Home About us Products Services Contact us Bookmark
:: wikimiki.org ::
Cincinnati Blues Festival

Cincinnati Blues Festival

The Cincinnati Blues Festival is an annual Blues music festival held on the banks of the Ohio River in Cincinnati, Ohio. Over the years it has showcased such famous acts as Lonnie Mack, Clarence Gatemouth Brown, and Sonny Moorman. Category:Cincinnati, Ohio Category:United States music festivals

Blues

The blues is a vocal and instrumental form of music based on a pentatonic scale as well as a characteristic twelve-bar chord progression. The form evolved in the United States in the community of the African slaves from spirituals, praise songs, field hollers, shouts, and chants. The use of blue notes and the prominence of call-and-response patterns in the music and lyrics are indicative of the blues' West African pedigree. The blues has been a major influence on later American and Western popular music, finding expression in ragtime, jazz, big band, rhythm and blues, rock and roll and country music, as well as conventional pop songs and even modern classical music. The phrase the blues is a synonym for having a fit of the blue devils, meaning low spirits, depression and sadness. An early reference to this can be found in George Colman's farce Blue devils, a farce in one act (1798). Later during the 19th century, the phrase was used as a euphemism for delirium tremens and the police. Though usage of the phrase in African American music may be older, it has been attested to since 1912 in Memphis, Tennessee with W. C. Handy's "Memphis Blues". In lyrics the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood.

Characteristics

There are few characteristics common to all blues, because the genre takes its shape from the peculiarities of individual performances. However, some characteristics have been present since before the creation of the modern blues and are common to most styles of African American music. The earliest blues-like music was a "functional expression, rendered in a call-and-response style without accompaniment or harmony and unbounded by the formality of any particular musical structure." This pre-blues music was adapted from slave field shouts and hollers, expanded into "simple solo songs laden with emotional content". The blues, as it is now known, can be seen as a musical style based on both European harmonic structure and the West African call-and-response tradition, transformed into an interplay of voice and guitar. Many blues elements, such as the call-and-response format and the use of blue notes, can be traced back to the music of Africa. Sylviane Diouf has pointed to several specific traits—such as the use of melisma and a wavy, nasal intonation—that suggest a connection between the Muslim music of West and Central Africa and blues. Ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik may have been the first to contend that certain elements of the blues have African/Moslem roots. For instance, Kubik pointed out that the Mississippi technique of playing the guitar using a knife blade, recorded by W.C. Handy in his autobiography, is common to West and Central Africa cultures, regions where Islam is strong and where the kora, a guitar-like instrument, is often the stringed instrument of choice. This technique consists of pressing a knife against the strings of the guitar, and is a possible antecedent of the slide guitar technique. slide guitar singer, is generally considered responsible for the standardization of the 12-bar blues.]] Blues music later adopted elements from the "Ethiopian airs"—"Ethiopian" is used here to mean "black"—of minstrel shows and Negro spirituals, including instrumental and harmonic accompaniment. The style also was closely related to ragtime, which developed at about the same time, though the blues better preserved "the original melodic patterns of African music". Songs from this early period had many different structures. Examples can be found in Leadbelly's or Henry Thomas's recordings. However, the twelve-, eight-, or sixteen-bar structure based on tonic, subdominant and dominant chords became the most common. Melodically, blues music is marked by the use of the flatted third, fifth and seventh (the so-called blue or bent notes) of the associated major scale. What is now recognizable as the standard 12-bar blues form is documented from oral history and sheet music appearing in African American communities throughout the region along the lower Mississippi River during the first decade of the 1900s (and performed by white bands in New Orleans at least since 1908). One of these early sites of blues evolution was along Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. Blues is sometimes danced as an informal type of swing dance, with no fixed patterns and a heavy focus on connection, sensuality and improvisation, often with body contact. However, most blues dance moves are inspired by traditional blues dancing. Although usually done to blues music, it can be done to any slow tempo 4/4 music, including "club" music.

Lyrics

Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often with the singer voicing his or her "personal woes in a world of harsh reality: a lost love, the cruelty of police officers, oppression at the hands of white folk, hard times". Many of the oldest blues records contain gritty, realistic lyrics, in contrast to much of the music being recorded at the time. One of the more extreme examples, "Down in the Alley" by Memphis Minnie, is about a prostitute having sex with men in an alley. Music such as this was called "gut-bucket" blues. The term refers to a type of homemade bass instrument made from a metal bucket used to clean pig intestines for chitterlings, a soul food dish associated with slavery and deprivation. "Gut-bucket" described blues that was "low-down" and earthy, that dealt with often rocky or steamy man-woman relationships, hard luck and hard times. Gut-bucket blues and the rowdy juke-joint venues where it often was played, earned blues music an unsavory reputation. Proper, church-going people shunned it, and preachers railed against it as sinful. And because it often treated the hardships and injustices of life, the blues gained an association in some quarters with misery and oppression. But the blues was about more than hard times; it could be humorous and raunchy as well: :Rebecca, Rebecca, get your big legs off of me, :Rebecca, Rebecca, get your big legs off of me, :It may be sending you baby, but it's worrying the hell out of me. Author Ed Morales has claimed that Yoruba mythology played a part in early blues, citing Robert Johnson's "Crossroads" as a "thinly veiled reference to Eleggua, the orisha in charge of the crossroads". However, many seminal blues artists such as Joshua White, Son House, Skip James, or Reverend Gary Davis were Christians, setting religious chants to music. The original lyrical form of the blues was probably a single line, repeated three times. It was only later that the current, most common structure—a line, repeated once and then followed by a single line conclusion—became standard.

Musical style

Though during the first decades of the twentieth century blues music was not clearly defined in terms of chords progression, the twelve-bar blues became standard in the '30s. However, in addition to the conventional twelve-bar blues, there are many blues in 8-bar form, such as "How Long Blues", "Trouble in Mind", and Big Bill Broonzy's "Key to the Highway". There are also 16-bar blues, as in Ray Charles's instrumental "Sweet 16 Bars". The basic twelve-bar lyric framework of a blues composition is reflected by a standard harmonic progression of twelve bars, in 4/4 or 2/4 time. The blues chords associated to a twelve-bar blues are typically a set of three different chords played over a twelve-bar scheme: :I - I - I - I :IV - IV - I - I :V - IV - I - I where the Roman numbers refer to the degrees of the progression. That would mean, if played in the tonality of F, the chords would be as follow: :F - F - F - F :Bb - Bb - F - F :C - Bb - F - F In this example, F is the tonic chord, Bb the subdominant. Note that much of the time, every chord is played in the dominant seventh (7th) form. Frequently, the last chord is the dominant (V or in this case C) turnaround making the transition to the beginning of the next progression. The lyrics generally end on the last beat of the tenth bar or the first beat of the eleventh bar, and the final two bars are given to the instrumentalist as a break; the harmony of this two-bar break, the turnaround, can be extremely complex, sometimes consisting of single notes that defy analysis in terms of chords. The final beat, however, is almost always strongly grounded in the dominant seventh (V7), to provide tension for the next verse. Musicians sometimes refer to twelve-bar blues as "B-flat" blues because it is the traditional pitch of the tenor sax, trumpet/cornet, clarinet and trombone. turnaround Even more characteristic of blues are the blue notes in the melodic scale. While the twelve-bar harmonic progression had been intermittently used for centuries, the revolutionary aspect of blues was the frequent use of the flatted third, flatted seventh, and even flatted fifth in the melody, together with crushing—playing directly adjacent notes at the same time, i.e., diminished second—and sliding—similar to using grace notes. Where a classical musician will generally play a grace note distinctly, a blues singer or harmonica player will glissando; a pianist or guitarist might crush the two notes and then release the grace note. Blues harmonies also use the subdominant major-minor seventh and the tonic major-minor seventh in place of the tonic. Blues is occasionally played in a minor key. The scale differs little from the traditional minor, except for the occasional use of a flatted fifth in the tonic, often crushed by the singer or lead instrument with the major fifth in the harmony. Janis Joplin's rendition of "Ball and Chain", accompanied by Big Brother and the Holding Company, provides an example of this technique. Also, minor-key blues is most often structured in sixteen bars rather than twelve—e.g., "St. James Infirmary Blues" and Trixie Smith's "My Man Rocks Me"—and was often influenced by evangelical religious music. Blues shuffles are also typical of the style. Their use reinforces the rhythm and call-and-response trance, the groove. Their simplest version commonly used in many postwar electric blues, rock-and-rolls, or early bebops is a basic three-note riff on the bass strings of the guitar. Played in time with the bass and the drums, this technique, similar to the walking bass, produces the groove feel characteristic of the blues. The last bar of the chord progression is usually accompanied by a turnaround making the transition to the beginning next progression. Shuffle rhythm is often vocalized as "dow, da dow, da dow, da" or "dump, da dump, da dump, da" as it consists of uneven eight notes. On a guitar this may be done as a simple steady bass or may add to that stepwise quarter note motion from the fifth to the seventh of the chord and back. An example is provided by the following tablature for the first two bars of a blues progression in E: E7 A7 E |-------------------|-------------------| B |-------------------|-------------------| G |-------------------|-------------------| D |-------------------|2--2-4--4-2--2-4--4| A |2--2-4--4-2--2-4--4|0--0-0--0-0--0-0--0| E |0--0-0--0-0--0-0--0|-------------------|

