title: Agriculture in India

text: Vedic literature provides some of the earliest written record of agriculture in India. Rigveda hymns, for example, describes ploughing, fallowing, irrigation, fruit and vegetable cultivation. Other historical evidence suggests rice and cotton were cultivated in the Indus Valley, and ploughing patterns from the Bronze Age have been excavated at Kalibangan in Rajasthan. Bhumivargaha, an Indian Sanskrit text, suggested to be 2500 years old, classifies agricultural land into 12 categories: urvara (fertile), ushara (barren), maru (desert), aprahata (fallow), shadvala (grassy), pankikala (muddy), jalaprayah (watery), kachchaha (contiguous to water), sharkara (full of pebbles and pieces of limestone), sharkaravati (sandy), nadimatruka (watered from a river), and devamatruka (rainfed). Some archaeologists believe that rice was a domesticated crop along the banks of the river Ganges in the sixth millennium BC. So were species of winter cereals (barley, oats, and wheat) and legumes (lentil and chickpea) grown in northwest India before the sixth millennium BC. Other crops cultivated in India 3000 to 6000 years ago, include sesame, linseed, safflower, mustard, castor, mung bean, black gram, horse gram, pigeon pea, field pea, grass pea (khesari), fenugreek, cotton, jujube, grapes, dates, jack fruit, mango, mulberry, and black plum. Indians might have domesticated buffalo (the river type) 5000 years ago.


title: Agriculture in India

text: According to some scientists agriculture was widespread in the Indian peninsula, 10000–3000 years ago, well beyond the fertile plains of the north. For example, one study reports 12 sites in the southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka providing clear evidence of agriculture of pulses Vigna radiata and Macrotyloma uniflorum, millet-grasses (Brachiaria ramosa and Setaria verticillata), wheats (Triticum dicoccum, Triticum durum/aestivum), barley (Hordeum vulgare), hyacinth bean (Lablab purpureus), sorghum (Sorghum bicolor), pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum), finger millet (Eleusine coracana), cotton (Gossypium sp.), linseed (Linum sp.), as well as gathered fruits of Ziziphus and two Cucurbitaceae.


title: Agriculture in India

text: Some claim Indian agriculture began by 9000 BC as a result of early cultivation of plants, and domestication of crops. Settled life soon followed with implements and techniques being developed for agriculture. Double monsoons led to two harvests being reaped in one year. Indian products soon reached trading networks and foreign crops were introduced. Plants and animals—considered esses "reeds that produce honey without bees" being grown. These were locally called साखर, (Sākhara). On their return journey soldiers carried the "honey bearing reeds," thus spreading sugar and sugarcane agriculture. People in India had invented, by about 500 BC, the process to produce sugar crystals. In the local language, these crystals were called "khanda" (खण्ड), which is the source of the word "candy".


title: Agriculture in India

text: Before the 18th century, cultivation of sugarcane was largely confined to India. A few merchants began to trade in sugar – a luxury and an expensive spice in Europe until the 18th century. Sugar became widely popular in 18th-century Europe, then graduated to become a human necessity in the 19th century all over the world. Sugarcane plantations, just like cotton farms, became a major driver of large and forced human migrations in the 19th century and early 20th century – of people from Africa and from India, both in millions – influencing the ethnic mix, political conflicts and cultural evolution of Caribbean, South American, Indian Ocean and Pacific Island nations.


title: Agriculture in India

text: The history and past accomplishments of Indian agriculture thus influenced, in part, colonialism, slavery and slavery-like indentured labour practices in the new world, Caribbean wars and world history in 18th and 19th centuries.


title: Agriculture in India

text: Despite some stagnation during the later modern era the independent Republic of India was able to develop a comprehensive agricultural programme.


title: Agriculture in India

text: In the years since its independence, India has made immense progress towards food security. Indian population has tripled, and food-grain production more than quadrupled. There has been a substantial increase in available food-grain per capita.


title: Agriculture in India

text: Before the mid-1960s, India relied on imports and food aid to meet domestic requirements. However, two years of severe drought in 1965 and 1966 convinced India to reform its agricultural policy and that it could not rely on foreign aid and imports for food security. India adopted significant policy reforms focused on the goal of food grain self-sufficiency. This ushered in India's Green Revolution. It began with the decision to adopt superior yielding, disease resistant wheat varieties in combination with better farming knowledge to improve productivity. The state of Punjab led India's green revolution and earned the distinction of being the country's breadbasket.


title: Agriculture in India

text: The initial increase in production was centred on the irrigated areas of the states of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. With the farmers and the government officials focusing on farm productivity and knowledge transfer, India's total food grain production soared. A hectare of Indian wheat farm that produced an average of 0.8 tonnes in 1948, produced 4.7 tonnes of wheat in 1975 from the same land. Such rapid growth in farm productivity enabled India to become self-sufficient by the 1970s. It also empowered the smallholder farmers to seek further means to increase food staples produced per hectare. By 2000, Indian farms were adopting wheat varieties capable of yielding 6 tonnes of wheat per hectare.


title: Agriculture in India

text: With agricultural policy success in wheat, India's Green Revolution technology spread to rice. However, since irrigation infrastructure was very poor, Indian farmers innovated with tube-wells, to harvest ground water. When gains from the new technology reached their limits in the states of initial adoption, the technology spread in the 1970s and 1980s to the states of eastern India — Bihar, Odisha and West Bengal. The lasting benefits of the improved seeds and new technology extended principally to the irrigated areas which account for about one-third of the harvested crop area. In the 1980s, Indian agriculture policy shifted to "evolution of a production pattern in line with the demand pattern" leading to a shift in emphasis to other agricultural commodities like oilseed, fruit and vegetables. Farmers began adopting improved methods and technologies in dairying, fisheries and livestock, and meeting the diversified food needs of a growing population.


title: Agriculture in India

text: As with rice, the lasting benefits of improved seeds and improved farming technologies now largely depends on whether India develops infrastructure such as irrigation network, flood control systems, reliable electricity production capacity, all-season rural and urban highways, cold storage to prevent spoilage, modern retail, and competitive buyers of produce from Indian farmers. This is increasingly the focus of Indian agriculture policy.


title: Agriculture in India

text: India ranks 74 out of 113 major countries in terms of food security index. India's agricultural economy is undergoing structural changes. Between 1970 and 2011, the GDP share of agriculture has fallen from 43% to 16%. This isn't because of reduced importance of agriculture or a consequence of agricultural policy; rather, it is largely due to the rapid economic growth in services, industrial output, and non-agricultural sectors in India between 2000 and 2010.


title: Agriculture in India

text: Agricultural scientist MS Swaminathan has played a vital role in the green revolution. In 2013, NDTV named him one of 25 living legends of India for outstanding contributions to agriculture and making India a food-sovereign country.


title: Agriculture in India

text: Two states, Sikkim and Kerala have planned to shift fully to organic farming by 2015 and 2016 respectively.


title: Agriculture in India

text: Indian irrigation infrastructure includes a network of major and minor canals from rivers, groundwater well-based systems, tanks, and other rainwater harvesting projects for agricultural activities. Of these, the groundwater system is the largest. Of the 160 million hectares of cultivated land in India, about 39 million hectare can be irrigated by groundwater wells and an additional 22 million hectares by irrigation canals. In 2010, only about 35% of agricultural land in India was reliably irrigated. About 2/3rd cultivated land in India is dependent on monsoons. The improvements in irrigation infrastructure in the last 50 years have helped India improve food security, reduce dependence on monsoons, improve agricultural productivity and create rural job opportunities. Dams used for irrigation projects have helped provide drinking water to a growing rural population, control flood and prevent drought-related damage to agriculture. However, free electricity and attractive minimum support price for water intensive crops such as sugarcane and rice have encouraged ground water mining leading to groundwater depletion and poor water quality. A news report in 2019 states that more than 60% of the water available for farming in India is consumed by rice and sugar, two crops that occupy 24% of the cultivable area.


title: Agriculture in India

text: , India had a large and diverse agricultural sector, accounting, on average, for about 16% of GDP and 10% of export earnings. India's arable land area of 159.7 million hectares (394.6 million acres) is the second largest in the world, after the United States. Its gross irrigated crop area of 82.6 million hectares (215.6 million acres) is the largest in the world. India is among the top three global producers of many crops, including wheat, rice, pulses, cotton, peanuts, fruits and vegetables. Worldwide, , India had the largest herds of buffalo and cattle, is the largest producer of milk and has one of the largest and fastest growing poultry industries.


title: Agriculture in India

text: The following table presents the 20 most important agricultural products in India, by economic value, in 2009. Included in the table is the average productivity of India's farms for each produce. For context and comparison, included is the average of the most productive farms in the world and name of country where the most productive farms existed in 2010. The table suggests India has large potential for further accomplishments from productivity increases, in increased agricultural output and agricultural incomes.


title: Agriculture in India

text: In 2019, as per Food and Agriculture Organization Corporate Statistical Database (FAOSTAT) data, India produces various agriculture products in following values:


title: Agriculture in India

text: In addition to growth in total output, agriculture in India has shown an increase in average agricultural output per hectare in last 60 years. The table below presents average farm productivity in India over three farming years for some crops. Improving road and power generation infrastructure, knowledge gains and reforms has allowed India to increase farm productivity between 40% to 500% over 40 years. India's recent accomplishments in crop yields while being impressive, are still just 30% to 60% of the best crop yields achievable in the farms of developed as well as other developing countries. Additionally, despite these gains in farm productivity, losses after harvest due to poor infrastructure and unorganised retail cause India to experience some of the highest food losses in the world.


title: Agriculture in India

text: The Statistics Office of the Food and Agriculture Organization reported that, per final numbers for 2009, India had grown to become the world's largest producer of the following agricultural products:


title: Agriculture in India

text: Per final numbers for 2009, India is the world's second largest producer of the following agricultural products:


title: Agriculture in India

text: In 2009, India was the world's third largest producer of eggs, oranges, coconuts, tomatoes, peas and beans.


