Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday Essay Example for Free

Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday Essay Bill Crow’s Jazz Anecdotes is a thought-provoking, often amusing collection of stories from within jazz’s inner circles, told by and about some of the genre’s leading figures. While not a history of jazz, it gives readers some insights to how jazz artists worked, lived, bonded, and coped with an America in which many were still outsiders. The book’s forty-three chapters (expanded from the original 1990 edition) describe the life jazz musicians shared, offering insights into a rather exclusive, unconventional circle of performing artists. The numerous anecdotes are categorized by chapters, gathering related tales and moving from a general overview of jazz life to anecdotes about individuals, like Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, and Benny Goodman. Essentially, Crow creates a context in which jazz musicians lived, and then places individual musicians within it, giving readers a better understanding of how they functioned in this rarified climate. For example, the volume opens with â€Å"Wild Scenes,† which Crow says describes how â€Å"the individuality of jazz musicians combines with the capricious world in which they try to make a living† (Crow 3). The brief chapter sets the stage for the rest of the book, giving glimpses of the unconventional world jazz musicians inhabited (which explains to some degree their relationship to society at large). â€Å"The Word ‘Jazz’† contains attempts to explain the origins of the genre’s name, and â€Å"Inventions† offers accounts of how certain innovations occurred (such as Dizzy Gillespie’s distinctive bent trumpet), giving the reader a sense of history though the work is not an orthodox history per se. Many of the stories contained in Jazz Anecdotes convey the musicians’ camaraderie and warmth toward each other, as well as each other’s idiosyncrasies. Others convey how difficult and often arbitrary the jazz lifestyle often was. â€Å"Hiring and Firing† demonstrates how unstable many musicians’ careers were, rife with disputes over money or dismissals for their personal quirks. (For example, Count Basie fired Lester Young for refusing to participate in recording sessions occurring on the 13th of any month. ) â€Å"Managers, Agents, and Bosses† offers a glimpse into the seamier underside of jazz, where dishonest managers and mobsters often trapped jazz performers in unfair contracts or worse. Though jazz musicians appear to inhabit a special world, Crow does not discuss jazz in a social vacuum, tying it to social phenomena like race relations. In â€Å"Prejudice,† the tales take a more serious tone by showing how black jazz artists faced abundant racism, particularly in the South. However, Crow notes that â€Å"Jazz helped to start the erosion of racial prejudice in America . . . [because] it drew whites and blacks together into a common experience† (Crow 148). Jazz artists dealt with racism in various ways – Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday stood up to it while Zutty Singleton accepted it. Meanwhile, even white musicians like Stan Smith angered both races – whites for performing with blacks, and blacks for â€Å"intruding on their music† (Crow 152). The final chapters focus on individual artists, illustrating the greats’ personalities. Louis Armstrong emerges as earthy and good-hearted; Bessie Smith as strong and willful but ultimately self-destructive; Fats Waller is an impish pleasure-seeker given to excellent music but poor business decisions; and Benny Goodman as gifted but tight-fisted and controlling. Taken as a whole, Jazz Anecdotes offers a look at jazz’s human side, including its foibles, genius, camaraderie, crookedness, and connection to an American society from which it sometimes stood apart. Its legendary figures are depicted as gifted, devoted artists who enjoyed hedonism, companionship, and particularly independence. If any single thing stands out in this book, it is the latter; for the figures in this work, jazz meant creativity and freedom, which they pursued with equal vigor and vitality. Crow, Bill. Jazz Anecdotes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

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Day 2: Start the day off by visiting one of the 7 wonders of the Modern World. The great city, Chichen Itza, located in deep jungle of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, flourished between the 9th and 13th centuries A.D. It was also a sophisticated urban center and center of regional trade. The Mayans emerged around 3,000 years ago in present-day Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, and Mexico. According to a Mayan source, a man named K’uk’ulkan, which means feathered serpent, come from the west and establish a capital at Chichen Itza. It is unknown if this story refers to the Toltec groups or the Itza groups, or if it just a myth. During 550 to 800 AD, the main purpose of the city was to make human sacrifices and magical ceremonies. Itzamnà ¡, the supreme God, was the most important deity; he was the creator god, the god of fire, and the god of the hearth. Other significant Gods included Chac, a hooked-nose god of rain and lightning, and Kukulcà ¡n, the Feathered Serpent, who resembles the man who established the city, K’uk’ulkan. These Gods appear on many temples and were later adopted by the Toltecs and Aztecs as Quetzalcoatl. The Kukulcan, also known as El Castillo, is considered the most famous monument in the city; a unique feature of the pyramid is that it represents today’s modern calendar. A 16th-century Spanish bishop, Diego de Landa, named this pyramid after the legendary ruler of the city and the ancient snake deity. The accuracy of Mayan astronomy influenced the number of steps the temple has. In addition to space observations, the Maya used their mathematical knowledge to create a monument that has 91 steps on each side and a total of 365 steps, the same number of days in a year. The Mayans wanted to create monuments to observe and ... ...eas. The primary attraction of the town is the Ollantaytambo Fortress, located on the edge of the settlement in a section known as the Temple Hill. A monument close from the fortress is the Wall of the Six Monoliths, a towering section of wall composed of six large sections. Archaeologists believe that the construction of the wall was abandoned before its completion and the reasons are remain unknown. Some might believe that the Spaniards swiped the Incas out of the region. A nature megalithic structure near Lake Titicaca is Aramu Muru. Legends say that Viracocha first created life on Earth at Lake Titicaca, on the borders of Peru and Bolivia. In the center of the lake, the Island of Sun stands; in the island, there’s a sacred temple and unknown burial towers called chulpas in Sillustani; these towers were plated with gold and holds the remains of the Inca royalty.

