Creative drummers, artistry, virtuosity, and playing time

This chapter explores the drummer as a creative artist versus their role as an accompanist and timekeeper. This chapter picks up in the late 1930s, when star drummers like Buddy Rich set new standards for virtuosity on the drum kit, and drum battles became popular displays of technical skill and showmanship. It also discusses the ‘all-girl’ swing bands of the 1930s and 1940s, focusing on the case of drummer Viola Smith. The chapter describes the increasingly prominent role of the drummer in the new bebop style of the 1940s, focusing on two of the drum kit’s greatest musical innovators, Kenny ‘Klook’ Clarke and Max Roach. It also traces the origins of the ‘four-on-the-floor’ pulse of the bass drum and backbeat on two and four of the snare drum that came to dominate dance music through the twentieth century to the present day. The chapter concludes with the drum kit’s second global superstar after Gene Krupa: Ringo Starr of the Beatles.

Kick It

The drum kit—the combination of kick drum, snare drum, and cymbals—has provided the pulse of popular music from before the dawn of jazz up to the present day pop charts. This book is a provocative social history of the instrument that looks closely at key innovators in the development of the kit: inventors and manufacturers like the Ludwig and Zildjian dynasties, jazz icons like Gene Krupa and Max Roach, rock stars from Ringo Starr to Keith Moon, and popular artists who haven't always got their dues as drummers, such as Karen Carpenter and J Dilla. Addressing a seeming contradiction – the centrality of the drum kit on the one hand, and the general disparagement of drummers on the other—this book makes the case for the drum kit’s role as one of the most important and transformative musical inventions of the modern era. Going beyond its purely musical history, it uses the instrument to replay the wider history of the United States and to chart the rise of the drum kit’s global economic and cultural influence. Tackling the history of race relations, global migration, and the changing tension between high and low culture, it shows how the drum kit, drummers, and drumming helped change modern music—and society as a whole—from the bottom up.

December 1966

Jimi deepens his entanglement with manager Michael Jeffery by signing another ill-advised contract, and moves with Chas Chandler and Kathy Etchingham into an apartment owned by Ringo Starr. He begins assembling a wide-ranging collection of albums, including many by favourite blues artists Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, and Elmore James. After a visit with his former bandleader, Little Richard, Hendrix is accosted by the London police due to his skin color and clothing choices. The Jimi Hendrix Experience make their television debut on Ready Steady Go!, and record “Foxey Lady,” “Can You See Me,” “Love or Confusion,” “Red House,” and other original Hendrix compositions. The band’s first single, “Hey Joe” backed with “Stone Free,” is released to rave reviews. Then, while waiting backstage to perform at a Boxing Day matinee, Jimi composes “Purple Haze,” drawing inspiration from a Philip José Farmer science fiction short story. He rings in the new year with Noel Redding’s family.

La crónica 'después de la gran división'. Carlos Monsiváis entre 'vedettes' e ídolos

Las crónicas dedicadas a divas, ídolos y estrellas, que Carlos Monsiváis publica en semanarios durante los años setenta y ochenta, manifiestan una inflexión de la crónica modernista, ya que la incorporación de la cultura masiva supone un desafío a la moderna organización del campo literario basada en la división arte elevado / cultura de masas. Apelamos a la denominación crónica después de la gran división (Huyssen 2006) para referir a este proceso de reconfiguración: planteamos la conversión de las “páginas de sociales” en crónicas; nos detenemos en la singular autofiguración del escritor como una mezcla de Albert Camus y Ringo Starr, para finalmente considerar a Monsiváis como un transculturador de la crónica.

Does Geographic Relocation Induce the Loss of Features from a Single Speaker’s Native Dialect?

Over the past few years, academics such as Sankoff and Blondeau (2007) and Harrington (2006) have exhibited a marked interest in dialect variation and language change across the lifespan. Though it was acknowledged that individuals could temporarily adapt their language to accommodate to other interlocutors, permanent changes to their underlying grammar were previously thought impossible. What has come to light, however, is that as individuals we have been given increasing opportunities to be much more mobile; and as a result, our language has too. The aim of this study is to provide evidence for the claim that social and geographical mobility (in this case geographical) can cause an individual’s language to change. It was motivated by the belief that language cannot change after an individual has surpassed the critical period. The study focuses on one individual speaker in particular: the musician Ringo Starr. The speaker in question lived in Liverpool until the age of 40, before relocating to America. The data for this investigation were sourced from a number of TV and Radio interviews with Starr, taken from 20 years prior to and 20 years after his geographic relocation. In both cases, the interlocutors were speakers of British and American English varieties. The study examines three stable variables that exist in the speaker’s native dialect of Liverpool English — realisation of /t/ to /r/, non-rhoticity, and NURSE ~ SQUARE merger — and investigates whether these remain stable features, are lost completely, or are altered by geographical relocation. The study found that, although the speaker did not lose any features of his native dialect completely, the salience of the variables was affected by the move to the US. The speaker reduced his levels of /t/ to /r/ realisation and became more rhotic in certain phonological and lexical contexts. He retained the NURSE ~ SQUARE merger, but the results showed that he increased his frequency of F1 of NURSE vowels, articulating them slightly lower. Starr never acquired new, American variables such as the alveolar flap. What these results demonstrate is that an individual is capable of changing their language after the supposed “critical period”; it shows that not all change can be attributed to temporary accommodation. Dialect contact with varieties of American English appears to have resulted in some changes to Starr’s grammar.