An elderly black man sits on a drum with his legs on two sides. Using his fingers and the edge of his hand, he taps repeatedly at the drumhead, producing strong drumbeat. A second drummer joins in playing with the same rhythm. A third black man plays a stringed instrument, the body of which is roughly fashioned from a calabash (葫芦). Another calabash has been made into a drum, and a woman beats at it with two short sticks. One voice, then other voices join in. A dance accompanies this musical give-and-take, a moving picture that appears, on the one hand, informal and spontaneous yet, on closer inspection, ritualized (程式化的) and precise. It is a dance of massive size. A dense crowd of dark bodies forms into circular groups—perhaps five or six hundred individuals moving in time to the beat of the music, some swaying gently, others aggressively stomping their feet. A number of women in the group begin chanting.
The scene could be Africa. In fact, it is nineteenth-century New Orleans. Scattered firsthand accounts provide us with fascinating details of the slave dances that took place in the open area then known as Congo Square and there are perhaps no more fascinating documents in the history of African American music. Benjamin Latrobe, the noted architect, witnessed one of these collective dances on February 21,1819, and not only left us a vivid written account of the event but made several sketches of the instruments used. These drawings confirm that the musicians of Congo square, about 1891, were playing percussion (打击乐器) and stringed instruments almost identical to those characteristic of real African music.
Later documents add to our knowledge of the public slave dances in New Orleans but still leave us with many open questions — some of which, in time, historical research may be able to explain, while others might never be answered. One thing, however, is clear. Although these days we tend to view the intersection of black and white musical currents as a theoretical, almost symbolic issue, these storied accounts of the Congo Square dances provide us with a real time and place, an actual transfer of totally African ritual to the native soil of the New World.
1. Which of the following best describes the musical scene in the beginning?| A．It’s slow and relaxing. | B．It’s lovely and childlike. |
| C．It’s strong and organized. | D．It’s delightful and encouraging. |
| A．To help its readers to read a music history book. |
| B．To show the value of the accounts in music history. |
| C．To familiarize its readers with a type of ancient music. |
| D．To praise an architect who was a dedicated music lover. |
| A．It’s more of a musical theory. | B．It’s more of a vivid life. |
| C．It’s more of a religious ceremony. | D．It’s more of a cultural symbol. |
| A．A place where foreigners held musical festivals. |
| B．A place where music historians wrote their books. |
| C．A place where slaves could have a break from hard labour. |
| D．A place where African music found its voice on the new land. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Today, at 28, the young German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter is at the top. “She gives radiance (光辉) to music,” wrote Geoffrey Norris in The Daily Telegraph, London.
Born in Rheinfelden on June 29, 1963, Anne-Sophie grew up in Wehr, a small town just five kilometers from the Swiss border. Her father, Karl Wilhelm Mutter, and her mother, Gerlinde, considered music lessons part of a good education. It came as no surprise when Anne-Sophie said she wanted a violin for her fifth birthday.
Her parents thought she was too young for the violin, and persuaded her to start on the piano. But Anne-Sophie has always had a mind of her own. “I longed to play the violin,” she says, “it seemed to me a much more interesting instrument.” After six months, her parents gave in.
The famous violin teacher Erna Honigberfer, who lived nearby, became Annie-Sophie’s tutor. After only nine months of lessons, she entered the sixyearold in a nationwide competition for young musicians. With Christoph accompanying her on the piano, Anne-Sophie won first prize.
In 1974, Erna Honigberfer died. Anne-Sophie’s new teacher was Aida Stucki. She taught Anne-Sophie to develop her own ideas on how a piece should be played, not just to imitate others. This is one of the violinist’s strongest and most distinctive characteristics today.
Though the Mutters were short of money at times, they limited their daughter’s performances to once or twice a year. “We are glad we went the family road,” says her father. “No outsider can ever have an effect on our daughter’s career or push her into playing more concerts than she wants to.” Later she was allowed to give six to eight concerts a year and make some recordings.
1. Anne-Sophie’s career dates back to .| A．the late 1960s | B．1974 |
| C．the late 1970s | D．her fifth birthday |
| A．limited to twice or three times a year |
| B．accompanied on the piano by Christoph |
| C．highly praised throughout the world |
| D．appreciated by professors in London |
| A．She had two famous violin teachers. |
| B．She has always had a mind of her own. |
| C．She wanted a violin for her fifth birthday. |
| D．Violin seemed to her a much more interesting instrument. |
| A．children should learn music |
| B．money is not everything |
| C．Anne-Sophie was too young to give concerts |
| D．parents have a great effect upon their children |
【推荐2】Scientists say they have used artificial intelligence (AI) to create music to represent the protein structure of the novel coronavirus.