History

Origins

Blues has evolved from the spare music of poor black laborers into a wide variety of complex styles and subgenres, spawning regional variations across the United States and, later, Europe, Africa and elsewhere. What are now considered "blues" as well as modern "country music" arose at approximately the same time and place during the nineteenth century in the southern United States. Recorded blues and country can be found from as far back as the 1920s, when the popular record industry developed and created marketing categories called "race music" and "hillbilly music" to sell music by and for blacks and whites, respectively. At the time, there was no clear musical division between "blues" and "country" except for the race of the performer, and even that was sometimes incorrectly documented by the record companies. Popular misconceptions attempt to place blues into these racial categories: studies have situated the origin of "black" spiritual music inside slaves' exposure to their masters' Hebridean-originated gospels. African-American economist and historian Thomas Sowell also notes that the Southern, black, ex-slave population was acculturated to a considerable degree by and among their Scots-Irish "redneck" neighbors. Much has been speculated about the social and economical reasons for the appearance of the blues. The first appearance of the blues is not well defined and is often dated between ca. 1870 and 1900. This period coincides with the emancipation of the slaves and the transition from slavery to small-scale agricultural production in the southern part of the United States. Several scholars characterize the development appearing at the turn of the century as a move from group performances to a more indidualized style. They argue that the development of the blues is strongly related to the newly acquired freedom of the slaves. According to Lawrence Levine, "there was a direct relationship between the national ideological emphasis upon the individual, the popularity of Booker T. Washington's teachings, and the rise of the blues. Psychologically, socially, and economically, Negroes were being acculturated in a way that would have been impossible during slavery, and it is hardly surprising that their secular music reflected this as much as their religious music did."

Prewar blues

Flush with the success of appropriating the ragtime craze for commercial gain, the American sheet music publishing industry wasted no time in pursuing similar commercial success with the blues. In 1912, three popular blues-like compositions were published, precipitating the Tin Pan Alley adoption of blues elements: "Baby Seals' Blues" by Arthur Seals, "Dallas Blues" by Hart Wand and Memphis Blues" by W. C. Handy . Handy, formally trained musician, composer and arranger was a key popularizer of blues. Handy was one of the first to transcribe and then orchestrate blues in an almost symphonic style, with bands and singers. He went on to become a very popular composer, and billed himself as the "Father of the Blues", though it can be debated whether his compositions are blues at all; they can be described as a fusion of blues with ragtime and jazz, a merger facilitated using the Latin habanera rhythm that had long been a part of ragtime. Extremely prolific over his long life, Handy's signature work was the St. Louis Blues. St. Louis Blues In the 1920s, the blues became a major element of African American and American popular music in general, reaching "white" audience via Handy's work and the classic female blues performers. It evolved from informal performances to entertainment in theaters, for instance within the Theater Owners Bookers Association, in nightclubs, such as the Cotton Club, and juke joints, for example along the Beale Street in Memphis. This evolution led to a notable diversification of the styles and to a clearer cut between blues and jazz. Several records companies, such as the American Record Corporation, Okeh Records, and Paramount Records, began to record African Amercian music. As the recording industry grew, so did, in the African American community, the popularity of country blues performers like Leadbelly, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lonnie Johnson, Son House and Blind Blake. Jefferson was one of the few country blues performers to record widely, and may have been the first to record the slide guitar style, in which a guitar is fretted with a knife blade, the sawed-off neck of a liquor bottle, or other implement. the slide guitar went on to become an important part of the Delta blues. When blues recordings were first made, in the 1920s, there were two major divisions: a traditional, rural country blues, and a diverse set of more polished city blues or urban blues. Country blues were often unaccompanied, or performed with only a banjo or guitar, and were often improvised. There were many regional styles of country blues in the early 20th century, a few especially important. The (Mississippi) Delta blues was a rootsy style, often accompanied by slide guitar and harmonica, and characterized by a spare style and passionate vocals. The most influential performer of this style is usually said to be Robert Johnson, who was little recorded but combined elements of both urban and rural blues in a unique manner. Along with Robert Johnson, major artists of this style were his predecessors Charley Patton and Son House. The southeastern "delicate and lyrical" Piedmont blues tradition, based on an elaborated fingerpicking guitar technique, was represented by singers like Blind Willie McTell and Blind Boy Fuller. The lively Memphis blues style, which developed in the '20s and '30s around Memphis, Tennessee, was mostly influenced by jug bands, such as the Memphis Jug Band or the Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers. They used a large variety of unusual instruments such as washboard, fiddle, kazoo or mandoline. Representative artists in this style include Sleepy John Estes, Robert Wilkins, Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie. Memphis Minnie was a major female blues artist of this time. She was famous for her virtuoso guitar style. The pianist Memphis Slim also began his career in Memphis, but his quite distinct style was smoother and contained some swing elements. Many blues musicians based in Memphis moved to Chicago in the late thirties or early forties and participated in the urban blues movement, straddling the border between the country and electric blues. Memphis Slim City blues were much more codified and elaborate. Classic female urban or vaudeville blues singers were extremely popular in the 1920s, among them Mamie Smith, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Victoria Spivey. Though more a vaudeville performer than a blues artist, Bessie Smith was known as the "Empress of the Blues". She was the first African American to record in 1920 a blues number. Her success was such that 75,000 copies of "Crazy Blues" were sold in one month. Her mentor, Ma Rainey, similarly respected, was called the "Mother of Blues". According to Clarke, both vocalists used a "method of singing each song around centre tones, perhaps in order to project her voice more easily to the back of a room" and Smith "would also choose to sing a song in an unusual key, and her artistry in bending and stretching notes with her beautiful, powerful contralto to accommodate her own interpretation was unsurpassed". Urban male performers included some of the most popular black musicians of the era, such Tampa Red, Big Bill Broonzy and Leroy Carr. Before WWII, Tampa Red was sometimes referred to as "the king of the slide guitar." Carr made the unusual choice to accompany himself on the piano. Leroy Carr Another important style of 1930s and early '40s urban blues was boogie-woogie. Though most often piano based, it was not strictly a solo piano style, and was also used to accompany singers and, as a solo part, in bands and small combos. Boogie-Woogie was a style characterized by a regular bass figure, an ostinato or riff. It was featured by the most familiar example of shifts of level, in the left hand which elaborates on each chord, and trills and decorations from the right hand. Boogie-woogie was pioneered by the Chicago-based Jimmy Yancey and the Boogie-Woogie Trio (Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis). Chicago also produced other musicians in the style, like Clarence "Pine Top" Smith and Earl Hines, who "linked the propulsive left-hand rhythms of the ragtime pianists with melodic figures similar to those of Armstrong's trumpet in the right hand". One kind of early 1940s urban blues was the jump blues, a style heavily influenced by big band music and characterized by the use of the guitar in the rhythm section, a jazzy, up-tempo sound, declamatory vocals and the use of the saxophone or other brass instruments. The jump blues of people like Louis Jordan and Big Joe Turner, based in Kansas City, Missouri, later became the primary basis for rock and roll and rhythm and blues. Also straddling the border between classic rhythm and blues and blues is the very smooth Louisiana style, whose main representatives are Professor Longhair and, more recently, Doctor John.

