Duke Ellington Essay Example for Free

Duke Ellington Essay One of the greatest jazz bandleaders, arrangers, recording artist, and composers of all time is none other than Duke Ellington. Born on April 29, 1899 in Washington, D.C., Ellington was destined for musical talent. His family was musically talented; both of his parents could play piano even though neither could read music. Ellington did not grow up in a poor family; and he had educational advantages that many black musicians in his time didn’t have. He received the nickname â€Å"Duke† from a fellow classmate, because of his elegant way of dressing and his regal behavior. While in school elementary school, he received piano lessons, and by the time he reached high school, he was already performing locally. He was also a fairly good painter and won a scholarship to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. But his art career was overshadowed by his love for music. Music won his heart, so art wasn’t in the picture. At the age of 17, he wrote his first song, â€Å"The Soda Fountain Rag†, which was his debut. In 1919, Ellington’s son Mercer was born. With encouragement from Fats Waller, Duke moved to New York with his newly formed group, The Washingtonians. He later formed the Duke Ellington Orchestra, which by 1930 had grown to include 12 musicians. During these early years in New York, Ellington developed skills that he would carry throughout his entire career. He evolved from band member to leader and performed in a variety of clubs. His writing and arranging skills also evolved and became more defined. These new skills would be his unique compositional style. Some of Ellington’s new influences were stride piano players like Willie â€Å"The Lion† Smith and James P. Johnson and ragtime piano players. One of the best career moves made by Ellington was his booking at The Cotton Club in Harlem, New York. His band was established house performers there from 1927 to 1932. Ellington’s influence on the jazz community was definite from that point on. Radio broadcasts from the club made Ellington famous across America and also gave him the financial security to assemble a top notch band that he could write music specifically for. Musicians tended to stay with the band for long periods of time. For example, saxophone player Harry Carney would remain with Duke nonstop from 1927 to Ellingtons death in 1974. In 1928 clarinetist Barney Bigard left King Oliver and joined the band. Ellington and Bigard would later co-write one of the orchestras signature pieces Mood Indigo in 1930. In 1929 Bubber Miley, was fired from the band because of his alcoholism and replaced with Cootie Williams. Ellington also appeared in his first film Black and Tan later that year. The Duke Ellington Orchestra left the Cotton Club in 1931 (although he would return on an occasional basis throughout the rest of the Thirties) and toured the U.S. and Europe. During Duke Ellington’s tenure at the Cotton Club, he had gone from an aspiring New York bandleader to a leading figure in the world of jazz. He had become well known far beyond New York. Along with the Cotton Club reviews, he had made many records, radio broadcasts, special performances, and even film appearances. He officially had a national following, and he needed to create new music that would address both his national and international audiences. Ellington was set to accomplish new things in the world of jazz. Ellington’s band was ahead of their time style wise, and they could really swing. Ellingtons first great achievements came in the three-minute song form, and he later wrote music for all kinds of settings: the ballroom, the comedy stage, the nightclub, the movie house, the theater, the concert hall, and the cathedral. Ellington’s different music styles became more pronounced and recognizable.His first style was his jungle style, which included much growling on the instruments. This style was built around the raucous playing of Bubber Miley, Cootie Williams, and Tricky Sam Nanton. The song East St. Louis Toodle-Oo is a good example of this style of playing. The floor shows were elaborately designed around the music the band played. His next style was his mood style, is known for his exquisitely beautiful ballads played by saxophonist Johnny Hodges. Some of his most known mood style selections are â€Å"Solitude†, â€Å"Prelude to a Kiss†, and â€Å"Lotus B lossom†. Another style is his concerto style, in which he featured Cootie Williams, Jimmy Hamilton, and Barney Bigard. By the early 1940s, Ellington experimented with extended composition and his orchestra toured the US and Europe extensively. In 1943, Ellington inaugurated a series of annual concerts at Carnegie Hall with the premiere of Black, Brown, and Beige. He continued to expand the scope of his compositions and activities as a bandleader throughout his life. His foreign tours became increasingly frequent and successful; his travel experiences served as the inspiration for his many works about people, places and trains. He wrote nearly two thousand compositions before his death in 1974. His fourth style was his standard style, where he approached his arrangements in the same manner as the other big bands. He also had a dance style that kind of coincided with his jungle style. Unlike many of their contemporaries, the Ellington Orchestra was able to make the change from the Hot Jazz of the 1920s to the Swing music of the 1930s. The song It Dont Mean a Thing (If It Aint Got That Swing) even came to define the era. This ability to adapt and grow with the times kept the Ellington Orchestra a major force in Jazz up until Dukes death in the 1970s. Throughout the Forties and Fifties Ellingtons fame and influence continued to grow. The band continued to produce Jazz standards like Take the A Train, Perdido, The C Jam Blues and Satin Doll. In the 1960s Duke wrote several religious pieces, and composed The Far East Suite. He also collaborated with a very diverse group of musicians whose styles spanned the history of Jazz. He played in a trio with Charles Mingus and Max Roach, sat in with both the Louis Armstrong All-Stars and the John Coltrane Quartet, and he had a double big-band date with Count Basie. Duke Ellington influenced millions of people both around the world and at home. He gave American music its own sound for the first time. In his fifty year career, he played over 20,000 performances in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East as well as Asia. The extent of Ellingtons innovations helped to redefine the various forms in which he worked. Duke Ellington was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1966. He was later awarded several other prizes, along with 13 Grammys, the Pulitzer Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969, and the Legion of Honor by France in 1973, the highest civilian honors in each country. Simply put, Ellington transcends boundaries and fills the world with a treasure trove of music that renews itself through every generation of fans and music-lovers. His legacy continues to live on and will endure for generations to come. His son Mercer Ellington took over his band after his death, and his grandson Paul Ellington is over the Ellington Estate now. The Ellington Fund helps to fund the Ellington School of Arts where students are inspired to achieve their highest musical capabilities. Duke Ellington is truly a classic indeed. CITED PAGE www.dukeellington.com\ellington www.pbs.org www.redhotjazz.com\duke.html www.schirmer.com The Biographical Dictionary of African Americans