Researchers used machine-learning methods to make the music, which may help them better understand the virus. The research team assigned musical notes to amino acids (氨基酸) that make up the so-called “spiked(刺突)” protein that infects human cells. Machine learning was then used to turn the protein and structural information into a nearly two-hour piece of classical music.
Markus Buehler of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) led the research team. Buehler told the Reuters news agency that turning the protein data into music let people gain a better understanding of something they cannot see. “You would need many different images, many different magnifications (放大) to see with your eyes, while your ears can pick up with just a couple of seconds of music,” he said.
The finished selection was uploaded to the music sharing website SoundCloud. Listeners of the early part of the piece described it with words such as “beautiful”, “interesting”, “calm” and “nature”. Buehler said this part of the music represents the ease at which the spiked protein enters the human cell, making the coronavirus highly infectious. He noted that the virus is very good at “tricking the cell to open the doors” to infect someone. As the virus then reproduces and the spiked protein attaches to more cells, the music becomes louder, faster and more intense. One SoundCloud user noted that this part could represent one of the first signs of the virus in humans, a high body temperature. Others described the more intense part of the music as “scary” and “sad”.
The researchers say a possible next step could be to use the musical method to design an antibody to attack the virus.
1. What does the underlined word “tricking” mean in paragraph 4?| A．Cheating. | B．Forcing. | C．Stopping. | D．Helping. |
| A．Happy. | B．Encouraged. | C．Disappointed. | D．Upset. |
| A．Researchers composed the music on their own. |
| B．Music may improve our understanding of the virus. |
| C．Musical method has been applied to attack the virus. |
| D．SoundCloud users had the same reaction to the whole music. |
【推荐3】Country music is one of the most popular kinds of music in the United States today because it is about simple but strong human feelings and events — love, sadness, good times, and bad times. It tells real-life, stories and sounds the way people really talk. As life becomes more complicated (复杂), it is good to hear music about ordinary people.
Country music, sometimes called country-western, comes from two kinds of music. One is the traditional music of the people in the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States. The other is traditional cowboy music from the west. The singers usually play guitars, and in the 1920s they started using electric guitars. At first city people said country music was low class. It was popular mostly in the South.
But during World War II, thousands of Southerners went to the Northeast and Midwest to work in the factories. They took their music with them. Soldiers from the rest of the country went to army camps (军营) in the South. They learned country music. Slowly it became popular all over the country.
Today country music is also popular everywhere in the United States and Canada — in small towns and in New York City, among black and white, and among educated and uneducated people. About 1, 200 radio stations broadcast country music twenty-four hours a day. English stars sing it in British English, and people in other countries sing it in their own languages. The music that started with cowboys and poor southerners is now popular all over the world.
1. It can be learned from the passage that country music comes from ________.| A．the Northeast and Midwest | B．real-life stories in small towns |
| C．factories and army camps in the South | D．the Appalachian Mountains and the West |
| A．the Northeast | B．the north | C．the Midwest | D．the south |
| A．they wanted to take music with them | B．they wanted to work in the factories there |
| C．they wanted to make country music popular | D．they wanted to make other people like country music |
【推荐1】A nickname is a shortened form of a person's name. A nickname can also be a descriptive name for a person, place or thing. Many American cities have nicknames.
Los Angeles has several nicknames. One is simply the city's initials, LA. It is also called "The City of Angels" because Los Angeles means “the angels” in Spanish.
Los Angeles often has warm, sunny weather. So another nickname is “City of Flowers and Sunshine”. New York is called “The Big Apple”. So Los Angeles is sometimes called “The Big Orange” because of the fruit that grows in that city's warm climate.
The American motion picture and television industries are based in Los Angeles. So it is not surprising that it is called “The Entertainment Capital of the World”. Many films are made in the area of Los Angeles called Hollywood. Millions of people visit the area. No trip to Los Angeles is completely without seeing the word “Hollywood” spelled out in huge letters on a hillside.
Many movie stars live in Los Angeles. The city is sometimes called “Tinseltown”. This nickname comes from the shiny, bright and often unreal nature of Hollywood and the movie industry.
Another nickname for Los Angeles is “La–La Land”, using the first letters of Los and Angeles. This means a place that is fun and not serious, and maybe even out of touch with reality.
The city of Los Angeles is part of Los Angeles County. There are many smaller cities in the county. Beverly Hills, with its rich people, is one of them. So is Pasadena, with its Rose Parade each New Year's Day.
