Culture

Culture (/ˈkʌltʃər/) is, in the words of E.B. Tylor, "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society."

Cambridge English Dictionary states that culture is, "the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time."Terror Management Theory posits that culture is a series of activities and worldviews that provide humans with the illusion of being individuals of value in a world meaning—raising themselves above the merely physical aspects of existence, in order to deny the animal insignificance and death that Homo Sapiens became aware of when they acquired a larger brain.

Burning Spear

Winston Rodney OD (born 1 March 1945), better known by the stage name Burning Spear, is a Jamaican roots reggae singer and musician. Burning Spear is a Rastafarian and one of the most influential and long-standing roots artists to emerge from the 1970s.

Early life

Winston Rodney was born in Saint Ann's Bay, Saint Ann, Jamaica. As a young man he listened to the R&B, soul and jazz music transmitted by the US radio stations whose broadcasts reached Jamaica. Curtis Mayfield is cited by Rodney as a major US musical influence along with James Brown. Rodney was deeply influenced as a young man by the views of the political activist Marcus Garvey, especially with regard to the exploration of the themes of Pan-Africanism and self-determination. In 1969, Bob Marley, who was also from Saint Ann, advised Rodney to approach Coxsone Dodd's Studio One label after Rodney sought his advice during a casual conversation.

Career

Joseph Hill

Joseph Hill (22 January 1949 – 19 August 2006) was the lead singer and songwriter for the roots reggae group Culture, most famous for their 1977 hit "Two Sevens Clash", but also well known for their "International Herb" single. Hill recorded twenty-two albums.

Biography

Early life and career

Joseph Hill was born in 1949 in Linstead, a town in Saint Catherine Parish in the southeast of Jamaica. He was raised in a Christian family and began singing in church at the age of six. Within two years he was making his own musical instruments. After leaving home he came into contact with Rastafarians and adopted the faith.

He began his career in the late 1960s as a percussionist, recording with the Studio One house band the Soul Defenders. He also worked as a sound system deejay, and began performing as a backing vocalist, leading to his singles "Behold the Land" and "Take Me Girl" in the early 1970s. In the early 70s Hill performed with two groups that included future reggae star Glen Washington – C35 Incorporated and Stepping Stone. He performed regularly on the hotel circuit, but had his greatest success with the group Culture.

Combustion

Combustion /kəmˈbʌs.tʃən/ or burning is a high-temperature exothermic redox chemical reaction between a fuel and an oxidant, usually atmospheric oxygen, that produces oxidized, often gaseous products, in a mixture termed as smoke. Combustion in a fire produces a flame, and the heat produced can make combustion self-sustaining. Combustion is often a complicated sequence of elementary radical reactions. Solid fuels, such as wood, first undergo endothermic pyrolysis to produce gaseous fuels whose combustion then supplies the heat required to produce more of them. Combustion is often hot enough that light in the form of either glowing or a flame is produced. A simple example can be seen in the combustion of hydrogen and oxygen into water vapor, a reaction commonly used to fuel rocket engines. This reaction releases 242 kJ/mol of heat and reduces the enthalpy accordingly (at constant temperature and pressure):

Combustion of an organic fuel in air is always exothermic because the double bond in O₂ is much weaker than other double bonds or pairs of single bonds, and therefore the formation of the stronger bonds in the combustion products CO₂ and H₂O results in the release of energy. The bond energies in the fuel play only a minor role, since they are similar to those in the combustion products; e.g., the sum of the bond energies of CH₄ is nearly the same as that of CO₂. The heat of combustion is approximately -418 kJ per mole of O₂ used up in the combustion reaction, and can be estimated from the elemental composition of the fuel.

Popular culture

Popular culture or pop culture is the entirety of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, images, and other phenomena that are within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the late 20th and early 21st century. Heavily influenced by mass media, this collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of the society. The most common pop culture categories are: entertainment (movies, music, TV), sports, news (as in people/places in news), politics, fashion/clothes, technology, and slang.

Popular culture is often viewed as being trivial and "dumbed down" in order to find consensual acceptance throughout the mainstream. As a result, it comes under heavy criticism from various non-mainstream sources (most notably religious groups and countercultural groups) which deem it superficial, consumerist, sensationalist, or corrupt.

History and definitions

The term "popular culture" was coined in the 19th century or earlier. Traditionally, popular culture was associated with poor education and the lower classes, as opposed to the "official culture" and higher education of the upper classes.