Thursday, October 31, 2019

BARGAINING Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

BARGAINING - Assignment Example Kaiser Permanente thought that a national agreement might lead to nationwide strike or lack of support for the agreement by the local unions. On the other side the coalition of unions believed that the national agreement will lead to national wages that will be lower than the local rates (Leventhal, 2006). 26 of the unions were convinced that the national negotiation would not give the best results for their members. Looking at this someone can realize that the interests of Kaiser Permanente were to make sure that they were able to curb national strikes and prevent local unions from rejecting the agreement. The coalition of unions on the other side wanted to make sure that the union members had job security and that there would not be a decrease in payment rates that were resultants (Leventhal, 2006). The interests mentioned herein can be differentiated from the positions of the involved parties in that they were not the demands made by the negotiation parties. In this case the demands are what will be referred to as the positions of the involved parties. The reasons behind the demands are what are referred to as the interest. This is the primary reason as to why the herein mentioned factors can be referred to the conflicting interests of the interest-based negotiation. For Kaiser Permanente to be contributing to the negotiation process they first had to accept the local wage rates to be used nationally. This is the most appropriate through which the other party will feel like the national negotiation process had something positive for them. With such an action the Coalition of unions will not have to fear that the national agreement will lead to a situation where their members are accorded lesser wages as compared to the wages that they used to get under the local agreements. Given the fact that interest-based negotiation dwells on integration and mutual compromising, the coalition of unions will also have to agree that will prevent

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Roadmap to the Development Process of Toyota Prius Essay Example for Free

Roadmap to the Development Process of Toyota Prius Essay Toyota Motor Corporation is a famous Japanese multinational corporation, and is considered the world’s second largest automaker of automobiles, trucks, buses, robots, and providing financial services. When Toyota and other Japanese carmakers entered the American market, they were not considered as a threat to the American auto industry because it was believed their cars had no appeal to American consumers However, in the 1970s, due to several problems like environmental regulations, and quality control issues with American cars, a good number of American car owners began searching for alternatives to poorly made American cars. In response to these changes, Toyota and other Japanese carmakers aggressively marketed their cars to Americans as being fuel-efficient, environmentally friendly, and having better build quality than American cars. In addition, Toyota marketed their cars with commercials involving young Toyota drivers jumping in the air. As a result, the Japanese’s marketing campaign along with continuing problems from the Big Three auto manufacturers, allowed import cars to make up about 20 percent of the US car market by 1980. Stage1. General Motors, Ford and Daimler-Chrysler focused in the late 1990s on mergers and acquisitions for improving their business positions to meet future challenges. Toyota, meanwhile, centered its business strategy on technological innovation and persistent environmental product development. The price of oil was not especially high during the 1990s when Toyota started its hybrid car program. Oil prices were below US $20 barrel in 1994 and were to fall to a 50-year low around 1997 when the Toyota Prius was first sold in Japan. Clearly something else was driving Toyota and other Japanese companies to invest so heavily in hybrid car development. There are three probable reasons: 1 . High petrol taxes in Japan, due to the Japanese government wanting to reduce the dependence of Japan on imported oil. While this would have certainly driven the Japanese development of hybrid cars, petrol was cheap in the key US market at this time. 2) The potential to gain a market advantage by developing the key technologies required to successfully commercialize hybrid cars, and then owning these developments via patents. 3) The expectation that ownership of these key fuel savings technologies would become very valuable when world oil prices rise from the lows of the mid-1990s, which was a fair long-term assumption to make during this period. Stage2: Decision Making Process: In 1994, the executive team acknowledged the potential threat of depleting oil reserves and climate change and change their strategy or products to meet the needs of future customers. Course of Action: Toyota set up a group tasked with meeting the challenge of creating a vehicle for the 21st century, which would work within the parameters of natural resource constraints and environmental issues. Commitment to course of action: Toyota pioneered the concept of Hybrid (petrol/electric) technology to mass produce the world’s first eco-efficient vehicle, the Toyota Prius. Evaluation of decision/re-engineering: The first prototype of the car had even faced starting problem. It took almost six months to roll the car. Finally, when the car started, it moved for a few yards only. It was hard to imagine that Toyota, which was known for its efficient production systems, was facing such trouble. Initially it felt that ‘Prius’ was a case of technological problems, impossible demands and multiple miscalculations. It proved how a great company could overcome obstacles and turn a dream into reality. Though ‘Prius’ represented only a small fraction of the nine million cars and trucks that the Japanese company planned to produce in 2006, it would be the first vehicle to provide a serious alternative to internal combustion engines, designed for a world of scarce oil and was branded as ‘The car for the future’. Stage3: Toyota carefully studied the US market and sees there is a growing oil crisis and foresees a need for change in the structure for cars, converting their needs to oil saving cars. While American car manufactures lacked producing such cars, then Toyota caught that opportunity and tried to occupy this niche market. By 2002, it was being sold in North America, Japan, Europe, Hong Kong, Australia and Singapore. Analysts opined that the demand for hybrid cars would rise because of the unstable oil prices and the growing need for environment friendly products. Post Evaluation By examining the external environment and acknowledging the potential threats of depleting resources and increased concern over environmental issues, Toyota have turned a threat into a business opportunity, boosting their reputation both as an environmentally conscious and as technological innovators and established themselves as leaders in this growing market. The car industry faces many complex issues, but the introduction of the Prius provided Toyota with a competitive advantage. RoadMap to the development Process of Toyota Prius. Stage1| Stage2| Stage3| Executive level| 1 Expressed concern about the future of the automobile2. Embarked a new project called G21 to the team3. Communicated the vision and priorities to the team| 1. The executive team acknowledged the potential threat of depleting oil2. Challenged the team for the innovation of new model using new technology| 1. Toyota unveiled the Prius in Japan in October 1997, two months ahead of schedule. 2. Made strategy plans for introducing cars to US and other prospective continents| Management and Team level| 1. Engaged in improving the existing internal combustion engine technology2. Started making refinements to the existing technology | 1. Team committed to the course of action using hybrid technology. 2. Came up with around 80 alternatives. 3. Identified numerous problems heat, reliability, noise, and cost. 4. Narrowed the list to four models. 5. After endless fussing and tweaking, the team finally reached 66 miles per gallon the 100% mileage improvement. | 1. Team has started putting efforts towards with second and third generation Prius. 2. Redesigned the model for making it more appealing to the consumers. | Marketing /Sales Team| 1. Identification of the growing oil prices. 2. Identification of Growing middle class around the world. | 1. Raised the concern that Premium price for the hybrid would make it impossible to sell. 2. Challenged with building consumer technology awareness. | 1. Devised new marketing ways to cut down dealership costs in US. 2. Devised new ways to boost the sales through internet, relied on grass-roots marketing, and public relations events|.

Saturday, October 26, 2019

Denition Of Baby Dumping Theology Religion Essay

Denition Of Baby Dumping Theology Religion Essay The issues of the baby dumping become a contemporary issues that never decrease in term of their quantity. Nowadays, this issues become more worse compared to previous years. We can say that, the baby dumping activities always happening almost everyday. According to the Headquarters of Royal Malaysia Police (PDRM), they stated that, the meaning of the baby dumping is the act of leaving away their babies at the any places without taking care of that babies. According to the Community, Family and Women Ministry, the issues of baby dumping already had achieved almost to thousand per a year. This cases become a hot and big topic around malaysians people. Many parties had already discussing about this problem that commonly happen in Malay communities. The question that we should always asking is, why this problems always happen toward our teenagers? According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia it define baby dumping as a social problem that happen when the mother of the baby want to abondent or have willing to leave their children in public or private places with the intent to dispose their baby without have heart to take care their babies. Usually this kind of cases happened when the mother of the baby have giving birth to the unwanted babies. Thus, to cover all their mistakes, they take a drastic way by dispose their own babies. Besides that, the Wikipedia also defined baby dumping as a rejecting and throwing a baby away after the mother of the baby have giving a birth and exposeing their baby with the danger in a means to make sure their baby death. In addition, according to Kamus Dewan Edisi 4, page 208, the term dumping give a means throw, delete and remove while the meaning for the word baby is a newborn child by the mother. If we combined the meaning of the baby dumping, it give to us a deep meaning as a dumped or eliminate the innocent child to everywhere without have any humane nature. The meaning that was given by the dictionary give a more and better understand about the issues that was always happened and occured in our country. Besides that, baby dumping also can be defined as when a pair of irresponsible parent either already married or not make a decision to just abandon their unwanted baby in unfavorable places such as dumpstair, abondan places even in front of other houses. ALTERNATIVE WAYS TO CURB THE BABY DUMPING Some of the steps that was taken by the parties either by government, parent and school cannot brought a successfull method in order to overcome this kind of issue. Therefore, it is important to discuss the alternative ways in order to curb this baby dumping problems. GOVERNMENT The other alternatives that government shall take is set up the DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) Bank. It is was proposed by Selangor police, Chief Datuk Khalid Abu Bakar in year 2010. In Malaysia, using DNA Bank to solve the crime cases like baby dumping is a one of the new approach. The DNA Bank will give a lot of benefict for the police by facilitate their investigation. For baby dumping cases, DNA Bank can trace the parents that abandoned their newborn babies because DNA Bank will keep the DNA of all newborn babies. Thus, any person that abandoned their babies will easily to get trace by the police. Besides the baby dumping cases, DNA Bank also can help the police in other crime cases, like murder, robbery cases and so on. Eventhough this facilities will give alot of benefit to solve the crime issues, but it may going to take a time and need a lot of cost to build this facilities in our country. However, it still become a best solution to address cases that related with baby dumping p roblems. Second alternatives that government can take in action is reconstruct the syllabus. The present syllabus that our children used today is good enough to them become acknowledgeable person but there are leakage in creating an awareness to our children regarding the sexual relationship. Thus, government should reconstruct or add the syllabus in certain subject like in Pendidikan Islam and Pendidikan Moral. The element that can create and rise the awareness and could highlight the consequences of social problem like free sex and baby dumping should be emphasized. Besides reconstruct the syllabus, the government also should exterminate the pornographic material either from internet or in form of electronic multimedia. This kind of things will influence the teenager to do a bad thing easily if the immediate and the drastic step did not take by the government. Nowadays, teenagers can access this pornographic material by using the internet so government should block all this matter from ente r to our country. Set a strict rule also can be taken by government in order to overcome this cases. The promotion of islam as a way of life also can be a excellent alternative to reduce the number of baby dumping statistic because the majority person that involved in baby dumping cases are muslim youth. Therefore, the government can hired the islamic scholar or ulama to take a reesponsible to explain and have a some talk about the religion to our young generation. Beside that, when there is a program or when there is a national celebration, the government could invited the religious person or motivator to motivate our citizen instead of invite the singer to organise their concert. One of the politician in our country had said that, one of the reason why the baby dumping in our country increase for every year is due to the entertaiment that they easily to get. Too entertaimnet that didnot give any benefit for them will cause them to get chances involve in social problem. Other than that, government also should give a support for NGO activities. One of the method that NGO organised t o overcome this problem is by providing baby hatch. The baby hatch was get supported by our Ministry of Women, Family Community development. The function of baby hatch is to help the women especially the young women that need help from abandoning their babies by providing place for them to leave their unwanted babies instead of throwing them in unsuitable places. Thus, this baby hatch should be build in other state so that this problem can resolved. SCHOOL School plays important role to help in curbing the baby dumping problem among the teenagers. The first alternative that the school should do is increase the knowledge and social skill among the teenagers. The teacher should not just teach the students about the knowledge in textbook, but they also should have iniciative to teach the student about the general knowledge including the sexuality issues. The students should know how worse the social problem that just happening in our country. They also should have some knowledge how to take care themselve from being trapping in free sex and also baby dumping cases. Besides that, the teenagers also need some skill to make decision about when they should initiate with sex, with whom and under what circumstances they should know about the sex. Besides the knowledges, school also should provided the martial art class. This martial art class is important to teenager to have a some skill to defence them from be a victim in sexuality issue. The second alternative is school should offer reproductive health service and contraception. Normally, the facilities was only exist in public and private family planning clinic. Thus, the teenagers that have some problem in sexuality relationship may feel embarrassed due to the perception of cammunity toward them. We should take some example from United State, they also offer reproductive health in school to give their students the knowledges regarding with the sexual relationship. By providing this service in school, the students can use it to get counseling session regarding with their sexuality relationship. To overcome the baby dumping issues, besides give counseling, the service also can organise communication program for parents and teen to discuss about the teenagers problem in sex education. It is important to enhance the teens sense of personal development and to parent in knowing about their children problems. The third method that the school can do is by applying the sex education to their students. Sex education in school is a better option to overcome this problem. But, many parties may have a wrong perception toward the objective of sex education in school. actually, it is not the teacher teach the student about how to have a safe free sex, but the objective of sex education are to provide the awareness to the students and let them to have a better understanding of reproductive system and health. It is important to provide the students especially female students about the consequences of having a relationship with a boy in a early stage. Beside that, sex education could give the extra knowledge and tend to reduce the number of unprotected sexual intercourse and also illegal pregnancy. We should learn from Singapore, they addressed the issues much better and faster than us. Now, the sex education was formally taught in upper primary school until the pre university level. The objective t hat Singapore emphasized regarding the sex education are to building the teenagers that mature and be responsible with their own body. PARENT Parents play a high role to teach their kids to become good in their own behavior. Thus, the role of parent in curbing the baby dumping need to address very well. First of all, the parent should openly discussed about the sex education with their children. Eventhough the topic about the sex education is still taboo to aur culture, but it is important to prevent the teenage to get the wrong information about sex from wrong sources. Parents always refuse and opposed to discuss about the sex with their children and leave the respnsible to the teacher only. Thus, the parent should take their own role to reduce the number of baby dumping in our country. The parent should have initiative to story the consequences of being in a relationship in an early stage to their children. The children should know how they should respect their own body by not letting any men touch their body without have any legal relationship. Beside that, if the children asking the questions, the parent should provide the actual answer to their children. They should not give a wrong answer because the children may have cinfusing in understanding that topic. Second alternative that the parent could taken is supervise their children activities. Parent should know very well about what their children do and with who their children befriend. If necessary, parent should control their children when they frequently love to hangout with their friend instead of staying at home. Once, before egulate all their children activities including their children social life, but now parents is different. They believe that their children can manage their life very well even without their parent guide. They also should firm their childrem activities relating with the activities that do not good for their life. Sometimes, parents did not give a full attention to their children because of too much spending with their work. Thus, the children feel boring staying at home by themselve and finally take a decision to hangout with their friends that tend to involve in social problem. So, parent should spent their time with their children in order to understand their children behaviour and problems.