Early postwar blues

Doctor John After World War II and in the 1950s, increased urbanization and the use of amplification led to new styles of electric blues music, popular in cities such as Chicago, Detroit and Kansas City. Chicago became a blues center in the early fifties. The Chicago blues is influenced to a large extent by the Mississippi blues style, because most artists of this period were migrants from the Mississippi region: Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, and Jimmy Reed were all born in Mississippi. Their style is characterized by the use of electric guitar, sometimes slide guitar, blues harp, traditional bass and drums. Nevertheless, some musicians of the same artistic movement, such as Elmore James or J. B. Lenoir, also used saxophones but more as a rhythm support than as solo instruments. Though Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) are the best known harp musicians of the early Chicago blues scene, others such as Big Walter Horton and Sonny Boy Williamson, who had already begun their careers before the war, also had tremendous influence. Muddy Waters and Elmore James were known for their innovative use of slide electric guitar. However, B. B. King and Freddy King did not use slide guitars and were perhaps the most influential guitarists of the Chicago blues style. Howling Wolf and Muddy Waters were famous for their deep voice. Howling Wolf is particularly acknowledged for distorting his voice with a special use of the microphone. Willie Dixon played a major role on the Chicago scene. He was a bassist, but his fame came from his composing and writing of most standard blues numbers of the period. He wrote "Hoochie Coochie Man" and "I Just Want to Make Love to You" for Muddy Waters, "Wang Dang Doodle" for Koko Taylor, and "Back Door Man" for Howlin' Wolf, and many others. Most artists of this style recorded for the Chicago-based Chess Records label. The influence of blues on mainstream American popular music was huge in the fifties. In the mid-1950s, musicians like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry emerged. Directly influenced by the Chicago blues, their enthusiastic playing departed from the melancholy aspects of blues and is often acknowleged as the transition from the blues to rock 'n' roll. Elvis Presley and Bill Haley, mostly influenced by the jump blues and boogie-woogie, popularized rock and roll within the white segment of the population. The influence of the Chicago blues was also very important in Louisiana's zydeco music. Clifton Chenier and others introduced many blues accents in this style, such as the use of electric solo guitars and cajun arrangements of blues standards. However, other artists popular at this time, such as T-Bone Walker and John Lee Hooker, showed up different influences which are not directly related to the Chicago style. Dallas-born T-Bone Walker is often associated with the California blues style. This blues style is smoother than Chicago blues and is a transition between the Chicago blues, the jump blues and swing with some jazz-guitar influence. On the other hand, John Lee Hooker's blues is very personal. It is based on Hooker's deep rough voice accompanied by a single electric guitar. Though not directly influenced by boogie woogie, his very groovy style is sometimes called "guitar boogie". His first hit "Boogie Chillen" reached #1 on the R&B charts in 1949.

Blues in the '60s and '70s

By the beginning of the 1960s, African American music like rock and roll and soul were parts of mainstream popular music. White performers had brought black music to new audiences, both within the United States and abroad. Though many listeners simply enjoyed the catchy pop tunes of the day, others were inspired to learn more about the roots of rock, soul, R&B and gospel. Especially in the United Kingdom, many young men and women formed bands to emulate blues legends. By the end of the decade, white-performed blues in a number of styles, mostly fusions of blues and rock, had come to dominate popular music across much of the world. soul Blues masters such as John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters continued to perform to enthusiastic audiences, inspiring new artists steeped in traditional blues, such as New York-born Taj Mahal. John Lee Hooker was particularly successful in the late sixties in blending his own style with some rock elements, playing together with younger white musicians. The 1971 album Endless Boogie is a major example of this style. B.B. King had emerged as a major artist in the fifties and reached his height in the late sixties. His virtuoso guitar technique earned him the eponymous title "king of the blues". In contrast to the Chicago style, King's band used strong brass support (saxophone, trumpet, trombone) instead of slide guitar or harp. Tennessee-born Bobby "Blue" Bland" is another artist of the time who, like B.B. King, successfully straddled blues and R&B genres. The music of the Civil Rights and Free Speech movements in the U.S. prompted a resurgence of interest in American roots music in general and in early African American music, specifically. Important music festivals such as the Newport Folk Festival brought traditional blues to a new audience. Prewar acoustic blues was rediscovered along with many forgotten blues heroes including Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, and Reverend Gary Davis. Many compilations of classic prewar blues were republished, in particular by the Yazoo Records company. J. B. Lenoir, an important artist of the Chicago blues movement in the fifties, recorded several outstanding LPs using acoustic guitar, sometimes accompanied by Willie Dixon on the acoustic bass or drums. His work at this time had an unusually direct political content relative to racism or Vietnam War issues. As an example, this quotation from Alabama blues record:
I never will go back to Alabama, that is not the place for me (2x)
You know they killed my sister and my brother,
and the whole world let them peoples go down there free
In the late sixties, the so-called West Side blues emerged in Chicago with Magic Sam, Magic Slim and Otis Rush. In contrast with the early Chicago style, this style is characterized by a strong rhythm support (a rhythm and a bass electric guitar, and drums), the absence of harp or saxophone and a lesser melodic contain. Talented, new musicians like Albert King, Buddy Guy, or Luther Allison appeared. Their style was a kind of fusion between the Chicago style and rock à la Jimi Hendrix, using amplified electric guitar. Luther Allison album cover]] However, what made blues really come across to the young white audiences in the early 1960s was the Chicago-based Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the British blues movement. The style of British blues developed in England, when dozens of bands such as Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, and Cream took to covering the classic blues numbers from either the Delta or Chicago blues traditions. The British blues musicians of the early 1960s would ultimately inspire a number of American blues-rock fusion performers, including Canned Heat, Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter, The J. Geils Band and others, who at first discovered the form by listening to British performers, but in turn went on to explore the blues tradition on their own. One blues-rock performer, Jimi Hendrix, was a rarity in his field at the time: a black man who played psychedelic blues-rock. Hendrix was a virtuoso guitarist, and a pioneer in the innovative use of distortion and feedback in his music. Through these artists and others, both earlier and later, blues music has been strongly influential in the development of rock music.

Blues from the 1980s to the present

rock music] Since 1980, blues has continued to thrive in both traditional and new forms through the continuing work of Taj Mahal, Ry Cooder and the music of Robert Cray, Albert Collins, Keb' Mo' and others such as Jessie Mae Hemphill or Kim Wilson. The Texas rock-blues style emerged based on an original use of guitars for both solo and rhythms. In contrast with the West Side blues, the Texas style is strongly influenced by the British rock-blues movement. Major artists of this style are Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Fabulous Thunderbirds and ZZ Top. The '80s also saw a revival of John Lee Hooker's popularity. He collaborated with a diverse array of musicians such as Carlos Santana, Miles Davis, Robert Cray and Bonnie Raitt. Eric Clapton, who was known for his virtuoso electric guitar within the Blues Breakers and Cream, made a remarked comeback in the '90s with his MTV Unplugged album, in which he played some standard blues numbers on acoustic guitar. Around this time blues publications such as Living Blues and Blues Revue began appearing at newsstands, major cities began forming blues societies and outdoor blues festivals became more common. More nightclubs and venues emerged. In the 1990s and today blues performers are found touching elements from almost every musical genre, as can be seen, for example, from the broad array of nominees of the yearly Blues Music Awards, previously named W. C. Handy Awards Contemporary blues music is nurtured by several well-known blues labels such as Alligator Records, Blind Pig Records, Chess Records (MCA), Delmark Records, and Vanguard Records (Artemis Records). Some labels are famous for their rediscovering and remastering of blues rarities such as Arhoolie Records, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (heir of Folkways Records), and Yazoo Records (Shanachie Records).

Musical impact

As the origin of the blues scale, the blues has exerted a profound influence on many styles of music. Many jazz, folk or rock performers, such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bob Dylan and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, have performed significant blues recordings. The blues scale frequently is found in non-blues musical forms, such as popular songs like Harold Arlen's "Blues in the Night", blues ballads like "Since I Fell for You" and "Please Send Me Someone to Love", and even orchestral works like George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and "Concerto in F". Indeed, the blues scale is ubiquitous in modern popular music and informs many modal frames, especially the ladder of thirds as in "A Hard Day's Night". Blues forms turn up in some surprising places. The theme to the televised Batman had a blues structure, as did teen idol Fabian's first hit, "Turn Me Loose". The first great country music star Jimmie Rodgers was a blues performer. Guitarist/vocalist Tracy Chapman's hit "Give Me One Reason" was a 12-bar blues and has, as a result, become a contemporary blues club standard in Chicago. R&B music can be traced back to spirituals and blues. Spirituals are often cited as the origin of the blues. Musically, spirituals were a descendent of New England choral traditions, and in particular of Isaac Watts's hymns, mixed with African rhythms and call-and-response forms. Spirituals or religious chants in the Afro-American community are much better documented than the "low-down" blues. They developed mostly because the communities could gather easier during mass or worship gatherings, the so-called camp meetings. Their popularity was also due to their—at first glance—politically correct contents. Most early country bluesmen such as Skip James or Charley Patton were able to play as well both genres, which usually basically only differ in the lyrics. Georgia Tom Dorsey is the perfect example of blues musician and composer straddling the border between country and urban blues, and spirituals. He is often cited as the father of Gospel music. However, the beginning of Gospel music can be better dated to 1930 and the first successes of the Golden Gate Quartet. In the fifties, soul music, best represented by Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and James Brown, overtook many elements of both Gospel and blues music. In the sixties and seventies these genres merged in what is called soul blues music. Direct heir of soul, funk music of the seventies can be seen as an antecedent of hip-hop and contemporary R&B and shows the filiation of the blues with most modern R&B music. funk and bebop genres. Though clearly a jazz artist, he used extensively the blues form.]] Before World War II, the difference between blues and jazz was sometimes vague. Usually jazz was more impregnated by harmonic structures stemming from brass bands. However, the jump blues is a clear example of mix between both styles. After the war, the influence of blues on jazz was tremendous, and most of the bebop classics, such as Charlie Parker's "Now's the Time", are based on the extensive use of the pentatonic scale and the blue note. However, this influence was purely formal. The bebop marked a major shift of jazz from pop music for dancing to a high-art, less-accessible, cerebral "musician's music". The audience for both blues and jazz definitively split, and it was at this time that the border between blues and jazz became the most unambiguous. Artists straddling the border between jazz and blues are categorized into the jazz-blues sub-genre. The influence of both the twelve-bar structure and the blues scale on rock-and-roll music was so profound that rock and roll can properly be classified as an outgrowth of blues, or even "blues with a back beat". Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog", with its unmodified twelve-bar structure (both harmony and lyrics) and a melody centered on flatted third of the tonic (and flatted seventh of the subdominant), is a blues song transformed to a new genre by rhythm and sheer energy. One can hardly find a major song from rock-and-roll's revolutionary period that is not, at its roots, a blues composition transformed by rhythm: "Johnny B. Good", "Blue Suede Shoes", "Whole Lotta' Shakin' Going On", "Tutti-Frutti", "Shake, Rattle, and Roll", "What'd I Say", and "Long Tall Sally". The early African American rock musicians retained the frank sexual themes of blues. "Got a gal named Sue, knows just what to do" or "See the girl with the red dress on, she knows how to do it all night long" are hard to mistake. Even the subject matter of "Hound Dog" contains well-hidden sexual double entendre. More sanitized early "white" rock borrowed both the structure and harmonics of blues, although minimizing harmonic creativity and sexual nuance, such as Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock". Many white musicians who covered black rock songs would go so far as to change the words; possibly the most famous example was Pat Boone's cover of "Tutti Frutti", which originally started "Tutti frutti, loose booty . . . a wop bop a lu bop, a good Goddamn."

Social impact

Pat Boone (left) and John Belushi.]] Like jazz, rock and roll and hip hop music, blues has been accused of being the "devil's music" and of inciting violence and other poor behavior. In the early 20th century, the blues was considered disreputable, especially as white audiences began listening to the blues during the 1920s. In the early twentieth century, W.C. Handy was the first to make the blues more respectable to nonblack Americans. Now blues is a major component of the African American and American cultural heritage in general. This status is not only mirrored in scholar studies in the field but also in main stream movies such as Sounder (1972), the Blues Brothers (1980 and 2000), and Crossroads (1986). The the Blues Brothers movies, which mix up almost all kinds of music related to blues such as R&B or Zydeco, have had a major impact on the image of blues music. They promoted the standard traditional blues "Sweet home Chicago", whose version by Robert Johnson is maybe the best known, to the unofficial status of Chicago's city anthem. More recently, in 2003, Martin Scorsese made a lot of efforts to promote the blues to a larger audience. He asked several famous directors such as Clint Eastwood and Wim Wenders to participate in a series of short films called The Blues. He also participated in the reedition of compilations of major blues artists in a series of high quality CDs.

References


-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-

Further Reading


- Paul Oliver, The Story Of The Blues. Northeastern University Press, 1998 [new edition]; 212 pages. ISBN 1555533558.
- Robert Palmer, Deep Blues. Viking, 1981, 310 pages. ISBN 0670495115.
- Mike Rowe, Chicago Breakdown. Eddison Press, 1973, 226 pages. ISBN 0856490156.

Notes

# Ferris, pg. 228 Blues has had inestimable influence upon the development of not only jazz but every genre of American music. # The Oxford English Dictionary (Second Edition, 1989) gives Handy as the earliest attestation of "Blues." # Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2002, Routledge (UK), ISBN 0415291895 # Tony Bolden, Afro-Blue: Improvisations in African American Poetry and Culture, 2004, University of Illinois Press, ISBN 0252028740 # Southern, pg. 333 # Garofalo, pg. 44 # Ferris, pg. 229 # Morales, pg 276 Morales attributes this claim to John Storm Roberts in Black Music of Two Worlds, beginning his discussion with a quote from Roberts There does not seem to be the same African quality in blues forms as there clearly is in much Caribbean music. # SFGate # Garofalo, pg. 44 Gradually, instrumental and harmonic accompaniment were added, reflecting increasing cross-cultural contact. Garofalo goes on to cite others mentioning the "Ethiopian airs" and "Negro spirituals". # Schuller, cited in Garofalo, pg. 27 # Garofalo, pgs. 46-47 # Ewen, pg. 143 # Ewen, pgs. 142-143 # Morales, pg. 277 # Ferris, pg. 230 # Grace notes were common in the Baroque and Classical periods, but they acted as ornamentation rather than as part of the harmonic structure. Mozart comes very close in the slow movement of his Piano Concerto No. 21, holding a flatted fifth in the dominant for a full quarter-note. But this was a technique for building unbearable tension for resolution into the major fifth, while a blues melody could sustain the flatted fifth indefinitely as part of the scale. In other words both a blues musician and Mozart could slide from a flatted mi to a major mi over a dominant chord, but the blues musician could also use the flatted mi as a harmonic resolution in a major key. # # Wilbur M. Savidge, Randy L. Vradenburg, Everything About Playing the Blues, 2002, Music Sales Distributed, ISBN 1884848095, pg. 35 # Garofalo, pgs. 44-47 As marketing categories, designations like race and hillbilly intentionally separated artists along racial lines and conveyed the impression that their music came from mutually exclusive sources. Nothing could have been further from the truth... In cultural terms, blues and country were more equal than they they were separate. Garofalo goes on to later claim that artists were sometimes listed in the wrong racial category in record company catalogues. # Philip V. Bohlman, "Immigrant, folk, and regional music in the twentieth century", in The Cambridge History of American Music, ed. David Nicholls, 1999, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521454298, pg. 285 # Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom, Oxford University Press, 1977, ISBN 0195023749, pg. 223 # Garofalo, pg. 27; Garofalo cites Barlow in Handy's sudden success demonstrated [the] commercial potential of [the blues], which in turn made the genre attractive to the Tin Pan Alley acks, who wasted little time in turning out a deluge of imitations.