title: Agriculture in India

text: India and China are competing to establish the world record on rice yields. Yuan Longping of China National Hybrid Rice Research and Development Centre set a world record for rice yield in 2010 at 19 tonnes per hectare in a demonstration plot. In 2011, this record was surpassed by an Indian farmer, Sumant Kumar, with 22.4 tonnes per hectare in Bihar, also in a demonstration plot. These farmers claim to have employed newly developed rice breeds and system of rice intensification (SRI), a recent innovation in farming. The claimed Chinese and Indian yields have yet to be demonstrated on 7 hectare farm lots and that these are reproducible over two consecutive years on the same farm.


title: Agriculture in India

text: The total production and economic value of horticultural produce, such as fruits, vegetables and nuts has doubled in India over the 10-year period from 2002 to 2012. In 2012, the production from horticulture exceeded grain output for the first time. The total horticulture produce reached 277.4 million metric tonnes in 2013, making India the second largest producer of horticultural products after China. Of this, India in 2013 produced 81 million tonnes of fruits, 162 million tonnes of vegetables, 5.7 million tonnes of spices, 17 million tonnes of nuts and plantation products (cashew, cacao, coconut, etc.), 1 million tonnes of aromatic horticulture produce and 1.7 million tonnes of flowers (7.6 billion cut flowers).


title: Agriculture in India

text: During the 2013 fiscal year, India exported horticulture products worth , nearly double the value of its 2010 exports. Along with these farm-level gains, the losses between farm and consumer increased and are estimated to range between 51 and 82 million metric tonnes a year.


title: Agriculture in India

text: Organic agriculture has fed India for centuries and it is again a growing sector in India. Organic production offers clean and green production methods without the use of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides and it achieves a premium price in the market place. India has 6,50,000 organic producers, which is more that any other country. India also has 4 million hectares of land certified as organic wildculture, which is third in the world (after Finland and Zambia). As non availability of edible biomass is impeding the growth of animal husbandry in India, organic production of protein rich cattle, fish and poultry feed using biogas /methane/natural gas by cultivating Methylococcus capsulatus bacteria with tiny land and water foot print is a solution for ensuring adequate protein rich food to the population.


title: Agriculture in India

text: India has seen a huge growth in cooperative societies, mainly in the farming sector, since 1947 when the country gained independence from Britain. The country has networks of cooperatives at the local, regional, state and national levels that assist in agricultural marketing. The commodities that are mostly handled are food grains, jute, cotton, sugar, milk, fruit and nuts Support by the state government led to more than 25,000 cooperatives being set up by the 1990s in the state of Maharashtra.


title: Agriculture in India

text: Most of the sugar production in India takes place at mills owned by local cooperative societies. The members of the society include all farmers, small and large, supplying sugarcane to the mill. Over the last fifty years, the local sugar mills have played a crucial part in encouraging political participation and as a stepping stone for aspiring politicians. This is particularly true in the state of Maharashtra where a large number of politicians belonging to the Congress party or NCP had ties to sugar cooperatives from their local area and has created a symbiotic relationship between the sugar factories and local politics. However, the policy of "profits for the company but losses to be borne by the government", has made a number of these operations inefficient.


title: Agriculture in India

text: As with sugar, cooperatives play a significant part in the overall marketing of fruit and vegetables in India. Since the 1980s, the amount of produce handled by Cooperative societies has increased exponentially. Common fruit and vegetables marketed by the societies include bananas, mangoes, grapes, onions and many others.


title: Agriculture in India

text: Dairy farming based on the Amul Pattern, with a single marketing cooperative, is India's largest self-sustaining industry and its largest rural employment provider. Successful implementation of the Amul model has made India the world's largest milk producer. Here small, marginal farmers with a couple or so heads of milch cattle queue up twice daily to pour milk from their small containers into the village union collection points. The milk after processing at the district unions is then marketed by the state cooperative federation nationally under the Amul brand name, India's largest food brand. With the Anand pattern three-fourth of the price paid by the mainly urban consumers goes into the hands of millions of small dairy farmers, who are the owners of the brand and the cooperative.


title: Agriculture in India

text: Cooperative banks play a great part in providing credit in rural parts of India. Just like the sugar cooperatives, these institutions serve as the power base for local politicians.


title: Agriculture in India

text: A 2003 analysis of India's agricultural growth from 1970 to 2001 by the Food and Agriculture Organization identified systemic problems in Indian agriculture. For food staples, the annual growth rate in production during the six-year segments 1970–76, 1976–82, 1982–88, 1988–1994, 1994–2000 were found to be respectively 2.5, 2.5, 3.0, 2.6, and 1.8% per annum. Corresponding analyses for the index of total agricultural production show a similar pattern, with the growth rate for 1994–2000 attaining only 1.5% per annum.


title: Agriculture in India

text: The biggest problem of farmers is the low price for their farm produce. A recent study showed that proper pricing based on energy of production and equating farming wages to Industrial wages may be beneficial for the farmers.


title: Agriculture in India

text: India has very poor rural roads affecting timely supply of inputs and timely transfer of outputs from Indian farms. Irrigation systems are inadequate, leading to crop failures in some parts of the country because of lack of water. In other areas regional floods, poor seed quality and inefficient farming practices, lack of cold storage and harvest spoilage cause over 30% of farmer's produce going to waste, lack of organised retail and competing buyers thereby limiting Indian farmer's ability to sell the surplus and commercial crops.


title: Agriculture in India

text: The Indian farmer receives just 10% to 23% of the price the Indian consumer pays for exactly the same produce, the difference going to losses, inefficiencies and middlemen. Farmers in developed economies of Europe and the United States receive 64% to 81%.


title: Agriculture in India

text: Although India has attained self-sufficiency in food staples, the productivity of its farms is below that of Brazil, the United States, France and other nations. Indian wheat farms, for example, produce about a third of the wheat per hectare per year compared to farms in France. Rice productivity in India was less than half that of China. Other staples productivity in India is similarly low. Indian total factor productivity growth remains below 2% per annum; in contrast, China's total factor productivity growths is about 6% per annum, even though China also has smallholding farmers. Several studies suggest India could eradicate its hunger and malnutrition and be a major source of food for the world by achieving productivity comparable with other countries.


title: Agriculture in India

text: By contrast, Indian farms in some regions post the best yields, for sugarcane, cassava and tea crops.


title: Agriculture in India

text: Crop yields vary significantly between Indian states. Some states produce two to three times more grain per acre than others.


title: Agriculture in India

text: As the map shows, the traditional regions of high agricultural productivity in India are the north west (Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh), coastal districts on both coasts, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. In recent years, the states of Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh in central India and Gujarat in the west have shown rapid agricultural growth.


title: Agriculture in India

text: The table compares the statewide average yields for a few major agricultural crops in India, for 2001–2002.


title: Agriculture in India

text: Crop yields for some farms in India are within 90% of the best achieved yields by farms in developed countries such as the United States and in European Union. No single state of India is best in every crop. Tamil Nadu achieved highest yields in rice and sugarcane, Haryana in wheat and coarse grains, Karnataka in cotton, Bihar in pulses, while other states do well in horticulture, aquaculture, flower and fruit plantations. These differences in agricultural productivity are a function of local infrastructure, soil quality, micro-climates, local resources, farmer knowledge and innovations.


title: Agriculture in India

text: The Indian food distribution system is highly inefficient. Movement of agricultural produce is heavily regulated, with inter-state and even inter-district restrictions on marketing and movement of agricultural goods.


title: Agriculture in India

text: One study suggests Indian agricultural policy should best focus on improving rural infrastructure primarily in the form of irrigation and flood control infrastructure, knowledge transfer of better yielding and more disease resistant seeds. Additionally, cold storage, hygienic food packaging and efficient modern retail to reduce waste can improve output and rural incomes.


title: Agriculture in India

text: In 2012, the National Crime Records Bureau of India reported 13,754 farmer suicides. Farmer suicides account for 11.2% of all suicides in India. Activists and scholars have offered a number of conflicting reasons for farmer suicides, such as monsoon failure, high debt burdens, genetically modified crops, government policies, public mental health, personal issues and family problems.


title: Agriculture in India

text: Indian National Policy for Farmers of 2007 stated that "prime farmland must be conserved for agriculture except under exceptional circumstances, provided that the agencies that are provided with agricultural land for non-agricultural projects should compensate for treatment and full development of equivalent degraded or wastelands elsewhere". The policy suggested that, as far as possible, land with low farming yields or that was not farmable should be earmarked for non-agricultural purposes such as construction, industrial parks and other commercial development.


title: Agriculture in India

text: Amartya Sen offered a counter viewpoint, stating that "prohibiting the use of agricultural land for commercial and industrial development is ultimately self-defeating." He stated that agricultural land may be better suited for non-agriculture purposes if industrial production could generate many times more than the value of the product produced by agriculture. Sen suggested India needed to bring productive industry everywhere, wherever there are advantages of production, market needs and the locational preferences of managers, engineers, technical experts as well as unskilled labour because of education, healthcare and other infrastructure. He stated that instead of government controlling land allocation based on soil characteristics, the market economy should determine productive allocation of land.


title: Agriculture in India

text: The required level of investment for the development of marketing, storage and cold storage infrastructure is estimated to be huge. The government has not been able to implement schemes to raise investment in marketing infrastructure. Among these schemes are 'Construction of Rural Godowns', 'Market Research and Information Network', and 'Development / Strengthening of Agricultural Marketing Infrastructure, Grading and Standardisation'.


title: Agriculture in India

text: The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), established in 1905, was responsible for the search leading to the "Indian Green Revolution" of the 1970s. The ICAR is the apex body in agriculture and related allied fields, including research and education. The Union Minister of Agriculture is the president of the ICAR. The Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute develops new techniques for the design of agricultural experiments, analyses data in agriculture, and specialises in statistical techniques for animal and plant breeding.


title: Agriculture in India

text: Recently (May 2016) the government of India has set up the Farmers Commission to completely evaluate the agriculture programme. Its recommendations have had a mixed reception.


