A Passion for Polka

A Passion for Polka PDF Author: Victor Greene
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520911725
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
Not so long ago, songs by the Andrews Sisters and Lawrence Welk blasted from phonographs, lilted over the radio, and dazzled television viewers across the country. Lending star quality to the ethnic music of Poles, Italians, Slovaks, Jews, and Scandinavians, luminaries like Frankie Yankovic, the Polka King, and "Whoopee John" Wilfart became household names to millions of Americans. In this vivid and engaging book, Victor Greene uncovers a wonderful corner of American social history as he traces the popularization of old-time ethnic music from the turn of the century to the 1960s. Drawing on newspaper clippings, private collections, ethnic societies, photographs, recordings, and interviews with musicians and promoters, Greene chronicles the emergence of a new mass culture that drew heavily on the vivid color, music, and dance of ethnic communities. In this story of American ethnic music, with its countless entertainers performing never-forgotten tunes in hundreds of small cities around the country, Greene revises our notion of how many Americans experienced cultural life. In the polka belt, extending from Connecticut to Nebraska and from Texas up to Minnesota and the Dakotas, not only were polkas, laendlers, schottisches, and waltzes a musical passion, but they shone a scintillating new light on the American cultural landscape. Greene follows the fortunes of groups like the Gold Chain Bohemians, illuminating the development of an important segment of American popular music that fed the craze for international dance music. And even though old-time music declined in the 1960s, overtaken by rock and roll, a new Grammy for the polka was initiated in 1986. In its ebullience and vitality, the genre endures.

A Passion for Polka

A Passion for Polka PDF Author: Victor Greene
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520911725
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 608

Get Book Here

Book Description
Not so long ago, songs by the Andrews Sisters and Lawrence Welk blasted from phonographs, lilted over the radio, and dazzled television viewers across the country. Lending star quality to the ethnic music of Poles, Italians, Slovaks, Jews, and Scandinavians, luminaries like Frankie Yankovic, the Polka King, and "Whoopee John" Wilfart became household names to millions of Americans. In this vivid and engaging book, Victor Greene uncovers a wonderful corner of American social history as he traces the popularization of old-time ethnic music from the turn of the century to the 1960s. Drawing on newspaper clippings, private collections, ethnic societies, photographs, recordings, and interviews with musicians and promoters, Greene chronicles the emergence of a new mass culture that drew heavily on the vivid color, music, and dance of ethnic communities. In this story of American ethnic music, with its countless entertainers performing never-forgotten tunes in hundreds of small cities around the country, Greene revises our notion of how many Americans experienced cultural life. In the polka belt, extending from Connecticut to Nebraska and from Texas up to Minnesota and the Dakotas, not only were polkas, laendlers, schottisches, and waltzes a musical passion, but they shone a scintillating new light on the American cultural landscape. Greene follows the fortunes of groups like the Gold Chain Bohemians, illuminating the development of an important segment of American popular music that fed the craze for international dance music. And even though old-time music declined in the 1960s, overtaken by rock and roll, a new Grammy for the polka was initiated in 1986. In its ebullience and vitality, the genre endures.

Jewish Experiences across the Americas

Jewish Experiences across the Americas PDF Author: Katalin Franciska Rac
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 1683403975
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Latin American Jewish Studies Association Best Edited Volume This volume explores the local specificities and global forces that shaped Jewish experiences in the Americas across five centuries. Featuring a range of case studies by scholars from the United States, Brazil, Europe, and Israel, it explores the culturally, religiously, and politically diverse lives of Jewish minorities in the Western Hemisphere. The chapters are organized chronologically and trace four global forces: the western expansion of early modern European empires, Jewish networks across and beyond empires, migration, and Jewish activism and participation in international ideological movements. The volume weaves together into one narrative the histories of communities and individuals separated by time and space, such as the descendants of Portuguese converts, Moroccan immigrants to Brazil, and U.S.-based creators of Yiddish movies. Through its transnational focus and close attention paid to local circumstances, this volume offers new insights into the multicultural pasts of the Americas’ Jewish populations and of the different regions that make up North, Central, and South America. Contributors: Lenny A. Ureña Valerio | Elisa Kriza | Raanan Rein | Adriana M. Brodsky | Lucas de Mattos Moura Fernandes | Katalin Franciska Rac | Zachary M Baker | Neil Weijer | Hilit Surowitz-Israel | Isabel Rosa Gritti | Tamar Herzog | Jose C Moya | Sandra McGee Deutsch | Dana Rabin Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Old Money

Old Money PDF Author: Nelson Aldrich
Publisher: Allworth
ISBN: 9781880559642
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
This insider's look at inherited wealth in the United States explores the complex meanings of money and success in American sociey with a new introduction that examinies whether America's privileged class will be willing or able to play a leadership role in the twenty-first century. Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.