Ohio River

The Ohio River is a principal tributary of the Mississippi River, 1,579 km (981 mi) long in the eastern United States.
United States
The Ohio River viewed from Liberty Hill in Ripley, Ohio.
Of great significance in the history of North America dating from the time of the Native Americans, the river was a primary transportation route during the westward expansion of the early U.S. It flows through or along the border of six states, and its watershed encompasses 14 states, including many of the states of the southeastern U.S. through its largest tributary, the Tennessee. During the eighteenth century it was the southern boundary of the Northwest Territory, thus serving as the border between free and slave territory.

Description

Northwest Territory Northwest Territory The river is formed by the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers in downtown Pittsburgh. From Pittsburgh, it flows to the northwest through western Pennsylvania, before making an abrupt, almost 180 degree, turn to the south-southwest at the West Virginia state line where it then forms the border between West Virginia and Ohio. The river then follows a roughly southwestern and then western course between Kentucky and Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois until it joins the Mississippi from the east at Cairo, Illinois. At its mouth, the Ohio is wider than the Mississippi itself. [http://terraserver.microsoft.com/map.aspx?t=1&s=14&lon=-89.1538398279652&lat=36.9976844072984&w=750&h=500&opt=0&f=Tahoma,Verdana,Arial&fs=8&fc=ffffff99] Major tributaries of the river, indicated by the location of their mouth, include:
- Allegheny River — Pennsylvania
- Monongahela River — Pennsylvania
- Beaver River— Pennsylvania
- Little Muskingum River — Ohio
- Duck Creek — Ohio
- Muskingum River — Ohio
- Little Kanawha River — West Virginia
- Hocking River — Ohio
- Kanawha River — West Virginia
- Guyandotte River — West Virginia
- Big Sandy River — Kentucky-West Virginia border
- Scioto River — Ohio
- Little Miami River — Ohio
- Licking River — Kentucky
- Great Miami River — Ohio-Indiana border
- Kentucky River — Kentucky
- Green River — Kentucky
- Wabash River — Indiana-Illinois border
- Saline River — Illinois
- Cumberland River — Kentucky
- Tennessee River — Kentucky

Watershed

The Ohio's watershed covers 490,603 square kilometers (189,422 square miles), including the eastern-most regions of the Mississippi Basin. States drained by the Ohio include: Mississippi Basin with Ohio River and Scioto River tributary on right.]]
- Illinois (the southeast corner of the state),
- Indiana (all but the northern area of the state),
- Ohio (the southern half of the state),
- New York (a small area of the southern border along the headwaters of the Allegheny River),
- Pennsylvania (a corridor from the southwestern corner to north central border),
- Maryland (a small corridor along the Youghiogheny River on the state's western border),
- West Virginia (all but the eastern border of the state),
- Kentucky (all but a tiny part in the extreme west of the state drained directly by the Mississippi River),
- Tennessee (all but a small part in the extreme west of the state drained directly by the Mississippi River),
- Virginia (the western border of the state),
- North Carolina (the western border of the state),
- Georgia (the northwest corner of the state),
- Alabama (the northern fringe of the state), and
- Mississippi (the northeast corner of the state). See [http://earthtrends.wri.org/maps_spatial/maps_detail_static.cfm?map_select=393&theme=2] for a map and information on the Ohio's watershed.

Pre-history

The Ohio River was formed by glacial meltwater from the last stage of this ice age, the Wisconsin glaciation. During the glacial retreat, the river was temporarily dammed just southwest of Louisville, Kentucky, creating a large lake until the dam burst. The Ohio River largely supplanted the former Teays River drainage system, which was disrupted by the glaciers. Today, the river still follows a significant portion of the old Teays River course in southernmost Ohio.

History

Since it was considered by pre-Columbian inhabitants of eastern North America to be part of a single river continuing on through the lower Mississippi, it is perhaps an understatement to characterize the Ohio as a mere tributary of the Mississippi. The river is 981 miles (1579 km) long and carries the largest volume of water of any upper tributary of the Mississippi. In fact, the Ohio typically carries a much greater volume of water than the upper Mississippi. On May 19, 1749 King George II of Great Britain granted the Ohio Company a charter of land around the forks of the Ohio River. Louisville, Kentucky was founded at the only major natural navigational barrier on the river, the Falls of the Ohio. These were a series of rapids where the river flowed over hard, fossil-rich beds of limestone. The first locks on the river were built at Louisville to circumnavigate the falls. Today, this is the site of McAlpine Locks and Dam. Because the Ohio River flowed westwardly, it became the convenient means of westward movement by pioneers travelling from western Pennsylvania. After reaching the mouth of the Ohio, settlers would travel north on the Mississippi River to St. Louis, Missouri. There, some continued on up the Missouri River, some up the Mississippi, and some further west over land routes. In these early days, in the early 19th century, pirates set up shop at Cave-in-Rock in southern Illinois, waylaid travellers on their way down the river, killed them, stole their goods, and scuttled their boats. The folktales of Mike Fink recall the keelboats used for commerce in the early days of European settlement. Because of its significant role as the southern border of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, the Ohio River is historically famous as the border dividing free states and slave states. As depicted in several novels by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Toni Morrison, the Ohio River was the barrier which, by crossing by boat or 'on ice floes', slaves were freed. Today, the Ohio River generally separates Midwestern and Great Lakes states from Southern border states. Interestingly, by an accident of history, the charter for Virginia went not to the middle of the Ohio River, but to its far shore so the entire river was included. Wherever the river serves as a boundary between states—Illinois, Indiana and Ohio on the north, and Kentucky and West Virginia on the south, the river essentially belongs to the two states on the south that were divided from Virginia. Kentucky brought suit against Indiana in the early 1980s because of the building of the Marble Hill nuclear power plant in Indiana, which would have discharged its waste water into the river. The U.S. Supreme Court held that Kentucky's jurisdiction (and, implicitly, that of West Virginia) extended only to the low water mark of 1793, important because the river has been extensively dammed for navigation, so that the present river bank is north of the old low water mark. Similarly in the 1990s, Kentucky disputed Illinois' right to collect taxes on a riverboat casino docked in Metropolis, citing their control of the entire river. In the early 1980s, the Falls of the Ohio National Wildlife Conservation Area was established at Louisville, Kentucky.

