Word: vernacular
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Laura I. Gerald '90, one of the seminar leaders, cited "a language barrier" as a primary factor in the failure of government AIDS information to reach Blacks. "[AIDS pamphlets] don't come out in the vernacular. But those are the kinds of words we need if we want people to understand," she said...
...rhythmic vitality of jazz? The line from Johann Strauss and Franz Lehar to Frederick Loewe and Richard Rodgers is really very short. Far from being an exotic and irrational entertainment, opera is the most vital and popular of musical forms. Is Mozart's The Magic Flute, composed in the vernacular for the Viennese commercial theater, stuffy high art just because it is 200 years old and occasionally performed at the Met? That would be news to Mozart, who craved popular esteem and pointed to it as a proof of artistry. Are Bernstein's Candide, Gian Carlo Menotti's The Saint...
...sprawl, it would be difficult to pick out the boundary. There is synergy everywhere, from the maquiladoras on the Mexican side, where American manufacturers pay less than $1 an hour to a largely grateful work force, to the shops lining El Paso's Bridge Street, where Spanish is the vernacular...
Natives see a certain irony in the sudden cachet of their homespun style. "Originally people built adobe homes, which are really mud huts, because the materials were cheap and available," explains Santa Fe Architect Michael Bodelson, 33. "It was a vernacular architecture, low technology." These days, he notes in amusement, only the rich can afford to build adobe homes, since authentic construction can add about 15% to 20% to the cost of a comparable wood-frame or brick home...
...such, he represents one of the salient trends in modern American music, the fusion of the pop vernacular with the mainstream classical tradition. He is not alone: Rock Musician Glenn Branca writes raucous symphonies for electric guitars, and the Chinese-American Lucia Hwong brings a cross-cultural sensibility to bear on her wistful New Age musings. But although Davis' orchestral music may contain improvisatory sections reminiscent of jazz, it is carefully controlled and expertly planned. Imagine Ellington's lush, massed sonorities propelled by Bartok's vigorous whiplash rhythms and overlaid with the seductive percussive haze of the Balinese gamelan orchestra...