Understanding the Business Competitive Environment

When designing a new strategy for the company, a firm must fully analyze the respective competitive environment in order to come up with decisions that are beneficial. A company must take into account even the minutest details regarding the competitors to understand the factors driving the success of the competitors. PEST analysis, SWOT analysis and Michael Porter’s 5 forces analysis are some ways that develop an understanding of the success of the competitor firms (Porter, 1998). Some questions are given below which help the companies to understand the importance of their expertise and their operations. . How strong is the team of the members at the competitor firm? A firm must focus on their own team and work towards the exploitation of expertise of these members. The other firm may perform well because of their specialization in that field. However, at your company you should make your team strong to gain a competitive edge. 2. What are the practices (operations) adopted by the competitor firm? This helps the firm to gather knowledge on the procedures and methods adopted by the competitor firms. This knowledge helps the company in making its processes efficient in order to stay ahead in the industry and also so that the firms practices can become a benchmark. (Withrow, 2006). 3. What markets or market segments your competitors serve? This question helps the firm in realizing the markets that are being catered and the markets that can be tapped. If the company focuses on itself, it can capture the market of its competitors and create a loyal customer base for itself (Withrow, 2006). 4. What are the competitor’s products/ services prices and promotion strategy? This helps in gaining an insight about the strategies that the companies adopt in order to capture the market. The firm must focus on improving its strategies of cost cutting and adopting to the technological changes so that it can remain ahead of the competition. (Ward, n. d. ) 5. Why customers buy from your competitors? The answer to this question tells about the added value that customers receive as a result of using the competitor products. The firm must focus on providing best services to the customers so that they remain loyal.

The Controversy Surrounding Multiple Personality Disorder...

The Controversy Surrounding Multiple Personality Disorder Multiple Personality Disorder is a condition that many people probably have not heard of. Among those who have heard of it, there are even less who actually know what it is. However, according to Piper (1997) there were about 6,000 cases diagnosed in North America alone in 1986. Some experts estimate that multiple personality disorder, or MPD, affects 5 to 10 percent of the population, or about 100 million people worldwide. For such a widespread disorder, the publics lack of knowledge about it is pretty shocking. One explanation for this lack of knowledge could be the fact that many people, fueled by the beliefs of many noted psychologists, do not believe the†¦show more content†¦For the most part, what psychologists talk about as identity, although a useful construct, is a complete illusion. The example he gives is how people tend to act differently in different situations. For instance, a teenage boy is usually one way around his friends, another way around his parents, an d yet another around his siblings or other family members. Richmond calls these different aspects of personality ego states. Many psychologists dont even attempt to define personality. For example, Carroll (2003) gives the following explanation for an alter personality: The alters are said to occur spontaneously and involuntarily, and function more or less independently of each other. This really gives no insight as to what an alter personality truly is; it only describes what an alter does. Piper attempts to explain alter personalities in stating each personality has its own set of personality traits, such as language abilities, style of speech, value systems, and cognitive styles. This gives a little clearer picture of what a personality consists of, but its not quite complete. One reason many are skeptical about MPD could be that no one really understands what an alter personality is, so it is therefore hard to believe they exist. Besides the apparent presence of alter personalities, there are many otherShow MoreRelatedEssay on Dissociative Identity Disorder800 Words   |  4 PagesIdentity Disorder Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is a severe condition in which two or more distinct identities or personality states are present in, and alternately take control of an individual. People who suffer from DID often have no recollection of what they have done or said while under the influence of the alternate personalities. Friends, family, and the person with the disorder often have a hard time dealing with DID, because of the sporadic nature of the personalities. DID is aRead MoreDissociative Identity Disorder1310 Words   |  6 PagesDissociative Identity Disorder or DID. 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