Cities along the Ohio

For a full listing, see List of cities and towns along the Ohio River. Besides Pittsburgh and Cairo, other cities along the Ohio include:
- Steubenville, Marietta, Belpre, Pomeroy, Gallipolis, Ironton, Portsmouth, Ripley and Cincinnati in Ohio
- Weirton, New Martinsville, Wheeling, Paden City, Parkersburg and Huntington in West Virginia
- Ashland, Newport, Covington, Louisville, Owensboro, Henderson and Paducah in Kentucky
- Madison, Jeffersonville, Clarksville, New Albany, Tell City, Evansville and Mount Vernon in Indiana.
- Cairo, Metropolis, Brookport, Old Shawneetown, Cave-In-Rock, Elizabethtown and Golconda in Illinois

See also


- Ohio and Erie Canal
- List of crossings of the Ohio River

External links


- [http://www.kyinbridges.com/Features.aspx The Ohio River Bridges Project] (note: site uses Flash) Ohio River Category:Rivers of Illinois Category:Rivers of Indiana Category:Rivers of Kentucky Category:Rivers of Ohio Category:Streams of Pennsylvania Category:Rivers of West Virginia simple:Ohio River

Cincinnati

:The article refers to the city in Ohio. For information on the city in Iowa, see Cincinnati, Iowa. Cincinnati is a city in southwestern Ohio, United States that lies on the Ohio River and is the county seat of Hamilton County. It is nicknamed "The Queen City" (also "The Queen of the West," "The Blue Chip City," "The City of Seven Hills" and "Cincinnata") and is sometimes abbreviated to "Cincy", "Cinci", "Cinti" or "The 'Nati". As of the 2000 census, Cincinnati had a total population of 331,285, making it the third largest city in Ohio. It has a much larger metropolitan area covering parts of Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana, with over two million residents. It is home to both the Reds and the Bengals, as well as major corporations such as Procter & Gamble, Kroger, GE Infrastructure, Federated Department Stores (owner of Macy's, Bloomingdale's, and Lord & Taylor), Chiquita Brands International, Great American Insurance Company, The E. W. Scripps Company, the U.S. Playing Card Company and Fifth Third Bank.

History

Cincinnati was founded in 1788 by John Cleves Symmes. Surveyor John Filson (also the author the tale of Daniel Boone) named it "Losantiville"[http://www.filsonhistorical.org] from four terms, each of different language, meaning "The city opposite the mouth of the Licking River." "Ville" is French for "city," "anti" is Greek for "opposite," "os" is Latin for "mouth," and "L" was all that was included of "Licking River." In 1790, Arthur St. Clair, the governor of the Northwest Territory, changed the name of the settlement to "Cincinnati" in honor of the Society of the Cincinnati, of which he was president. The society honored General George Washington, who was considered a latter day Cincinnatus—the Roman general who saved his city, then retired from power to his farm. To this day, Cincinnati in particular, and Ohio in general, are home to a disproportionately large number of descendants of Revolutionary War soldiers who were granted lands in the state. In 1802, Cincinnati was chartered as a village, and in 1819, it was incorporated as a city. The introduction of steam navigation on the Ohio River in 1811 and the completion of the Miami and Erie Canal helped the city grow to 115,000 citizens by 1850. The nickname "Porkopolis" was coined around 1835, when Cincinnati was the country's chief hog packing center, and herds of pigs traveled the streets. Called the "Queen of the West" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (although this nickname was first used by a local newspaper in 1819), Cincinnati was an important stop on the Underground Railroad, which helped slaves escape from the South. Cincinnati is also known as the "City of Seven Hills," which is probably a romantic reference to Rome and Cincinnatus, though there is no agreement on the specific hills [http://www.cincinnati.com/local/atoz/upsanddowns.html]to which the name refers (however, see discussion section). As a pioneer-era city, it compared with Pittsburgh and Nashville. As a "Riverboat" and canal-era city, it compared with Louisville, St. Louis and New Orleans. As an immigrant, industrial city it compared with Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, and Detroit. Because of its river setting and extensive park system, many commentators have remarked on Cincinnati's beauty, including Winston Churchill, who called it "the most beautiful of America's inland cities." The city's picturesque skyline was used as a backdrop for the fictional city of Monticello on the soap opera The Edge of Night, one of the many soap operas sponsored by Cincinnati soap maker Procter & Gamble. Cincinnati was a pioneer city in many respects. It was the first city in the United States to establish a Jewish Hospital in 1850. Also established in 1850, Gibson Greeting Cards (acquired by American Greetings in 2000) was the first to publish greeting cards. It is where America's [http://www.cincyfiremuseum.com/history.html first municipal fire department]was established in 1853. Established in 1867, the Cincinnati Red Stockings (later, the Cincinnati Reds) became the world's first professional (all paid, no amateurs) baseball team in 1869. Additionally, in 1935, baseball's first night game was played at Crosley Field. Cincinnati was the first to build and own a major railroad in 1880, a vital railway connection between east and west. In 1902, the world's first reinforced concrete skyscraper was built, the Ingalls Building. [http://www.bartleby.com/65/be/Beard-Da.html "The Sons of Daniel Boone"], later known as The Boy Scouts of America, began in Cincinnati in 1905. Because of the city's rich German heritage, the pre-prohibition era allowed Cincinnati to become a national forerunner in the [http://www.citybeat.com/2004-04-28/socincinnati.shtml brewing industry.] During experimentation for 6 years (until 1939), Cincinnati's AM radio station, WLW was the first to broadcast at an astounding 500,000 watts. In 1943, King Records (and it's subsidiary, Queen Records) was founded, and went on to record early music by artists who became highly successful and influential in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_music Country], R&B, and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_roll Rock]. [http://www.cetconnect.org/50/index.asp#documents WCET TV] was the first licensed public television station, established in 1954. On December 3, 1979, Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum (now called the U.S. Bank Arena) was the site of one of the worst rock concert tragedies in United States history. Eleven fans were killed and several dozen others injured in the rush for seating at the opening of a sold-out concert by The Who. The concert was using "festival seating" (also known as "general seating" or "stadium seating"), where the best seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis. When the crowds waiting outside heard the band performing a soundcheck, they thought the concert was beginning and tried to rush into the still-closed doors, trampling those at the front of the crowd. The tragedy was blamed on poor crowd control, mainly the failure of arena management to open enough doors to deal with the crowd outside. As a result, concert venues across North America switched to assigned seating or changed their rules about festival seating. Cincinnati immediately outlawed festival seating at concerts, although it overturned the ban on August 4, 2004, since the ban was making it difficult for Cincinnati to book concerts. (Many music acts prefer festival seating because it allows the most enthusiastic fans to get near the stage and generate excitement for the rest of the crowd. In 2002, the city had made a one-time exception to the ban, allowing festival seating for a Bruce Springsteen concert.) Cincinnati was the only city in the U.S. to outlaw festival seating altogether.

Politics

Currently, although the City of Cincinnati generally votes Democrat like other Midwestern cities, Hamilton County and the rest of the metropolitan area generally votes Republican. The city is governed by a nine-member city council, whose members are elected at large. Prior to 1924, city council was elected through a system of wards. The ward system lent itself to corruption and Cincinnati was run by the Republican political machine of Boss Cox from the 1880's through the 1920's with a few brief interludes. A reform movement arose in 1923, led by another Republican, Murray Seasongood. Seasongood eventually founded the Charter Committee, which used ballot initiatives in 1924 to eliminate the ward system and replace it with the current at-large system and also to introduce a city manager. From 1924 to 1957, the council was selected by proportional representation. As of 1957, all candidates run in a single race and the top nine vote-getters are elected (the "9-X system"). The mayor was selected by the council. Starting in 1987, the top vote-getter in the city council race automatically became mayor. Starting in 1999, the mayor was chosen in a separate election and the city manager accepted a lesser role in government; these reforms were referred to as the "strong mayor" reforms. Cincinnati politics includes the participation of the Charter Party, the third-party with the longest history of winning in local elections.