title: Agriculture in India

text: In November 2011, India announced major reforms in organised retail. These reforms would include logistics and retail of agricultural produce. The announcement led to major political controversy. The reforms were placed on hold by the government in December 2011.


title: Agriculture in India

text: In the summer of 2012, the subsidised electricity for pumping, which has caused an alarming drop in aquifer levels, put additional strain on the country's electrical grid due to a 19% drop in monsoon rains and may have contributed to a blackout across much of the country. In response the state of Bihar offered farmers over $100 million in subsidised diesel to operate their pumps.


title: Agriculture in India

text: Startups with niche technology and new business models are working to solve problems in Indian agriculture and its marketing. Kandawale is one such e-commerce website which sells Indian red onions to bulk users direct from farmers, reducing unnecessary cost escalations.


title: Agriculture in India

text: The contributions of agriculture in the Indian economy have been increasing over the years. According to the economic survey, the share of agriculture in gross domestic product (GDP) reached almost 20% for the first time in 17 years, making a sole bright spot in performance during financial year 2020–2021.


title: Agriculture in India

text: Modern farms and agriculture operations have changed over the years primarily because of advancements in technology, including sensors, devices, machines, and information technology.


title: Agriculture in India

text: Personalized e-commerce stores and market places have brought farming products like fertilizers, seeds, machines and equipment that help farmers grow quality products. Educational portals let farmers know innovative things about farming that increase the contributions of agriculture to the economy.


title: Agriculture in India

text: Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY) was launched in 2015 by the Narendra Modi regime to promote organic farming, under which farmers form organic farming clusters of 50 or more farmers with a minimum total area of 50 acres to share organic methods using traditional sustainable methods, costs, and marketing, etc. It initially aimed to have 10,000 clusters by 2018 with at least 500,000 acres under organic farming and government "cover the certification costs and promote organic farming through the use of traditional resources." Government provides INR 20,000 per acre benefit over three years.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Porgy and Bess () is an English-language opera by American composer George Gershwin, with a libretto written by author DuBose Heyward and lyricist Ira Gershwin. It was adapted from Dorothy Heyward and DuBose Heyward's play "Porgy", itself an adaptation of DuBose Heyward's 1925 novel of the same name.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: "Porgy and Bess" was first performed in Boston on September 30, 1935, before it moved to Broadway in New York City. It featured a cast of classically trained African-American singers—a daring artistic choice at the time. A 1976 Houston Grand Opera production gained it a renewed popularity after languishing in the doldrums of the 1960s and early 1970s, and it is now one of the best known and most frequently performed operas.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The libretto of "Porgy and Bess" tells the story of Porgy, a disabled black street beggar living in the slums of Charleston. It deals with his attempts to rescue Bess from the clutches of Crown, her violent and possessive lover, and Sportin' Life, her drug dealer. The opera plot generally follows the stage play.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: In the years following Gershwin's death, "Porgy and Bess" was adapted for smaller-scale performances. It was adapted as a film in 1959. Some of the songs in the opera, such as "Summertime", became popular and are frequently recorded. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the trend has been toward productions with greater fidelity to Gershwin's original intentions. Smaller-scale productions also continue to be mounted. A complete recorded version of the score was released in 1976; since then, it has been recorded several times.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The origin of "Porgy and Bess" is DuBose Heyward's 1925 novel "Porgy". Heyward produced a play by the same name with Dorothy Heyward.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: George Gershwin read "Porgy" in 1926 and proposed to Heyward to collaborate on an operatic version. In 1934, Gershwin and Heyward began work on the project by visiting the author's native Charleston, South Carolina. In a 1935 "New York Times" article, Gershwin explained his motivation for calling "Porgy and Bess" a folk opera:


title: Porgy and Bess

text: "Porgy and Bess" is a folk tale. Its people naturally would sing folk music. When I first began work on the music I decided against the use of original folk material because I wanted the music to be all of one piece. Therefore I wrote my own spirituals and folksongs. But they are still folk music—and therefore, being in operatic form, "Porgy and Bess" becomes a folk opera.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: In the fall of 1933 Gershwin and Heyward signed a contract with the Theatre Guild to write the opera. In the summer of 1934 Gershwin and Heyward went to Folly Beach, South Carolina (a small island near Charleston), where Gershwin got a feel for the locale and its music. He worked on the opera there and in New York. Ira Gershwin, in New York, wrote lyrics to some of the opera's classic songs, most notably "It Ain't Necessarily So". Most of the lyrics, including "Summertime", were written by Heyward, who also wrote the libretto.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Gershwin's first version of the opera, running four hours (counting the two intermissions), was performed privately in a concert version in Carnegie Hall, in the fall of 1935. He chose as his choral director Eva Jessye, who also directed her own renowned choir. The world premiere performance took place at the Colonial Theatre in Boston on September 30, 1935—the try-out for a work intended initially for Broadway where the opening took place at the Alvin Theatre in New York City on October 10, 1935. During rehearsals and in Boston, Gershwin made many cuts and refinements to shorten the running time and tighten the dramatic action. The run on Broadway lasted 124 performances. The production and direction were entrusted to Rouben Mamoulian, who had previously directed the Broadway productions of Heyward's play "Porgy". The music director was Alexander Smallens. The leading roles were played by Todd Duncan and Anne Brown. Brown was a 20-year-old student at Juilliard, the first African-American vocalist admitted there, when she read that George Gershwin was going to write a musical version of "Porgy". She wrote him and asked to sing for him, and Gershwin's secretary invited her. Gershwin was impressed and began asking Brown to come and sing the songs as he composed them for "Porgy". The character of Bess was originally a secondary character, but as Gershwin was impressed with Brown's singing, he expanded the part of Bess and cast Brown. When they had completed rehearsals and were ready to begin previews, Gershwin invited Brown to join him for lunch. At that meeting, he told her, "I want you to know, Miss Brown, that henceforth and forever after, George Gershwin's opera will be known as "Porgy and Bess"." Influential vaudeville artist John W. Bubbles created the role of Sportin' Life; the role of Serena was created by Ruby Elzy.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: After the Broadway run, a tour started on January 27, 1936, in Philadelphia and traveled to Pittsburgh and Chicago before ending in Washington, DC, on March 21, 1936. During the Washington run, the cast—as led by Todd Duncan—protested segregation at the National Theatre. Eventually management gave in to the demands, resulting in the first integrated audience for a performance of any show at that venue.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: In 1938, many of the original cast reunited for a West Coast revival that played in Los Angeles and at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco. Avon Long took on the role of Sportin' Life for the first time, a role he continued to play in many productions over a long career.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Noted director and producer Cheryl Crawford produced professional stock theater in Maplewood, New Jersey, for three very successful seasons. The last of these closed with "Porgy and Bess", which she co-produced with John Wildberg. In refashioning it in the style of musical theatre which Americans were used to hearing from Gershwin, Crawford produced a drastically cut version of the opera compared with the first Broadway staging. The orchestra was reduced, the cast was halved, and many recitatives were reduced to spoken dialog.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Having seen the performance, theater owner Lee Shubert arranged for Crawford to bring her production to Broadway. The show opened at the Majestic Theatre in January 1942. Duncan and Brown reprised their roles as the title characters, with Alexander Smallens again conducting. In June, contralto Etta Moten, whom Gershwin had first envisioned as Bess, replaced Brown in the role. Moten was such a success that Bess became her signature role. The Crawford production ran for nine months and was far more successful financially than the original.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Radio station WOR in New York broadcast a live one-hour version on May 7, 1942. The cast included Todd Duncan, Anne Brown, Ruby Elzy, Eloise C. Uggams, Avon Long, Edward Matthews, Harriet Jackson, Georgette Harvey, Jack Carr, and the Eva Jessye Choir; the WOR Symphony was conducted by Alfred Wallenstein. The 12-inch-diameter 78 rpm, glass base, lacquer-coated disks were transferred to open-reel tape on February 6, 1975.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: On March 27, 1943, the opera had its European premiere at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen. Performed during the Nazi occupation of the country, this performance was notable for being performed by an all-white cast made up in blackface. After 22 sold-out performances, the Nazis forced the theatre to close the production. Other all- or mostly white productions in Europe, reflecting contemporary demographics in the countries, took place in Zürich, Switzerland, in 1945 and 1950, and Gothenburg and Stockholm, Sweden, in 1948.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Blevins Davis and Robert Breen produced a revival in 1952 which restored much of the music cut in the Crawford version, including many of the recitatives. It divided the opera into two acts, with the intermission occurring after Crown forces Bess to stay on Kittiwah Island. This version restored the work to a more operatic form, though not all of the recitatives were retained. In this version, "Porgy and Bess" was warmly received throughout Europe. The London premiere took place on October 9, 1952, at the Stoll Theatre where the opera continued until February 10, 1953.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: This production's original cast featured Americans Leontyne Price as Bess, William Warfield as Porgy, and Cab Calloway as Sportin' Life, a role that Gershwin had composed with him in mind. The role of Ruby was played by a young Maya Angelou. Price and Warfield met and wed while on the tour. The role of Porgy was the first for Warfield after his appearance as Joe singing "Ol' Man River" in the popular 1951 MGM film of "Show Boat".


title: Porgy and Bess

text: After a tour of Europe financed by the United States Department of State, the production came to Broadway's Ziegfeld Theatre in March 1953. It later toured North America. After completing its North American run in Montreal, the company embarked on an international tour, with LeVern Hutcherson as Porgy and Gloria Davy as Bess. The production first performed in Venice, Paris, and London, and in other cities in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia. The company also made a stop at the Cairo Opera House in Egypt in January 1955. In 1955–1956 the company toured in cities in the Middle East, Africa, Russia, and Latin America.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: During this tour, "Porgy and Bess" was presented for the first time at La Scala in Milan in February 1955. A historic yet tense premiere took place in Moscow in December 1955; it was during the Cold War and the first time an American theater group had been to the Soviet capital since the Bolshevik Revolution. Author Truman Capote traveled with the cast and crew, and wrote an account included in his book "The Muses Are Heard".


