Electric Blue Watermelon.Electric blue watermelon watermelon, plant (Citrullus vulgaris) of the family Curcurbitaceae (gourd family) native to Africa and introduced to America by Africans transported as slaves. Watermelons are now extensively cultivated in the United States and are popular also in S Russia. The fleshy, juicy fruit is eaten fresh, the rind is pickled, and in Asia the seeds are eaten (the dry wild watermelon was originally domesticated for its seeds). The North Mississippi Allstars (ATO Records, 2005) The world of commercial pop music is youth-oriented and globalized, the aim being to synthesize a recording that every 16-year-old on the planet will buy at the same time. But far, far beneath the strip-mall surface of 21st-century pop is a barely-living core of tradition. It's the sound that happened when the kidnapped peoples of West Africa banged into the Anglo-Celtic culture of the American South. The contemporary pop music industry was born in the 1950s and '60s when that sound acquired the global megaphone of electronic media. In most pop music today it's impossible to hear any living connection to that old tradition, rap music rap music or hip-hop, genre originating in the mid-1970s among black and Hispanic performers in New York City, at first associated with an athletic style of dancing, known as breakdancing. The word rap, derived from a 1960s slang word for conversation, generally consists of chanted, often improvised, street poetry accompanied by a montage of well-known recordings, usually disco or funk. being the exception. Then there are the North Mississippi Allstars--a three-man-band of two white brothers and their African American childhood friend, bassist Chris Chew. The brothers, guitarist Luther and drummer Cody Dickinson, are the sons of the legendary pianist and producer Jim Dickinson who was part of the '60s Memphis folk scene and went on to do session work with the Rolling Stones, among others. The Dickinson boys started out in punk and rap-rock bands. As they've matured, they've integrated their firm foundation in North Mississippi Hill Country blues. The Allstars now make music that transcends generations. Guest artists include rappers (Memphian Al Kapone), septuagenarian bluesmen (Othar Turner and R. L. Burnside), and a middle-aged country singer (Lucinda (language) Lucinda - A language which combines Russell-like polymorphism with Linda-like concurrency. Lucinda is implemented as a threaded interpreter written in C, for a Sun network and a Meiko Computing Surface. ["Lucinda - An Overview", P. Butcher, U York et al, SIGPLAN Notices 26(8):90-100, Aug 1991]. E-mail: Alan Wood The Allstars are a living illustration of James Brown's comment, "Music is like water. I've never heard of young people's water and old people's water. There's just water." Drink up. |
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