Other

Cincinnati was an important port for the Underground Railroad in pre-Civil War times. It is located right on the border of the slave state Kentucky and is often mentioned as a destination for many people escaping the bonds of slavery. After Martin Luther King Jr's assassination a deadly riot broke out in Cincinnati killing 2. Cincinanti's turmiol insued in 2001, with a racial incident that occured after a number of shootings of black males. After the death of Roger Owensby Jr, a group brought a lawsuit against the city of Cincinnati alleging consistent racial profiling behind the disproportionate amount of deaths for younger black males. While the lawsuit was beginning, the shooting of Timothy Thomas, an unarmed 19-year old black male by a Cincinnati Police officer during an on-foot pursuit in what was, at the time, one of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods, sparked the 2001 Cincinnati Riots.

Geography and climate

Geography

2001 Cincinnati Riots Cincinnati is located at (39.136160, -84.503088). According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 206.1 km² (79.6 mi²). 201.9 km² (78.0 mi²) of it is land and 4.1 km² (1.6 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 2.01% water. The Cincinnati – Middletown Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), the 25th largest in the United States, has a population of 2,009,632. It includes the Ohio counties of Hamilton, Butler, Warren, Clermont and Brown, as well as the Kentucky counties of Boone, Bracken, Campbell, Gallatin, Grant, Kenton, and Pendleton, and the Indiana counties of Dearborn, Franklin, and Ohio.

Climate

Cincinnati's weather is temperate and seasonal. Summers are hot and humid with cool evenings. The mean annual temperature is 54 °F (12 °C), with an average annual snowfall of 32 inches (81.3 cm) and an average annual rainfall of 41 inches (1,040 mm). The wettest seasons are the spring and summer, although rainfall is fairly constant all year round. During the winter, particularly in January and February, several days of snow can be expected, allowing for winter sports. Winter temperatures range from 27 to 43 °F (−3 to 6 °C) and summer temperatures range from 66 to 86 °F (19 to 30 °C). The highest recorded temperature was 103.0 °F (39.4 °C) on 1988-08-17, and the lowest recorded temperature was −22 °F (−30 °C) on 1994-01-19.

Neighborhoods

Cincinnati's unique geography nestles its neighborhoods in small basins and the hillsides that overlook them. Because of this, many of the city's neighborhoods developed very strong personal identities. Today's outer neighborhoods such as Clifton and Carthage were originally settled as their own villages, with individual downtown sections of their own. Over-the-Rhine was an important neighborhood in German-American history. Also important to the city's landscape is the division into "East and West Sides." There has always been a light-hearted rivalry between the East Side, who "has the money and spends it," and the West Side, who "has the money and doesn't spend it." There are an assortment of classifications, but the separations only help to unite the city more.

Demographics

As of the census of 2003, there are 317,361 people, 166,012 households, and 72,566 families residing in the city. The population density is 1,640.5/km² (4,249.0/mi²). There are 166,012 housing units at an average density of 822.1/km² (2,129.2/mi²). The racial makeup of the city is 52.97% White, 42.92% Black or African American, 0.21% Native American, 1.55% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 0.63% from other races, and 1.68% from two or more races. 1.28% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race. There are 148,095 households out of which 25.1% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 26.6% are married couples living together, 18.6% have a female householder with no husband present, and 51.0% are non-families. 42.8% of all households are made up of individuals and 11.1% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 2.15 and the average family size is 3.02. The age distribution is 24.5% under the age of 18, 12.9% from 18 to 24, 31.6% from 25 to 44, 18.7% from 45 to 64, and 12.3% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 32 years. For every 100 females there are 89.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 85.6 males. Although the city was ranked as one of the poorest cities in the United States in 2003, the median income for a household in the city is $29,493, and the median income for a family is $37,543. Males have a median income of $33,063 versus $26,946 for females. The per capita income for the city is $19,962. 21.9% of the population and 18.2% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 32.0% of those under the age of 18 and 14.8% of those 65 and older are living below the poverty line.

Fountain Square

poverty line Fountain Square is a public square in Downtown Cincinnati, located at Fifth Street and Vine. Its centerpiece is the landmark bronze Tyler Davidson Fountain. The square is a popular hardscape, surrounded by hotels, banks, department stores, and restaurants. The space was donated to the city of Cincinnati by prominent citizen Henry Probasco and dedicated on its completion in 1871 to his brother-in-law, Tyler Davidson. In 1998 the fountain underwent extensive restoration. In September 2005 the fountain was temporarily moved to the Cincinnati Art Museum while Fountain Square itself undergoes extensive renovation. Fountain Square was featured in the credits of the television series WKRP in Cincinnati.

Riverfront

Being situated on the Ohio River, Cincinnati is home to several prominent bridges that connect the downtown to Covington, Kentucky and Newport, Kentucky, including the picturesque John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge; the Daniel Carter Beard Bridge (aka The Big Mac Bridge); and the Purple People Bridge.

Education

Cincinnati Public Schools operates the public schools in the city.

Media

Print

Cincinnati is served by two daily newspapers: The Cincinnati Enquirer, owned by Gannett Co., and The Cincinnati Post, owned by the E.W. Scripps Company, as well as an African American newspaper (The Cincinnati Herald) and weekly newspapers CityBeat and CiN Weekly. The Cincinnati Business Courier [http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/] is a weekly business publication.

Television


- The following TV stations serve the Cincinnati area:
  - WLWT [http://www.channelcincinnati.com/ Channel 5] (NBC), owned by Hearst-Argyle
  - WCPO [http://www.wcpo.com/ Channel 9] (ABC), owned by Scripps-Howard
  - WKRC [http://www.wkrc.com/ Channel 12] (CBS), owned by Clear Channel
  - WXIX [http://www.fox19.com/ Channel 19] (FOX), owned by Raycom Media
  - WSTR-TV [http://www.wb64.net/ Channel 64] (WB), owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group
  - WOTH [http://www.wbqc.com/woth/ Channel 25], owned by WBQC (below)--(low power)
  - WBQC [http://www.wbqc.com Channel 38] (UPN)--(low power)
  - WCET [http://www.wcet.org Channel 48] (PBS)

Radio


- These are the major talk and music radio stations in the Cincinnati area:
  - 55WKRC AM Talk Radio "The Talk Station" [http://www.55krc.com]
  - NewsRadio 700 WLW AM "The Big One" [http://www.700wlw.com]
  - Sacred Heart Radio 740 AM [http://www.sacredheartradio.com]
  - News Talk 1160 WBOB AM [http://www.wbob.com]
  - 1360 Homer AM "The Sports Animal" Sports Radio [http://www.1360homer.com]
  - 1530 WCKY AM "The Revolution of Talk Radio" [http://www.wcky.com]
  - WAIF "What Radio Was Meant To Be" Community radio 88.3 FM [http://waif883.org]
  - WJVS "Joint Vocational School" Mon-Fri 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM on 88.3 FM
  - WGUC 90.9 FM NPR; Classical Music [http://www.wguc.org]
  - WVXU 91.7 FM NPR; Public Radio [http://www.wvxu.org/html/wvxu.html]
  - WOFX "The FOX" Classic Rock 92.5 FM [http://www.foxcincinnati.com]
  - WAKW "New Life 93" Christian 93.3 FM [http://www.wakw.com]
  - WVMX "Mix 94.1" Adult Contemporary FM [http://www.wvmx.com]
  - WMOJ "Jammin' Oldies" Oldies 94.9 FM [http://www.mojo949.com]
  - WYGY "The Star" Country 96.5 FM [http://www.965thestar.com]
  - WAQZ "Cincinnati's New Rock 97.3" Alternative Rock 97.3 FM [http://www.newrock973.com]
  - WOXY (FM) "97.7 Max FM"
  - WRRM "Warm 98" Soft Rock 98.5 FM [http://www.warm98.com]
  - WIZF "The Wiz" Hip Hop-Rap-R&B 100.9 FM [http://www.wizfm.com]
  - WKRQ "Q 102" Top 40 101.9 FM [http://www.wkrq.com]
  - WEBN "WEBN" Rock 102.7 FM [http://www.webn.com]
  - WGRR "Oldies 103.5" Oldies 103.5 FM [http://www.wgrr.com]
  - WNLT "K Love" Contemporary Christian 104.3 FM [http://www.klove.com]
  - WNKU "Best Public Radio in the country" Eclectic music 89.7 FM [http://wnku.org]
  - WUBE "B 105" Country 105.1 FM [http://www.wube.com]
  - WPFB "The Rebel" Country 105.9 FM [http://www.1059therebel.com]
  - WKFS "KISS 107 FM" Top 40-Hip Hop-Rap 107.1 [http://www.kisscincinnati.com]
  - WDBZ "The Buzz of Cincinnati" 1320 AM Black Talk Radio

