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Knowing the lingo is a smart starting point for making informed career decisions, so here we’ve put together a mini-dictionary of music terms for easy reference so that you can boost your knowledge or simply refresh your memory.
- Live Performances
Glossary of Music Terms: Live Performances. June 14, 2019. A...
- Live Performances
- Overview
- Hippie lifestyle
- The movement’s soundtrack
- Militant resistance
1960s counterculture, a broad-ranging social movement in the United States, Canada, and western Europe that rejected conventional mores and traditional authorities and whose members variously advocated peace, love, social justice, and revolution. The 1960s counterculture movement, which generally extended into the early 1970s, was an alternative approach to life that manifested itself in a variety of activities, lifestyles, and artistic expressions, including recreational drug use, communal living, political protests, casual sex, and folk and rock music.
The movement was perhaps best encapsulated by the phrase “turn on, tune in, drop out,” coined by the American psychologist Timothy Leary, who demonstrated contempt for authority and championed the use of LSD and other psychoactive drugs. U.S. Pres. Richard Nixon famously called Leary “the most dangerous man in America.” The counterculture movement featured artists such as Andy Warhol, who was famous for his Pop art works. Adherents advocated freedom of expression and a distrust of those in power.
One enduring image of the counterculture movement is that of “hippies,” who were mostly white, middle-class, young Americans. Many felt alienated from their parents’ lifestyles, which they viewed as too focused on material goods and consumerism. That tension drove a “generation gap” that became a hallmark of the 1960s. Hippies often let their hair grow long, and many men had facial hair. The title track of the musical Hair, first performed in 1967, captures this style with the lyrics:
My hair like Jesus wore it
Hallelujah, I adore it
Hallelujah, Mary loved her son,
Why don’t my mother love me?
Hippies wore colourful clothes and typically donned sandals. They eschewed regular jobs, many had vegetarian diets, and some engaged in “free love.” Hippies often traveled the country, sometimes in Volkswagen Microbuses, dubbed “hippie buses,” adorned with peace signs. One of their most famous slogans was “Make love, not war.”
Rock music was an important part of the counterculture movement. Bands like the Grateful Dead—whose fans are known as “Deadheads”—had a strong influence on 1960s counterculture. The Beatles, the most influential band of the era, “helped make rock music a battering ram for the youth culture’s assault on the mainstream,” according to a New York Times article in 1975. The folk music icon Bob Dylan spoke for many alienated youth when in 1965 he sang, “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.” Other artists and bands associated with the counterculture movement included Joan Baez, Jefferson Airplane, the Velvet Underground and the Rolling Stones. A powerful counterculture song was “Almost Cut My Hair” (1970) by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. A song by the Who, “My Generation” (1965)—with its line “I hope I die before I get old”—practically became an anthem of 1960s youth. The era also produced rock musicals, including (in addition to Hair), Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1968), and Jesus Christ Superstar (1971).
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Music festivals helped fuel the counterculture movement, most famously Woodstock, a three-day 1969 extravaganza in upstate New York that featured bands and artists such as the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, and Santana. An estimated 400,000 people attended the event. In December 1969, the Altamont festival in Livermore, California, resulted in tragedy. Organizers made the fateful decision to hire the Hells Angels, a motorcycle gang, to provide security, and one of its members fatally stabbed a Black teenager who had drawn a gun as the Rolling Stones were performing. The Associated Press reflected two decades later that this moment “shattered the dream of a utopian counterculture for the ’60s generation.”
The 1960s counterculture was also marked by armed protest groups. The Black Panther Party, for example, a group founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in California, sought to protect Black neighbourhoods from police brutality and declared, “The time has come for Black people to arm themselves.” That prompted the state to pass legislation dubbed...
- Fred Frommer
- 360 Deal: A contract between a record label and an artist where the record company receives a percentage of other income the artist generates, not just from their recorded music.
- A&R: Short for Artists and Repertoire, it’s the department at a record label or music publisher responsible for discovering new talent and signing them to the company.
- Artist Manager: An Artist Manager is responsible for fostering an artist or band’s career to be as successful as possible. The manager guides the artist’s professional decisions and serves as a representative and advisor for business deals.
- Back Catalogue: This is a collection of an artist/writer’s music e.g. albums, EP, and/or singles. Also known as a ‘discography’.
Jun 4, 2023 · Overall, "Contraband" is a powerful critique of the music industry and its exploitative nature. The song warns against the dangers of sacrificing one's art and identity for the demands of the industry and highlights the importance of supporting artists in their journey to stay true to themselves.
What does the word contraband mean? There are six meanings listed in OED's entry for the word contraband . See ‘Meaning & use’ for definitions, usage, and quotation evidence.
Jan 1, 2024 · The music industry works through a network of partnerships between companies and individuals on the music creation side (singers, songwriters, and producers), the customer-facing side (streaming platforms, venues and public performance platforms like radio) and the business side, connecting the two (labels, managers, publicists, Performance ...
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A controlled composition clause affects the mechanical royalties paid on a composition that is co-written by the recording artist. The controlled composition clause in a recording contract places a limit on how much the label is required to pay for songs in which the artist is also the songwriter.