Friday, October 25, 2019

Extended Families :: essays research papers

Extended Families in the African American Culture   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There are some lines attributed to Victor Hugo which read: â€Å"She broke the bread into two fragments and gave them to her children, who ate with eagerness. ‘She hath kept none for herself,’ grumbled the sergeant.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã¢â‚¬Å"’Because she is not hungry,’ said a soldier   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã¢â‚¬Å"’No,’ said the sergeant, ‘because she is a mother.’†   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  These lines of writ are truly identifiable in my past. I have no doubt that my mother would sacrifice her own comfort, as she often has, in order to assure that I, myself, have that which I desire and need. However I would surely be remorsed if I failed to admit that my happiest times come not only when I am in the company of my mother but also in the company with my father, brothers, and sister. The joys of a family are surely among the great gifts of God. It is this feeling of unity that I hate to see withheld from any human being, having experienced this fullness of joy myself. It is this reason among others that pains me to read the accounts of early African Americans that were enslaved and oft robbed of their biological families.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The two pieces that I have most enjoyed reading, Equiano and Douglas, talked of this most severe suffering and pain. Equiano writes, â€Å"I remember in the vessel in which I was brought over in, in the man’s apartment, there were several brothers, who, in the sale, were sold in different lots; and it was very moving on this occasion to see their distress and hear their cries at parting†¦Why are parents to lose their children, brothers their sisters, or husbands their wives? Surely this is a new refinement in cruelty, which, while it has no advantage to atone for it, thus aggravates distress, and adds fresh horrors even to the wretchedness of slavery.† Equiano who had already been stripped of his sister, with whom he was taken captive, would learn that if they had been brought to the auction block together, they still, most assuredly, would have been taken by two distinct masters and hence forced to live their confinements apart.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Frederick Douglas recounts quite a different way in which he was stripped of his family. Following popular practice, his mother was sold while he was still an infant to a neighboring farm and he recalls seeing her only â€Å"four or five times. Extended Families :: essays research papers Extended Families in the African American Culture   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There are some lines attributed to Victor Hugo which read: â€Å"She broke the bread into two fragments and gave them to her children, who ate with eagerness. ‘She hath kept none for herself,’ grumbled the sergeant.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã¢â‚¬Å"’Because she is not hungry,’ said a soldier   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã¢â‚¬Å"’No,’ said the sergeant, ‘because she is a mother.’†   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  These lines of writ are truly identifiable in my past. I have no doubt that my mother would sacrifice her own comfort, as she often has, in order to assure that I, myself, have that which I desire and need. However I would surely be remorsed if I failed to admit that my happiest times come not only when I am in the company of my mother but also in the company with my father, brothers, and sister. The joys of a family are surely among the great gifts of God. It is this feeling of unity that I hate to see withheld from any human being, having experienced this fullness of joy myself. It is this reason among others that pains me to read the accounts of early African Americans that were enslaved and oft robbed of their biological families.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The two pieces that I have most enjoyed reading, Equiano and Douglas, talked of this most severe suffering and pain. Equiano writes, â€Å"I remember in the vessel in which I was brought over in, in the man’s apartment, there were several brothers, who, in the sale, were sold in different lots; and it was very moving on this occasion to see their distress and hear their cries at parting†¦Why are parents to lose their children, brothers their sisters, or husbands their wives? Surely this is a new refinement in cruelty, which, while it has no advantage to atone for it, thus aggravates distress, and adds fresh horrors even to the wretchedness of slavery.† Equiano who had already been stripped of his sister, with whom he was taken captive, would learn that if they had been brought to the auction block together, they still, most assuredly, would have been taken by two distinct masters and hence forced to live their confinements apart.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Frederick Douglas recounts quite a different way in which he was stripped of his family. Following popular practice, his mother was sold while he was still an infant to a neighboring farm and he recalls seeing her only â€Å"four or five times.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Jazz Music between World Wars Essay