Real Black

Real Black PDF Author: John L. Jackson Jr.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226390020
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
New York's urban neighborhoods are full of young would-be emcees who aspire to "keep it real" and restaurants like Sylvia's famous soul food eatery that offer a taste of "authentic" black culture. In these and other venues, authenticity is considered the best way to distinguish the real from the phony, the genuine from the fake. But in Real Black, John L. Jackson Jr. proposes a new model for thinking about these issues--racial sincerity. Jackson argues that authenticity caricatures identity as something imposed on people, imprisoning them within stereotypes--turning them into racial objects and inanimate things, instead of living, breathing human beings. Contending that such assumptions deny people agency--not to mention humanity--in their search for identity, Jackson counterposes sincerity, an internal and more productive analytical model for thinking about race. Moving in and around Harlem and Brooklyn, Jackson offers a kaleidoscope of subjects and stories that directly and indirectly address how race is negotiated in today's world--including tales of name-changing hip-hop emcees, book-vending numerologists, urban conspiracy theorists, corrupt police officers, mixed-race neo-Nazis, and high-school gospel choirs forbidden to catch the Holy Ghost. Enlisting "Anthroman," his cape-crusading critical alter ego, Jackson records and retells these interconnected sagas in virtuosic detail and, in the process, shows us how race is defined and debated, imposed and confounded every single day.

The Old, Weird America

The Old, Weird America PDF Author: Greil Marcus
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0312572913
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
A Special Edition with a New Introduction and an Updated Discography This is Greil Marcus's acclaimed book on the secret music made by Bob Dylan and the Band in 1967, which introduced a phrase that has become part of the culture: "the old, weird America." It is this country that the book maps--the "playground of God, Satan, tricksters, Puritans, confidence men, illuminati, braggarts, preachers, anonymous poets of all stripes" (Luc Sante, New York magazine). In honor of Dylan's seventieth birthday, this special edition includes a new introduction, an updated discography, and a cover featuring never-before-seen photographs of the legendary recording sessions.

George Washington

George Washington PDF Author: James A. Crutchfield
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780765310705
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Between 1753, when he was commissioned as a major of Virginia militia, and 1775, when the Second Continental Congress named him Commander-in-Chief of all colonial military forces, George Washington rose from anonymity as a minor landowner and surveyor to become America's first national hero. With little military training he led the thirteen fledgling colonies through six years of grueling war against formidable British forces, steered the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, and served two terms as the first president of the United States. His accomplishments were so stunning and he was so revered that by the end of the war some of his generals urged him to install himself as king, an idea he looked upon with "abhorrence," calling the very thought "painful." Nor would he consider standing for a third term as president. In this revealing book, James Crutchfield writes of Washington as an enigmatic man-"No more elusive personality exists in history" as an eminent Harvard historian observed. His outward commonness concealed a quick, analytic mind, capable of learning from mistakes, gauging his successes not on winning battles but on the effect his decisions would have on the future of his country. "Washington remains an American hero, in every definition of the word," Crutchfield says. "He was a man who rose above the political uncertainty of the infant United States to chart its destiny for two centuries into the future."

Yesteryear

Yesteryear PDF Author: Dorothy Garlock
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
ISBN: 0759522782
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
An irresistible tale of love and passion in the post-Civil-War South from Dorothy Garlock, the award-winning, bestselling author of A Gentle Giving and Sins of Summer. Addie waited four long years for her husband to return from the Civil War, but to no avail. Now deserters and drifters are making her life dangerous . . . until a mysterious stranger shows up to protect her and her children.

The Archaeology of Citizenship

The Archaeology of Citizenship PDF Author: Stacey Lynn Camp
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813063957
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Since the founding of the United States, the rights to citizenship have been carefully crafted and policed by the Europeans who originally settled and founded the country. Immigrants have been extended and denied citizenship in various legal and cultural ways. While the subject of citizenship has often been examined from a sociological, historical, or legal perspective, historical archaeologists have yet to fully explore the material aspects of these social boundaries. The Archaeology of Citizenship uses the material record to explore what it means to be an American. Using a late-nineteenth-century California resort as a case study, Stacey Camp discusses how the parameters of citizenship and national belonging have been defined and redefined since Europeans arrived on the continent. In a unique and powerful contribution to the field of historical archaeology, Camp uses the remnants of material culture to reveal how those in power sought to mold the composition of the United States and how those on the margins of American society carved out their own definitions of citizenship.

The Age of Acrimony

The Age of Acrimony PDF Author: Jon Grinspan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1635574633
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
A penetrating, character-filled history “in the manner of David McCullough” (WSJ), revealing the deep roots of our tormented present-day politics. Democracy was broken. Or that was what many Americans believed in the decades after the Civil War. Shaken by economic and technological disruption, they sought safety in aggressive, tribal partisanship. The results were the loudest, closest, most violent elections in U.S. history, driven by vibrant campaigns that drew our highest-ever voter turnouts. At the century's end, reformers finally restrained this wild system, trading away participation for civility in the process. They built a calmer, cleaner democracy, but also a more distant one. Americans' voting rates crashed and never fully recovered. This is the origin story of the “normal” politics of the 20th century. Only by exploring where that civility and restraint came from can we understand what is happening to our democracy today. The Age of Acrimony charts the rise and fall of 19th-century America's unruly politics through the lives of a remarkable father-daughter dynasty. The radical congressman William “Pig Iron” Kelley and his fiery, Progressive daughter Florence Kelley led lives packed with drama, intimately tied to their nation's politics. Through their friendships and feuds, campaigns and crusades, Will and Florie trace the narrative of a democracy in crisis. In telling the tale of what it cost to cool our republic, historian Jon Grinspan reveals our divisive political system's enduring capacity to reinvent itself.

Growing Old in America

Growing Old in America PDF Author: David Hackett Fischer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019972685X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
A history of aging in America surveys and compares actualities and attitudes in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries and suggests practical improvements on the current inadequate system of pensions, social security, medicare, and other programs.