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folk song

(Encyclopedia)folk song, music of anonymous composition, transmitted orally. The theory that folk songs were originally group compositions has been modified in recent studies. These assume that the germ of a folk m...

cowboys

(Encyclopedia)cowboys, in American history. 1 Tory marauders, adherents to the British cause in the American Revolution, who fought in the contested area of Westchester co., N.Y. Their opposite numbers, who favored...

Downers Grove

(Encyclopedia)Downers Grove, village (2020 pop. 50,247), Du Page co., NE Ill.; settled 1832, inc. 1873. Downers Grove has undergone population growth and commercial d...

Connecticut, University of

(Encyclopedia)Connecticut, University of, mainly at Storrs; coeducational; land grant and state supported; chartered and opened 1881 as Storrs Agricultural School. It became a college in 1893 and a university in 19...

Waters, Muddy

(Encyclopedia)Waters, Muddy, 1915–83, African-American blues singer and guitarist, b. Rolling Fork, Miss., as McKinley Morganfield. As a teenager he began singing and playing traditional country blues on harmonic...

Hamlin, Talbot Faulkner

(Encyclopedia)Hamlin, Talbot Faulkner, 1889–1956, American historian of architecture, b. New York City. He was librarian of the Avery Library, Columbia (1934–45), and professor of architecture there. Hamlin wro...

Rinehart, Mary Roberts

(Encyclopedia)Rinehart, Mary Roberts rīnˈhärt [key], 1876–1958, American novelist, b. Pittsburgh. A graduate nurse, she married Dr. Stanley M. Rinehart in 1896. The first of her many mystery stories, The Circu...

St. John, John Pierce

(Encyclopedia)St. John, John Pierce, 1833–1916, American political reformer, b. Brookville, Ind. He traveled in the West and in South America, fought in the Union army in the Civil War, and after 1869 practiced l...

Ma, Yo-Yo

(Encyclopedia)Ma, Yo-Yo mä [key], 1955–, American cellist, b. Paris. The son of musicologist Hiao-Tsun Ma, who left China in the 1930s, he was a musical prodigy, giving a public recital in Paris at the age of si...

spiritual

(Encyclopedia)spiritual, a religious folk song of American origin, particularly associated with African-American Protestants of the southern United States. The African-American spiritual, characterized by syncopati...