26
With its warm climate and rich soil, the South developed an economy on cotton export. This was the area of great cotton plantations with large numbers of slaves. In the upland South the soil was poorer, farms were smaller, and slaves were few. In the mountain areas of the South - the Appalachians and the Ozark mountains of Arkansas - life was hard and isolated, and blacks were generally absent.
The South has produced a variety of Negro song styles, such as the gospel, spirituals, blues, known since the mid 1800 and marked by messages of “good news” and driving, dynamic rhythm. Scholars debate how African rhythms, slaves’ work songs, English ballades, and Southern spirituals mixed together to form the blues. Many of the earliest blues guitarists were traveling with street performers who, because many could not read either words or music, developed patterns that were ideal for improvisation. The anguish of love lost, the perils of gambling and liquor, and a longing for the open road were widely known to cause someone to sing the blues. Listeners could nurse their heartache to a slow blues melody or enjoy raucous tales of no-good men and loose women. But it was not until 1920 that the music industry realized how popular the blues could be. Once the depression set in, however, the blues lost out – people preferred to be cheered up. The blues never regained the popularity it had enjoyed in the mid-1920s, but its raw feeling and rhythmic energy have greatly influenced R&B, rock, and jazz.
Usually accompanied by instruments and punctuated with spontaneous shouts, claps, and stomps, the gospel and spiritual became integral to worship in black churches. Gospel popularized by ac-claimed Dixie musicians won fans world-wide. Elvis Presley, a boy from East Tupelo, Mississippi, the biggest star of the 20th century, known as “the
King of rock ‘n’ roll, was influenced by gospel music. Then, in Memphis - the center for blues music – he, just for fun, recorded a song at the Recording Studio. Presley’s potential was immediately recognized. The style that made him famous was discovered while fooling around in the studio. He brought more black content than others to the combination of blues and country music – influential popular white style, the cowboy music in large part derived from the South. By the 1920s, Southern rural folk had emigrated to the cities. Soon the “mountain” or “hillbilly” music was picked up by radio and spread by shows.
The first country-music superstars melded blues with a yodel that “displayed hopes and prayers and dreams of the common people.” Elvis Presley pushed the beat, adding an exciting urgency to the music. In the 195Os Presley’s popularity grew though the music critics found his music “atheistic, criminal and threat to democracy.” In the early ‘60s, the Beatles replaced Elvis as the most important figures in rock. When asked about
Elvis and rock, the Beatles’ John Lennon said simply, “Before Elvis there was nothing.”
Elvis brought together the musical sounds of the blacks in America and of country
27
people. His songs started a new period in American music. People love to imitate him.
There’s even an Elvis Presley Impersonation Society. Elvis impersonators dress up like
Elvis and sing on stage. Some of them do wish they were Elvis!
Alabama (Heart of Dixie) is a South’ heavy industry state, a space flight center and the land of rich crops. The world’s only monument to an insect pest was erected here. Kentucky ranks as one of the country’s leading coal producers. It is also famous for its race-horses, whiskey and tobacco. The world’s longest cave system is at Mammoth
Cave. Kentucky is known to be the birth-place of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th USA President. (a log cabin where he was born is preserved with care).
The nickname of Arkansas is Land of Opportunity. The discovery of coal and oil conversed this area into a mining belt, well-known for its industrial violence. At the nation’s only diamond field – now a state park finders can keep any gem uncovered.
