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Lin-Manuel Miranda on his first viewing of "West Side Story"
Show title:
American Masters
Video title:
Lin-Manuel Miranda on his first viewing of "West Side Story"
Video duration:
1m 0s
Video description:
Lin-Manuel Miranda describes discovering Rita Moreno and seeing "West Side Story" for the first time, and realizing it was about Puerto Rican New Yorkers. "It was a gamechanger."
Reed was always at the forefront of American avant-garde music, beginning with creation of the Velvet Underground in 1965. Gritty and realistic, the brutal honesty in Reed’s lyrics and sound made him a cultural icon of the disenfranchised throughout the ’60s and ’70s. From punk rock to grunge, he has had an unparalleled influence on the American music scene.
Bebop, a style of jazz developed in the 1940's, changed American music but wasn't taken seriously for much of Charlie Parker's life. This mid-century popcorn television commercial shows how the public's perception of bebop was riddled with stereotypes.
Charlie Parker's nickname "Yardbird" came to be while he was on the way to a gig with some fellow musicians and involved a bird in a yard that had an unfortunate fate.