R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz and Country August 30, 2007
Posted by Tom Moore in : Uncategorized , 1 comment so far
R. Crumb was the quintessential cartoonist of the Sixties, part of what set the Summer of Love apart visually from that which came before and after. The hippies, while busy rejecting middle-class and mainstream social values across the board, were at the same time rediscovering culture that had been forgotten, devalued, had been part of an underground America, whether it was country blues, old-time string bands, or western swing. R. Crumb’s images reflect this fascination with the style of thirty or forty years earlier (now, of course, the music of the sixties is now as distant for us as the music of Charlie Patton or Blind Willie McTell was for Crumb and the hippies).
This charming little book presents full page portraits in color by Crumb of dozens of important early musical figures, together with brief biographies. As a bonus, you get a CD with tracks recorded by those depicted.
ML394 .C35 2006
Multicultural (1926) August 27, 2007
Posted by Tom Moore in : Uncategorized, Villa-Lobos, brazil, multicultural , add a comment
While Heitor Villa-Lobos was not the first Brazilian composer to make a big impact internationally (that was Carlos Gomes, with a string of successful operas for La Scala in the late 19th century), he was the first whose works remain in the repertory. His career also coincided with the economic modernization of the country in the first three decades of the 20th century, and with the cultural modernization which took place in the 1920s, particularly in Sao Paulo. This was a time in which Brazil began to view its racial heritage positively, as something to be proud of. Even today the logo of the Brazilian federal government incorporates colors representing the “three races” – white, black and red for Brazilians of European descent, of African descent and of indigenous descent.
Villa-Lobos’s own esthetic reflected the multicultural mix of Brazil, incorporating the composer’s experiences with popular Brazilian music, including its African influences, and his knowledge of European modernism, particularly that of Stravinsky and of
France. One of the composer’s masterpieces is certainly the Choros no. 10, a ten-minute work from 1926, which begins with an instrumental introduction (perhaps representing the vibrant nature of Brazilian forests), and concludes with an almost orgiastic choral combination of indigenous (Brazilian Indian) rhythms and music drawn from a popular song by composer Anacleto de Medeiros and poet Catulo da Paixao Cearense), full of percussive accents. It would be hard to find a piece which better expressed the aspirations of a tropical country, full of life.
The Music Library has this piece on three CDS (CD 5179, CD 3054 and CD 1361), and you can also listen to it on streaming audio via Classical Music Library.
New CDs! August 24, 2007
Posted by Tom Moore in : Uncategorized , add a commentThe CDs have been rolling in! This past summer the Music Library added a record number of compact discs for your listening pleasure. Among these are some very interesting sets from the Brilliant Classics label in the Netherlands, including the complete piano sonatas of Scriabin (CD-14763), complete chamber music of Schumann (CD-14971), complete piano sonatas of Schubert (CD-14753), complete keyboard works (solo) of Mozart (CD-14746), and the complete songs of Faure (CD-14754). Here’s your chance to really get to know these fundamentals of the classical canon.
Brazilian beats August 13, 2007
Posted by Tom Moore in : Lenine, Pernambuco, Recife, Siba, brazil, brazilian, folk, pop, popular, rabeca , add a comment
MESTRE AMBROSIO – CD 7527
Music-lovers from outside Brazil usually identify the country musically with the samba, the highlight of Carnaval each year, a cultural product imported to Rio de Janeiro from Salvador in the early twentieth century, and adopted as a national symbol by the government of Getulio Vargas in the 30’s and 40s. But Brazil, a large country with a heritage of more than 500 years since its colonization, has musical roots that are deep and various, and nowhere more so than in the Northeast, where the Portuguese arrived first. If a composer wants to evoke Brazil, he draws upon the folk music of the Northeast -particularly Paraiba and Pernambuco.
The musical group known as Mestre Ambrosio (“Mestre”, or master, is the honorific given to a skilled musician) is based in Recife, the capital of Pernambuco. The group was formed in 1992, and recorded its first CD in 1995, which was produced by pop star Lenine. Unlike Lenine’s music, where more mainstream musical sounds are flavored with Northeastern idioms, Mestre Ambrosio is much closer to back-country Northeastern roots, with a stripped-sound style based on the rabeca (a folk-violin which dates to Portuguese borrowings from Muslim invaders in the middle ages), with percussion. Lots of percussion – the photo on the CD shows the lone rabeca (played by Siba) with no fewer than five percussion instruments. On occasion you may hear an electric guitar or bass – but the music rocks without these. The groove is infectious, and the lyrics amusing or hilarious, with a deadpan delivery by lead singer Siba. Once this disc hits your CD player, it will stay there.
Official site (Portuguese only): http://www2.uol.com.br/mestreambrosio/
-Tom Moore
Welcome! August 13, 2007
Posted by Tom Moore in : Uncategorized , add a commentWelcome! You are reading Biddle Beat, the blog of the Music Library at Duke University, where we will share news about the library, reviews of books, scores and recordings in our collections, recommendations about what to read and listen to, and much more. We welcome your contributions. If you would like to write a review for something you are excited about, please mail it to stephen.moore@duke.edu, and we will post your review.
