25
Featured Events
2001For the first time ever, the Recording Academy agrees to accept a downloadable single for Grammy consideration. Virgin Records releases two singles: "Dig In," by Lenny Kravitz and "God Gave Me Everything" by Mick Jagger are released to digital retailers via Liquid Audio.
1980Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham dies at age 32 of asphyxiation from vomiting after a night of heavy drinking. The band decides to break up instead of replacing him.
1979Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Evita makes its debut on Broadway with Patti LuPone after a successful year on London's West End.More
1970The Partridge Family's self-titled TV show debuts on ABC.
25
In Music History
2012Two con artists, Alpha Lorenzo Walker and Tamara Diaz, are sentenced to 292 days in jail and 3 years' probation after an attempt to blackmail Stevie Wonder. The pair had somehow obtained or created a video portraying Wonder in a negative light and were demanding $5 million under threat of releasing it to the public. The pair were caught in a sting operation.
2010Bush performs at the second Epicenter Music Festival in Fontana, California. This concert marks the band's first live appearance since 2002.
2008MySpace Music, the all-in-one music service/social network, finally becomes a reality as it launches after agreeing to a deal with EMI, the last major label holdout.
2003Indie rocker Matthew Jay dies at age 24 from an unexplained fall from a London apartment building.
2001Rapper Erick Sermon sustains serious injuries when, according to his publicist, he is involved in an auto accident. It is announced by police one week later that the injuries are actually the result of a plunge out a third-story window.
2001The voice of Bob Marley ushers satellite radio onto the air, promising listeners greater variety on the dial - for a price - with the launch of XM Satellite Radio. It is the first worldwide broadcast of a satellite radio station.
2001Modern rock act The Verve Pipe plays a benefit concert at Schuba's in Chicago. All proceeds benefit the American Red Cross.
1998Johnny Cash suffers a relapse of pneumonia and is admitted to a Nashville hospital.
1993The US Postal Service issues a Patsy Cline commemorative stamp.
1990Mercer University Drive in Macon, Georgia, is renamed "Little Richard Penniman Boulevard" after the famous singerwho grew up there.
1990Dave Grohl, former drummer of the Washington DC band Scream, joins Nirvana.
1985Diana Ortiz (of Dream) is born in San Fernando Valley, California.
1981The Rolling Stones start their US tour with a concert at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, where they play to a crowd of 90,000.
University Of Miami Bans "Dixie"
1968
No more whistling "Dixie" for University of Miami students as the school becomes the first university to ban the controversial Confederate anthem from being played at public events.
In a letter to the student body, President Henry King Stanford explains his reasons for banning the traditional tune, which first rose to prominence in blackface minstrel shows before becoming an anthem for the Confederacy during the American Civil War and a popular theme at modern sporting events. With lyrics wistfully recalling the bygone days "in the land of cotton," while, protesters point out, stereotyping the slaves who picked that very cotton, the song attracts controversy.
As the Civil Rights movement gained traction throughout the '50s and '60s, African Americans likened their reaction to confronting symbols of the Old South like the Confederate flag and "Dixie" to the Jews encountering Nazi swastikas: a painful reminder of a time of bondage and prejudice.
Stanford writes, "It is not honorable to force upon a minority group the symbols of the Confederacy which, rightly or wrongly, have become so distasteful to them, symbols which are associated in their minds with slavery, discrimination, and the degradation of human personality, all conditions that are at complete variance with that part of my Southern heritage which I prize so highly."
Despite other schools (including Clemson University and the University of Georgia) following Miami's lead, Confederate heritage groups and several Southern schools retain "Dixie" as a fight song that they insist represents heritage, not hate - an argument that rages well into the 21st century. In the ensuing decades, artists re-envision the song's message by removing stereotypical black dialect and setting the tune against songs that detail black hardship, such as jazz singer Rene Marie mixing it with "Strange Fruit," Billie Holiday's haunting song about lynching. Just a few year after the ban, Mickey Newbury's "An American Trilogy," made popular by Elvis Presley, combines "Dixie" with the Union anthem "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and the spiritual-turned-protest song "All My Trials."
As the Civil Rights movement gained traction throughout the '50s and '60s, African Americans likened their reaction to confronting symbols of the Old South like the Confederate flag and "Dixie" to the Jews encountering Nazi swastikas: a painful reminder of a time of bondage and prejudice.
Stanford writes, "It is not honorable to force upon a minority group the symbols of the Confederacy which, rightly or wrongly, have become so distasteful to them, symbols which are associated in their minds with slavery, discrimination, and the degradation of human personality, all conditions that are at complete variance with that part of my Southern heritage which I prize so highly."
Despite other schools (including Clemson University and the University of Georgia) following Miami's lead, Confederate heritage groups and several Southern schools retain "Dixie" as a fight song that they insist represents heritage, not hate - an argument that rages well into the 21st century. In the ensuing decades, artists re-envision the song's message by removing stereotypical black dialect and setting the tune against songs that detail black hardship, such as jazz singer Rene Marie mixing it with "Strange Fruit," Billie Holiday's haunting song about lynching. Just a few year after the ban, Mickey Newbury's "An American Trilogy," made popular by Elvis Presley, combines "Dixie" with the Union anthem "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and the spiritual-turned-protest song "All My Trials."
No comments:
Post a Comment