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Books > Music > Contemporary popular music
Based on lengthy interviews with Ellington's bandmates, family, and friends, Duke Ellington and His World offers a fresh look at this legendary composer. The first biography of the composer written by a fellow musician and African-American, the book traces Ellington's life and career in terms of the social, cultural, political, and economic realities of his times. Beginning with his birth in Washington, DC, through his first bands and work at the legendary Cotton Club, to his final great extended compositions, this book gives a thorough introduction to Ellington's music and how it was made. It also illuminates his personal life because, for Ellington, music was his life and his life was a constant inspiration for music. When A. H. Lawrence was a young trombone player in the '40s, he met Ellington and befriended the elder musician. From that point forward, he closely followed Ellington's career. Because of his deep love for Ellington's music, he began interviewing many of the stars of Ellington's early bands, hoping to capture from them, before they passed away, their memories and insights. Drawing on these interviews with legendary musicians-including many who worked with Ellington from his earliest days, such as drummer Sonny Greer, who played with Ellington's first bands in the '20s and who continued in his bands through the early '50s-the book offers a rounded and human portrait of the great composer and musician. Ellington's son Mercer was particularly forthcoming, offering new information about his childhood and experiences working with his father. The insights into the family that he shared have not previously been published. The result is a thorough biography that offers unique insights into Ellington: the man and his music. This fresh and balanced portrayal will undoubtedly add to our understanding of one of America's greatest artists and bring renewed attention to his distinguished body of work.
This highly original and accessible book draws on the author's personal experience as a musician, producer and teacher of popular music to discuss the ways in which audio technology and musical creativity in pop music are inextricably bound together. This relationship, the book argues, is exemplified by the work of Trevor Horn, who is widely acknowledged as the most important, innovative and successful British pop record producer of the early 1980s. In the first part of the book, Timothy Warner presents a definition of pop as distinct from rock music, and goes on to consider the ways technological developments, such as the transition from analogue to digital, transform working practices and, as a result, impact on the creative process of producing pop. Part two analyses seven influential recordings produced by Trevor Horn between 1979 and 1985: 'Video Killed the Radio Star' (The Buggles), 'Buffalo Gals' (Malcolm McClaren),'Owner of a Lonely Heart' (Yes), 'Relax' (Frankie Goes to Hollywood), 'Slave to the Rhythm' (Grace Jones), and albums by The Art of Noise and Propaganda. These records reveal how the creative use of technology in the modern pop recording studio has informed Horn's work, a theme that is then explored in an extensive interview with Horn himself.
Titles: Dancing Queen * Knowing Me, Knowing You * Take a Chance on Me * Mamma Mia * Lay All Your Love on Me * Super Trouper * I Have a Dream * The Winner Takes It All * Money, Money, Money * S.O.S. * Chiquitita * Fernando * Voulez Vous * Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) * Does Your Mother Know * One of Us * The Name of the Game * Thank You for the Music * Waterloo.
Popular music is not simply a series of musicians, moments, genres or recordings. Audiences matter; and the most ardent audience members are the fans. To be a fan is to feel a connection with music. The study of fandom has begun to emerge as a vital strand of academic research, one that offers a fresh perspective on the nature of music culture. Fan Identities and Practices in Context investigates fan identities and practices in different contexts and in relation to different bands and artists. Through a series of empirical case studies the book reflects a diverse array of objects and perspectives associated with this vibrant new field of study. Contributors examine how fans negotiate their identities and actively pursue their particular interests, touching on a range of issues including cultural capital, generational memory, gender, fan fiction and the use of new media. This book was originally published as two special issues of Popular Music and Society.
To many, it seemed as though Lizzo shot to fame overnight. But long-time fans, like author Billie Oliver, know this is hardly the case. Lizzo's story is one of tireless persistence, in an industry and media landscape where she was often made to feel like she didn't belong. Well, you better believe that never stopped Lizzo. Lizzobangers, her debut album, dropped in 2014 and piqued the interest of the American music industry. There were murmurs, and some collaborations (*cough* Prince *cough*). But it was from 2016 onwards, as Lizzo's hilarious online presence grew in step with her status as a body positivity and self-love advocate, that her ascent to global stardom began. All the while, Lizzo maintained her brand of I-don't-give-a-f**k sincerity that many of us now aspire to. Or at least enjoy watching. How many other artists can claim to have twerked on stages around the world while playing classical flute? This book offers 50 pieces of Lizzo's story as a tribute to an icon who truly shines (and lets us all shine too).
