题目内容
Joseph Machlis says that the blues is a native American musical and verse form, with no direct European and African antecedents of which we know. In other words, it is a blending of both traditions. Something special and entirely different from either of its parent traditions. (Although Alan Lomax cites some examples of very similar songs having been found in Northwest Africa, particularly among the Wolof and Watusi)
The word 'blue' has been associated with the idea of melancholia or depression since the Elizabethan era. The American writer, Washington Irving is credited with coining the term 'the blues,' as it is now defined, in 1807. The earlier (almost entirely Negro) history of the blues musical tradition is traced through oral tradition as tar back as the 1860s.
When African and European music first began to merge to create what eventually became the blues, the slaves sang songs filled with words telling of their extreme suffering and privation. One of the many re sponses to their oppressive environment resulted in the field holler. The field holler gave rise to the spiritual, and the blues, "notable among all human works of art for their profound despair... They gave voice to the mood of alienation and anomie that prevailed in the construction camps of the South," for it was in the Mississippi Delta that blacks were often forcibly conscripted to work on the levee and land-clearing crews, where they were often abused and then tossed aside or worked to death.
Alan Lomax states that the blues tradition was considered to be a masculine discipline (although some of the first blues songs heard by whites were sung by 'lady' blues singers like Mamie Smith and Bessie Smith) and not many black women were to be found singing the blues in the juke-joints. The Southern prisons also contributed considerably to the blues tradition through work songs and the songs of death row and murder, prostitutes, the warden, the hot sun, and a hundred other privations. The prison road crews and work gangs where were many bluesmen found their songs, and where many other blacks simply became familiar with the same songs.
Following the Civil War (according to Rolling Stone), the blues arose as "a distillate of the African music brought over by slaves. Field hollers, ballads, church music and rhythmic dance tunes called jump-ups evolved into a music for a singer who would engage in call-and-response with his guitar. He would sing a line, and the guitar would answer it." By the 1890s the blues were sung in many of the rural areas of the South. And by 1910, the word 'blues' as applied to the musical tradition was in fairly common use.
Some 'bluesologists' claim (rather dubiously) that the first blues song that was ever written down was 'Dallas Blues,' published in 1912 by Hart Wand, a white violinist from Oklahoma City. The blues form. was first popularized about 1911-14 by the black composer W.C. Handy (1873-1958). However, the poetic and musical form. of the blues first crystallized around 1910 and gained popularity through the publication of Handy's "Memphis Blues" (1912) and "St. Louis Blues" (1914). Instrumental blues had been recorded as early as 1913. Mamie Smith recorded the first vocal blues song, 'Crazy Blues' in 1920. Priestly claims that while the widespread popularity of the blues had a vital influence on subsequent jazz, it was the "initial popularity of jazz which had made possible the recording of blues in the first place, and thus made possible the absorption of blues into both jazz as well as the mainstream of pop music."
American troops brought the blues home with them following the First World War. They did not, of course, learn them from Europeans, but from Southern whites who had been exposed to the blues. At this time, the U.S. Army was still segregated. During the twenties, the blues became a national craze. Records by leading blues singers like Bessie Smith and later, in
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During the reign of Augustus the Rome army became a professional one. Its core of legionaires was composed of Roman citizens who served for a minimum of twenty five years. Augustus in his reign tried to eliminate the loyalty of the legions to the generals who commanded them, forcing them to take an oath of allegiance directly to him. While the legions remained relatively loyal to Augustus during his reign, under others, especially the more corrupt emperors or those who unwisely treated the military poorly, the legions often took power into their own hands. Legions continued to move farther and farther to the outskirts of society, especially in the later periods of the empire as the majority of legionaires no longer came from Italy, and were instead born in the provinces. The loyalty the legions felt to their emperor only degraded more with time, and lead in the 2nd Centry and 3rd Century to a large number of military usurpers and civil wars. By the time of the military officer emperors that characterized the period following the Crisis of the Third Century the Roman army was just as likely to be attacking itself as an outside invader.
Both the pre-and post-Marian armies were greatly assisted by auxiliary troops. A typical Roman legion was accompanied by a matching auxiliary legion. In the pre-Marian army these auxiliary troops were Italians, and often Latins, from cities near Rome. The post-Marian army incorporated these Italian soldiers into its standard legions (as all Italians were Roman citizens after the Social War). Its auxiliary troops were made up of foreigners from provinces distant to Rome, who gained Roman citizenship after completing their twenty five years of service. This system of foreign auxiliaries allowed the post-Marian army to strengthen traditional weak points of the Roman system, such as light missile troops and cavalry, with foreign specialists, especially as the richer classes took less and less part of military affairs and the Roman army lost much of its domestic calvary.
At the beginning of the Imperial period the number of legions was 60, which Augustus more than halved to 25, numbering at approximately 160,000 men. As mow territory was conquered throughout the Imperial period, this fluctuated into the mid-thirties. At the same time, at the beginning of the Imperial period the foreign auxiliaries made up a rather small portion of the military, but continued to rise, so that by the end of the period of the Five Good Emperors they probably equalled the legionaires in number, giving a combined total of between 300,000 and 400,000 men in the Army.
The last major reform. of the Imperial Army came under the reign of Diocletian in the late 3rd Century. During the instability that had marked most of that century, the army had fallen in number and lost much of its ability to effectively police and defend the empire. He quickly recruited a large number of men, increasing the number of legionaires from between 150,000-200,000 to 350,000-400,000, effectively doubling the number in a case of quantity over quality.
During the reign of Augustus, changes happened in Rome army, excluding ______.