title: Porgy and Bess

text: This 1965 production by New Zealand Opera included several Māori opera singers, deemed by the Gershwin trust to be consistent with the requirement for black artists as the cast. The experience of working with a Broadway musical director, Ella Gerber, and being in the cast (from chorus to a minor character role) was a unique opportunity for New Zealand opera singers.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: During the 1960s and early 1970s, "Porgy and Bess" mostly languished on the shelves, a victim of its perceived racism. Though new productions took place in 1961 and 1964, along with a Vienna Volksoper premiere in 1965 (again with William Warfield as Porgy), these did little to change many African Americans' opinions of the work. Many music critics still had not accepted it as a true opera.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: A new staging of "Porgy and Bess" was produced by the Houston Grand Opera in 1976, directed by Jack O'Brien with musical direction by John DeMain; it restored the complete original score for the first time. Following its debut in Houston, the production opened on Broadway at the Uris Theatre on September 25, 1976 and was recorded complete by RCA Records. This version was very influential in turning the tide of opinion about the work.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: For the first time, an American opera company, not a Broadway production company, had tackled the opera. This production was based on Gershwin's original full score. It did not incorporate the cuts and other changes that Gershwin had made before the New York premiere, nor the ones made for the 1942 Cheryl Crawford revival or the 1959 film version. It allowed the public to take in the operatic whole as first envisioned by the composer. In this light, "Porgy and Bess" was accepted as an opera. Donnie Ray Albert and Robert Mosley alternated performances in the role of Porgy. Clamma Dale and Larry Marshall starred, respectively, as Bess and Sportin' Life. This production won the Houston Grand Opera a Tony Award—the only opera ever to receive one—and a 1978 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording. The conductor was John DeMain.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Another Broadway production was staged in 1983 at Radio City Music Hall with conductor C. William Harwood, based on the Houston production.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The Metropolitan Opera presented a production of "Porgy and Bess" in 1985 after considering it since the 1930s. It opened February 6, 1985, with a cast including Simon Estes, Grace Bumbry, Bruce Hubbard, Gregg Baker and Florence Quivar. The Met production was directed by Nathaniel Merrill and designed by Robert O'Hearn. The conductor was James Levine. The production received 16 performances in its first season and was revived in 1986, 1989 and 1990, for a total of 54 performances.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Trevor Nunn first tackled the work in an acclaimed 1986 production at England's Glyndebourne Festival. The 1986 Trevor Nunn production was scenically expanded and videotaped for television in 1993 (see below in "Television"). These productions were also based on the "complete score," without incorporating Gershwin's revisions. A semi-staged version of this production was performed at the Proms in 1998.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The centennial celebration of the Gershwin brothers from 1996 to 1998 included a new production as well. On February 24–25, 2006, the Nashville Symphony, under the direction of John Mauceri, gave a concert performance at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center. It incorporated Gershwin's cuts made for the New York premiere, thus giving the audience an idea of what the opera sounded like on its Broadway opening. In 2000 and 2002 the New York City Opera had a revival directed by Tazewell Thompson. In 2007, Los Angeles Opera staged a revival directed by Francesca Zambello and conducted by John DeMain, who led the history-making Houston Opera revival of "Porgy and Bess" in 1976.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: South Africa's Cape Town Opera has frequently performed "Porgy and Bess" abroad, most notably with the Welsh National Opera, NorrlandsOperan, Deutsche Oper Berlin and at the Wales Millennium Centre, Royal Festival Hall and Edinburgh Festival Theatre. In October 2010, its planned tour of the opera to Israel was criticised by Desmond Tutu.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess" premiered on November 9, 2006, at the Savoy Theatre (London), directed by Trevor Nunn. (Although that was the title given to this production, the 1993 television adaptation of Nunn's 1986 production had also used it.) For this new production, he adapted the lengthy opera to fit the conventions of musical theatre. Working with the Gershwin and Heyward estates, Nunn used dialogue from the original novel and subsequent Broadway stage play to replace the recitatives with naturalistic scenes. He did not use operatic voices in this production, but relied on musical theatre actors as leads. Gareth Valentine provided the musical adaptation. Despite mostly positive reviews, Nunn's production closed months early because of poor box office returns.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: This original cast of this version included Clarke Peters as Porgy, Nicola Hughes as Bess, O. T. Fagbenle as Sportin' Life, and Cornell S. John as Crown.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Another production titled "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess", directed by Diane Paulus with book adapted by Suzan-Lori Parks and music adapted by Diedre Murray, was presented by the American Repertory Theater (ART) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Broadway production was produced by Buddy Freitag and Barbara Freitag. Previews started August 17, and the show opened August 31, 2011. Following Trevor Nunn's latest production of the work, the ART "Porgy" was the second production initiated by the Gershwin and Heyward estates to adapt the opera for the musical theatre stage. Again spoken dialogue, here written by Parks, replaced the opera's sung recitatives. William David Brohn and Christopher Jahnke created new orchestrations for the production.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Before the opening, Paulus, Parks and Murray made statements to the press about the production's primary goal being to "introduce the work to the next generation of theatergoers". They discussed changes to the opera's plot, dialogue and score that were being explored to make the work more appealing to a contemporary audience. In response, Stephen Sondheim wrote an editorial letter criticizing Paulus, McDonald and Parks' "disdain" toward the work, and criticized the new title because it underplayed the contribution of Heyward. Critic Hilton Als countered in "The New Yorker" that Sondheim had very little exposure to black culture and that the Paulus version succeeded in "humanizing the depiction of race onstage."


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The production began previews on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in December 2011 and officially opened on January 12, 2012. The original cast included Audra McDonald as Bess, Norm Lewis as Porgy, David Alan Grier as Sportin' Life, Phillip Boykin as Crown, Nikki Renee Daniels as Clara, and Joshua Henry as Jake. All of the major roles are played by the same cast as in Cambridge.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Early reviews of the show were positive to mixed. All praised McDonald's performance of Bess, but critics were divided on the success of the adaptation, staging and setting. Some praised the intimate scale of the drama and the believability of the performances; others found the staging to be unfocused and the settings to lack atmosphere. "Time" magazine ranked the show as its number two choice among theatre productions in 2011.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The production was nominated for 10 awards in the 2012 Tony Awards, winning Best Revival of a Musical and Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical for McDonald. The production ran through September 23, 2012. It played 322 performances, 17 more than the 1953 revival, making it the longest-running production of "Porgy and Bess" on Broadway thus far.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: This production ran at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre from 17 July to 23 August. Cast members included Rufus Bonds Jr (Porgy), Nicola Hughes (Bess), Cedric Neal (Sportin' Life), Phillip Boykin (Crown), Sharon D. Clarke (Mariah), Jade Ewen (Clara) and Golda Rosheuvel (Serena). The production was directed by Timothy Sheader, and also used the book adapted by Suzan-Lori Parks, It was nominated at the Olivier Awards for Best Musical Revival.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: After an absence of nearly thirty years on the Met stage, the company staged the new 2018 London production conducted by David Robertson in Fall 2019. It featured a cast including Golda Schultz, Latonia Moore, Angel Blue, Elizabeth Llewellyn, Denyce Graves, Eric Owens, Frederick Ballentine, Alfred Walker, and Ryan Speedo Green.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The production was hailed as "splendid" by "The New York Times". A live cast album, released on December 17, 2019, won a Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The opera begins with a short introduction which segues into an evening in Catfish Row. Jasbo Brown entertains the community with his piano playing. Clara, a young mother, sings a lullaby to her baby ("Summertime") as the working men prepare for a game of craps ("Roll them Bones"). One of the players, Robbins, scorns his wife Serena's demands that he not play, retorting that on a Saturday night, a man has the right to play. Clara's husband, the fisherman Jake, tries his own lullaby ("A Woman is a Sometime Thing") with little effect. Little by little, other characters in the opera enter Catfish Row, among them Mingo, another fisherman, and Jim, a cotton-hauling stevedore who, tired of his job, decides to give it up and join Jake and the other fishermen. Porgy, a disabled beggar, enters on his goat cart to organize the game. Peter, an elderly "honey man" [honey vendor] returns, singing his vendor's call. Crown, a strong and brutal stevedore, storms in with his woman, Bess, and buys cheap whiskey and some "happy dust" off the local dope peddler, Sportin' Life. Bess is shunned by the women of the community, especially the pious Serena and the matriarchal cookshop owner Maria, but Porgy softly defends her. The game begins. One by one, the players get crapped out, leaving only Robbins and Crown, who has become extremely drunk. When Robbins wins, Crown attempts to prevent him from taking his winnings. A brawl ensues, which ends when Crown stabs Robbins with Jim's cotton hook, killing him. Crown runs, telling Bess to fend for herself but that he will be back for her when the heat dies down. Sportin' Life gives her a dose of happy dust and offers to take her with him when he goes to New York, but she rejects him. He flees, and Bess begins to pound on doors, but is rejected by all of the residents of Catfish Row, with the exception of Porgy, who lets her in.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The mourners sing a spiritual to Robbins ("Gone, Gone, Gone"). To raise money for his burial, a saucer is placed on his chest for the mourners' donations ("Overflow"). Bess enters with Porgy and attempts to donate to the burial fund, but Serena rejects her money until Bess explains that she is now living with Porgy. A white detective enters and coldly tells Serena that she must bury her husband the next day, or his body will be given to medical students (for dissection). He suddenly accuses Peter of Robbins's murder. Peter denies his guilt and says Crown was the murderer. The Detective orders Peter to be arrested as a material witness, whom he will force to testify against Crown. Serena laments her loss in "My Man's Gone Now". The undertaker enters. The saucer holds only fifteen dollars of the needed twenty-five, but he agrees to bury Robbins as long as Serena promises to pay him back. Bess, who has been sitting in silence slightly apart from the rest of those gathered, suddenly begins to sing a gospel song and the chorus joyfully join in, welcoming her into the community. ("Oh, the Train is at de Station")


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Jake and the other fishermen prepare for work ("It take a long pull to get there"). Clara asks Jake not to go because it is time for the annual storms, but he tells her that they desperately need the money. This causes Porgy to sing from his window about his new, happy-go-lucky outlook on life. ("I got plenty o' nuttin"). Sportin' Life waltzes around selling "happy dust", but soon incurs the wrath of Maria, who threatens him. ("I hates yo' struttin' style"). A fraudulent lawyer, Frazier, arrives and farcically divorces Bess from Crown. When he discovers Bess and Crown were not married, he raises his price from a dollar to a dollar and a half. Archdale, a white lawyer, enters and informs Porgy that Peter will soon be released. The bad omen of a buzzard flies over Catfish Row and Porgy demands that it leave now that he finally has found happiness. ("Buzzard keep on flyin' over".)


title: Porgy and Bess

text: As the rest of Catfish Row prepares for the church picnic on nearby Kittiwah Island, Sportin' Life again offers to take Bess to New York with him; she refuses. He attempts to give her some "happy dust" despite her claims that she's given up drugs, but Porgy grabs his arm and scares him off. Sportin' Life leaves, reminding Bess as he goes that her men friends come and go, but he will be there all along. Bess and Porgy are now left alone, and express their love for each other ("Bess, You Is My Woman Now"). The chorus re-enters in high spirits as they prepare to leave for the picnic ("Oh, I can't sit down"). Bess is invited to the picnic by Maria, but she demurs as Porgy cannot come (due to his disability, he cannot get on the boat), but Maria insists. Bess leaves Porgy behind as they go off to the picnic. Porgy watches the boat leave ("I got plenty o' nuttin" reprise).


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The chorus enjoys themselves at the picnic ("I ain't got no shame"). Sportin' Life presents the chorus his cynical views on the Bible ("It Ain't Necessarily So"), causing Serena to chastise them ("Shame on all you sinners!"). Everyone gets ready to leave. As Bess, who has lagged behind, tries to follow them, Crown emerges from the bushes. He reminds her that Porgy is "temporary" and laughs off her claims that she has been living decently now. Bess wants to leave Crown forever and attempts to make him forget about her ("Oh, what you want wid Bess?") but Crown refuses to give her up. He grabs her and will not let her go to the boat, which leaves without her, and then forcefully kisses her. He laughs at his conquest as her resistance begins to fail, and commands her to get into the woods, where his intentions are only too clear.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: A week later, Jake leaves to go fishing with his crew, one of whom observes that it looks as if a storm is coming in. Peter, still unsure of his crime, returns from prison. Meanwhile, Bess is lying in Porgy's room delirious with fever, which she has had ever since returning from Kittiwah Island. Serena prays to remove Bess's affliction ("Oh, Doctor Jesus"), and promises Porgy that Bess will be well by five o'clock. As the day passes, a strawberry woman, Peter (the Honey Man) and a crab man each pass by with their wares ("Vendors' Trio"). As the clock chimes five, Bess recovers from her fever. Porgy tells Bess that he knows she has been with Crown, and she admits that Crown has promised to return for her. Porgy tells her she is free to go if she wants to, and she tells him that although she wants to stay ("I Wants to Stay Here"), she is afraid of Crown's hold on her. Porgy asks her what would happen if there was no Crown, and Bess tells Porgy she loves him and begs him to protect her. Porgy promises that she will never have to be afraid again ("I Loves You, Porgy").


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Clara watches the water, fearful for Jake. Maria tries to allay her fears, but suddenly the hurricane bell begins to ring.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The residents of Catfish Row are all gathered in Serena's room for shelter from the hurricane. They drown out the sound of the storm with prayers and hymns ("Oh, Doctor Jesus") while Sportin' Life mocks their assumption that the storm is a signal of Judgment Day. Clara desperately sings her lullaby ("Summertime" [reprise]). A knock is heard at the door, and the chorus believes it to be Death ("Oh there's somebody knocking at the door"). Crown enters dramatically, having swum from Kittiwah Island, seeking Bess. He shows no fear of God, claiming that after the long struggle from Kittiwah, God and he are friends. The chorus tries to drown out his blaspheming with more prayer, and he taunts them by singing a vulgar song ("A red-headed woman"). Suddenly, Clara sees Jake's boat float past the window, upside-down, and she runs out to try to save him, handing her baby to Bess. Bess asks that one of the men go out with her, and Crown taunts Porgy, who cannot go. Crown goes himself, yelling out as he leaves "Alright, Big Friend! We're on for another Bout!" The chorus continue to pray as the storm rises.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: A group of women mourn Clara, Jake, and all of those who have been killed in the storm ("Clara, Clara, don't you be downhearted"). When they begin to mourn for Crown as well, Sportin' Life laughs at them and is told off by Maria. He insinuates that Crown may not be dead, and observes that when a woman has a man, maybe she's got him for keeps, but if she has "two" men, then it's highly likely she'll end up with none. Bess is heard singing Clara's lullaby to her baby, whom she is now taking care of. ("Summertime" [reprise]). Once Catfish Row is dark, Crown stealthily enters to claim Bess, but is confronted by Porgy. A fight ensues that ends when Porgy kills Crown. Porgy exclaims to Bess, "You've got a man now. You've got Porgy!"


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The detective enters and talks with Serena and her friends about the murders of Crown and Robbins. They deny knowledge of Crown's murder, frustrating the detective. Needing a witness for the coroner's inquest, he next questions an apprehensive Porgy. Once Porgy admits to knowing Crown, he is ordered to come and identify Crown's body. Sportin' Life tells Porgy that corpses bleed in the presence of their murderers, and the detective will use this to hang Porgy. Porgy refuses to identify the body, but is dragged off anyway. Bess is distraught, and Sportin' Life puts his plan into action. He tells her that Porgy will be locked up for a long time, and points out that he is the only one still here. He offers her happy dust, and though she refuses, he forces it on her. After she takes a whiff, he paints a seductive picture of her life with him in New York ("There's a boat dat's leavin' soon for New York"). She regains her strength and rushes inside, slamming the door on his face, but he leaves a packet of happy dust on her doorstep, and settles down to wait.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: On a beautiful morning, Porgy is released from jail, where he has been arrested for contempt of court after refusing to look at Crown's body. He returns to Catfish Row much richer after playing craps with his cellmates. He gives gifts to the residents, and pulls out a beautiful red dress for Bess. He does not understand why everyone seems so uneasy at his return. He sees Clara's baby is now with Serena and realizes something is wrong. He asks where Bess is. Maria and Serena tell him that Bess has run off with Sportin' Life to New York ("Oh Bess, Oh Where's my Bess?"). Porgy calls for his goat cart, and resolves to leave Catfish Row to find her. He prays for strength, and begins his journey. ("Oh, Lawd, I'm on my way")


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Ira Gershwin stipulated that only blacks be allowed to play the lead roles when the opera was performed in the United States, launching the careers of several prominent opera singers. Gershwin sought to write a true jazz opera and believed that Metropolitan Opera staff singers could never master the jazz idiom, which could instead only be sung by a black cast. Some black singers were overjoyed at Gershwin's work, going so far as to describe him as the "Abraham Lincoln of Negro music"..


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Nevertheless, the opera's depiction of African Americans attracted controversy from the outset. Virgil Thomson, a white American composer, stated that "Folklore subjects recounted by an outsider are only valid as long as the folk in question is unable to speak for itself, which is certainly not true of the American Negro in 1935." An apocryphal quote attributed to Duke Ellington allegedly stated "the times are here to debunk Gershwin's lampblack Negroisms," but the quote was probably invented by a journalist who interviewed Ellington about the opera. Ellington publicly repudiated the article shortly after its publication. Ellington's response to the 1952 Breen revival was completely the opposite. His telegram to the producer read: "Your "Porgy and Bess" the superbest, singing the gonest, acting the craziest, Gershwin the greatest." Several of the members of the original cast later stated that they, too, had concerns that their characters might play into a stereotype that African Americans lived in poverty, took drugs, and solved their problems with their fists.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: A planned production by the Negro Repertory Company of Seattle in the late 1930s, part of the Federal Theatre Project, was cancelled because actors were displeased with what they viewed as a racist portrayal of aspects of African-American life. The director initially envisioned that they would perform the play in a "Negro dialect." These Pacific Northwest African American actors, who did not speak in such dialect, would be coached in it. Florence James attempted a compromise of dropping the use of dialect but the production was canceled.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Another production of "Porgy and Bess", this time at the University of Minnesota in 1939, ran into similar troubles. According to Barbara Cyrus, one of the few black students then at the university, members of the local African-American community saw the play as "detrimental to the race" and as a vehicle that promoted racist stereotypes. The play was cancelled due to pressure from the African-American community, which saw their success as proof of the increasing political power of blacks in Minneapolis–Saint Paul.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The belief that "Porgy and Bess" was racist gained strength during the civil rights movement and Black Power movement of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. As these movements advanced, "Porgy and Bess" was seen as more and more out of date. When the play was revived in the 1960s, social critic and African-American educator Harold Cruse called it, "The most incongruous, contradictory cultural symbol ever created in the Western World."


title: Porgy and Bess

text: In the 1976 Houston Opera production, the director, Sherwin Goldman, had trouble finding interested performers. Goldman, a white Texas native and a graduate of Yale and Oxford Universities, recalled, "I was auditioning singers all around the country, I guess thirty cities in all, from theater groups to church choirs, but was having a hard time finding directors ... I don't think there was a single black person, of those who had never been associated with Porgy, who didn't seriously bad-mouth it." Nevertheless, a cast was assembled of African American classically trained performers from all around the country.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Gershwin's all-black opera was also unpopular with some celebrated black artists. Harry Belafonte declined to play Porgy in the late 1950s film version, so the role went to Sidney Poitier. Poitier found the opera insulting and only took on the film role due to coercion from producer Samuel Goldwyn. Betty Allen, president of The Harlem School of the Arts, admittedly loathed the piece, and Grace Bumbry, who excelled in the 1985 Metropolitan Opera production as Bess, made the often cited statement: I thought it beneath me, I felt I had worked far too hard, that we had come far too far to have to retrogress to 1935. My way of dealing with it was to see that it was really a piece of Americana, of American history, whether we liked it or not. Whether I sing it or not, it was still going to be there.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Over time, however, the opera gained acceptance from the opera community and some in the African-American community. Maurice Peress stated in 2004 that ""Porgy and Bess" belongs as much to the black singer-actors who bring it to life as it does to the Heywards and the Gershwins."


title: Porgy and Bess

text: During the era of apartheid in South Africa, several South African theatre companies planned to put on all-white productions of "Porgy and Bess". Ira Gershwin, as heir to his brother, consistently refused to permit these productions to be staged. But in 2009, Cape Town Opera's production, set in 1970s South Africa and inspired by life in Soweto, toured Britain, opening at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff and going on to the Royal Festival Hall in London and Edinburgh Festival Theatre. Most of the cast were black South Africans; American singers involved in the production have found the "passionate identification with the opera" by the South African singers "a wake-up call".


title: Porgy and Bess

text: A 2017/2018 staging of the opera by the Hungarian State Opera featured a predominantly white cast. While the opera was presented in the context of the Syrian migrant crisis (moved from Catfish Row to an airport), the controversy of recasting continued. While the Hungarian State Opera, in discussions with the Tams-Witmark Music Library originally agreed to the casting requirements, it ultimately declined to do so when the wording was not included in the written contract. This production galvanized conservative commentators who lauded it as a success over "political correctness". Ultimately, Tams-Witmark required the Hungarian State Opera to include in its printed material that this production "is contrary to the requirements for the presentation of this work".


title: Porgy and Bess

text: In the summer of 1934, George Gershwin worked on the opera in Charleston, South Carolina. He drew inspiration from the James Island Gullah community, which he felt had preserved some African musical traditions.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The music reflects his New York jazz roots, but also draws on southern black traditions. Gershwin modeled the pieces after each type of folk song which the composer knew about; jubilees, blues, praying songs, street cries, work songs, and spirituals and blended them with arias and recitatives from European opera tradition.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The most fundamental influences on the composition and orchestrations in evidence throughout "Porgy and Bess", aside from those of American jazz and black religious music, are the European composers whose music Gershwin studied and absorbed during his tutelage with the likes of Edward Kilenyi, Rubin Goldmark, Charles Hambitzer, and Henry Cowell. Cowell's key contribution, however, may have been to suggest that Gershwin study with Joseph Schillinger, whose influence, if not as important as his followers claim, is notable throughout. Some commenters have believed they heard similarities to melodies heard in Jewish liturgical music in Gershwin's opera. Gershwin biographer Edward Jablonski heard a similarity between the melody of "It Ain't Necessarily So" and the Haftarah blessing, while others hear similarities with Torah blessing. In a sociological survey of Jewish American culture, the author remarked, "One musicologist detected 'an uncanny resemblance' between the folk tune 'Havenu [sic] Shalom Aleichem' and the spiritual [sic] 'It Take a Long Pull to Get There' from "Porgy and Bess"."


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The score makes use of a series of leitmotifs. Many of these represent individual characters: some of these are fragments of the opera's set numbers (Sportin' Life, for example, is frequently represented by the melody which sets the title words of "It Ain't Necessarily So"). Other motifs represent objects (such as the sleazy chromatic "Happy Dust" motif) or places, notably Catfish Row. Many of the through-composed passages of the score combine or develop these leitmotifs in order to reflect the on-stage action. Particularly sophisticated uses of this techniques can be seen after the aria "There's a boat dat's leaving soon for New York" in act 3, scene 2. The opera also frequently reprises its set numbers (these might be considered extended "Leitsektionen"). Notable in this respect are the reprises of "Bess, you is my woman now" and "I got plenty o' nuttin' " which conclude act 2, scene 1. The song "Summertime" is stated four times alone.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The work is scored for two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes (second doubling English horn), three clarinets in B-flat (second and third doubling alto saxophones), one bass clarinet in B-flat (doubling fourth clarinet and tenor saxophone), one bassoon; three French horns in F, three trumpets in B-flat, one trombone, one bass trombone, one tuba; a percussion section that includes timpani, xylophone, triangle, glockenspiel, suspended and crash cymbals, snare drum, tom-toms, bass drum, African drums, an unspecified small drum, tubular bells, wood block, temple blocks, cowbell, sandpaper and train whistle; one piano; one banjo; and strings.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The 1976 and 1977 recordings of the opera won Grammy Awards for Best Opera Recording, making "Porgy and Bess" the only opera to win this award over two consecutive years.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Days after the Broadway premiere of "Porgy and Bess" with an all-black cast, two white opera singers, Lawrence Tibbett and Helen Jepson, both members of the Metropolitan Opera, recorded highlights of the opera in a New York sound studio, released as "Highlights from Porgy and Bess".


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Members of the original cast were not recorded until 1940, when Todd Duncan and Anne Brown recorded selections from the work. Two years later, when the first Broadway revival occurred, American Decca rushed other members of the cast into the recording studio to record other selections not recorded in 1940. These two albums were marketed as a two-volume 78 rpm set "Selections from George Gershwin's Folk Opera Porgy and Bess". After LPs began to be manufactured in 1948, the recording was transferred to LP, and subsequently, to CD.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: In 1942, Mabel Mercer and Cy Walter released a 78-RPM jazz album of excerpts from the opera on an obscure label.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Although members of the jazz community initially felt that a Jewish-American composer and a white novelist could not adequately convey the plight of black people in a 1930s Charleston ghetto, jazz musicians warmed up more to the opera after twenty years, and more jazz-based recordings of it began to appear. Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald recorded an album in 1957 in which they sang and scatted Gershwin's tunes. The next year, Miles Davis recorded what some consider a seminal interpretation of the opera arranged for big band.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: In 1959, Columbia Masterworks Records released a soundtrack album of Samuel Goldwyn's film version of "Porgy and Bess", which had been made that year. It was not a complete version of the opera, nor was it even a complete version of the film soundtrack, which featured more music than could be contained on a single LP. The album remained in print until the early 1970s, when it was withdrawn from stores at the request of the Gershwin estate. It is the first stereo album of music from "Porgy and Bess" with an all-black cast. However, according to the album liner notes, Sammy Davis Jr. was under contract to another recording company, and his vocal tracks for the film could not be used on the album. Cab Calloway substituted his own vocals of Sportin' Life's songs. Robert McFerrin was the singing voice of Porgy, and Adele Addison the singing voice of Bess. The white singer Loulie Jean Norman was the singing voice of Clara (portrayed onscreen by Diahann Carroll), and Inez Matthews the singing voice of Serena (portrayed onscreen by Ruth Attaway).


title: Porgy and Bess

text: In 1963, Leontyne Price and William Warfield, who had starred in the 1952 world tour of "Porgy and Bess", recorded their own album of excerpts from the opera for RCA Victor. None of the other singers from that production appeared on that album, but John W. Bubbles, the original Sportin' Life, substituted for Cab Calloway (who had played Sportin' Life onstage in the 1952 production). The 1963 recording of "Porgy and Bess" excerpts remains the only official recording of the score on which Bubbles sings Sportin' Life's two big numbers.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: In, 1976, for RCA Victor, Ray Charles and Cleo Laine recorded an album of excerpts in which the two of them sang several roles. The album was arranged and conducted by Frank De Vol. It featured the organ of Joe Sample, the trumpet of Harry Edison and guitar work of Joe Pass and Lee Ritenour. It was jazz-based with full orchestrations, but the orchestrations used were not Gershwin's.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: In 1990, Leonard Slatkin conducted an album of excerpts from the opera, released on a Philips Records CD, with Simon Estes (who sang Porgy in the first Metropolitan Opera production of the work) and Roberta Alexander.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: A 1959 film version, produced in 70 mm Todd-AO by Samuel Goldwyn, was plagued with problems. Rouben Mamoulian, who had directed the 1935 Broadway premiere, was hired to direct the film, but was subsequently fired in favor of director Otto Preminger after a disagreement with the producer. Mamoulian urged making the film on location in South Carolina after a fire on the sound stage destroyed the film's sets. Goldwyn, who never liked making films on location, considered Mamoulian's request a sign of disloyalty. Robert McFerrin dubbed the singing voice for Sidney Poitier's Porgy as did Adele Addison for Dorothy Dandridge's Bess. Ruth Attaway's Serena and Diahann Carroll's Clara were also dubbed. Although Dandridge and Carroll were singers, their voices were not considered operatic enough. Sammy Davis Jr., Brock Peters and Pearl Bailey (who played Sportin' Life, Crown and Maria, respectively) were the only principals who provided their own singing. André Previn's adaptation of the score won him an Academy Award, the film's only Oscar. An associated soundtrack recording was released on LP by Columbia Masterworks Records. For the soundtrack album, Cab Calloway performed the songs sung by the Sportin’ Life character because Davis's label, Decca records, released a competing album featuring Davis and Carmen McRae performing songs from the opera.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The Gershwin estate was disappointed with the film, as the score was substantially edited to make it more like a musical. Much of the music was omitted from the film, and many of Gershwin's orchestrations were either changed or completely scrapped. It was shown on network television in the U.S. only once, in 1967. Critics attacked it for not being faithful to Gershwin's opera, for over-refining the language grammatically, and for its "overblown" staging. The film was removed from release in 1974 by the Gershwin estate. In 2011, it was selected to the U.S. National Film Registry.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Mike Medavoy and Bobby Geisler announced in 2019 that they are developing a re-envisioned and updated film version with the approval of the Gershwin estate.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The 1945 Warner Bros. film biography of Gershwin, "Rhapsody in Blue", featured an extended musical scene recreating the opening of the original Broadway production of "Porgy and Bess". Included was the original Bess, Anne Brown, recreating her performance. The scene includes a more elaborate (and historically inaccurate) arrangement for the film of the song "Summertime", sung by Anne Brown as Bess with full chorus, but the Catfish Row set design is a virtual duplicate of the one seen in the 1935 Broadway stage production.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The 1985 film "White Nights" featured a scene in which Gregory Hines performed "There's a Boat Dat's Leavin' Soon for New York" as Sportin' Life. Hines' rendition, before a Siberian audience, included a tap dancing sequence. Director Taylor Hackford pointed out in a special edition DVD release of the film that it was necessary to locate a Russian woman of color (Helene Denbey) to portray Bess, as per Gershwin's stipulations.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: In 1993, Trevor Nunn's Glyndebourne Festival stage production of "Porgy and Bess", not to be confused with his later production, was greatly expanded scenically and videotaped in a television studio without an audience. This first Nunn production was also called "The Gershwins' 'Porgy and Bess' " when shown on television. It was telecast by the BBC in England and by PBS in the United States. It featured a cast of operatic American singers, with the exception of Willard White, who is Jamaican but sounded American, as Porgy. Cynthia Haymon sang the role of Bess. Nunn's "opening up" of the stage production was considered highly imaginative; his cast received much critical praise, and the three-hour production retained nearly all of Gershwin's music, heard in the original 1935 orchestrations. This included the opera's sung recitatives, which have occasionally been turned into spoken dialogue in other productions. No extra dialogue was written for this production, as had been done in the 1959 film. All performers lip-synched rather than singing live on set, leading "The New York Times" to write: "What you hear is basically Mr. Nunn's acclaimed Glyndebourne Festival production, the original cast intact. What you see was filmed later in a London studio. The performers, some new to the production, are lip-synching. It's as if an elaborate visual aid had been concocted for the EMI recording."


title: Porgy and Bess

text: This "Porgy and Bess" production was subsequently released on VHS and DVD. It has won far greater acclaim than the 1959 film, which was widely panned by most critics. The 1993 television production of "Porgy and Bess" was nominated for four Emmy Awards, and won for its art direction. It also won a BAFTA Award for Best Video Lighting.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: In 2002, the New York City Opera telecast its new version of the Houston Opera production, in a live performance from the stage of Lincoln Center. This version featured far more cuts than the previous telecast, but, like nearly all stage versions produced since 1976, used the sung recitatives and Gershwin's orchestrations. The telecast also included interviews with director Tazewell Thompson and was hosted by Beverly Sills.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: In 2009 the San Francisco Opera debuted the Gershwins' "Porgy and Bess" to critical acclaim. The production was recorded at that time and shown on PBS in the fall of 2014, and was later released on DVD and Blu-ray.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: On December 1, 1935, during the Broadway run, Todd Duncan and Anne Brown performed "Summertime", "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin'" and "Bess, You Is My Woman Now" on NBC's "The Magic Key of RCA" radio program. Duncan and Brown also appeared on the 1937 CBS Gershwin memorial concert on September 8, 1937, broadcast from the Hollywood Bowl less than two months after the composer's death, along with several other members of the Broadway cast, including John W. Bubbles and Ruby Elzy. They performed several selections from the opera.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The complete "Porgy and Bess" has been broadcast by the Metropolitan Opera three times as part of the Met's live radio broadcast series. The 1985 broadcast performance starred Simon Estes and Roberta Alexander. In 1986 Bumbry was heard with Robert Mosley as Porgy. In 1990, Estes and Leona Mitchell sang the leads in the third broadcast.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Gershwin prepared an orchestral suite containing music from the opera after "Porgy and Bess" closed early on Broadway. Though it was originally titled "Suite from "Porgy and Bess"", Ira later renamed it "Catfish Row".


title: Porgy and Bess

text: In 1942 Robert Russell Bennett arranged a medley (rather than a suite) for orchestra which has often been heard in the concert hall, known as "". It is based on Gershwin's original scoring, though for a slightly different instrumentation (the piano was removed from the orchestral texture at the request of the conductor Fritz Reiner, for whom the arrangement was made). In addition, both Morton Gould and Robert Farnon each arranged an orchestral suite, premiering in 1956 and 1966, respectively.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: In 1951, Australian-born composer Percy Grainger, who was an admirer, performer and arranger of Gershwin's music, completed a twenty-minute piece for two pianos titled "Fantasy on George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess".


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The pianist Earl Wild prepared a virtuoso piano arrangement in the manner of Franz Liszt, entitled "Grand Fantasy on Airs from Porgy and Bess".


title: Porgy and Bess

text: "Porgy and Bess" contains many songs that have become popular in their own right, becoming standards in jazz and blues in addition to their original operatic setting.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Some of the more celebrated renditions of these songs include Sarah Vaughan's "It Ain't Necessarily So" and the versions of "Summertime" recorded by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Jascha Heifetz in his own transcriptions for violin and piano.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: Numerous other musicians have recorded "Summertime" in varying styles, including both instrumental and vocal recordings; it may be even the most popular cover song in popular music.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: On July 14, 1993, the United States Postal Service recognized the opera's cultural significance by issuing a commemorative 29-cent postage stamp.


title: Porgy and Bess

text: The 1940/1942 Decca "Porgy and Bess" recording with members of the original cast was included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress, National Recording Registry in 2003. The board selects recordings on an annual basis that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."


title: Roland TR-808

text: The Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer, commonly known as the 808, is a drum machine manufactured by the Roland Corporation between 1980 and 1983. It was one of the first drum machines to allow users to program rhythms instead of using preset patterns. Unlike its nearest competitor at the time, the more expensive Linn LM-1, the 808 generates sounds using analog synthesis rather than by playing samples (prerecorded sounds).


title: Roland TR-808

text: Launched when electronic music had yet to become mainstream, the 808 received mixed reviews for its unrealistic drum sounds and was a commercial failure. After building approximately 12,000 units, Roland discontinued the 808 after its semiconductors became impossible to restock. It was succeeded by the TR-909 in 1983.


title: Roland TR-808

text: Over the course of the 1980s, the 808 attracted a cult following among underground musicians for its affordability on the used market, ease of use and idiosyncratic sounds, particularly its deep, booming bass drum. It became a cornerstone of the emerging electronic, dance, and hip hop genres, popularized by early hits such as "Planet Rock" by Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force and "Sexual Healing" by Marvin Gaye.


title: Roland TR-808

text: The 808 was eventually used on more hit records than any other drum machine. Its popularity in hip hop has made it one of the most influential inventions in popular music, comparable to the Fender Stratocaster's impact on rock. Its sounds are included with music software and modern drum machines and it has inspired unlicensed recreations.


title: Roland TR-808

text: In the 1960s, drum machines were most often used to accompany home organs. They did not allow users to program rhythms, but instead offered preset patterns such as bossa nova. In 1969, the Hammond Organ Company hired the American musician and engineer Don Lewis to demonstrate its products, including an electronic organ with a built-in drum machine designed by the Japanese company Ace Tone. Lewis was known for performances using electronic instruments he had modified, decades before the popularization of instrument hacking via circuit bending. He made extensive modifications to the Ace Tone drum machine, creating his own rhythms and wiring it through his organ's expression pedal to accent the percussion.


title: Roland TR-808

text: Lewis was approached by Ikutaro Kakehashi, the president and founder of Ace Tone, who wanted to know how he had achieved the sounds using the Ace Tone machine. In 1972, Kakehashi formed the Roland Corporation and hired Lewis to help design drum machines. By the late 1970s, microprocessors were appearing in instruments such as the Roland MC-8 Microcomposer, and Kakehashi realized they could be used to program drum machines. In 1978, Roland released the CompuRhythm CR-78, the first drum machine with which users could write, save and replay their own patterns.


title: Roland TR-808

text: With its next machine, the TR-808, Roland aimed to develop a drum machine for the professional market, expecting that it would mainly be used to create demos. The engineers conceived a "drum synthesizer" with which users could program drum sequences and edit parameters such as tuning, decay and level. Though they aimed to emulate real percussion, the prohibitive cost of memory drove them to design sound-generating hardware instead of using samples (prerecorded sounds). Kakehashi purchased faulty transistors to create the 808's distinctive sizzling sound. The chief engineer, Makoto Muroi, credited the 808 voice circuit design to "Mr. Nakamura" and the software to "Mr. Matsuoka".


title: Roland TR-808

text: The 808 imitates acoustic percussion: the bass drum, snare, toms, conga, rimshot, claves, handclap, maraca, cowbell, cymbal and hi-hat (open and closed). Rather than playing samples, it generates sounds using analog synthesis; the TR in TR-808 stands for "transistor rhythm". The sounds do not resemble real percussion, and have been described as "clicky", "robotic", "spacey", "toy-like" and "futuristic". "Fact" described them as a combination of synthesizer tones and white noise that resemble "bursts coming from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop" more than a real drum kit.


title: Roland TR-808

text: The 808 is noted for its powerful bass drum sound, built from a sine oscillator, low-pass filter and voltage-controlled amplifier. The bass drum decay control allows users to lengthen the sound, creating uniquely low frequencies that flatten slightly over time, possibly not by design. "The New Yorker" described the bass drum as the 808's defining feature.


title: Roland TR-808

text: The 808 was the first drum machine with which users could program a percussion track from beginning to end, complete with breaks and rolls. Users can program up to 32 patterns using the step sequencer, chain up to 768 measures and place accents on individual beats. Users can also set the tempo and time signature, including unusual signatures such as and . The 808 includes volume knobs for each voice, numerous audio outputs and a DIN sync port (a precursor to MIDI) to synchronize with other devices. Its three trigger outputs can synchronize with synthesizers and other equipment.


title: Roland TR-808

text: The 808 launched in 1980 with a list price of . Roland marketed it as an affordable alternative to the Linn LM-1, manufactured by Linn Electronics, which used samples of real drum kits. The 808 sounded simplistic and synthetic by comparison; electronic music had yet to become mainstream and many musicians and producers wanted realistic-sounding drum machines. According to many reports, one review dismissed the 808 as sounding like "marching anteaters", though this likely referred to machines that predated it. "Contemporary Keyboard" wrote a positive review, predicting that it would become "the standard for rhythm machines of the future".


title: Roland TR-808

text: Despite some early adopters, the 808 was a commercial failure and fewer than 12,000 units were sold. Roland ended production in 1983 after semiconductor improvements made it impossible to restock the faulty transistors essential to its design.


