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Books > Music > Contemporary popular music
Initially branching out of the European contradance tradition, the
danzon first emerged as a distinct form of music and dance among
black performers in nineteenth-century Cuba. By the early
twentieth-century, it had exploded in popularity throughout the
Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean basin. A fundamentally hybrid music
and dance complex, it reflects the fusion of European and African
elements and had a strong influence on the development of later
Latin dance traditions as well as early jazz in New Orleans.
Danzon: Circum-Caribbean Dialogues in Music and Dance studies the
emergence, hemisphere-wide influence, and historical and
contemporary significance of this music and dance phenomenon.
During the mid-1950s, when Hollywood found itself struggling to compete within an expanding entertainment media landscape, certain producers and studios saw an opportunity in making films that showcased performances by rock 'n' roll stars. Rock stars eventually found cinema to be a useful space to extend their creative practices, and the motion picture and recording industries increasingly saw cinematic rock stardom as a profitable means to connect multiple media properties. Indeed, casting rock stars for film provided a tool for bridging new relationships across media industries and practices. From Elvis Presley to Madonna, this book examines the casting rock stars in films. In so doing, Rock Star/Movie Star offers a new perspective on the role of stardom within the convergence of media industries. While hardly the first popular music culture to see its stars making the transition to screen, the timing of rock's emergence and its staying power within popular culture proved fortuitous for a motion picture business searching for its place in the face of continuous technological and cultural change. At the same time, a post-star-system film industry provided a welcoming context for rock stars who have valued authenticity, creative autonomy, and personal expression. This book uses illuminating archival resources to demonstrate how rock stars have often proven themselves to be prominent film workers exploring this terrain of platforms old and new - ideal media laborers whose power lies in the fact that they are rarely recognized as such. Combining star studies with media industry studies, this book proposes an integrated methodology for writing media history that combines the actions of individuals and the practices of industries. It demonstrates how stars have operated as both the gravitational center of media production as well as social actors who have taken on a decisive role in the purposes to which their images are used.
Arguably the world's most popular partnered social dance form, salsa's significance extends well beyond the Latino communities which gave birth to it. The growing international and cross-cultural appeal of this Latin dance form, which celebrates its mixed origins in the Caribbean and in Spanish Harlem, offers a rich site for examining issues of cultural hybridity and commodification in the context of global migration. Salsa consists of countless dance dialects enjoyed by varied communities in different locales. In short, there is not one dance called salsa, but many. Spinning Mambo into Salsa, a history of salsa dance, focuses on its evolution in three major hubs for international commercial export-New York, Los Angeles, and Miami. The book examines how commercialized salsa dance in the 1990s departed from earlier practices of Latin dance, especially 1950s mambo. Topics covered include generational differences between Palladium Era mambo and modern salsa; mid-century antecedents to modern salsa in Cuba and Puerto Rico; tension between salsa as commercial vs. cultural practice; regional differences in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami; the role of the Web in salsa commerce; and adaptations of social Latin dance for stage performance. Throughout the book, salsa dance history is linked to histories of salsa music, exposing how increased separation of the dance from its musical inspiration has precipitated major shifts in Latin dance practice. As a whole, the book dispels the belief that one version is more authentic than another by showing how competing styles came into existence and contention. Based on over 100 oral history interviews, archival research, ethnographic participant observation, and analysis of Web content and commerce, the book is rich with quotes from practitioners and detailed movement description.
Since 1997, the war in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has taken more than 6 million lives and shapes the daily existence of the nation's residents. While the DRC is often portrayed in international media as an unproductive failed state, the Congolese have turned increasingly to art-making to express their experience to external eyes. Author Cherie Rivers Ndaliko argues that cultural activism and the enthusiasm to produce art exists in Congo as a remedy for the social ills of war and as a way to communicate a positive vision of the country. Ndaliko introduces a memorable cast of artists, activists, and ordinary people from the North-Kivu province, whose artistic and cultural interventions are routinely excluded from global debates that prioritize economics, politics, and development as the basis of policy decision about Congo. Rivers also shows how art has been mobilized by external humanitarian and charitable organizations, becoming the vehicle through which to inflict new kinds of imperial domination. Written by a scholar and activist in the center of the current public policy debate, Necessary Noise examines the uneasy balance of accomplishing change through art against the unsteady background of civil war. At the heart of this book is the Yole!Africa cultural center, which is the oldest independent cultural center in the east of Congo. Established in the aftermath of volcano Nyiragongo's 2002 eruption and sustained through a series of armed conflicts, the cultural activities organized by Yole!Africa have shaped a generation of Congolese youth into socially and politically engaged citizens. By juxtaposing intimate ethnographic, aesthetic, and theoretical analyses of this thriving local initiative with case studies that expose the often destructive underbelly of charitable action, Necessary Noise introduces into heated international debates on aid and sustainable development a compelling case for the necessity of arts and culture in negotiating sustained peace. Through vivid descriptions of a community of young people transforming their lives through art, Ndaliko humanizes a dire humanitarian disaster. In so doing, she invites readers to reflect on the urgent choices we must navigate as globally responsible citizens. The only study of music or film culture in the east of Congo, Necessary Noise raises an impassioned and vibrantly interdisciplinary voice that speaks to the theory and practice of socially engaged scholarship.