The jazz craze in music during the 1920s reflected a general spirit of the times for many commentators like Seldes that this decade became known as the Jazz Age. Following World War I, jazz music certainly captured the popular imagination. The rapid popularity of jazz music led to its equally rapid spread among musicians. No other style up to this time in American popular music so quickly came to dominate popular performance. The American vernacular, which had already made significant inroads into the commercial popular music market, had captured popular tastes at an unprecedented level, seemingly sweeping aside the old â€Å"standards. † And just as ragtime and syncopated dance music became part of earlier commercial popular music, the dominance of jazz in the 1920s also represented a major triumph of the black vernacular in American popular music. The jazz craze began through the influence of non-professional musicians. While still marginal to most legitimate venues, non-professional musicians performing the jazz vernacular were attracting audiences to clubs, theaters, restaurants, and were popular in the speakeasies of the 1920s. They also had opportunities for their music to reach a broader audience in a booming record market following World War I. Professional musicians, however, quickly adopted jazz music in their orchestras and smaller bands. They co-opted the jazz fever while simultaneously distancing themselves from non-professionals. (Charters, 39-43) By occupying the most lucrative jobs in theaters, dance halls, hotels, and other venues, professional musicians positioned themselves as the premier interpreters of this new vernacular idiom in commercial popular music. The common defense of jazz as good music during the Jazz Age embraced the professional musicians and professional composers who performed and created jazz music, not the non-professional musicians who first introduced it. In adopting jazz idioms, professional musicians were simply continuing the process of cultivating the American vernacular. Black professional musicians were already adopting black vernacular idioms in their music making in earlier syncopated society orchestras and simply adopted jazz idioms as well as the name in their â€Å"jazz† orchestras. (Bushell, 72-75) White professional musicians had performed rags as part of their repertoire in the past, but with the jazz craze, many were quick to adopt syncopated dance and jazz practices in some form as the defining style of their profession. White professional musicians also quickly followed black professional musicians in transforming their bands into jazz orchestras, and just as quickly claimed to be the modern proponents of this new American popular music. Black and white professional jazz orchestras in the 1920s established the basic instrumentation, arrangement, and techniques of the big band dance orchestras that dominated American popular music until the 1950s. In the 1920s, an emerging new ideal of good music involved a balancing of the previous cultivated practices and cultivated music of professional musicians with popular vernacular idioms. The proper balance, however, was hotly debated. Professional musicians would constantly distance themselves from the pure vernacular of non-professional musicians. In defending their balance of the cultivated and the vernacular in popular performance, popular tastes, however, were demanding jazz music and a professional musician would be remiss to ignore his patrons in the popular music market as much as stodgy critics and some professional musicians would rail against the pernicious influence of jazz. Professional musicians in mediating the popular music market had to continue to navigate the moral, aesthetic, class, and racial construction of good music in America. While popular tastes in musical entertainment promoted the black vernacular in commercial popular music, the plight of the African American community in the United States continued to be dire. Some leaders in the black community had hoped that African Americans’ participation during World War I in both the military and in industry, and the Great Migration out of the Jim Crow South, would change their fortunes as segregated and oppressed second class citizens. The post-war years, however, dashed most hopes of any immediate positive change. (DeVeaux, 6-29) Race relations went in the opposite direction. Race riots sprung up across the nation while lynching continued to be a regular occurrence. Efforts continued to secure the legal segregation of black communities, and the labor movement continued to exclude blacks. The Ku Klux Klan reached its peak membership and popularity during the 1920s. The segregation and denigration of the black community was also reflected in the social organization of American music. (Hansen, 493-97) Besides the segregation of audiences and most venues, black professional musicians also remained outside the artistic community of white professional musicians in terms of unions, band organizations, and this community’s vision of a professional class of artist in America. The balance of the cultivated and the vernacular among professional musicians also continued to run against elitist conceptions of popular music and popular musicians as less legitimate than the music, musicians, and composers of the European cultivated tradition of classical and opera music. Black professional musicians also continued to strive to break through the barriers erected against them in the world of European cultivated music. This continuing tension in the implied lower status of professional musicians who performed American popular music erupted during the Jazz Age into an open rebellion against the European cultivated tradition. Professional musicians in jazz orchestras attempted to counter the singular role claimed by the European cultivated tradition. These musicians asserted that jazz was a true American or African American school of fine art music in contrast to cultivated European music – a populist appeal for high art legitimacy. This high art turn in American popular music, however, ultimately