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MUSIC GENRE A music genre is a category (or genre) of pieces of music that share a certain style or "basic musical language".
Music can also be categorised by non-musical criteria such as geographical origin.
POPULAR MUSIC GENRE Blues - The Blues is a vocal and instrumental music form which emerged in the African-American community of
the United States. Blues evolved from West African spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants and has
its earliest stylistic roots in West Africa. This musical form has been a major influence on later American and Western
popular music, finding expression in ragtime, jazz, big bands, rhythm and blues, rock and roll and country music, as well
as conventional pop songs and even modern classical music. Due to its powerful influence that spawned other major musical
genres originating from America, blues can be regarded as the root of pop as well as American music.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Movie Trailer - THE AGE OF SCANDERBEG
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Gjergj Kastrioti (1405–January 17, 1468), better known as Skanderbeg, was an Albanian prince who united the Albanian tribes of Epirus , Albania and a Slavic tribe from Montenegro in resisting the expanding Ottoman Empire for 25 years. Today he's considered a national hero of Albania.
Obliged by the Ottomans to pay tribute to the Empire, and to ensure the fidelity of local rulers, Gjon Kastrioti's sons were taken by the Sultan to his court as hostages. In 1423, Gjergj Kastrioti and his three brothers were taken by the Turks. He attended military school and led many battles for the Ottoman Empire. He was awarded for his military victories with the title Iskander Bey (Albanian transliteration: Skënderbeu, English transliteration: Skanderbeg, In Turkish this title means Lord or Prince Alexander, in honor of Alexander the Great). Skanderbeg soon switched sides and came back to his native land to successfully defend Albania against the Ottoman Empire until the time of his death.
Success in the Ottoman army
He earned distinction as an officer in several Ottoman campaigns both in Asia Minor and in Europe, and the Sultan appointed him to the rank of General. He fought against Greeks, Serbs and Hungarians, and some sources claim that he maintained secret links with Ragusa, Venice, Ladislaus V of Hungary, and Alfonso I of Naples. Sultan Murad II gave him the title Vali, making him Governor of some provinces in central Albania. He was respected abroad, but he missed his country. After the death of hirisoner exchange, failed.
In 1466, Sultan Mehmed II personally led an army into Albania and laid siege to Kruje as his father had also attempted sixteen years earlier. Kruje was defended by a garrison of 4,400 men, led by Prince Tanush Thopia. After several months, Mehmed, like Murad II, saw that seizing Kruja by force of arms would not be easily accomplished, and left the siege to return to Istanbul. However, he left a force of forty thousand men under Ballaban Pasha to maintain the seige, even building a castle in central Albania, which he named El-basan (eventually becoming the modern Elbasan), to support the siege. This second siege was no more successful than the first was eventually broken by Skanderberg, resulting in the death of Ballaban Pasha, who fell victim to the use of firearms.
A few months later, in 1467, Mehmed, frustrated by his inability to subdue Albania, again led an army into Albania, this one the largest of its time. Kruje was besieged for a third time, but on a much grander scale. While a contingent kept the city and its forces pinned down, Ottoman armies came pouring in from Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, and Greece with the aim of keeping the whole country surrounded, thereby strangling Skanderbeg’s supply routes and limiting his mobility. During this conflict, Skanderbeg fell ill with malaria in the Venetian controlled city of Lezhe, and died on January 17, 1468, just as the army under the leadership of Leke Dukagjini defeated the Ottoman force in Shkodra.
The Albanian resistance went on after the death of Skanderbeg for an additional ten years under the new leadership of Leke Dukagjini. In 1478, the fourth siege of Kruje finally proved successful for the Ottomans; demoralized and severely weakened by hunger and lack of supplies from the year-long siege, the defenders surrendered to Mehmed, who had promised them to leave unharmed in exchange. As the Albanians were walking away with their families, however,the Ottomans reneged on this promise, killing the men and enslaving the women and children. A year later, the Ottoman forces captured Shkodra, the last free Albanian castle (although it was under Venetian control at the time), but the Albanian resistance continued sporadically until around 1500.
Papal Relations
Skanderbeg's military successes evoked a good deal of interest and admiration from the Papal States, Venice, and Naples, themselves threatened by the growing Ottoman power across the Adriatic Sea. Skanderbeg managed to arrange for support in the form of money, supplies, and occasionally troops from all three states through his diplomatic skill. One of his most powerful and consistent supporters was Alfonso the Magnanimous, the king of Aragon and Naples, who decided to take Skanderbeg under his protection as a vassal in 1451, shortly after the latter had scored his second victory against Murad II. In addition to financial assistance, the King of Naples supplied the Albanian leader with troops, military equipment, and sanctuary for himself and his family if such a need should arise. As an active defender of the Christian cause in the Balkans, Skanderbeg was also closely involved with the politics of four Popes, one of them being Pope Pius II, the Renaissance humanist, writer, and diplomat.