Moving back through Dewey, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Rousseau, the lineage of Western music education finds its origins in Plato and Pythagoras. Yet theories not rooted in the ancient Greek tradition are all but absent. A Way of Music Education provides a much-needed intervention, integrating ancient Chinese thought into the canon of music education in a structured, systematized, and philosophical way. The book's three central sources - the Yijing (The Book of Changes), Confucianism, and Daoism - inform author C. Victor Fung's argument: that the human being exists as an entity at the center of an organismic world in which all things and events, including music and music education, are connected. Fung ultimately proposes a new educational philosophy based on three key ideas in Chinese thought: change, balance, and liberation. A unique work, A Way of Music Education offers a universal approach engrained in a specific and ancient cultural tradition.
A keen critic of culture in modern Indonesia, Andrew N. Weintraub
shows how a genre of Indonesian music called dangdut evolved from a
denigrated form of urban popular music to a prominent role in
Indonesian cultural politics and the commercial music industry.
Dangdut--named onomatopoetically for the music's characteristic
drum sounds "dang" and "dut"--is Indonesia's most popular music,
heard in streets and homes, public parks and narrow alleyways,
stores and restaurants, and all forms of public transportation.
Despite dangdut's tremendous popularity in Indonesia and other
parts of Asia, it has seldom received the serious critical
attention it deserves.
Analytical and Cross-Cultural Studies in World Music presents intriguing explanations of extraordinary musical creations from diverse cultures across the world. All the authors are experts, deeply engaged in the traditions they describe. They recount the contexts in which the music is created and performed, and then hone in on elucidating how the music works as sound in process. Accompanying the explanatory prose is a wealth of diagrams, transcriptions, recordings, and (online) multimedia presentations, all intended to convey the richness, beauty, and ingenuity of their subjects. The music ranges across geography and cultures--court music of Japan and medieval Europe, pagode song from Brazil, solos by the jazz pianist Thelonius Monk and by the sitar master Budhaditya Mukherjee, form-and-timbre improvisations of a Boston sound collective, South Korean folk drumming, and the ceremonial music of indigenous cultures in North American and Australia--much of which has never been so thoroughly analyzed before. Thus the essays diversify and expand the scope of this book's companion volume, Analytical Studies in World Music, to all inhabited continents and many of its greatest musical traditions. An introduction and an afterword point out common analytical approaches, and present a new way to classify music according to its temporal organization. Two special chapters consider the juxtaposition of music from different cultures: of world music traditions and popular music genres, and of Balinese music and European Art music, raising provocative questions about the musical encounters and fusions of today's interconnected world. For everyone listening in wonderment to the richness of world music, whether listener, creator, or performer, this book will be an invaluable resource and a fount of inspiration.
In the nearly eight decades since his death from tuberculosis at
age thirty-five, singer-songwriter Jimmie Rodgers has been an
inspiration for numerous top performers--from Woody Guthrie, Lead
Belly, Bill Monroe and Hank Williams to Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash,
Dolly Parton, Bob Dylan, and Beck. How did this Mississippi-born
vaudevillian, a former railroad worker who performed so briefly so
long ago, produce tones, tunes, and themes that have had such broad
influence and made him the model for the way American roots music
stars could become popular heroes?
Get into the music with David Leander Williams as he charts the rise and fall of Indiana Avenue, the Majestic Entertainment Boulevard of Indianapolis, which produced some of the nation's most influential jazz artists. The performance venues that once lined the vibrant thoroughfare were an important stop on the Chitlin' Circuit and provided platforms for greats like Freddie Hubbard and Jimmy Coe. Through this biography of the bustling street, meet scores of the other musicians who came to prominence in the avenue's heyday, including trombonist J.J. Johnson and guitarist Wes Montgomery, as well as songwriters like Noble Sissle and Leroy Carr.