Online Media


- The following are online media outlets, including new aggregators, in the Cincinnati area:
  - The Dean of Cincinnati [http://www.deanofcincinnati.com]
  - 513 Green PAC [http://www.513gpac.fiveonetree.org]
  - AroundCinci.com [http://www.aroundcinci.com]
  - Blue Chip Review [http://bluechipreview.com]
  - Cincinnati.com [http://www.cincinnati.com]
  - The Cincinnati Nation [http://www.cincinnatination.com]
  - NKY.com [http://www.nky.com]
  - Queen City Forum [http://queencityforum.com]
  - WOXY (internet radio) [http://www.woxy.com]

Transportation


- Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport is located in Hebron, Kentucky, and serves Cincinnati, Ohio.
- The John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge, opened in 1866, links Cincinnati and Covington, Kentucky. This bridge was the prototype for the Brooklyn Bridge, also designed by Roebling.
- Cincinnati is accessible via interstates I-75, I-71 and I-74. I-275 is a beltway around the city, and I-471 links it to Newport, Kentucky.
- Lunken Airport - Cincinnati Municipal Airfield
- Amtrak Passenger Rail Service
- Greyhound Lines Bus Service
- Cincinnati has an unfinished Subway, abandoned during construction in 1925 due to cost overruns. Proposals exist to build a new system and resurrect the remaining tunnels, but none have been erected.
- METRO city passenger bus, operated by SORTA, the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority
- TANK Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky in Downtown Cincinnati, south of sixth street.

Culture


- Mt. Adams
- Clifton Gaslight District
- Big Pig Gig

Attractions


- Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden
- Cincinnati Museum Center [http://www.cincymuseum.org/]combines the Cincinnati Children's Museum, the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History and Science, the OmniMax Cinema, and the Cincinnati History Museum in the classic Art-Deco Union Terminal, the largest half-dome on the planet Earth.
- Coney Island of Cincinnati
- Paramount's Kings Island, located in Mason, a suburb 20 miles northeast of Cincinnati)
- Boomerang Bay Waterpark, also in Mason, also owned by Paramount
- The Beach Waterpark, also in Mason
- TPC at River's Bend, a golf club that hosts a Champions Tour event (men's senior golf)
- Western & Southern Financial Group Masters, an important tennis tournament held in Mason
- [http://www.junglejims.com/ Jungle Jim's International Market] -- Most unusual grocery store in the world! International Food experience bar none.
- [http://www.freedomcenter.org/ National Underground Railroad Freedom Center]

Buildings

tennis
- Carew Tower tallest building in Cincinnati and a National Histroic Landmark; open air observation deck on 49th story; prototype for Empire State Building
- PNC Tower 5th tallest in the world (tallest in the US outside of New York City) when it was built in 1914
- Scripps Center Home of the world headquarters for Scripps Howard
- Ingalls Building The world's first reinforced concrete skyscraper
- Star Tower
- Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal A former train station; now a museum; example of Art Deco style. Amtrak station has returned to Union Terminal since renovation.
- US Bank Tower
- The Contemporary Arts Center By Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, 2004 winner of the Pritzker Prize. Called by the New York Times the "most important American building to be completed since the end of the Cold War."
- Aronoff Center Performing art center, by architect César Pelli.
- Aronoff Center for Design and Art Home of the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, by architect Peter Eisenman.
- Vontz Center for Molecular Studies at University of Cincinnati, by architect Frank Gehry, 1989 winner of the Pritzker Prize.
- Engineering Resarch Center at University of Cincinnati, by architect Michael Graves.
- College Conservatory of Music at University of Cincinnati, by architect Henry Cobb partner of I.M. Pei.
- Campus Recreation Center at University of Cincinnati, by architect Thom Mayne, 2005 winner of the Pritzker Prize. Opening 2005.
- Athletic Center at University of Cincinnati, by architect Bernard Tschumi. Opening 2006.

Galleries


- Carl Solway Gallery
- Cincinnati Art Galleries
- The Design Consortium Gallery
- Miller Gallery
- Visual History Gallery
- Weston Art Gallery

Famous Cincinnati natives


- William Howard Taft – President of the United States, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
- William Henry Harrison – President of the United States
- Sarah Jessica Parker – actress
- Carmen Electra – entertainer
- Bootsy Collins – musician
- Jerry Springer – talk show host
- Roger Staubach – football player
- Barry Larkin – baseball player
- Ken Griffey, Jr. – baseball player (born in Pennsylvania, raised in Cincinnati)
- Pete Rose – baseball player
- Frank Duveneck – painter
- Ulysses S. Grant – President of the United States, General
- Henry Heimlich  – co-developer of the Heimlich maneuver
- Powel Crosley Jr. – inventor, industrialist, and entrepreneur
- Steven Spielberg – producer/director
- George Clooney – Actor
- Ted Turner – Media Mogul
- Roy Rogers – The Singing Cowboy
- Bill Hemmer – FOX News Channel Channel Anchor
- Andy Williams – singer
- Doris Day – actress
- Tony Snow – FOX News Channel Anchor and radio host
- Charles Manson – infamous murderer
- Rosemary Clooney – Singer/Actress
- William McGuffey – 19th century writer of the McGuffey Readers
- Daniel Carter Beard – founder of the Boy Scouts of America
- Harriet Beecher Stowe – author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, abolitionist
- Thomas Worthington Whittredge – painter [http://www.spfld-museum-of-art.org/collection/whittre.html]
- Linda Vester – FOX News Channel Channel Anchor
- Nick Lachey – Singer, Member of 98 Degrees

Museums


- American Classical Music Hall of Fame and Museum
- Cincinnati Art Museum
- The Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education
- [http://www.cincyfiremuseum.com/history.html Cincinnati Fire Museum]
- John Hauck House
- Heritage Village Museum
- Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal
- Cincinnati Observatory Center
- The Contemporary Arts Center
- Drake Planetarium
- Greater Cincinnati Science Education Center
- Harriet Beecher Stowe House
- National Signs of the Times Museum
- National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
- Newport Aquarium (in Newport, Kentucky)
- The Taft Museum of Art

Theater

For a town of its size, Cincinnati boasts a vibrant community of theatre artists, educators, and producers. Audiences can attend professional, semi-professional, community, and educational theatre opportunities year-round in the Cincinnati tri-state region. Many theatres within the region are members of the League of Cincinnati Theatres. Professional (Equity) Theatre
- Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park
- Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati Professional (Non-Equity) Theatre
- Know Theatre Tribe
- Clear Stage Cincinnati
- Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival
- Cincinnati Public Theatre
- Stage First Cincinnati
- New Edgecliff Theater
- The Performance Gallery
- The Children's Theatre Community (Non-Professional) Theatre
- Mariemont Players
- Falcon Productions
- Ovation Theatre Company
- Cincinnati Music Theatre
- Wyoming Players
- Lookingglass Theatre
- If Theatre Collective
- Showbiz Players Educational Theatre In addition to theatre experiences offered through most high schools, which are critiqued by local students through the annual Cappie Awards, Cincinnati offers a number of college-level theatre/performing arts training and performing opportunities including:
- University of Cincinnati
- Xavier University
- Northern Kentucky Universi