Cultural Iceberg!

 In the year of 1976, Edward T. Hall said that cultures were like an iceberg. We only see a minimun fragment of it, we only see a really tiny percent of the surface, the tip of the iceberg, while there is such much more on the bottom. 

Today we are starting with the top of the iceberg, specifically with Visual Arts and Music. 

Speaking of these topics when it comes about USA can be almost exhausting. This country stands out notoriously in the entertainment industry in its various forms, and almost surprisingly in each of these forms remains relevant, but perhaps the most remembered globally is its specifically music and audiovisual productions. 

AUDIOVISUAL ARTS 

For hundreds of thousands, the United States, more specifically Hollywood, is the Mecca of cinema, or at least film industry in its most known and powerfull form. 

Although there are countries such as France and Italy that in their artistic expression are unquestionably unsurpassed in cinema when it comes to artistic composition, originality, ethereal beauty and even the beginnings of this form of human expression,  the American industry stills relevant, because it has the most powerful film industries and the most prodigious film festivals, even many of the most commercial or simply world known artists, producers, actors and directors reside and work in this country. 

To be more precise in maintaining this country's prominence in the film industry as a business, we must go back to the end of the 19th century and the beginnings of the 20th century, when entrepreneurs and inventors took an incredible interest in the industry. Even Thomas Edinson invested in technological patents that allowed the creation of films, effectively monopolizing cinema. It is also important to highlight that in 1911 a series of companies began to establish themselves in the western United States having large film studios, among these companies we find some of the most important and well-known production companies today such as: Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox or Paramount. 

In the following years up to the present day, the United States would establish itself in a very concrete way as a major film industry, and not only as a business or large commercial industry with excellent global results. Also from silent films, then sound films, and the films we see today even on platforms like Netflix or Amazon Prime have managed to produce and allow us to know amazing audiovisual pieces, iconic characters and memorable geniuses. 

In a hasty summary we could recap some of the most memorable moments in the history of American cinema: the rising recognition of Chaplin who came from England, the rising recognition of Buster Keaton, the incredible wave of musicals, police crimes, gangster stories like Scarface, terrors like Dracula or unusual stories like King Kong, well-known actors like Marlene Dietrich, Jean Harlow, Katherine Hepburn or Bette Davis lived their most golden moment, and at the end of the decade of the 30s we began to know the color cinema, that Walt Disney with his animations of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck was who most used this tool in its beginnings. 

Then we came across one of the best films in the history of cinema in 1941: Citizen Kane, by Orson Welles, a film that revolutionized by its detail, cinematographic language and authentic narrative structure, which would change what it was to tell stories forever in the cinema of this country. In the passing of these years, actors such as Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, James Dean, Marlon Brando or Paul Newman stand out. Marilyn Monroe. And at the end of the 50s Alfred Hitchcock would impose himself as one of the masters of suspense. 

Television established itself in society and at the beginning of the 60s this factor damaged many directors, only allowing the most prestigious ones to continue with their great productions and generating a certain stagnation in the birth of new minds and visions in cinematography, until unexpectedly a new wave of directors would emerge who today have been among the most important and influential in current cinema, with directors such as: Kubrick, Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. 

And when we review the decades of the 70s until today we find other incredible works such as Titanic, Rocky, Star Wars, Jaws, Jurassic Park and countless other films that more than any other cinematic wave would remain embedded in popular culture. And in recent years we find directors like Tarantino, Wes Anderson or Greta Gerwig, and many, many more that make us feel cinema more alive than ever and remind us that it is always in constant change. 

This historical review shows the commercial power and reach that a country like the United States has in the film industry, and also that it also has memorable works and characters with significant contributions to the art itself.

MUSIC 

The music of the United States reflects the country's multi-ethnic population through a diverse array of styles. Rock and roll, country, rhythm and blues, jazz, and hip hop are among the country's most internationally renowned genres. Much of modern popular music can trace its roots to the emergence in the late 1800s of African American blues and the growth in the 1920s of gospel music.

It manifested itself in a melancholy mixture of work songs, spiritual music and gospel, which combined to create a narrative, call-and-response form adopted by later musical genres.

It is well known that country music is America’s oldest musical genre and is arguably its most diverse. Its roots lie in such disparate elements as English folk balladry, Mississippi Delta blues, Irish fiddle tunes, French/Cajun music, Vaudeville, Southern gospel, Mexican conjunto, German polkas and Victorian pop songs.

During the 1920s, record companies and radio stations began marketing this genre.

In the early 1900's pianist Jelly Roll Morton described New Orleans as the “cradle of jazz”. The early development of the genre in New Orleans was connected to the community life of the city, as demonstrated by brass-band funerals, music for picnics in parks and Saturday-night fish fries.

In the 1940s, Afro-American expressions of gospel, blues and rhythm and blues converged to form rock ’n’ roll, the genre from which rock and its many, many subsidiary genres were born, later on, soul music sprang from the blues clubs, churches and street corners of the USA. It was a collision of genres that mixed testifying with showmanship and has been constantly evolving since the 1950s.

In the early 1970's Hip-hop spread across the USA like wildfire, with every major city developing its own unique brand of this powerful and exciting new genre.

Finally, from the 1990's to present days Hip-hop spread across the USA like wildfire, with every major city developing its own unique brand of this powerful and exciting new genre. The sound as we know it today began to have an impact in 1992 with the opening of NASA (Nocturnal Audio Sensory Awakening) in New York City. Its influence sent shockwaves across the USA, giving birth to countless subgenres today embraced by thrill-seeking millennials at dedicated EDM festivals.

Today, EDM has conquered the mainstream charts and the alternative all-night raves have turned into massive three-day spectacles such as Electric Daisy Carnival – one of the biggest and most famous of these festivals in the world.

Bibliography  

*The Cultural Iceberg. (n.d.). https://adeaconsmusing.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/151015.ucc_.culture.iceberg.pdf

*Egoitz Gago. (2018, March). Cómo Hollywood se convirtió en la meca del cine. La Vanguardia; La Vanguardia. https://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/junior-report/20180226/441105690565/hollywood-meca-cine.html

*Historia del cine estadounidense. (2021). Astalaweb.net. http://cine.astalaweb.net/Documentos/El%20cine%20estadounidense.asp

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