Profoundly shaken by the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Pius II tried to organize a new crusade against the Turks, and to that end he did his best to come to Skanderbeg's aid, as his predecessors Pope Nicholas V and Pope Calixtus III had done before him. This policy was continued by his successor, Pope Paul II. They gave him the title Athleta Christi, or Champion of Christ.
Skanderberg's 25-year resistance against the Ottoman Empire succeeded in helping protect the Italian peninsula from invasion by the Turks.
Gjergj Kastriot's Legacy
After his death from natural causes in 1468 in Lezhë, his soldiers resisted the Turks for the next 12 years. In 1480 Albania was finally conquered by the Ottoman Empire. When the Turks found the grave of Skanderbeg in Saint Nicholas church of Lezhe, they opened it and held his bones like talismans for luck. The same year, they invaded Italy and conquered the city of Otranto.
Skanderbeg's posthumous fame was not confined to his own country. Voltaire thought the Byzantine Empire would have survived had it possessed a leader of his quality. A number of poets and composers have also drawn inspiration from his military career. The French sixteenth-century poet Ronsard wrote a poem about him, as did the nineteenth-century American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Antonio Vivaldi composed an opera entitled Scanderbeg.
Skanderbeg today is the National Hero of Albania. Many museums and monuments are raised in his honor around Albania, among them the Skanderbeg Museum next to the castle in Krujë.
Skanderbeg is founder of Castriota Scanderbeg family which is today part of Italian nobility.
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A video game is a computer game where a video display such as a monitor or television is the primary feedback device. The term "computer game" also includes games which display only text (and which can therefore theoretically be played on a teletypewriter) or which use other methods, such as sound or vibration, as their primary feedback device, but there are very few new games in these categories. There always must also be some sort of input device, usually in the form of button/joystick combinations (on arcade games), a keyboard & mouse/trackball combination (computer games), or a controller (console games), or a combination of any of the above. Also, more esoteric devices have been used for input (see also Game controller). Usually there are rules and goals, but in more open-ended games the player may be free to do whatever they like within the confines of the virtual universe.
NOTESBlues - The Blues is a vocal and instrumental music form which emerged in the African-American community of
the United States. Blues evolved from West African spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants and has
its earliest stylistic roots in West Africa. This musical form has been a major influence on later American and Western
popular music, finding expression in ragtime, jazz, big bands, rhythm and blues, rock and roll and country music, as well
as conventional pop songs and even modern classical music. Due to its powerful influence that spawned other major musical
genres originating from America, blues can be regarded as the root of pop as well as American music. Hip Hop/Rap - Hip hop music (also referred to as rap or rap music) is a style of popular music. It is made up of two
main components: rapping (MCing) and DJing (audio mixing and scratching). Along with breakdancing and graffiti (tagging)
these are the four elements of hip hop, a cultural movement that was initiated by inner-city youth (mostly minorities such
as African Americans and Latinos) in New York City in the early 1970s. Typically, hip hop music consists of one or more rappers
who tell semi-autobiographic tales, often relating to a fictionalized counterpart, in an intensely rhythmic lyrical form making
abundant use of techniques like assonance, alliteration, and rhyme. The rapper is accompanied by an instrumental track, usually
referred to as a "beat", performed by a DJ, created by a producer, or one or more instrumentalists. This beat is often created
using a sample of the percussion break of another song, usually a funk, rock, or soul recording. In addition to the beat other
sounds are often sampled, synthesized, or performed. Sometimes a track can be instrumental, as a showcase of the skills of the
DJ or producer. Rhythm and Blues - Rhythm and blues is a name for black popular music tradition. When speaking strictly of "rhythm 'n' blues",
the term may refer to black pop-music from 1940s to 1960s that was not jazz nor blues but something more lightweight. The term "R&B"
often refers to any contemporary black pop music. Early-1950s R&B music became popular with both black and white audiences, and
popular records were often covered by white artists, leading to the development of rock and roll.A notable subgenre of
rhythm 'n' blues was doo-wop, which put emphasis on polyphonic singing. In the early 1960s rhythm 'n' blues took influences from
gospel and rock and roll and thus soul music was born. In the late 1960s, funk music started to evolve out of soul; by the 1970s
funk had become its own subgenre that stressed complex, "funky" rhythm patterns and monotonistic compositions based on a riff or two.
In the early to mid 1970s, hip hop music (also known as "rap") grew out of funk and reggae. Funk and soul music evolved into
contemporary R&B (no longer an acronym) in the 1980s, which cross-pollinated with hip-hop for the rest of the 20th century and
into the 21st century.