title: Roland TR-808

text: Though the 808 was unsuccessful, it was eventually used on more hit records than any other drum machine and became one of the most influential inventions in popular music. By the time Roland discontinued it in 1983, it had become common on the used market, often selling for less than $100 (). Its ease of use, affordability and idiosyncratic sound earned it a cult following among underground musicians and producers, and it became a cornerstone of the developing electronic and hip hop genres.


title: Roland TR-808

text: CBC News credited the first use of the 808 to the Japanese electronic group Yellow Magic Orchestra. The first records to feature the 808 were released in 1981: Yellow Magic Orchestra's "BGM" and the Monitors' "Nobody Told Me". In 1982, the American R&B artist Marvin Gaye released the first hit single that featured the 808, "Sexual Healing". Gaye was drawn to the instrument because he could use it to create music without other musicians or producers.


title: Roland TR-808

text: 808 samples are common in music software, and it has inspired numerous unlicensed clones. "Flavorwire" wrote that the 808 is now so ubiquitous that "its beats are almost a language of their own", with sounds recognizable even to listeners who do not know what drum machines are, and so "you also notice when somebody messes with them or uses them in unusual contexts". In 2019, "DJMag" wrote that it was likely the most used drum machine of the preceding 40 years.


title: Roland TR-808

text: The 808 has been described as hip hop's equivalent to the Fender Stratocaster guitar, which dramatically influenced the development of rock music. It was used by pioneering hip hop acts including Run-DMC, LL Cool J and Public Enemy. The 808 bass drum, in particular, became so essential that Hank Shocklee of the Bomb Squad production group declared that "it's not hip hop without that sound". "The New Yorker" wrote that the "trembling feeling of [the 808 bass drum], booming down boulevards in Oakland, the Bronx and Detroit, are part of America's cultural DNA". Even after the 808 fell out of use by East Coast hip hop producers in the 1990s, it remained a staple of Southern hip hop.


title: Roland TR-808

text: The rapper Kanye West used the 808 on every track on his 2008 solo album "808s & Heartbreak", which "Slate" described as "an explicit love letter to the device". "The New Yorker" wrote in 2015 that the 808 was the bedrock of the modern "urban-youth-culture soundtrack", particularly in trap music, and had influenced a new blend of dance and retro hip hop that "embraces and fetishizes ... street music from the past".


title: Roland TR-808

text: Artists pushed the limits of the 808's limited pattern storage; according to "Slate", "Those eight-bar units became veritable playgrounds for invention and creativity." Artists manipulated the bass drum to produce new sounds, such as on the 1984 single "Set it Off", in which the producer Strafe used it to imitate the sound of an underground nuclear test. The producer Rick Rubin popularized the technique of lengthening the bass drum decay and tuning it to different pitches to create basslines. The Beastie Boys used a reversed recording of an 808 on their 1986 track "Paul Revere".


title: Roland TR-808

text: In 1982, Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force released their single "Planet Rock", which used the 808 to create "strange, futuristic" percussion that was popular in clubs. The track influenced the development of electronic and hip hop music and subgenres including Miami bass and Detroit techno, and popularized the 808 as a "fundamental element of futuristic sound". According to "Slate", "Planet Rock" "didn't so much put the 808 on the map so much as reorient an entire world of post-disco dance music around it".


title: Roland TR-808

text: In the UK, the 808 was popularized by the electronic group 808 State, which took its name from the 808 and used it extensively. 808 State's Graham Massey said: "The Roland gear began to be a kind of Esperanto in music. The whole world began to be less separated through this technology, and there was a classiness to it—you could transcend your provincial music with this equipment." With the rise of rave culture, a precursor to acid house, the 808 became a staple sound on British radio.


title: Roland TR-808

text: The 808 was used extensively in pop. "The New Yorker" wrote that the it triggered "the big bang of pop's great age of disruption, from 1983 to 1986", and that its "defiantly inorganic timbres ... sketched out the domain of a new world of music". According to "Slate", it was instrumental in pop music's shift from conventional structure and harmonic progression to "thinking in terms of "sequences", discrete passages of sound and time to be repeated and revised "ad infinitum"".


title: Roland TR-808

text: The Argentine artist Charly García used the 808 for all percussion on his second album, "Clics modernos" (1983). In the 1984 Talking Heads concert film "Stop Making Sense", the singer David Byrne performs "Psycho Killer" accompanied by an 808, stumbling against its "gunshot"-like sounds. The drummer and songwriter Phil Collins found the 808 useful for looping rhythms for long periods, as human drummers would be tempted to add variations and fills. Whitney Houston's 1987 single "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)" makes extensive use of the 808.


title: Roland TR-808

text: Other artists who have used the 808 include Bassnectar, Damon Albarn, Diplo, Fatboy Slim, David Guetta and New Order. It has been referenced in lyrics by artists including the Beastie Boys, Outkast, Kelis, TI, Lil Wayne, Britney Spears, Beyoncé, R Kelly and Robbie Williams. Its bass drum has been used as a metaphor for a heartbeat in songs by artists including Madonna, Rihanna and Kesha.


title: Roland TR-808

text: The 808 was followed in 1983 by the TR-909, the first Roland drum machine to use samples. Like the 808, the 909 was influential on popular music, influencing genres such as techno, house and acid.


title: Roland TR-808

text: 808 samples were included in ReBirth RB-338, an early software synthesiser developed by Propellerhead Software. According to Andy Jones of "MusicTech", ReBirth was "especially incredible" as the first software emulation of 808 sounds. It was retired in 2017 as Roland said it infringed on its intellectual property. Roland has included 808 samples in several drum machines, including its Grooveboxes in the 1990s. Its TR-8 and TR-8S drum machines, released in the 2010s, recreate the sounds electronically rather than through sample playback.


title: Roland TR-808

text: In 2017, Roland released the TR-08, a miniaturized 808 featuring an LED display, MIDI and USB connections, expanded sequencer control and a built-in speaker. Roland released the first official software emulations of the 808 and 909 in 2018. In 2019, Behringer released an unlicensed recreation of the 808, the Behringer RD-8 Rhythm Designer. Unlike Roland's TR-08 and TR-8S, which use samples and virtual synthesis to recreate the 808 sounds, the RD-8 uses analog circuitry.


title: Magpie Murders

text: Magpie Murders is a 2016 mystery novel by British author Anthony Horowitz and the first novel in the "Susan Ryeland" series. The story focuses on the murder of a mystery author and uses a story within a story format.


title: Magpie Murders

text: The book has been translated into multiple languages and has been adapted into a six-part television drama series with the same title.


title: Magpie Murders

text: An unmarried, middle-aged editor named Susan Ryeland receives from her superior the handwritten manuscript of the latest projected novel of the best-selling writer Alan Conway, but notices that the final chapter is missing. Shortly afterwards, she learns that Alan Conway has died in an apparent suicide by falling off the tower of his mansion. A suicide note in Conway's own handwriting is delivered to her office. However, she has nagging doubts about the reality of the events, and decides to investigate Conway's death in order to know the truth, and to find where the last chapter of the manuscript went.


title: Magpie Murders

text: Horowitz first developed the concept of "Magpie Murders" during the first season of "Midsomer Murders", which premiered in 1997. He has stated that he wanted the novel to "be more than just a murder mystery story" and to be "a sort of a treatise on the whole genre of murder mystery writing. How the writers come up with the ideas; how these books are formed."


title: Magpie Murders

text: "Magpie Murders" was first released in hardback and e-book format in the United Kingdom on 6 October 2016 through Orion. An audiobook adaptation narrated by Allan Corduner and Samantha Bond was simultaneously released through Orion and BrillianceAudio. The novel was given a release in the United States the following year through HarperCollins and HarperAudio in hardback, e-book, and audiobook format. Paperback editions were released in the United Kingdom in 2017 and the United States in 2018.


title: Magpie Murders

text: In the following years the novel has been released into multiple languages that include Korean and Japanese (2018, through The Open Books (열린책들) and 東京創元社, respectively), as well as Chinese and German (2019, 新星出版社 and Berlin Insel Verlag, respectively).


title: Magpie Murders

text: Reception for "Magpie Murders" was largely positive, earning a "Rave" rating from the book review aggregator Book Marks based on eight independent reviews. It was reviewed by outlets such as "The New York Times" and "Time" magazine, the latter of which called it the "thinking mystery fan’s ideal summer thriller." Common praise for the series centered upon its characters and the use of the story within a story, with some criticism noting that the story within a story also made it difficult to keep up with the goings on.


title: Magpie Murders

text: In July 2020 "Deadline" announced that PBS’ "Masterpiece" would adapt the novel into a six-part drama series and air it in the US, and on BritBox in the UK. Horowitz was to prepare the script and "Masterpiece" was to produce it along with Jill Green and Eleventh Hour Films. Tim McMullan was signed to portray the character of Atticus Pünd after actor Timothy Spall pulled out of the production due to scheduling issues. Lesley Manville agreed to play the other central character, Susan Ryeland, who has a more significant role in the series than in the book. Daniel Mays, Alexandros Logothetis as Susan's lover, Claire Rushbrook as her sister, Jude Hill and Matthew Beard were also part of the series' cast.


title: Magpie Murders

text: The role of author Alan Conway was played by Conleth Hill. Other members of the cast included Pippa Haywood and Michael Maloney. Director for the series was Peter Cattaneo.


title: Magpie Murders

text: The television series was filmed in 2021 in and around Dublin, Ireland with Dublin City University properties used for some scenes and in Bloomsbury in County Meath. Some exteriors were shot in London and extensive shooting was completed in Suffolk, where much of the story takes place; the production spent over three weeks in the village of Kersey, Suffolk where the Bell Inn became The Queens Arms.


title: Magpie Murders

text: On Britbox in the UK, the series began streaming on 10 February 2022, while in North America, the PBS series premiered on 16 October 2022.


title: Magpie Murders

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the series has a 100% rating based on reviews from 12 critics, with an average rating of 8 out of 10.