Most of these megacities are in developing countries that are struggling to cope with both the speed and the scale of human migration. Estimates of the future spread of urbanization are based on the observation that in Europe, and in North and South America, the urban share of the total population has stabilized at 75%- 85%. If the rest of the world follows this path it is expected that in the next decade an extra 100 million people will join the cities of Africa, and 340 million the cities of Asia: the equivalent of a new Bangkok every two months. By 2030 nearly two-thirds of the world's population will be urban.
In the long run, that is good news. If countries now industrializing follow the pattern of those that have already done so, their city-dwellers will be both more prosperous and healthier. Man is gregarious species, and the words" urbane" and" civilized" both derive from the advantages of living in large settlements.
History also shows, though, that the transition can be uncomfortable. The slums of Manchester were, in their time, just as awful as those of Nairobi today. But people moved there for exactly the same reason: however nasty conditions seemed, the opportunities of urban life outstripped those of the countryside. The question is how best to handle the change.
If there is one thing that everybody agrees on, it is that urbanization is unstoppable. Migrants attempting to escape poverty, and refugees escaping conflict, are piling into cities in what the executive director of UN HABITAT, Anna, Tibailjuka, describes as" premature urbanization."
Dr Tibaijuka believes it might be possible to slow the pace of migration from the countryside with policies that enhance security and rural livelihoods. There is room for debate, though, over whether better rural development in any form. can seriously slow the pace of urbanization-- or even whether such a slowdown would be a good thing.
Michael Mutter, an urban planning adviser at the British government's Department for International Development (DFID), says that the relevant indicators suggest that in many countries the effective" carrying capacity" of rural areas has been reached. As happened in Europe in the 18th century, population growth and technological improvements to agriculture are creating a surplus population. That surplus has to go some where to earn its living.
Indeed, some people go so far so to argue that governments, international donors and aid agencies spend too much on rural development and neglect the cities. Most countries have a rural development policy, but only a few have urban ones. DFID, for example, spends only 5% of its budget directly on urban develop ment. Moreover, these critics point out that, although rural areas often have worse sanitation, illiteracy and homelessness than cities, such figures are deceptive. Being illiterate, homeless or without access to a flush toilet are far more serious problems in a crowded city than in the countryside.
Of the many lessons being learnt from past urban-development failures, one of the most important is that improvements must involve local people in a meaningful way. Even when it comes to the poorest slum dwellers, some governments and city authorities are realizing that people are their own greatest assets. Slumdwellers International is a collection of "grassroots" federations of people living in slums. Its idea is simple. Slum-dwellers in a particular place get together and form. a federation to strengthen local savings and credit schemes, and to lobby for greater co-operation with the authorities. Such federations are having a big impact on slum-upgrading schemes around the world.
I cry easily. I once burst into tears when the curtain came down on the Kirov Ballet's "Swan Lake". I still choke up every time I see a film of Roger Bannister breaking the "impossible" four-minute mark for the mile. I figure I am moved by witnessing men and women at their best. But they need not be great men and women, doing great things.
Take the night, some years ago, when my wife and I were going to dinner at a friend's house in New York city. It was sleeting. As we hurried toward the house, with its welcoming light, I noticed a car pulling out from the curb. Just ahead, another car was waiting to back into the parking space—a rare commodity in crowded Manhattan. But before he could do so another car came up from behind, and sneaked into the spot. "That's dirty pool." I thought.
While my wife went ahead into our friend's house. I stepped into the street to give the guilty driver a piece of my mind. A man in work clothes rolled down the window.
"Hey," I said, "this parking space belongs to that guy," I gestured toward the man ahead, who was looking back angrily. I thought I was being a good Samaritan, I guess—and I remember that the moment I was feeling pretty manly in my new trench coat.
"Mind your own business!" the driver told me.
"No," I said. "You don't understand. That fellow was waiting to back into this space."
Things quickly heated up, until finally he leaped out of the car. My God, he was colossal. He grabbed me and bent me back over the hood of his car as if I was a rag doll. The sleet stung my face. I glanced at the other driver, looking for help, but he gunned his engine and hightailed it out of there.
The huge man shook his rock of a fist of me, brushing my lip and cutting the inside of my mouth against my teeth. I tasted blood. I was terrified. He snarled and threatened, and then told me to beat it.
Almost in a panic, I scrambled to my friend's front door. As a former Marine, as a man, I felt utterly humiliated. Seeing that I was shaken, my wife and friends asked me what had happened. All I could bring myself to say was that I had had an argument about a parking space. They had the sensitivity to let it go at that.
I sat stunned. Perhaps haft an hour later, the doorbell rang. My blood ran cold. For some reason I was sure that the bruiser had returned for me. My hostess got up to answer it, but I stopped her. I felt morally bound to answer it myself.
I walked down the hallway with dread. Yet I knew I had to face up to my fear. I opened the door. There he stood, towering. Behind him, the sleet came down harder than ever.
"I came back to apologize," he said in a low voice. "When I got home, I said to myself, 'what right I have to do that？' I'm ashamed of myself. All I can tell you is that the Brooklyn Navy Yard is closing. I've worked there for years. And today I got laid off. I'm not myself. I hope you'll accept my apology."
I often remember that big man. I think of the effort and courage it took for him to come back to apologize. He was man at last.
And I remember that after I closed the door, my eyes blurred, as I stood in the hallway for a few moments alone.
From the passage, we can infer that the author is what kind of person？
It is true that American capitalism should be【C10】______with the achievements of its economy, the question【C11】______immediately comes to our mind is what are the essential【C12】______and construct their significance in the【C13】______of American economy, we shall then be able to make a good【C14】______of the key factors that have【C15】______to the phenomenal growth of American economy in the past two centuries.
First and【C16】______, American capitalism is organized as a private enterprise system for private profit,【C17】______the resulting rewards protected by the state as private【C18】______. This, in fact, is the general【C19】______of American economic institutions, underlining the social structure【C20】______which American society has been built.
【C1】
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