Femininity Versus Androgyny in The Laugh of the Medusa and A Room of Ones Own :: A Room of Ones Own Essays

Femininity Versus Androgyny in The Laugh of the Medusa and A Room of One's Own      Ã‚  Ã‚   There is much debate in feminist circles over the "best" way to liberate women through writing. Some argue that a female writer should, in an effort to recapture her stolen identity, attack her oppressive influences and embrace her femininity, simultaneously fostering dimorphic literary, linguistic, and social arenas. Others contend that the feminization of writing pigeonholes women into an artistic slave morality, a mindset that expends creative energy on battle and not production, and inefficiently overturns stereotypes and foments positive social change; rather, one should lose gender self-consciousness and write androgynously.    Hà ©là ¨ne Cixous and Virginia Woolf, in "The Laugh of the Medusa" and "A Room of One's Own," respectively, epitomize these opposing ideologies, highlighting different historical sources for women's literary persecution, theorizing divergent plans for women's progress, and stylistically mirroring their ideas. Ultimately, the primary difference is in each philosophy's time frame and belief over how much influence writing has to "empower," to borrow a current feminist buzzword. For Cixous, women's writing goes hand in hand with women's liberation: "Writing is precisely the very possibility of change, the space that can serve as a springboard for subversive thought, the precursory movement of a transformation of social and cultural structures" (311). Woolf, however, sees women's writing as emblematic of and dependent on women's progress in general; only with "a room of her own and five hundred a year," through widespread social change, will her fictional Mary Carmichael "be a poet" (9 4).    One of Cixous's main intents is "to break up, to destroy" (309). This destruction of injustice colors her entire perspective; much of her essay is devoted to reaction, to toppling the tyranny of men. Men's writing, she argues, "is a locus where the repression of women has been perpetuated, over and over, more or less consciously, and...has grossly exaggerated all the signs of sexual opposition" (311). Cixous compares women's self-image to that of disenfranchised blacks: "They can be taught that their territory is black: because you are Africa, you are black. Your continent is dark. Dark is dangerous...And so we have internalized this horror of the dark" (310). Through these cultural judgments, men "have made for women an antinarcissism!...They have constructed the infamous logic of antilove" (310). She connects this antilove most strongly with self-loathing for the body: "We've been turned away from our bodies, shamefully taught to ignore them, to strike them with that stupid sexual modesty" (315).