Louisiana (Pelican State) was established as a French colony. As a result, the area is largely Catholic in religion and there is still a considerable French-speaking population in rural areas. The largest city New Orleans was founded by the French in 1718. From 1764 to 1800, it was under the rule of Spain. Then it was sold by Napoleon to the USA as part of the Louisiana Purchase almost for nothing. But the influence of France is still strongly felt there: French is spoken by most of the natives as a second language. The city has been known to the world as the “Big Easy”- it was easy to find work there for African-Americans who were often turned away from other cities - or “the City that never sleeps”- the half-million people city of indolent charm, “the best jazz, the best gumbo, the best Margaritas, the best French Quarter.” It has long been an inspiration to soulful writers and artists who sing the blues. New Orleans is the birth place of Jazz
(that’s why one of its symbols is saxophone) which is played by a number of people everywhere. A lot of people associate the place with Bourbon Street - a real paradise of nightlife (by the way, this is the only city in the USA where drinking outside is not punished by the law. But you must be 21). The people of the city and Louisiana have worked hard enough to construct a good part of US seafood and energy industries. After a devastating Hurricane Katrina (August 2005), when the catastrophic flooding left 80% of New Orleans submerged, it got the name of “the Lost City.” The devastation brought on by Katrina was nature’s 9/11: it seemed to have inflicted her wrath on the world’s most powerful country for not believing in the threats posed by global warming. The interesting peculiarity of the city is that it’s located below sea level. New Orleans’s earliest settlements were built on higher ground, but by the 19th century, the city had spread into areas up to 10 feet below sea level between a massive Lake Pontchartrain and a mighty Mississippi River on the fragile shore all along the path of hurricanes in
28
the South and Eastern United States. The levees have been in place since 1947, providing 58 years of a false sense of security. A hurricane like Katrina packs the energy of a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes with winds of 140 to 165 miles an hour. The storm surge that hit the Gulf coast, some 29 feet, was the highest ever recorded. The suffering all along the Gulf Coast, where the airport and expressway were underwater, homes and whole islands vanished, was terrible, with thousands of people’s lives falling into ruin, with the looting and arson following Katrina’s deadly strike. The hurricane devastated an entire city and made a large percentage of povertystricken Africa-American homeless. The horrendous damage wrought by Katrina will take years to repair, the ensuing rampant anarchy irreparably damaged America’s reputation in the civilized world. Lost oil production in the Gulf of Mexico accounted for nearly 95% and its lost natural-gas output – 80%.
P.S. A century of disaster: Sept.8, 1900 Galveston Hurricane – 16-foot swell leveled 97% of this Texas city, killing 6,000 residents. Reconstruction took some 25 years. April18, 1906 San Francisco Quake. The 7.9 quake struck at 5:15 a.m., and by 7 Army troops were pouring in; rebuilding began within a week. Aug.17, 1969 Hurricane Camille. For the second most intense US storm, the Red Cross set up shelters for 85,000 prior to its landfall; by November, the Army had cleared 11 million tons of debris. Aug. 24, 1992 Hurricane Andrew- 5,000 federal troops were sent to Florida 3 days after this Category 5 storm hit; the full cost paid on Sept. 1.
Florida (Nickname: “Sunshine State”) though still retaining many Southern patterns, has be-come the place for retirement or recreation of the middle and upper classes which first were arriving from the North and then were followed by an influx of Latin Americans. Florida is one of the fastest growing states in the nation. Tourism is the state’s leading industry with world-famous re-sort centers along the “Gold Coast”.
Many observers now consider Miami a major Latin American city. Cape Canaveral has developed into the most important space research center.
Virginia is home of the first English settlement in North America (Jamestown, 1607). In Virginia, there are many historic old towns and also Civil War sites to explore. George Washington , the first American President, lived and farmed at Mount Vernon, Virginia. He owned an immense area of land. Now the mansion is a museum. President Thomas Jefferson was an architect. He designed his own house, called Monticello. Inside, there are lots of gadgets, designed by him, too, including the writing machine. It made an instant copy as he wrote. Georgia, (Empire State of the South), one of the first colonies to be settled, was barely 60 years old in 1793 when the cotton gin made cotton profitable. Atlanta is noted for its educational system, the largest center devoted
29
primarily to black education in the nation. It is a birthplace of Martin Luther King – the Nobel Peace Prize Winner, the late Black civil rights leader. This is where his grave is. Among the city’s numerous parks is Grant Park with the Cyclorama of the Battle of Atlanta during the Civil War. The world’s largest peanut processing plant is in Ashburn, another city of Georgia. Outside the town, there is a huge model of peanut – it is over 3 yards high. There are all sorts of tasty foods to try in the Southern states. Corn is ground to a grainy powder and cooked. This is called grits. Southern fried chicken is really crispy on the outside. Flour made from ground corn is used in making corn bread.
At Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright, bicycle mechanics, piloted first manned, powered flights of heavier-than-air craft. There is a model of their plane Flyer there – a skeletal flying machine of spruce, ash and muslin, with a wingspan of 40 ft. and an unmanned weight of just over 600 lbs. that first 12-sec. flight changed the world, lifting it to new heights of freedom and giving mankind access to places it had never before dreamed of reaching. Although the flight was to transform life in the 20th century, only four newspapers in the USA carried news of their achievement – news widely dismissed as exaggerated. The Wrights created one of the greatest cultural forces since the development of writing, for their invention effectively became the World Wide Web of that era, bringing people, languages, ideas and values together. It also ushered in the age of globalization. Those superhighways of the sky not only revolutionized international business; they also opened up isolated economies, carried the cause of democracy around the world and broke down every kind of political barrier. Their example reminds us that genius does not have a pedigree, and that you don’t discover new worlds by plying safe, conventional waters. The 20th century was the American Century in large part because of great inventors such as the Wright brothers.
Questions
1. What is Dixie? 2. Why is the South regarded as the most distinctive of the US regions? 3.What values do the Southerners emphasize? 4. Are blacks in a majority here?
5. What is Dixie’s contribution to the American and world’s music culture? 6. Which
US state is the birth-place of Abraham Lincoln? 7. Why is the influence of France strongly felt in Louisiana? 8. Why is New Orleans called the Lost City? Whose responsibility do you think it is – state/local emergency forces police/active-duty troops/civilian volunteers to handle disasters? 9. Where is the most important space research center? Where is Russia’s space research center? 10. What are Virginia and
Georgia famous for? 11. How did the Wright brothers transform life in the 20th century? Where did it happen?
30
THE MIDWEST
includes twelve states: Minnesota (St. Paul), Wisconsin(Madison), Michigan (Lansing),Ohio(Columbus), Indiana(Indianapolis), Illinois (Springfield), Iowa(Des Moines), Kansas(Topeka), Nebraska (Lincoln), South Dakota (Pierre) and North Dakota (Bismark). It is a large, economically important region. It is an area of strong Scandinavian, German, Swiss, Dutch, and New England influence. In parts of
Minnesota and Wisconsin some people still refer to each other as ”Swedes” or “Danes” or “Norwegians”, even though their ancestors left their home countries and settled in the
US a hundred years ago. Even Americans with little knowledge of what countries their ancestors came from, and little sense of having a particular ethnic heritage, may carry on a family tradition without realizing what the origin of the tradition is. For example, one family may traditionally open Christmas presents on Christmas Eve while another always waits until Christmas morning. It is in many ways a city-dominated area, with the “cultures” of Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City determining much of the life. Yet it is quintessential American, the area to which the news media refer when they speak of the “heartland.” Here politics is regarded as equally the concern of all. The educational standards and aspirations of the region have been high from the beginning, and the tradition continues today.
From a political and social viewpoint this region is centered on Chicago, the regional center of Illinois, the nation’s second largest city, the most important port and industrial center which grew through a series of separate residential and industrial communities. Stretching for 47 km around the south-west shore of Lake Michigan, it is a railway center, Great Lakes shipping center and famous for its stockyards and grain elevators. Actually, Chicago is included in the Northeast regional division because it is part of the network of northern industrial and shipping centers. Among the city’s most impressive buildings are the John Hancock Center and the Standard Oil Company, both more than 335m. high, and Sears Tower (442 m..) which has long been the tallest in the world. The
University of Chicago- one of the work’s great universitieshas been shaping higher education and the intellectual lives of 4,000 undergraduates for over a century. A private institution charted in 1890, Chicago’s 203-acre campus on the shores of Lake Michigan has been home to 73 Nobel laureates, the largest number affiliated with any American university. The university’s scholars were the first to split the atom, to measure the speed of light, and to develop the field of sociology. Geographically the region may be subdivided into three smaller regions: the Great Lakes area with many hills, lakes and forests; the prairie area south of it, which has good soil for farming; the Great Plains area to the west, much drier than the prairie. It is mostly wheat fields and grassland, where