A good place for watching unusual-looking people is Venice, an area on the west side of Los Angeles. A system of waterways designed after the Italian city of Venice has been built there.
1. What's the purpose of the first paragraph?| A．To tell us what a nickname is. | B．To prove that nicknames are popular. |
| C．To lead us into the topic to be presented. | D．To tell us some people's nicknames. |
| A．LA. | B．City of Flowers and Sunshine. |
| C．The City of Angels. | D．The Big Apple. |
| A．Because Los Angeles often has warm, sunny weather. |
| B．Because many movie stars live in Los Angeles. |
| C．Because there are many smaller cities in the county. |
| D．Because the American motion picture and television industries are there. |
| A．fantastic | B．false | C．real | D．practical |
【推荐2】Will the next generation do better than the one that came before? To young people in wealthier nations, that dream of upward mobility seems more like a story about the past than modern-day reality, according to a large new survey taken in 21 countries. In poorer countries, though, there is still hope that young people’s lives will be better than those of their parents, and that the world is becoming a better place.
“In a lot of the developing world, there is a bit more optimism that with each generation our living standards are improving,” said Laurence Chandy, director of the office of global insight and policy at UNICEF, which conducted the survey with Gallup. “But there’s a recognition in the West that that’s stopped happening.” In the United States,56 percent of young people and 64 percent of older people said that children today would be worse off, economically, than their parents.
The survey was of 21,000 people in two age groups — 15 to 24, and 40 and up — and included nationally representative samples from all regions of the world. The younger group said that children today were better off in basic ways, like education, health care and physical safety.
And the best part of being a young person today? Technology, according to respondents in follow up interviews.
But young people also have significant concerns. In the survey, about nine in ten said they sometimes or often have anxiety. Six in ten said children today have more pressure from adults to succeed than their parents did.
In the six richest countries in the survey, about one-third of young people said they thought today’s children would be economically better off than their parents. They were particularly pessimistic (悲观的) in Japan, France, Britain and Spain.
In low-income countries, though, about two-thirds of young people said they thought today’s children would do better financially than their parents, especially in Africa and South Asia. They were also more likely than those in high-or middle-income countries to say the world was becoming a better place with each generation
1. How does the author develop the first paragraph?| A．By listing figure y giving examples | B．By giving examples |
| C．By following the time order | D．By making a comparison |
| A．Education | B．Health care | C．Technology | D．Physical safety |
| A．90% | B．60% | C．56% | D．64% |
| A．How to make the world a better place? |
| B．Where are young people most optimistic? |
| C．What are the concerns of young people about economy? |
| D．Will children be much healthier than their parents? |
【推荐3】Each year more than 2,500 people die and 12.600 are injured in home fires just in the United States, with direct property(财产) loss because of home fires at about $7.3 billion every year. Every day Americans experience the horror of fires, but most people don't understand fires.
To protect yourself, it is important to learn something about home fires.
In less than 30 seconds a small flame can get completely out of control and turn into a major fire. It only takes minutes for thick black smoke to fill a house or for it to be in flames. Most deadly fires occur in the home when people are asleep. If you realize a fire, you won’t have time to take valuables because the fire spreads too quickly and the smoke is too thick. The fire uses up the oxygen you need and produces smoke and poisonous gases that kill. Breathing even small amounts of smoke and toxic gases can make you tired and sleepy, and short of breath. The smoke can cause you to be a deep sleeper before the flames reach your door. You may not wake up in time to escape.
Room temperatures in a fire can be 100 degrees at floor level and rise to 600 degrees at eye level. Breathing in this super-hot air will burn your lungs. It can melt clothes to your skin. In five minutes, a room can get so hot that everything in it starts to burn at once.
Fires are bright at first, but quickly produce black smoke and complete darkness. If you wake up to a fire you may be blinded, confused about where you are or which direction you should go and unable to find your way around the home you’ve lived in for years.
Only when we know the true nature of fires can we prepare our families and ourselves.
1. How does the first paragraph develop?| A．By raising questions. | B．By giving examples. |
| C．By expressing opinions. | D．By listing reasons, |
| A．The fire can get out of control quickly. |
| B．It is important to find poisonous gases. |
| C．Leaving valuables behind may save your life. |
| D．It is dangerous to sleep away from the door. |
| A．Getting us to lose our ways. |
| B．Making our faces turn black, |
| C．Causing us to wake up in time. |
| D．Forcing us to walk around the home. |
| A．Different processes of home fires. |
| B．Some basic knowledge of home fires. |
| C．Great damage of the fires in the USA. |
| D．Some good ways to prevent home fires. |