Discuss personal therapist variables

The literature on therapist effectiveness had found support for the importance of the personal experience and background of the therapist. This would imply that counseling effectiveness does not rely only on the theoretical orientation and academic training, but also on the values, principles, emotional stability, self-awareness, and optimism of the therapist (Seligman, 2006).As a student of the counseling process, I am fairly certain that being optimistic, open-minded and emotionally mature are what I consider my strengths and which will help me become a more effective therapist. Counseling is a helping profession and I believe that we could not give to others what we do not have. As a therapist, one must be able to reserve judgment, to accept clients unconditionally and have the willingness to help.Emotional maturity is said to be borne from experience and age (Sperry, Carlson & Kjos, 2003), and although I am not advanced in age, I know that I am emotionally mature because I have a lready experienced a number of difficult situations in my childhood which also gives me an insight into the feelings and thoughts of my clients, I am in a better position to understand them, because I have experienced what they are going through.However, this advantage may also have its own flaw since transference can easily occur in this situation. I have a good grasp of who I am as a person, but I think that I still need to work on my inner self-awareness as well as determining what values are predominant in my life and how I can deal with how my values might influence my relationships with my clients. Nevertheless, I am confident that through this course and in the coming terms, I would be able to deal effectively with the said limitations.I had always been a firm believer of man’s capacity for growth, and I have to say that my counseling approach would be evocative or client-directed (Seligman, 2006). I think that when people are given the opportunity to think and confron t their own issues and problems, they would be able to realize the solutions to their problems. As a therapist, it is my responsibility to help clients become more self-aware, define their identities, become independent and confident. Thus, I am more inclined to use listening skills, empathy, and genuineness in my counseling sessions.

Student Athletes Are Stereotyped And Academic Performance

As previously mentioned, a common area student-athletes are stereotyped is academic performance. As part of the dumb jock stereotype, student-athletes are seen as being academically inept. That is not always the case, however, as college athletes can perform at the same or higher level than their nonathlete peers. In a classic study examining athletes’ academic performance, Adler Adler (1985) used participant observation to study a major college basketball program for four years. These scholars found that many athletes actually â€Å"enter college with optimistic and idealistic goals and attitudes about their impending academic careers† (Adler Adler, 1985, p. 241). After experiencing college life, including the stigmas associated with†¦show more content†¦Instead, it did not affect student-athletes’ academic performance. On the other hand, academic performance can fluctuate based on whether student-athletes are in-season or out-of-season. Scott, Paskus , Miranda, Petr, McArdle (2008) conducted a series of three studies at schools in each of the three NCAA divisions (Division I, Division III, and Division III). The research focused on student-athletes’ academic performance both in-season and out-of-season. The sample consisted of several thousand student-athletes. Across all divisions, results consistently showed that college athletes do better academically during the offseason. In some instances, however, involvement in athletics can have a positive impact. Whitley (1999) used data from 285,805 students in North Carolina from 1993-1996. Granted, the students in this study were in high school, but the results are still significant for a discussion about the stereotype of the dumb jock. Namely, Whitley (1999) discovered student-athletes had a higher GPA than nonathletes. They also had fewer absences, discipline referrals, dropouts and more dropouts than nonathletes. Therefore, student-athletes may even outperform typical st udents when it comes to academic success. Alcohol use A second area where student-athletes are often unfairly stereotyped is alcohol use. Even fellow college athletes have been shown to overestimate the drinking habits of their peers (Perkins Show MoreRelatedHow a Self-Fulfilling Stereotype Can Drag Down Performance by Shankar Vedantam657 Words   |  3 Pages Shankar Vedantam, author of Hidden Brain and NPR science correspondent informs and advocates for equality in the education system in his article â€Å"How a Self-Fulfilling Stereotype Can Drag Down Performance† published in the Washington Post (2009). Vedantam begins his article by interacting with the audience while he asks a question,and he cites Sociologist Min-Hsuing Huang’s research on the influence that the environment has on a minority. 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