failed when the depression wreaked havoc on the popular music market. With the introduction of a new popular music market of live performances, records, broadcasts, and films, the quest for legitimacy among professional popular musicians would have to take another route. It was a period where professional popular musicians in adopting the jazz vernacular went against the reigning cultural hierarchy in America. (Peretti, 234-40) The period following World War I was a crucial turning point in American popular music. The American vernacular in general was storming the ramparts of the old edifice of good music as Tin Pan Alley song and dance dominated popular performance. Both professional and nonprofessional musicians also were benefiting from more affluent times and the growing importance of entertainment in the lives of most urban Americans. To the chagrin of elite and moral defenders of nineteenth century cultural idealism, most urban Americans were readily joining a Cultural Revolution in commercial popular entertainment. And at the center of this revolution was the national craze for jazz music and jazz dance. The jazz craze made syncopated rhythms and other black vernacular idioms central elements of American popular music making. While many small jazz bands performed a black vernacular style of music from the Delta Region of New Orleans, jazz music in the 1920s encompassed not only this style but syncopated dance music, blues music, piano rags, and virtually any tune jazzed up by musicians. The jazz craze in essence was the craze for the black vernacular among popular audiences and the performance of this vernacular in some form by popular musicians and popular singers both professional and non-professional. The extent to which musicians and singers actually adopted the black vernacular rather than a superficial imitation – critique later jazz critics would make of certain sweet jazz during the 1920s – is less important than the fact that jazz entered the consciousness of the nation and musicians as the reigning popular music. The word Jazz seems to have found a permanent place in the vocabulary of popular music. It was used originally as an adjective describing a band that in playing for dancing were so infected with their own rhythm that they themselves executed as much, if not more, contortions than the dancers. The popularity of the raggy music has created a demand for music with exaggerated syncopation, an attempt as it were to produce the wonderful broken rhythms of the primitive African jungle orchestra. The jazz craze also coincided with the growth of black entertainment. During the 1920s, black entertainment districts like the South Side in Chicago and Harlem in New York City witnessed a major boom. Besides entertaining the large black populations of The Great Migration, black musicians and singers were entertaining white audiences who went uptown for their entertainment. The boom in the 1920s in black entertainment, as Kenny (1993, 89-92) and Shaw (1987, 122-30) show, was driven by the demand for the black vernacular. In musical theater, musical revues, vaudeville, dance, and speakeasies, the black vernacular and black artists were in demand. This demand was met not only in black entertainment districts, but also outside these districts as black artists performed for white audiences in musical revues, dance halls, and clubs in white entertainment districts. The popularity of the black vernacular also increased when record producers discovered a race market in black music. Most members of the New England School of cultivated music like Mason, and other defenders of the old ideal of good music, were stridently against the influence of jazz in both popular music and classical music. Repeating the moral, aesthetic, class, and racial epithets used to condemn the popularization of vernacular jazz, the guardians of the old ideal ridiculed any idea of jazz meriting the status of high art or even having an influence on serious music composition and performance. As David Stanley Smith, Professor of Music at Yale University, argued in The Musician of August 1926, jazz music’s â€Å"monotonous rhythm, as unvaried as the chug-chug of a steam engine, enslaves its practitioners within a formula, and induces in composer, performer, and listener a stupor of mind and emotion. † On the other hand, many of those individuals who embraced â€Å"modernism† in cultivated music were sympathetic to jazz music. These modernists emphasized jazz as the legitimate expression of the times and a nation. (Stewart, 102-109) The debate within the cultivated tradition between old idealists and modernists on the influence of jazz revolved mainly around the influence of popular jazz on serious music composition and performance. That the question would be posed in such a manner spoke to how, by the 1920s, the European cultivated tradition had organizationally and ideologically broken from the world of commercial popular music. Crossover between popular music and cultivated music occurred during the 1920s, but organizational and ideological barriers left little chance that jazz musicians would transform the cultivated tradition. The very formation of a separate world of cultivated music in the United States was predicated on its distinction from commercial popular music, popular musicians, and popular tastes – a distinction further exacerbated by jazz music being an expression of the black vernacular. The influence of jazz within the cultivated tradition, however, was debated during the 1920s as professional musicians laid claim to a truly American art form and modernists promoted the incorporation of jazz in serious music composition and performance. (Badger, 48-67) Traditionalists, of course, had reason to be optimistic as the