Featuring 666 standout metal songs from 1960 to the present day and illustrated with sleeves, flyers, posters and magazine ads, this is a feast for fans who love it loud. 666 Songs to Make You Bang Your Head Until You Die delves into the dark corners of hard rock and metal, unearthing hidden treasures and shining fresh light on old favourites. From pioneers like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, through million-sellers like Van Halen and AC/DC, to skull-crushers like Pantera and The Prodigy, and young bucks like Bring Me The Horizon and Paramore, the selection charts the evolution of the genre over the last 60 years. Each entry is packed with reviews from contemporary musicians, quotes from bandmates and fascinating trivia. Written in an informed, entertaining and irreverent style, 666 Songs to Make You Bang Your Head Until You Die is a must-have for metal lovers.
Following the success of Jazz Covers, this epic volume of groove assembles over 500 legendary covers from a golden era in Black music. Psychedelia meets Black Power, sexual liberation meets social conscience, and street portraiture meets fantastical cartoon in this dazzling anthology of visualized funk and soul. Gathering both classic and rare covers, the collection celebrates each artwork's ability to capture not only a buyer's interest, but an entire musical mood. Browse through and discover the brilliant, the bold, the outlandish and the sheer beautiful designs that fans rushed to get their hands on as the likes of Marvin Gaye, James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, Michael Jackson, and Prince changed the world with their unique and unforgettable sounds. Featuring interviews with key industry figures, Funk & Soul Covers also provides cultural context and design analysis for many of the chosen record covers.
First published in 1972, Ian Whitcomb's After the Ball is an exuberant account of the origins and explosion of popular music, informed by the author's store of experience in the field as a pop sensation of The Sixties. 'Brash, learned, funny and perspicacious.... The author of this free-wheeling, diverting history was a student at Trinity College, Dublin, when he created a rock hit 'You Turn Me On,' and experienced a brief, bewildering season as a touring rock celebrity. This book... is his effort to explain that experience to himself, and, well-educated man that he is, he goes all the way back to the first pop bestseller (in sheet music, of course), 'After The Ball,' and all the way forward to the 1960s.' New Yorker 'One of the best books on popular music to come along in the last few years.... Whitcomb's own involvement with music constantly surfaces to make the book both revealing and highly enjoyable.' Seattle Times
Punk. London.1977. Most people blinked and missed it. Many spent a decade trying to catch up. Derek Ridgers stumbled across it by accident, where it was, in the beating filthy heart of the Roxy in middle of a derelict slum called Covent Garden. Stumbling through the moshpits trying to keep hold of a borrowed camera. 1977. Punk London brings you 152 pages of photography featuring the birth of the the most exciting cultural phenomenon in UK history. Currents and vibes, flows and backwash, trends and anti-trends splashing around in the cauldron of youth culture in the city of London, and the lost rebels haunting their suburban bedrooms - jumping the train uptown to get into the legendary Roxy. All converged, for one priceless moment, an outpouring of a truly original, DIY, anarchic, underground scene. Ridgers captured the first wave. Kids in the crowd, never before seen. The punks who made their own clothes because you couldn't buy punk clothes. The punks who got beaten up time and again for making themselves into targets. Rebellion before it got easy. You won't see these kids anywhere in the magazines. They weren't trying to get famous. 1977 will happen again. 1977 is happening somewhere, for someone, right now.
Experimentation in Improvised Jazz: Chasing Ideas challenges the notion that in the twenty-first century, jazz can be restrained by a singular, static definition. The worldwide trend for jazz to be marginalized by the mainstream music industry, as well as conservatoriums and schools of music, runs the risk of stifling the innovative and challenging aspects of its creativity. The authors argue that to remain relevant, jazz needs to be dynamic, proactively experimental, and consciously facilitate new ideas to be made accessible to an audience broader than the innovators themselves. Experimentation in Improvised Jazz explores key elements of experimental jazz music in order to discern ways in which the genre is developing. The book begins with an overview of where, when and how new ideas in free and improvised jazz have been created and added to the canon, developing the genre beyond its initial roots. It moves on to consider how and why musicians create free and improvised jazz; the decisions they make while playing. What are they responding to? What are they depending on? What are they thinking? The authors analyse and synthesise the creation of free jazz by correlating the latest research to the reflections provided by some of the world's greatest jazz innovators for this project. Finally, the book examines how we respond to free and improvised jazz: artistically, critically and personally. Free jazz is, the book argues, an environment that develops through experimentation with new ideas.
'Every Sound There Is': Revolver and the Transformation of Rock and Roll assesses and celebrates the Beatles' accomplishment in their 1966 masterpiece. The essays of Every Sound There Is examine Revolver from a large number of complementary starting points that help us to understand both the album's contemporary creation and reception and the ways in which it continues to shape the creation and reception of popular music in the twenty-first century. Responding to the incredible diversity of Revolver, this gathering of international scholars focuses on the Beatles' 1966 album as one of rock and roll history's threshold moments. Bringing to bear approaches from the disciplines of musicology, cultural studies, poetics, gender studies, these essays address matters as diverse as the influence of American R&B on Revolver as well as its influence on Pink Floyd, each Beatle's contributions to the album, the musicological significance of the Beatles' harmonies and chord progressions, its status and coherence as a work of art, the technological and marketing significance of Revolver's recording and distribution, and its influence on the development of rock music.