The vast majority of films produced by Mumbai's commercial Hindi language film industry - known world-wide as Bollywood - feature songs as a central component of the cinematic narrative. While many critics have addressed the visual characteristics of these song sequences, very few have engaged with their aurality and with the meanings that they generate within the film narrative and within Indian society at large. Because the film songs operate as powerful sonic ambassadors to individual and cultural memories in India and abroad, however, they are significant and carefully-constructed works of art. Bollywood Sounds focuses on the songs of Indian films in their historical, social, and commercial contexts. Author Jayson Beaster-Jones walks the reader through the highly collaborative songs, detailing the contributions of film directors, music directors and composers, lyricists, musicians, and singers. A vital component of film promotion on broadcast media, Bollywood songs are distributed on soundtracks by music companies, and have long been the most popular music genre in India - even among listeners who rarely see the movies. Through close musical and multimedia analysis of more than twenty landmark compositions, Bollywood Sounds illustrates how the producers of Indian film songs mediate a variety of influences, musical styles, instruments, and performance practices to create this distinctive genre. Beaster-Jones argues that, even from the moment of its inception, the film song genre has always been in the unique position of demonstrating cosmopolitan orientations while maintaining discrete sound and production practices over its long history. As a survey of the music of seventy years of Hindi films, Bollywood Sounds is the first monograph to provide a long-term historical insights into Hindi film songs, and their musical and cinematic conventions, in ways that will appeal both to scholars and newcomers to Indian cinema.
Critiques and calls for reform have existed for decades within music education, but few publications have offered concrete suggestions as to how things might be done differently. Motivated by a desire to do just that, College Music Curricula for a New Century considers what a more inclusive, dynamic, and socially engaged curriculum of musical study might look like in universities. Editor Robin Moore creates a dialogue among faculty, administrators, and students about what the future of college music instruction should be and how teachers, institutions, and organizations can transition to new paradigms. Including contributions from leading figures in ethnomusicology, music education, theory/composition, professional performance, and administration, College Music Curricula for a New Century addresses college-level curriculum reform, focusing primarily on performance and music education degrees, and offer ideas and examples for a more inclusive, dynamic, and socially engaged curriculum of applied musical study. This book will appeal to thoughtful faculty looking for direction on how to enact reform, to graduate students with investment in shaping future music curricula, and to administrators who know change is on the horizon and seek wisdom and practical advice for implementing change. College Music Curricula for a New Century reaches far beyond any musical subdiscipline and addresses issues pertinent to all areas of music study.
In Choreographing in Color, J. Lorenzo Perillo investigates the development of Filipino popular dance and performance since the late 20th century. Drawing from nearly two decades of ethnography, choreographic analysis, and community engagement with artists, choreographers, and organizers, Perillo shifts attention away from the predominant Philippine neoliberal and U.S. imperialist emphasis on Filipinos as superb mimics, heroic migrants, model minorities, subservient wives, and natural dancers and instead asks: what does it mean for Filipinos to navigate the violent forces of empire and neoliberalism with street dance and Hip-Hop? Employing critical race, feminist, and performance studies, Perillo analyzes the conditions of possibility that gave rise to Filipino dance phenomena across viral, migrant, theatrical, competitive, and diplomatic performance in the Philippines and diaspora. Advocating for serious engagements with the dancing body, Perillo rethinks a staple of Hip-Hop's regulation, the "euphemism," as a mode of social critique for understanding how folks have engaged with both racial histories of colonialism and gendered labor migration. Figures of euphemism - the zombie, hero, robot, and judge - constitute a way of seeing Filipino Hip-Hop as contiguous with a multi-racial repertoire of imperial crossing, thus uncovering the ways Black dance intersects Filipino racialization and reframing the ongoing, contested underdog relationship between Filipinos and U.S. global power. Choreographing in Color therefore reveals how the Filipino dancing body has come to be, paradoxically, both globally recognized and indiscernible.