economic depression following the 1929 stock market crash wreaked havoc on the commercial market of popular jazz music. Defenders of the European cultivated tradition also had reason to celebrate as the confident proclamations of professional musicians on jazz as America’s first authentic art receded to the background as these musicians adjusted to changed economic circumstances and a new popular music market. Professional musicians’ struggle for legitimacy during the Jazz Age, however, laid the ideological and musical foundation upon which the next generation of professional musicians would construct a modern jazz paradigm. In their quest for legitimacy as professional artists, they were the first popular artists to attempt to transform the moral, aesthetic, class, and racial constructions of the old ideal of good music in America. While their efforts contained their own complicity in manners of distinction, the contradictions of an elite populism embedded in a racist culture, they did struggle to create an alternative understanding of art and society in America. As the self-appointed mediators of the American vernacular, professional musicians and composers ardently worked to construct an alternative form of good music to that of the European cultivated music tradition – a music reflecting in some fashion the world of popular audiences and popular tastes. ( DeVeaux, 525-40) In this process of syncretism, the reinvention and reinterpretation of musical idioms and practices, these artists created the American big band dance orchestra and the Tin Pan Alley song that dominated American popular music until the middle of the twentieth century. While jazz did not become a universally recognized American high art form during the Jazz Age, professional musicians and composers transformed it into legitimate popular art music, although at the expense of those non-professional vernacular musicians who did not assimilate into their profession. The need for professional musicians to legitimate popular dance orchestras disappeared after the 1920s, and the old ideal of good music no longer occupied this professional class of musician. (Gioia, 213-20) The emergence of an alternative ideal of good music among professional musicians signaled a final separation between popular music making and the cultivated tradition in American music. This break was both ideological and practical; a reflection of both a new professional ethos among professional musicians and the culmination of the division in the social organization of American music between the world of popular music and the world of European cultivated music. (Lopes, 25-36) The previous crisscrossing professionally between the cultivated tradition and popular music making was no longer part of this profession. The future big band leaders and musicians of the Swing Era began their professional careers not in symphonies, but in the small jazz ensembles and jazz orchestras of the Jazz Age. The fate of jazz was seemed threatened by the power over popular music of a new mass media industry of broadcasts, recordings, and film. Just when the fortunes of jazz seemed dead and buried, however, the swing craze reignited popular interest in the cultivated jazz vernacular. (Hennessey, 156-60) The promotion of sweet music and the subsequent swing craze, however, set in motion a new distinction within the profession of musician. No longer than singularly obsessed with the world of European cultivated music, professional musicians who assimilated the black jazz vernacular now viewed sweet music as their more direct nemesis. The race and class boundaries articulated in the old ideal of good music were now articulated more directly for professional musicians in the distinction between the popular music cultures of sweet and swing.

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Laura Fair Zanzibar essays

Laura Fair Zanzibar essays In her book, Fair describes many significant ways in which people use dress, music, and sport to challenge the inherited social order, and to redefine race, ethnicity, gender, and class. The book covers the time from the end of WWII back to the 1990s. During that time, Zanzibar experienced rapid social changes in the appearance of a large number of immigrants, and the end of slavery. The majority of the book focuses on urban Zanzibar and The political evolution of Zanzibar, in Fair's analysis, is largely a story of a change in identity issues among the people of the country. As the 1800's ended, people in Zanzibar were largely seen interims of old identities of free, well-bred Muslims (mwungwana), or non-Muslim, slave or rural (mshenzi). As the century progressed, there was a desire to be seen as Swahili in the 1910's, and there was a switch to ethnic identification in the 1920s. Get another identity appeared as the title Shiraze became increasingly popular in the 1930s and 1940s. These changes in identity were often marked by many differences in sport, music, and dress were used to challenge (and sometimes even identify) changes to social order, and make new definitions of gender, ethnicity, class, and race. Slavery was abolished by the British in 1896 in the Zanzibar Protectorate. Slaves themselves were a diverse lot, consisting of many different ethnicities from the African mainland, most were poor, some were well-off enough to own slaves themselves. As slavery ended, many former slaves suddenly found themselves without a formalized 'place' in the new Zanzibar, as their often relatively benign patron-client relationship Over time, the former slaves developed a new identity that was largely based on the traditional Swahili culture of the East African coast. Many remained on plantations owned by Arabs, but the majority moved to N'gambo, part of Zanz...