, and the impact hip-hop has on today’s society. Hip-hop has been around for more than a few decades and it has been considered to be one of the most controversial subjects for quite some time. […]

By the 1950’s, the blues had lost it’s primary black audience to soul music, but had gained a new audience of young white kids. To the black audience, the themes of oppression, anger and rebellion were no longer relevant and reminded them uncomfortably of their past history as slaves. In Britain, the popular music scene […]

The first problem that arises in attempting to answer this question is actually defining ‘black music’. Is it music made by black people, for black people, both or neither? And thus what exactly is it that sets it apart from ‘white music’? On a wider scale legally classifying someone as black or white also causes […]

In 1917 the Original Dixieland ‘Jass’ Band’s released their recording titled Dixie Jass Band One Step. Alexander, Scott (2008) provided information about the first Jazz records. This is considered by most musicologists as the first Jazz record to be released. This brings the history of Jazz almost to a whole century now. As with all […]