Though cultural hybridity is celebrated as a hallmark of U.S. American music and identity, hybrid music is all too often marked and marketed under a single racial label.Tamara Roberts' book Resounding Afro Asia examines music projects that foreground racial mixture in players, audiences, and sound in the face of the hypocrisy of the culture industry. Resounding Afro Asia traces a genealogy of black/Asian engagements through four contemporary case studies from Chicago, New York, and California: Funkadesi (Indian/funk/reggae), Yoko Noge (Japanese folk/blues), Fred Ho and the Afro Asian Music Ensemble (jazz/various Asian and African traditions), and Red Baraat (Indian brass band and New Orleans second line). Roberts investigates Afro Asian musical settings as part of a genealogy of cross-racial culture and politics. These musical settings are sites of sono-racial collaboration: musical engagements in which participants pointedly use race to form and perform interracial politics. When musicians collaborate, they generate and perform racially marked sounds that do not conform to their racial identities, thus splintering the expectations of cultural determinism. The dynamic social, aesthetic, and sonic practices construct a forum for the negotiation of racial and cultural difference and the formation of inter-minority solidarities. Through improvisation and composition, artists can articulate new identities and subjectivities in conversation with each other. Resounding Afro Asia offers a glimpse into how artists live multiracial lives in which they inhabit yet exceed multicultural frameworks built on racial essentialism and segregation. It joins a growing body of literature that seeks to write Asian American artists back into U.S. popular music history and will surely appeal to students of music, ethnomusicology, race theory, and politics, as well as those curious about the relationship between race and popular music.
In Arranging Gershwin, author Ryan Banagale approaches George
Gershwin's iconic piece Rhapsody in Blue not as a composition but
as an arrangement -- a status it has in many ways held since its
inception in 1924, yet one unconsidered until now. Shifting
emphasis away from the notion of the Rhapsody as a static work by a
single composer, Banagale posits a broad vision of the piece that
acknowledges the efforts of a variety of collaborators who shaped
the Rhapsody as we know it today. Arranging Gershwin sheds new
light on familiar musicians such as Leonard Bernstein and Duke
Ellington, introduces lesser-known figures such as Ferde Grofe and
Larry Adler, and remaps the terrain of this emblematic piece of
American music. At the same time, it expands on existing approaches
to the study of arrangements -- an emerging and insightful realm of
American music studies -- as well as challenges existing and
entrenched definitions of composer and composition.
The myth of Orpheus articulates what social theorists have known since Plato: music matters. It is uniquely able to move us, to guide the imagination, to evoke memories, and to create spaces within which meaning is made. Popular music occupies a place of particular social and cultural significance. Christopher Partridge explores this significance, analyzing its complex relationships with the values and norms, texts and discourses, rituals and symbols, and codes and narratives of modern Western cultures. He shows how popular musics power to move, to agitate, to control listeners, to shape their identities, and to structure their everyday lives is central to constructions of the sacred and the profane. In particular, he argues that popular music can be important edgework, challenging dominant constructions of the sacred in modern societies. Drawing on a wide range of musicians and musical genres, as well as a number of theoretical approaches from critical musicology, cultural theory, sociology, theology, and the study of religion, The Lyre of Orpheus reveals the significance and the progressive potential of popular music.
Rufus Thomas may not be a household name, but he is widely regarded as the patriarch of Memphis R&B, and his music influenced three generations. His first singles in the early 1950s were recorded as blues transitioned into R&B, and he was arguably one of the founding fathers of early rock ’n’ roll. In the early 1960s, his songs "The Dog" and "Walking the Dog" made a huge impact on the emerging British "mod" scene, influencing the likes of the Georgie Fame, the Rolling Stones, and the Who. And in the early 1970s, Thomas rebranded himself as the "funkiest man alive" and recorded funk classics that were later sampled by the likes of Public Enemy, Missy Elliot, and the Wu-Tang Clan. In Funkiest Man Alive: Rufus Thomas and Memphis Soul, Matthew Ruddick reveals the amazing life and career of Thomas, who started as a dancer in the minstrel shows that toured the South before becoming one of the nation’s early African American disc jockeys, and then going on to record the first hit singles for both Chess Records and Stax Records. Ruddick also examines the social fabric of the city of Memphis, analyzing the factors behind the vast array of talent that appeared in the late 1950s, with singers like Isaac Hayes, William Bell, Maurice White (Earth, Wind & Fire), and Thomas’s older daughter, Carla Thomas, all emerging from the tightly knit African American community. He also tells the story of Memphis-based Stax Records, one of the nation’s leading R&B record labels. From the earliest blues, the segregated minstrel shows, and the birth of rock ’n’ roll through to the emergence of R&B and funk, Rufus Thomas saw it all.
For jazz historians, Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings mark the first revolution in the history of a music riven by upheaval. Yet few traces of this revolution can be found in the historical record of the late 1920s, when the records were made. Even black newspapers covered Armstrong as just one name among many, and descriptions of his playing, while laudatory, bear little resemblance to those of today. For this reason, the perspective of Armstrong's first listeners is usually regarded as inadequate, as if they had missed the true significance of his music. This attitude overlooks the possibility that those early listeners might have heard something valuable on its own terms, something we ourselves have lost. If we could somehow recapture their perspective-without abandoning our own-how might it change our understanding of these seminal recordings? In Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings, Harker selects seven exceptional records to study at length: "Cornet Chop Suey," "Big Butter and Egg Man," "Potato Head Blues," "S.O.L. Blues"/"Gully Low Blues," "Savoy Blues," and "West End Blues." The world of vaudeville and show business provide crucial context, revealing how the demands of making a living in a competitive environment could catalyze Armstrong's unique artistic gifts. Technical achievements such as virtuosity, structural coherence, harmonic improvisation, and high-register playing are all shown to have a basis in the workaday requirements of Armstrong's profession. Invoking a breadth of influences ranging from New Orleans clarinet style to Guy Lombardo, and from tap dancing to classical music, this book offers bold insights, fresh anecdotes, and, ultimately, a new interpretation of Louis Armstrong and his most influential body of recordings.
Though you may not know the man, you probably know his music. Arkansas-born Louis Jordan's songs like "Baby, It's Cold Outside," "Caldonia" and "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens" can still be heard today, decades since Jordan ruled the charts. In his five-decade career, Jordan influenced American popular music, film and more and inspired the likes of James Brown, B.B. King, Chuck Berry and Ray Charles. Known as the "King of the Jukeboxes," he and his combo played a hybrid of jazz, swing, blues and comedy music during the big band era that became the start of R&B. In a stunning narrative portrait of Louis Jordan, author Stephen Koch contextualizes the great, forgotten musician among his musical peers, those he influenced and the musical present.
The International Who's Who in Popular Music 2007 provides biographical details on some of the most talented and influential artists, as well as up-and-coming individuals from the world of popular music. International in scope, this new edition provides information on artists, varying from Eminem to Wynton Marsalis; Ray Davies to Talvin Singh. Listed alphabetically by surname, entries provide full biographical profiles, including personal information, principal career details, recordings and compositions, and full contact details, where available. An index of groups is provided for ease of reference. Appendices include directories listing music festivals, music organizations, music awards and digital music sites providing legal downloads. The careers of pop, rock, folk, jazz, dance, world and country music artists from around the world are profiled in this new edition. New artists are included, as well as established names in popular music. Entrants include Elvis Costello, Carlos Santana, Wayne Shorter, Dizzee Rascal, Gil Scott-Heron and Joss Stone. Over 6,000 alphabetically arranged entries. Fully revised and updated for this ninth edition. Spans the full range of popular music.
The music we hear is always inhabited by voices of previous
performances. Because listening is now so often accompanied by
moving images, this process is more complex than ever. Music
videos, television and film music, interactive video games, and
social media are now part of the contemporary listening experience.
'Jazz Survivor' tells the story of Louis Bannet, the Dutch Louis Armstrong. Louis Bannet was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau during the was, but his skill as a musician saved his life: he became the 'star' of the Auschwitz Orchestra, as well as the personal bandleader for Dr Josef Mengele and the founder of the Gypsy Camp Orchestra.
How does the immediate experience of musical sound relate to
processes of meaning construction and discursive mediation?
Embodying Mexico examines two performative icons of
Mexicanness--the Dance of the Old Men and Night of the Dead of Lake
P tzcuaro--in numerous manifestations, including film, theater,
tourist guides, advertisements, and souvenirs. Covering a
ninety-year period from the postrevolutionary era to the present
day, Hellier-Tinoco's analysis is thoroughly grounded in Mexican
politics and history, and simultaneously incorporates
choreographic, musicological, and dramaturgical analysis.
Blues history is steeped in Chicago's sidewalks; it floats out of its restaurants, airport lounges and department stores. It is a fundamental part of the city's heritage that every resident should know and every visitor should be afraid to miss. Allow Rosalind Cummings-Yeates to take you inside the Checkerboard and Gerri's Palm Tavern, where folks like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon and Ma Rainey transformed Chicago into the blues mecca. Continue on to explore the contemporary blues scene and discover the best spots to hear the purest sounds of Sweet Home Chicago. |
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