Some context: Linda Maria Ronstadt was born in 1946 in Tucson, Arizona, daughter to Gilbert Ronstadt (1911-1995), a prosperous machinery merchant who ran the F. Ronstadt Co., and Ruth Mary (Copeman) Ronstadt (1914-1982), a homemaker. Ronstadt was raised on the family's 10-acre (4 ha) ranch with her siblings Peter (who served as Tucson's Chief of Police for 10 years, 1981-1991), Michael J., and Gretchen (Suzy). The family was featured in Family Circle magazine in 1953. Linda's father came from a pioneering Arizona ranching family and was of German, English, and Mexican ancestry.
Ronstadt's early family life was filled with music and tradition, which influenced the stylistic and musical choices she later made in her career. Growing up, she listened to many types of music, including Mexican music, which was sung by her entire family and was a staple in her childhood. Ronstadt has remarked that everything she has recorded on her own records - rock 'n' roll, jazz, rhythm and blues, gospel, opera, country, choral, and mariachi - is all music she heard her family sing in their living room, or heard played on the radio, by the age of 10. She credits her mother for her appreciation of Gilbert and Sullivan and her father for introducing her to the traditional pop and Great American Songbook repertoire that she would, in turn, help reintroduce to an entire generation. Early on, her singing style had been influenced by singers such as Lola Beltran and Edith Piaf; she has called their singing and rhythms "more like Greek music ... It's sort of like 6/8 time signature ... very hard driving and very intense." She also drew influence from country singer Hank Williams. She has said that "all girl singers" eventually "have to curtsy to Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday". Of Maria Callas, Ronstadt says, "There's no one in her league. That's it. Period. I learn more ... about singing rock n roll from listening to Maria Callas records than I ever would from listening to pop music for a month of Sundays. ... She's the greatest chick singer ever." She admires Callas for her musicianship and her attempts to push 20th-century singing, particularly opera, back into the bel canto "natural style of singing". A self-described product of American radio of the 1950s and 1960s, Ronstadt is a fan of its eclectic and diverse music programming.
What was her earliest influence ?
A: Growing up, she listened to many types of music, including Mexican music, which was sung by her entire family and was a staple in her childhood.
Some context: Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (Russian: Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov; 21 May 1921 - 14 December 1989) was a Russian nuclear physicist, dissident, and activist for disarmament, peace and human rights. He became renowned as the designer of the Soviet Union's RDS-37, a codename for Soviet development of thermonuclear weapons. Sakharov later became an advocate of civil liberties and civil reforms in the Soviet Union, for which he faced state persecution; these efforts earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975.
In 1972 Sakharov became the target of sustained pressure and intimidation, from his fellow scientists in the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Soviet press and direct threats of physical assault. Dissident activists, including the writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, sprang to his defence. In 1973 and 1974, the Soviet media campaign continued, targeting both Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn. While Sakharov disagreed with Solzhenitsyn's vision of Russian revival, he deeply respected him for his courage. Only a few individuals in the Soviet Union were willing to defend 'traitors' like Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn, and those who had dared were inevitably punished. Sakharov later described that it took "years" for him to "understand how much substitution, deceit, and lack of correspondence with reality there was" in the Soviet ideals. "At first I thought, despite everything that I saw with my own eyes, that the Soviet State was a breakthrough into the future, a kind of prototype for all countries". Then he came, in his words, to "the theory of symmetry: all governments and regimes to a first approximation are bad, all peoples are oppressed, and all are threatened by common dangers." After that he realized that there is not much "symmetry between a cancer cell and a normal one. Yet our state is similar to a cancer cell - with its messianism and expansionism, its totalitarian suppression of dissent, the authoritarian structure of power, with a total absence of public control in the most important decisions in domestic and foreign policy, a closed society that does not inform its citizens of anything substantial, closed to the outside world, without freedom of travel or the exchange of information." Sakharov's ideas on social development led him to put forward the principle of human rights as a new basis of all politics. In his works he declared that "the principle 'what is not prohibited is allowed' should be understood literally", defying the unwritten ideological rules imposed by the Communist ruling elite on the society in spite of the seemingly democratic (1936) USSR Constitution. In no way did Sakharov consider himself a prophet or the like: "I am no volunteer priest of the idea, but simply a man with an unusual fate. I am against all kinds of self-immolation (for myself and for others, including the people closest to me)." In a letter written from exile, he cheered up a fellow physicist and human rights activist with the words: "Fortunately, the future is unpredictable and also - because of quantum effects - uncertain." For Sakharov the indeterminacy of the future supported his belief that he could, and should, take personal responsibility for it.
did you find anything interesting?
A:
In 1973 and 1974, the Soviet media campaign continued, targeting both Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn.