Login or Register for free to create your own customized page of blog posts from your favorite blogs. You can also add blogs by clicking the "Add to MyJacketFlap" links next to the blog name in each post.
Blog Posts by Tag
In the past 7 days
Blog Posts by Date
Click days in this calendar to see posts by day or month
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Sarah Rahman, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 3 of 3
How to use this Page
You are viewing the most recent posts tagged with the words: Sarah Rahman in the JacketFlap blog reader. What is a tag? Think of a tag as a keyword or category label. Tags can both help you find posts on JacketFlap.com as well as provide an easy way for you to "remember" and classify posts for later recall. Try adding a tag yourself by clicking "Add a tag" below a post's header. Scroll down through the list of Recent Posts in the left column and click on a post title that sounds interesting. You can view all posts from a specific blog by clicking the Blog name in the right column, or you can click a 'More Posts from this Blog' link in any individual post.
The ukulele, a small four-stringed instrument of Portuguese origin, was patented in Hawaii in 1917, deriving its name from the Hawaiian word for “leaping flea.” Immigrants from the island of Madeira first brought to Hawaii a pair of Portuguese instruments in the late 1870s from which the ukuleles eventually developed. Trace back to the origins of the ukulele, follow its evolution and path to present-day popularity, and explore interesting facts about this instrument with Oxford Reference.
1. Developed from a four-string Madeiran instrument and built from Hawaiian koa wood, ukuleles were popular among the Hawaiian royalty in the late 19th century.
2. 1893’s World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago saw the first major performance of Hawaiian music with ukulele on the mainland.
3. By 1916, Hawaiian music became a national craze, and the ukulele was incorporated into popular American culture soon afterwards.
4. Singin’ In The Rain vocalist Cliff Edwards was also known as Ukulele Ike, and was one of the best known ukulele players during the height of the instrument’s popularity in the United States.
Cliff Edwards playing ukulele with phonograph, 1947. Photography from the William P. Gottlieb Collection. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
5. When its sales reached millions in the 1920s, the ukulele became an icon of the decade in the United States.
6. Ernest Ka’ai wrote the earliest known ukulele method in The Ukulele, A Hawaiian Guitar and How to Play It, 1906.
7. The highest paid entertainer and top box office attraction in Britain during the 1930s and 40s, George Fromby, popularized the ukulele in the United Kingdom.
Headline image credit: Ukuleles. Photo by Ian Ransley. CC BY 2.0 via design-dog Flickr.
Clara Bow, whose birthday falls on 29 July, was the “it” girl of her time, making fifty-two films between 1922 and 1930. “Of all the lovely young ladies I’ve met in Hollywood, Clara Bow has ‘It,’” noted novelist Elinor Glyn. According to her entry in American National Biography, “With Cupid’s bow lips, a hoydenish red bob, and nervous, speedy movement, Bow became a national rage, America’s flapper. At the end of 1927 she was making $250,000 a year.”
In recognition of the numerous leading ladies of the early days of Hollywood, the American National Biography team has put together a quiz to test your knowledge of early Hollywood and its stars. Film buff or not, the experiences of these iconic actresses may surprise you.
Sarah Rahman is a Digital Product Marketing Intern at Oxford University Press. She is currently a rising junior pursuing a degree in English literature at Hamilton College.
Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only history articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only television and film articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
The four-, five-, six- stringed instrument that we call a “banjo” today has a fascinating history tracing back to as early as the 1600s, while precursors to the banjo appeared in West Africa long before it was in use in America. Explore these fun facts about the banjo through a journey back in time.
The banjo was in use among West African slaves since as early as the 17th century.
Recent research in West African music shows more than 60 plucked lute instruments, all of which, to a degree, show some resemblance to the banjo, and so are likely precursors to the banjo.
The earliest evidence of plucked lutes comes from Mesopotamia around 6000 years ago.
The first definitive description of an early banjo is from a 1687 journal entry by Sir Hans Sloane, an English physician visiting Jamaica, who called this Afro-Caribbean instrument a “strum strump”.
The banjo had been referred to in 19 different spellings, from “banza” to “bonjoe” by the early 19th century.
The earliest reference to the banjo in North America appeared in John Peter Zenger’s The New-York Weekly Journal in 1736.
William Boucher (1822-1899) was the earliest commercial manufacturer of banjos. The Smithsonian Institution has three of his banjos from the years 1845-7. Boucher won several medals for his violins, drums, and banjos in the 1850s.
Joel Walker Sweeney (1810-1860) was the first professional banjoist to learn directly from African Americans, and the first clearly documented white banjo player.
After the 1850s, the banjo was increasingly used in the United States and England as a genteel parlor instrument for popular music performances.
The “Jazz Age” created a new society craze for the four-string version of the banjo. Around the 1940s, the four-string banjo was being replaced by the guitar.
Sarah Rahman is a digital product marketing intern at Oxford University Press. She is currently a rising junior pursuing a degree in English literature at Hamilton College.
Oxford Reference is the home of reference publishing at Oxford. With over 16,000 photographs, maps, tables, diagrams and a quick and speedy search, Oxford Reference saves you time while enhancing and complementing your work.
Subscribe to OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only music articles on OUPblog via email or RSS.
