Problem: Background: Victor Jara was born in 1932 in Lonquen, near Santiago, to two peasants, Manuel Jara and Amanda Martinez. His father was illiterate and encouraged his children to work from an early age to help the family survive, rather than attend school. By the age of 6, Jara was already working on the land. His father could not support the family on his earnings as a peasant at the Ruiz-Tagle estate, nor was he able to find stable work.
Context: After joining the choir at the University of Chile in Santiago, Jara was convinced by a choir-mate to pursue a career in theater. He subsequently joined the university's theater program and earned a scholarship for talent. He appeared in several of the university's plays, gravitating toward those with social themes, such as Russian playwright Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths, a depiction of the hardships of lower-class life. In 1957, he met Violeta Parra, a singer who had steered folk music in Chile away from the rote reproduction of rural materials toward modern song composition rooted in traditional forms, and who had established musical community centers called penas to incorporate folk music into the everyday life of modern Chileans. Jara absorbed these lessons and began singing with a group called Cuncumen, with whom he continued his explorations of Chile's traditional music. He was deeply influenced by the folk music of Chile and other Latin American countries, and by artists such as Parra, Atahualpa Yupanqui, and the poet Pablo Neruda. In the 1960s, Jara started specializing in folk music and sang at Santiago's La Pena de Los Parra, owned by Angel Parra. Through these activities, he became involved in the Nueva Cancion movement of Latin American folk music. He released his first album, Canto a lo humano, in 1966, and by 1970, he had left his theater work in favor of a career in music. His songs were inspired by a combination of traditional folk music and left-wing political activism. From this period, some of his best-known songs are "Plegaria a un Labrador" ("Prayer to a Worker") and "Te Recuerdo Amanda" ("I Remember You Amanda").
Question: What type of art did Jara pursue?
Answer:

Problem: Background: John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 - January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only three writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others were Booth Tarkington and William Faulkner), Updike published more than twenty novels, more than a dozen short-story collections, as well as poetry, art and literary criticism and children's books during his career.
Context: The principal themes in Updike's work are religion, sex, and America as well as death. Often he would combine them, frequently in his favored terrain of "the American small town, Protestant middle class", of which he once said, "I like middles. It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules." For example, the decline of religion in America is chronicled in In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996) alongside the history of cinema, and Rabbit Angstrom contemplates the merits of sex with the wife of his friend Reverend Jack Eccles while the latter is giving his sermon in Rabbit, Run (1960). Critics have often noted that Updike imbued language itself with a kind of faith in its efficacy, and that his tendency to construct narratives spanning many years and books--the Rabbit series, the Henry Bech series, Eastwick, the Maples stories--demonstrates a similar faith in the transcendent power of fiction and language. Updike's novels often act as dialectical theological debates between the book itself and the reader, the novel endowed with theological beliefs meant to challenge the reader as the plot runs its course. Rabbit Angstrom himself acts as a Kierkegaardian Knight of Faith. Describing his purpose in writing prose, Updike himself, in the introduction to his Early Stories: 1953-1975 (2004), wrote that his aim was always "to give the mundane its beautiful due." Elsewhere he famously said, "When I write, I aim my mind not towards New York but towards a vague spot east of Kansas." Some have suggested that the "best statement of Updike's aesthetic comes in his early memoir 'The Dogwood Tree'" (1962): "Blankness is not emptiness; we may skate upon an intense radiance we do not see because we see nothing else. And in fact there is a color, a quiet but tireless goodness that things at rest, like a brick wall or a small stone, seem to affirm."
Question: What can you tell me about his american themes
Answer: Often he would combine them, frequently in his favored terrain of "the American small town, Protestant middle class", of which he once said, "I like middles.

Problem: Background: Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music is a studio album by American R&B singer-songwriter and musician Ray Charles. It was recorded by Charles in February 1962 at Capitol Studios in New York City and at United Recording Studios in Hollywood, then released in April of that year by ABC-Paramount Records. The album departed stylistically from the singer's previous rhythm and blues music. It featured country, folk, and Western music standards reworked by Charles in popular song forms of the time, including R&B, pop, and jazz.
Context: Following his blues fusion with gospel and jazz influences on his earlier Atlantic material, which had brought him much fame and controversy, Charles sought to experiment with country music. As noted by himself in the liner notes for What'd I Say (1959), Charles was influenced by the genre in his youth, stating that he "used to play piano in a hillbilly band" and that he believed that he "could do a good job with the right hillbilly song today." At Atlantic, he attempted to incorporate this style and influence with his cover of country singer Hank Snow's "I'm Movin' On". Charles later said about the song, "When I heard Hank Snow sing 'Moving On', I loved it. And the lyrics. Keep in mind, I'm a singer, so I like lyrics. Those lyrics are great, so that's what made me want to do it." The "I'm Movin' On" sessions were his last for Atlantic. Charles's recording of his acclaimed studio effort The Genius of Ray Charles (1959) brought him closer to expressing his jazz and pop crossover ambitions. Described by one music critic as "the most important of his albums for Atlantic", the record was the first to introduce Charles's musical approach of blending his brassy R&B sound with the more middle of the road, pop-oriented style, while performing in the presence of a big band ensemble. Recording of the album, as well his ABC-Paramount debut, The Genius Hits the Road (1960), a collection of place-name songs devoted to parts of the United States, expanded on Charles's thematic and conceptually-organized approach to albums rather than commercially successful singles production. Inspired by this approach and his recording of "I'm Movin' On", Charles originally made plans for a single-less concept album. When Charles had announced that he wanted to work on an album of country music in 1961, during a period of racial segregation and tension in the United States, he received generally negative commentary and feedback from his peers, including fellow R&B musicians and ABC-Paramount executives. The country album concept, however, meant more to Charles as a test of his record label's faith in him and respect for his artistic freedom than as a test of social tolerance among listeners amid racial distinctions of country and R&B. Fueled by his esteem for creative control, Charles pitched the idea of a country album to ABC representatives. Following the successful lobby of the concept and a contract renewal in early 1962, which was linked to the launching of his own Tangerine label, Charles prepared his band for the recording sessions that produced Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music.
Question: test of social what?
Answer:
social tolerance among listeners amid racial distinctions of country and R&B.