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HOST:
Welcome to AMERICAN MOSAIC — a VOA Special English program aboutmusic and American life. And we answer your questions.
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This is Doug Johnson. This week — a question about baby boomersin America, and some music by Lizz Wright.
But first — get ready for a ride!
Harley Davidson Anniversary
HOST:
The Harley-Davidson Motor Company recently celebrated animportant birthday. Shep O’Neal has the details.
ANNCR:
As many as three-hundred-thousandpeople rode their Harley-Davidson motorcycles into Milwaukee,Wisconsin, in the last days of August. They came to the home of thefamous motorcycle company to celebrate its one-hundredth year ofproduction.
There were speeches, music performances, dances — even weddings.At least fourteen weddings took place among the Harley-Davidsonriders who attended the celebration.
The huge birthday party in Milwaukee was the end of a year-longanniversary celebration. Riders came from all over the United Statesand many other countries. Three-hundred Harley-Davidson owners flewin on a special flight from Japan.
The Harley-Davidson Motor Company got its start innineteen-oh-three. It was the idea of twenty-one-year-old WilliamHarley and twenty-year-old Arthur Davidson. They began the companyby building a machine that looked like a bicycle with a smallengine. They only made three motorcycles that first year.
Three years later, in nineteen-oh-six, they opened a factory withsix workers. By nineteen-twenty, Harley-Davidson was the largestmotorcycle company in the world. More than two-thousand businessessold Harleys in the United States and almost seventy othercountries.
Harley-Davidson has faced financial problems several times in itshistory. But it has always survived. This was often the result ofthe loyalty of people who would never ride any other motorcycle.
Today, the Harley-Davidson Motor Company is one of the mostsuccessful companies in the United States. It produces more thantwo-hundred-forty-thousand motorcycles each year. And it sells allof them.
The Baby Boom
HOST:
Our VOA listener question this week comes from Ondo State,Nigeria. Akingbulugbe Ayo wants to know about the “baby boom.”
The baby boom is what Americans call the period betweennineteen-forty-six and nineteen-sixty-four. The number of births inthe United States increased sharply when the soldiers came home fromWorld War Two.
In nineteen-fifty-seven, about four-point-three-million babiesarrived — the most ever. Four-million births is around average fora year. Baby boomers are a big part of the population, seventy-sevenmillion out of two-hundred-ninety million people.
But the phrase baby boom describes more than just populationgrowth. It also describes a period of change in American culture.
Population experts say a law helped create the baby boom. The lawgave soldiers who served in World War Two and the Korean War thefinancial support they needed to start families. It also providededucation, training, loan guarantees, unemployment payments andother assistance for former soldiers. Millions received educationand bought homes through the plan.
During this time, television helped spread baby boom culture.This was the first generation to grow up with TV. It broughtcomedians like Milton Berle and Lucille Ball into people’s homes.Cowboys in westerns like “Gunsmoke.” Music by Elvis Presley and TheBeatles. TV also let Americans watch the rise and fall of JosephMcCarthy, an anti-communist politician in the nineteen-fifties.
Many baby boomers were less conservative than their parents.During the sixties and seventies, these young people had their ownideas about sex, drugs and rock-and-roll music.
Baby boomers also became politically active. Some fought inVietnam. But others protested the war, or found ways not to serve.America continues to feel the political and social effects of thebaby boom. Bill Clinton was the first of his generation to becomepresident.
And the baby boom is big business. Companies make all sorts ofproducts that promise to make people look and feel younger.
Right now, many baby boomers are either planning theirretirements or worrying about their teenage children. The youngestboomers are about to reach forty. The oldest are close to sixty.Some children of baby boomers already have grown children of theirown. In the coming years, another baby boom is expected in America.Some population experts already call it the millenni-boom.
Lizz Wright
HOST:
Lizz Wright was an unknown singerlast year when she appeared at the Playboy Jazz Festival at theHollywood Bowl in California. The audience and music critics lovedher performance. This year she was back to perform songs from herfirst album. Steve Ember tells us more about Lizz Wright.
ANNCR:
Lizz Wright is twenty-three years old. She began singing inchurch when she was six. She sang with several choirs in highschool, then studied music at Georgia State University in Atlanta.The university did not have a vocal jazz program. So she worked withsmall independent jazz bands to learn what she really wanted to do –sing jazz.
Her first album is called “Salt.” Here she sings the Flora Purimclassic “Open Your Eyes, You Can Fly.”
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Lizz Wright wrote some of the songs on her album, including thetitle song. It honors the rhythm-and-blues singer Donny Hathaway whodied in nineteen-seventy-nine. He killed himself at the age ofthirty-three.
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We leave you with another song from Lizz Wright’s album “Salt.”This is “Fire.”
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HOST:
This is Doug Johnson. Our program was written by Lawan Davis,Mario Ritter and Paul Thompson, who was also our producer. And ourengineer was Vasco Volarich.
I hope you enjoyed our program. Join us again next week forAMERICAN MOSAIC — VOA’s radio magazine in Special English.