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Books > Arts & Architecture
During the heyday of Cold War cultural politics, state-sponsored
performances of classical and popular music were central to the
diplomatic agendas of the United States and the Soviet Union, while
states on the periphery of the conflict often used state-funded
performances to articulate their position in the polarized global
network. In Albania in particular, the postwar government invested
heavily in public performances, effectively creating a new genre of
popular music: the wildly popular light music. In Audible States:
Socialist Politics and Popular Music in Albania, author Nicholas
Tochka traces an aural history of Albania's government through a
close examination of the development and reception of light music
as it has long been broadcast at an annual song competition,
Radio-Television Albania's Festival of Song. Drawing on a wide
range of archival resources and over forty interviews with
composers, lyricists, singers, and bureaucrats, Tochka describes
how popular music became integral to governmental projects to
improve society-and a major concern for both state-socialist and
post-socialist regimes between 1945 and the present. Tochka's
narrative begins in the immediate postwar period, arguing that
state officials saw light music as a modernizing agent that would
cultivate a cosmopolitan, rational populace. Interweaving archival
research with ethnographic interviews, author Nicholas Tochka
argues that modern political orders do not simply render social
life visible, but also audible. As the Cold War thawed and
communist states fell, the post-socialist government turned again
to light music, now hoping that these musicians could help shape
Albania into a capitalist, "European" state. Incorporating insights
from ethnomusicology, governmental studies, and post-socialist
studies, Audible States presents an original perspective on music
and government that reveals the fluid, pervasive, but ultimately
limited nature of state power in the modern world. Tochka's project
represents a nascent entry in a growing area of study in music
scholarship that focuses on post-soviet Europe and popular musics.
A remarkably researched and engagingly written study, Audible
States is a foundational text in this area and will be of great
interest for music scholars and graduate students interested in
popular music, sound studies, and politics of the Cold War.
Sidney Poitier remains one of the most recognizable black men in
the world. Widely celebrated but at times criticized for the roles
he played during a career that spanned 60 years, there can be no
comprehensive discussion of black men in American film, and no
serious analysis of 20th century American film history that
excludes him. Poitier Revisited offers a fresh interrogation of the
social, cultural and political significance of the Poitier oeuvre.
The contributions explore the broad spectrum of critical issues
summoned up by Poitier's iconic work as actor, director and
filmmaker. Despite his stature, Poitier has actually been
under-examined in film criticism generally. This work reconsiders
his pivotal role in film and American race relations, by arguing
persuasively, that even in this supposedly 'post-racial' moment of
Barack Obama, the struggles, aspirations, anxieties, and tensions
Poitier's films explored are every bit as relevant today as when
they were first made.
Samuel Daniell can be described as one of the most accomplished yet least-known artists from the era of British exploration. He travelled around southern Africa between 1800 and 1803, and lived in Ceylon until his death in 1811.
His vivid sketches, drawings and watercolours are individuated and accomplished art works. Daniell’s representations of people of colour are remarkable for their perceptiveness and are perhaps unmatched in their sensitivity in the colonial era.
He also produced many drawings and paintings of animals that are noteworthy for their accuracy. His biography is a fascinating example of how art contributed to the accumulation of scientific knowledge and the extension of British imperial power.
Daniell’s drawings are widely scattered, and mostly unpublished. This biography reconstructs his life and travels by bringing together his known works from collections across the world.
Teaching the Postsecondary Music Student with Disabilities provides
valuable information and practical strategies for teaching the
college music student. With rising numbers of students with
disabilities in university music schools, professors are being
asked to accommodate students in their studios, classes, and
ensembles. Most professors have little training or experience in
teaching students with disabilities. This book provides a resource
for creating an inclusive music education for students who audition
and enter music school. Teaching the Postsecondary Music Student
with Disabilities covers all of the topics that all readers need to
know including law, assistive technology, high-incidence and
low-incidence disabilities, providing specific details on the
disability and how it impacts the learning of the music student.
The Last Word argues that the Hollywood novel opened up space for
cultural critique of the film industry at a time when the industry
lacked the capacity to critique itself. While the young studio
system worked tirelessly to burnish its public image in the wake of
celebrity scandal, several industry insiders wrote fiction to fill
in what newspapers and fan magazines left out. Throughout the 1920s
and 1930s, these novels aimed to expose the invisible machinery of
classical Hollywood cinema, including not only the evolving
artifice of the screen but also the promotional discourse that
complemented it. As likeminded filmmakers in the 1940s and 1950s
gradually brought the dark side of the industry to the screen,
however, the Hollywood novel found itself struggling to live up to
its original promise of delivering the unfilmable. By the 1960s,
desperate to remain relevant, the genre had devolved into little
more than erotic fantasy of movie stars behind closed doors,
perhaps the only thing the public couldn't already find elsewhere.
Still, given their unique ability to speak beyond the institutional
restraints of their time, these earlier works offer a window into
the industry's dynamic creation and re-creation of itself in the
public imagination.
During the century of British rule of the Indian subcontinent known
as the British Raj, the rulers felt the significant influence of
their exotic subjects. Resonances of the Raj examines the
ramifications of the intertwined and overlapping histories of
Britain and India on English music in the last fifty years of the
colonial encounter, and traces the effects of the Raj on the
English musical imagination. Conventional narratives depict a
one-way influence of Britain on India, with the 'discovery' of
Indian classical music occurring only in the post-colonial era.
Drawing on new archival sources and approaches in cultural studies,
author Nalini Ghuman shows that on the contrary, England was both
deeply aware of and heavily influenced by India musically during
the Indian-British colonial encounter. Case studies of
representative figures, including composers Edward Elgar and Gustav
Holst, and Maud MacCarthy, an ethnomusicologist and performer of
the era, integrate music directly into the cultural history of the
British Raj. Ghuman thus reveals unexpected minglings of peoples,
musics and ideas that raise questions about 'Englishness', the
nature of Empire, and the fixedness of identity. Richly illustrated
with analytical music examples and archival photographs and
documents, many of which appear here in print for the first time,
Resonances of the Raj brings fresh hearings to both familiar and
little-known musics of the time, and reveals a rich and complex
history of cross-cultural musical imaginings which leads to a
reappraisal of the accepted historiographies of both British
musical culture and of Indo-Western fusion.
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