Blues

Blues is about tradition and personal expression. At its core, the blues has remained the same since its inception. Most blues feature simple, usually three-chord, progressions and have simple structures that are open to endless improvisations, both lyrical and musical. The blues grew out of African spirituals and worksongs. In the late 1800s, southern African-Americans passed the songs down orally, and they collided with American folk and country from the Appalachians. New hybrids appeared by each region, but all of the recorded blues from the early 1900s are distinguished by simple, rural acoustic guitars and pianos. After World War II, the blues began to fragment, with some musicians holding on to acoustic traditions and others taking it to jazzier territory. However, most bluesmen followed Muddy Waters' lead and played the blues on electric instruments. From that point on, the blues continued to develop in new directions -- particularly on electric instruments -- or it has been preserved as an acoustic tradition

Worldbeat

The term worldbeat refers not to one specific style of music, but to a certain sensibility -- namely, the fusion of disparate musical styles in ways that are only possible from a globalized, multicultural perspective. The results can range from Westernized pop or dance music to wild, genre-hopping experimentalism, but the central, unifying feature of worldbeat is that it's a conscious attempt to bring world music to a wider audience. Frequently, this involves modernizing traditional sounds with up-to-date technology, or borrowing the most relevant elements from Western pop and rock, which have spread all over the world and affected other nations' pop-music scenes to varying degrees. At its best, worldbeat can produce utterly unique hybrids and amazing eclecticism; other times, worldbeat artists have been savaged for uprooting traditional styles and diluting them for mass consumption. Although the rock world was by no means closed to outside influence, the Western audience for world music really started to take shape in the mid-'80s, when rock artists like Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon, Mickey Hart, and David Byrne began to incorporate ethnic sounds into their recordings, and enthusiastically pursued high-profile collaborations with world-music artists. With the commercial possibilities presented by a greatly expanded potential audience, some artists began to tailor their music for international appeal. Although there were many exceptions, the majority of the worldbeat artists who achieved a measure of popularity in the West came from Africa, a continent whose music -- to make a broad generalization -- had already exerted a tremendous influence on Western popular music throughout the 20th century. Thus, the sounds of artists like Mory Kante, Salif Keita, and Youssou N'Dour were familiar enough to be appealing, yet different enough to be striking and intriguing. Other worldbeat performers use their broad range of musical knowledge to find similarities and common ground among different indigenous traditions from around the world -- sort of the musical equivalent of comparative literature studies. Most Western-born worldbeat artists fall under this category, but a few -- like England's 3 Mustaphas 3 -- take a less academic approach, trumpeting their freewheeling eclecticism and accentuating the contrasts between the various styles of music they've assimilated. Worldbeat has never been a commercial blockbuster in the West, but some of the better-known styles include the popular music of West Africa and South Africa, North African rai, Bulgarian choral music, Scandinavian folk, Tuvan throat singing, various forms of Indian music (raga, dance, and film music), Pakistani qawwali, Spanish flamenco, Brazilian samba, and Argentinian tango, to name just a few that have made an impact among adventurous critics and record buyers.

Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash was one of the most imposing and influential figures in post-World War II country music. With his deep, resonant baritone and spare, percussive guitar, he had a basic, distinctive sound. Cash didn't sound like Nashville, nor did he sound like honky tonk or rock & roll. He created his own subgenre, falling halfway between the blunt emotional honesty of folk, the rebelliousness of rock & roll, and the world-weariness of country. Cash's career coincided with the birth of rock & roll, and his rebellious attitude and simple, direct musical attack shared a lot of similarities with rock. However, there was a deep sense of history -- as he would later illustrate with his series of historical albums -- that kept him forever tied with country. And he was one of country music's biggest stars of the '50s and '60s, scoring well over 100 hit singles.

The Andrew Sisters

The Andrews Sisters were the most successful female vocal group of the first half of the 20th century in the U.S. One source lists 113 singles chart entries by the trio between 1938-1951, an average of more than eight per year. They boasted an exuberant, close-harmony style well-suited to cheery novelty songs, and their intricate vocal arrangements and rhythmic ability mirrored the sound of the swing bands that constituted their chief competition in their heyday. But, in a sense, they had no competition. No other female vocal group, and very few male ones, came close to their success from the late '30s to the early '50s, an era when first big bands and then solo singers dominated popular music. Their reign is all the more remarkable given that they swam against the current of contemporary music trends while making it seem effortless. For the most part, the Andrews Sisters did not focus on romantic material, but rather sang upbeat songs, often borrowed from other cultures. Although they were well-established by the time the U.S. entered World War II, their optimistic tenor made them perfect boosters of the war effort, and in later years they remained closely identified with the war years, remembered as wearing military uniforms and singing their signature song, "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy."

Πυξ Λαξ

Οι Πυξ Λαξ ήταν ελληνικό έντεχνο / εναλλακτικό ροκ συγκρότημα, που δημιουργήθηκε το 1989, εμφανίστηκε στη δισκογραφία το 1990, και διαλύθηκε το 2004 κλείνοντας την πορεία του με περιοδεία σε όλη την Ελλάδα
Τα μέληΤα ιδρυτικά μέλη του συγκροτήματος ήταν οι Φίλιππος Πλιάτσικας, Μπάμπης Στόκας και Μάνος Ξυδούς.