Despite the fact that most of jazz's major innovators and performers have been African American, the overwhelming majority of jazz journalists, critics, and authors have been and continue to be white men. No major mainstream jazz publication has ever had a black editor or publisher. Ain't But a Few of Us presents over two dozen candid dialogues with black jazz critics and journalists ranging from Greg Tate, Farah Jasmine Griffin, and Robin D. G. Kelley to Tammy Kernodle, Ron Welburn, and John Murph. They discuss the obstacles to access for black jazz journalists, outline how they contend with the world of jazz writing dominated by white men, and point out that these racial disparities are not confined to jazz but hamper their efforts at writing about other music genres as well. Ain't But a Few of Us also includes an anthology section, which reprints classic essays and articles from black writers and musicians such as LeRoi Jones, Archie Shepp, A. B. Spellman, and Herbie Nichols. Contributors Eric Arnold, Bridget Arnwine, Angelika Beener, Playthell Benjamin, Herb Boyd, Bill Brower, Jo Ann Cheatham, Karen Chilton, Janine Coveney, Marc Crawford, Stanley Crouch, Anthony Dean-Harris, Jordannah Elizabeth, Lofton Emenari III, Bill Francis, Barbara Gardner, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Jim Harrison, Eugene Holley Jr., Haybert Houston, Robin James, Willard Jenkins, Martin Johnson, LeRoi Jones, Robin D. G. Kelley, Tammy Kernodle, Steve Monroe, Rahsaan Clark Morris, John Murph, Herbie Nichols, Don Palmer, Bill Quinn, Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr., Ron Scott, Gene Seymour, Archie Shepp, Wayne Shorter, A. B. Spellman, Rex Stewart, Greg Tate, Billy Taylor, Greg Thomas, Robin Washington, Ron Welburn, Hollie West, K. Leander Williams, Ron Wynn
Colombia, November 1993: a reconstructed old passenger train is carrying one hundred musicians, acrobats and artists on a daring adventure through the heart of a country soaked in violence. Leading this crusade of hope is Manu Chao with his band Mano Negra. Manu's father Ramon Chao is on board to chronicle the journey. As the papa of the train, he endures personal discomfort, internal strife, derailments, stowaways, disease, guerrillas and paramilitaries. When the train arrives in Aracataca, the real-life Macondo of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Mano Negra disintegrates, leaving Manu to pick up the pieces with those determined to see this once-in-a-lifetime adventure through to the end.
Do you ever find yourself: Tumblin' out of bed and stumblin' to the kitchen? Searchin' for a cup of ambition? Sighin' and groanin' at the mundanity of life? We could all do with a bit more Dolly in our lives! With empowering advice on love, business, style and looking out for number one, these pages will help Dolly Parton lovers everywhere create the life they truly want.
Popular musicians acquire some or all of their skills and knowledge informally, outside school or university, and with little help from trained instrumental teachers. How do they go about this process? Despite the fact that popular music has recently entered formal music education, we have as yet a limited understanding of the learning practices adopted by its musicians. Nor do we know why so many popular musicians in the past turned away from music education, or how young popular musicians today are responding to it. Drawing on a series of interviews with musicians aged between fifteen and fifty, Lucy Green explores the nature of pop musicians' informal learning practices, attitudes and values, the extent to which these altered over the last forty years, and the experiences of the musicians in formal music education. Through a comparison of the characteristics of informal pop music learning with those of more formal music education, the book offers insights into how we might re-invigorate the musical involvement of the population. Could the creation of a teaching culture that recognizes and rewards aural imitation, improvisation and experimentation, as well as commitment and passion, encourage more people to make music? Since the hardback publication of this book in 2001, the author has explored many of its themes through practical work in school classrooms. Her follow-up book, Music, Informal Learning and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy (2008) appears in the same Ashgate series.
This book, first published in 1982, shows that jazz and blues are music forms that are about individualism, experiment, expression and feeling. From their origin in the work songs and spirituals of America's southern slaves, through to their adaptation to the urban adaptation to the urban environment in Chicago and New Orleans, the author details the social and economic background that saw the birth of the blues and jazz, and introduces and appraises their leading exponents. He shows how African rhythms were combined with an American musical tradition to produce a distinctive style which was to revitalise Western music.
In this lively examination of youth and their relationship to music, first published in 1994, contributors cover issues ranging from the place of music in urban subculture and what music tells us about adolescent views on love and sex, to the political status of youth and youth culture. |
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