Yana (singer)

Yana was a British singer famous enough to be regarded as a household name in late-1950's Britain, but whose fame faded fast thereafter; by the time of her death in 1989 she was almost completely unknown except to a few devoted fans, though the Daily Telegraph obituaries page noted her demise and included the obituary later in one of its published collections.

Early life and work

Yana was born Pamela Guard on 16 February 1932, in the town of Billericay, Essex (her later publicity people thought that it sounded more interesting to describe her as "Cornish-born" and her Christian name was sometimes rendered "Pamella"). As a teenager she became a hairdresser's assistant and then a fashion model at the Gaby Young modelling agency. Her singing career started when Bertie Green, the owner of the plush Astor Club in London, heard her (aged 19) singing at a private party in the club, her friends having dared her to get up and sing; Green booked her as a cabaret artiste. She also sang, from 1954, at the expensive Pigalle restaurant in Piccadilly. It was not long before she was singing across Britain in the theatres known as the Moss Empires and started to appear on television.

Singing

Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of tonality, rhythm, the use of sustained tones and a variety of vocal techniques. A person who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung without accompaniment or with accompaniment by musical instruments. Singing is often done in a group of other musicians, such as in a choir of singers with different voice ranges, or in an ensemble with instrumentalists, such as a rock group or baroque ensemble. Singers may also perform as soloist with accompaniment from a piano (as in art song and in some jazz styles) or with a symphony orchestra or big band. There are a range of different singing styles, including art music styles such as opera and Chinese opera, religious music styles such as Gospel, traditional music styles, world music, jazz, blues and popular music styles such as pop and rock.

Singing can be formal or informal, arranged or improvised. It may be done for religious devotion, as a hobby, as a source of pleasure, comfort, or ritual, as part of music education, or as a profession. Excellence in singing requires time, dedication, instruction, and regular practice. If practice is done on a regular basis then the sounds can become more clear and strong. Professional singers usually build their careers around one specific musical genre, such as classical or rock, although there are singers with crossover success (singing in more than one genre). They typically take voice training provided by voice teachers or vocal coaches throughout their careers.

Singer Motors

Singer Motors Limited was a British motor vehicle manufacturing business, originally a bicycle manufacturer founded as Singer & Co by George Singer, in 1874 in Coventry, England. Singer & Co's bicycle manufacture continued. From 1901 George Singer's Singer Motor Co made cars and commercial vehicles.

Singer Motor Co was the first motor manufacturer to make a small economy car that was a replica of a large car, showing a small car was a practical proposition. It was much more sturdily built than otherwise similar cyclecars. With its four-cylinder ten horsepower engine the Singer Ten was launched at the 1912 Cycle and Motor Cycle Show at Olympia. William Rootes, Singer apprentice at the time of its development and consummate car-salesman, contracted to buy 50, the entire first year's supply. It became a best-seller. Ultimately Singer's business was acquired by his Rootes Group in 1956, which continued the brand until 1970, a few years following Rootes' acquisition by the American Chrysler corporation.

Singer (naval mine)

The Singer was a naval mine made and deployed by the Confederacy during the American Civil War. It was a manually laid moored contact mine.

Development

During the American Civil War, Matthew Fontaine Maury, a Confederate government official established the Torpedo Bureau and the Torpedo Corps in Richmond, Virginia to oversee the development and deployment of new types of naval mines. Maury was convinced that the only way to defend the coastlines against Union assaults was through the widespread use of naval mines. Mines were inexpensive and easily produced on a large scale. The low cost and large volume of mines produced would supplement the small naval forces of the Confederacy and make it possible to defend against the superior fleet of the Union navy. The efforts of the Torpedo Bureau and the Torpedo Corps proved to be worth the investment of the Confederacy. For the relative low cost of the mines they did a tremendous amount of damage to the Union forces, sinking a total of 27 Union naval vessels.

Yana

Yana may refer to:

Locations

People

Other

Yana River

The Yana River (Russian: Я́на; IPA: [ˈjanə]), is a river in Sakha in Russia, located between the Lena to the west and the Indigirka to the east.

It is 872 kilometres (542 mi) long, while the upper Yana is 1,320 kilometres (820 mi) long. Its drainage basin covers 238,000 square kilometres (92,000 sq mi), and its annual discharge totals approximately 25 cubic kilometres (20,000,000 acre·ft). Most of this discharge occurs in May and June as the ice on the river breaks up. The Yana freezes up on the surface in October and stays under the ice until late May or early June. In the Verkhoyansk area, it stays frozen to the bottom for 70 to 110 days, and partly frozen for 220 days of the year.

The river begins at the confluence of the rivers Sartang and Dulgalakh. As the Yana flows into the Yana Bay of the Laptev Sea, it forms a huge river delta covering 10,200 square kilometres (3,900 sq mi). Yarok is a large flat island located east of the main mouths of the Yana.

There are approximately 40,000 lakes in the Yana basin, including both alpine lakes formed from glaciation in the Verkhoyansk Mountains (lowlands were always too dry for glaciation) and overflow lakes on the marshy plains in the north of the basin. The whole Yana basin is under continuous permafrost and most is larch woodland grading to tundra north of about 70°N, though trees extend in suitable microhabitats right to the delta.

Yana (Buddhism)

Yāna (Sanskrit and Pāli: "vehicle") refers to a mode or method of spiritual practice in Buddhism, and in particular to divisions of various schools of Buddhism according to their type of practice.

Nomenclature, etymology and orthography

In form, yāna is a neuter action noun (comparable to an English gerund) derived from the Sanskrit root yā- meaning "go" or "move", using any means of locomotion, by land or sea. Hence it may be translated "going", "moving", "marching, a march", "riding, a ride", "travelling, travel", "journey" and so on.

The word came to be extended to refer to any means used to ease or speed travel: hence such meanings as "vehicle", "carriage", "vessel", "wagon", "ship", and so on, depending on context. "Vehicle" is often used as a preferred translation as the word that provides the least in the way of presuppositions about the mode of travel.

In spiritual uses, the word yāna acquires many metaphorical meanings, discussed below.

Teaching story and metaphor

In the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta (1.33-34), Shakyamuni Buddha relates a profound teaching story on vehicles of conveyance utilizing the sacred river Ganges, all of which may be engaged as a metaphor for yana and a gradual or direct path: