The field of popular music production is overwhelmingly male dominated. Here, Paula Wolfe discusses gendered notions of creativity and examines the significant under-representation of women in studio production. Wolfe brings an invaluable perspective as both a working artist-producer and as a scholar, thereby offering a new body of research based on interviews and first-hand observation. Wolfe demonstrates that patriarchal frameworks continue to form the backbone of the music industry establishment but that women's work in the creation and control of sound presents a potent challenge to gender stereotyping, marginalisation and containment of women's achievements that is still in evidence in music marketing practices and media representation in the digital era.

The playback of recordings is the primary means of experiencing music in contemporary society, and in recent years 'classical' musicologists and popular music theorists have begun to examine the ways in which the production of recordings affects not just the sound of the final product but also musical aesthetics more generally. Record production can, indeed, be treated as part of the creative process of composition. At the same time, training in the use of these forms of technology has moved from an apprentice-based system into university education. Musical education and music research are thus intersecting to produce a new academic field: the history and analysis of the production of recorded music. This book is designed as a general introductory reader, a text book for undergraduate degree courses studying the creative processes involved in the production of recorded music. The aim is to introduce students to the variety of approaches and methodologies that are currently being employed by scholars in this field. The book is divided into three sections covering historical approaches, theoretical approaches and case studies and practice. There are also three interludes of commentary on the academic contributions from leading record producers and other industry professionals. This collection gives students and scholars a broad overview of the way in which academics from the analytical and practice-based areas of the university system can be brought together with industry professionals to explore the ways in which this new academic field should progress.

(The Little Black Songbook). A pocket sized collection of Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler songs presented in chord songbook format, with chord symbols, guitar chord boxes and complete lyrics. Includes over 70 classics, including: All the Roadrunning * Boom, Like That * Brothers in Arms * Calling Elvis * Expresso Love * Get Lucky * Money for Nothing * Romeo and Juliet * Sailing to Philadelphia * So Far Away * Sultans of Swing * Telegraph Road * Walk of Life * and more.

Stephen Botek apprenticed at the side of some of the greats of the jazz era, learning not only about music, but about life. Growing up in small-town Pennsylvania in the shadow of the Dorseys, Botek decides to follow his muse to a future in jazz. He gets mentored by clarinet great Buddy DeFranco and saxophone legend Joe Allard, meets up with greats such as Artie Shaw and Dizzy Gillespie along the way, and follows in Glenn Miller's footsteps with the Army Air Force Band. A primer on the jazz era, as well as an account of the benefits of apprenticeship, SONG ON MY LIPS not only recounts stories of the greats but takes us backstage, to their studios, and to many of the unique venues of the time. Jazz aficionados and new musicians alike will learn much about the music from this unique life story.

World Music Pedagogy, Volume VI: School-Community Intersections provides students with a resource for delving into the meaning of "world music" across a broad array of community contexts and develops the multiple meanings of community relative to teaching and learning music of global and local cultures. It clarifies the critical need for teachers to work in tandem with community musicians and artists in order to bridge the unnecessary gulf that often separates school music from the music of the world beyond school and to consider the potential for genuine collaborations across this gulf. The five-layered features of World Music Pedagogy are specifically addressed in various school-community intersections, with attention to the collaboration of teachers with local community artist-musicians and with community musicians-at-a-distance who are available virtually. The authors acknowledge the multiple routes teachers are taking to enable and encourage music learning in community contexts, such as their work in after-school academies, museums and libraries, eldercare centers, places of worship, parks and recreation centers, and other venues in which adults and children gather to learn music, make music, and become convivial through music This volume suggests that the world's musical cultures may be found locally, can be tapped virtually, and are important in considerations of music teaching and learning in schools and community contexts. Authors describe working artists and teachers, scenarios, vignettes, and teaching and learning experiences that happen in communities and that embrace the role of community musicians in schools, all of which will be presented with supporting theoretical frameworks.

Many educators already know that hip-hop can be a powerful tool for engaging students. But can hip-hop save our schools-and our society? Hip Hop Genius introduces an iteration of hip-hop education that goes far beyond studying rap music as classroom content. Through stories about the professional rapper who founded the first hip-hop high school and the aspiring artists currently enrolled there, sam seidel lays out a vision for how hip-hop's genius-the resourceful creativity and swagger that took it from a local phenomenon to a global force-can lead to a fundamental remix of the way we think of teaching, school design, and leadership. This 10-year anniversary edition welcomes two new contributing authors, Tony Simmons and Michael Lipset, who bring direct experience running the High School for Recording Arts. The new edition includes new forewords from some of the most prominent names in education and hip-hop, reflections on ten more years of running a hip-hop high school, updates to every chapter from the first edition, details of how the school navigated the unprecedented complexities brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and uprising in response to the murder of George Floyd, and an inspiring new concluding chapter that is a call to action for the field.

In the 1960s rock 'n' roll music began crossing the Atlantic Ocean--with The Beatles and The Who leading the British Invasion of the United States--and the Pacific Ocean, as American and European rock slowly began to take hold in Japan. This insightful study from visionary rock musician Julian Cope explores what really happened when Western music met Eastern shores. The clash between traditional Japanese values and the wild renegades of 1960s and 1970s rock 'n' roll is examined, and the seminal artists in Japanese post-World War II culture are all covered. From itinerate art-house poets to violent refusenik bands with penchants for plane hijacking, this is the story of the Japanese youths and musicians who simultaneously revolutionized a musical genre and the culture of a nation.

This comprehensive reference guide provides: 1,300+ chords in treble and bass clef notation; 42 chord qualities with multiple voicings for most chords; keyboard diagrams for each chord; and music theory info to aid in chord construction. A must for every piano player!

In the 1920s, Southern record companies ventured to cities like Dallas, Atlanta, and New Orleans, where they set up primitive recording equipment in makeshift studios. They brought in street singers, medicine show performers, pianists from the juke joints and barrelhouses. The music that circulated through Southern work camps, prison farms, and vaudeville shows would be lost to us if it hadn't been captured on location by these performers and recorders. Eminent blues historian Paul Oliver uncovers these folk traditions and the circumstances under which they were recorded, rescuing the forefathers of the blues who were lost before they even had a chance to be heard. A careful excavation of the earliest recordings of the blues by one of its foremost experts, Barrelhouse Blues expands our definition of that most American style of music.

Even prior to the field's invention, Susanne Langer implied that the arts are all subtopics of Communication Studies. This unique project has effectively allowed the author to combine his backgrounds in the interdisciplinary fields of popular music studies, cultural theory, communication studies, and the practice of music criticism. This book investigates the fascinating and important work of the British group Radiohead, named by Time Magazine among its Top 100 Most Influential People of 2008, and focuses particularly on their landmark recording OK Computer (1997), a document preserved as part of the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2015. Probing the band's exploration of the crucial issues surrounding contemporary technological development, especially as it relates to the concern of human survival, Radiohead and the Global Movement for Change is essentially a work of criticism that in its analysis combines what is known as 'musical hermeneutics' with the media ecology perspective. In this way, the author delineates how Radiohead's work operates as a clarion call that directs our attention to the troubling complex of cultural conditions that Neil Postman (1992) identifies as 'Technopoly' or 'the surrender of culture to technology'-a phenomenon that must become more broadly recognized and comprehended in order for it to be successfully confronted. This book's distinguishing features include: 1) its edifying analysis of a richly profound and celebrated musical text; 2) its extended focus upon what Martin Heidegger famously refers to as 'the question concerning technology'; 3) its use of the media ecology scholarly tradition at whose core lies communication study; and 4) its innovative and unique deployment of the affect-script theory of American personality theorist Silvan Tomkins in the study of musical communication.

George Harrison was one of the most prolific popular music composers of the late 20th century. During his tenure with the Beatles, he caught the wave of 1960s pop culture and began channeling its pervasive influence through his music. Often described as "The Invisible Singer," his solo recordings reveal him to be an elusive, yet essential, element in the Beatles' sound. The discussion of George Harrison's Beatle tracks featured in the text employs a Songscape approach that blends accessible music analysis with an exploration of the virtual space created on the sound recording. This approach is then used to explore Harrison's extensive catalog of solo works, which, due to their varied cultural sources, seem increasingly like early examples of Global Pop. In that sense, the music of George Harrison may ultimately be viewed as an important locus for pan-cultural influence in the 20th century, making this book essential reading for those interested in the history of songwriting and recording as well as the cultural study of popular music.

'[An] astute reckoning with modern celebrity' - The Times 'A wild read' - The Guardian 'A well-researched, measured account' - The Sun Part biography, part social history, Being Britney pieces together a collage of stories, interviews, legends and fan experiences to construct a definitive portrait of one of the biggest stars in recent history. In her unique narrative, acclaimed music author Jennifer Otter Bickerdike provides a sympathetic yet objective re-examination of Britney's trajectory from girl next door to woman trapped by fame. Being Britney is the compelling account of a talented, troubled and talked-about modern icon, whose life, work and individual significance will be recognised for many decades to come. 'After years of being framed as a victim, Britney deserves to be celebrated as the fighter, inspiration and enigma she truly is.' - Jennifer Otter Bickerdike

The Sound State of Uzbekistan: Popular Music and Politics in the Karimov Era is a pioneering study of the intersection between popular music and state politics in Central Asia. Based on 20 months of fieldwork and archival research in Tashkent, this book explores a remarkable era in Uzbekistan's politics (2001-2016), when the Uzbek government promoted a rather unlikely candidate to the prominent position of state sound: estrada, a genre of popular music and a musical relic of socialism. The political importance it attached to estrada was matched by the establishment of an elaborate bureaucratic apparatus for state oversight. The Sound State of Uzbekistan shows the continuing legacy of Soviet concepts to frame the nexus between music, artists and the state, and explains the extraordinary potency ascribed to estrada. At the same time, it challenges classical readings of transition and also questions common binary models for researching culture in totalitarian or authoritarian states. Proposing to approach lives in music under authoritarianism as a form of normality instead, the author promotes a post-Cold War paradigm in music studies.

Boy Bands and the Performance of Pop Masculinity provides a history of the boy band from the Beatles to One Direction, placing the modern male pop group within the wider context of twentieth- and twenty-first-century popular music and culture. Offering the first extended look at pop masculinity as exhibited by boy bands, this volume links the evolving expressions of gender and sexuality in the boy band to wider economic and social changes that have resulted in new ways of representing what it is to be a man. The popularity of boy bands is unquestionable, and their contributions to popular music are significant, yet they have attracted relatively little study. This book fills that gap with chapters exploring the challenges of defining the boy band phenomenon, its origins and history from the 1940s to the present, the role of management and marketing, the performance of gender and sexuality, and the nature of fandom and fan agency. Throughout, the author illuminates the ways in which identity politics influence the production and consumption of pop music and shows how the mainstream pop of boy bands can both reinforce and subvert gender and class hierarchies.

In today's culture, popular music is a vital site where ideas about gender and sexuality are imagined and disseminated. Popular Music and the Politics of Hope: Queer and Feminist Interventions explores what that means with a wide-ranging collection of chapters that consider the many ways in which contemporary pop music performances of gender and sexuality are politically engaged and even radical. With analyses rooted in feminist and queer thought, contributors explore music from different genres and locations, including Beyonce's Lemonade, A Tribe Called Red's We Are the Halluci Nation, and celebrations of Vera Lynn's 100th Birthday. At a bleak moment in global politics, this collection focuses on the concept of critical hope: the chapters consider making and consuming popular music as activities that encourage individuals to imagine and work toward a better, more just world. Addressing race, class, aging, disability, and colonialism along with gender and sexuality, the authors articulate the diverse ways popular music can contribute to the collective political projects of queerness and feminism. With voices from senior and emerging scholars, this volume offers a snapshot of today's queer and feminist scholarship on popular music that is an essential read for students and scholars of music and cultural studies.

Madonna is perhaps one of the most consistently transgressive and self-transforming artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The recent release of two critically acclaimed and best-selling albums and a sold-out world tour have renewed media and academic interest in the artist. Madonna presents a set of strikingly new challenges to cultural analysis, and new developments in Gender, Queer and Ethnic studies have shed more light on her entire oeuvre. Whilst the contributors do refer to classic cultural theorists such as Baudrillard, Zizek, Foucault and Barthes, new theoretical approaches to Madonna's work feature prominently. In view of this, the present volume offers new perspectives on Madonna's work to date, addressing her configurations of race, gender and sex(uality) and with special emphasis on her resurrection after the Sex backlash in the early 1990s. The collection focuses on new Madonna-related topics such as Hinduism, Judaism, Japanese culture, All-American culture, Queer culture, Motherhood and her influence on newer 'girl acts' such as the Spice Girls and Britney Spears. The book explores the themes of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and celebrity consumption through the lens of Madonna's songs, videos and shows. An international array of scholars portrays Madonna's popularisation of the notion that identity is not fixed and can be continuously rearranged and revamped. The book should have wide appeal for all those concerned with gender studies, cultural studies, ethnic studies, lesbian and gay musicology as well as popular music studies.

Here is the story of the boy from Brixton who became one of the most famous artists of the 20th century, returned to prominence in the 21st with music and visions informed by a sense of his own mortality and who through his life and work, changed lives and those of generations to come. David Bowie's music is loved by many and known by all as the soundtrack to the world of changes that was heralded by the creation of Ziggy Stardust. Through the hits and personas that followed, the work in art, drama, film and fashion, Bowie's voice rang clearly across the decades summoning everyone to a party where strangeness would be celebrated and the 'now' would always be new. Yet David Bowie remained forever the outsider, observing, creating, collaborating, inspiring and moving forward. This book follows a life that as much as any other was a personal journey but one in which so many joined and made part of their own.

On the basis of a body of reggae songs from the 1970s and late 1990s, this book offers a sociological analysis of memory, hope and redemption in reggae music. From Dennis Brown to Sizzla, the way in which reggae music constructs a musical, religious and socio-political memory in rupture with dominant models is vividly illustrated by the lyrics themselves. How is the past remembered in the present? How does remembering the past allow for imagining the future? How does collective memory participate in the historical grounding of collective identity? What is the relationship between tradition and revolution, between the recollection of the past and the imagination of the future, between passivity and action? Ultimately, this case study of 'memory at work' opens up a theoretical problem: the conceptualization of time and its relationship with memory. -- .

Pop music and rock music are often treated as separate genres but the distinction has always been blurred. Motti Regev argues that pop-rock is best understood as a single musical form defined by the use of electric and electronic instruments, amplification and related techniques. The history of pop-rock extends from the emergence of rock'n'roll in the 1950s to a variety of contemporary fashions and trends rock, punk, soul, funk, techno, hip hop, indie, metal, pop and many more. This book offers a highly original account of the emergence of pop-rock music as a global phenomenon in which Anglo-American and many other national and ethnic variants interact in complex ways. Pop-rock is analysed as a prime instance of 'aesthetic cosmopolitanism' that is, the gradual formation, in late modernity, of world culture as a single interconnected entity in which different social groupings around the world increasingly share common ground in their aesthetic perceptions, expressive forms and cultural practices. Drawing on a wide array of examples, this path-breaking book will be of great interest to students and scholars in cultural sociology, media and cultural studies as well as the study of popular music.

The Beatles loom large over the musical landscape even now that nearly a half-century has passed since the four men from Liverpool played their last notes together. While the story of their stunning rise and brief but brilliant time together on top of the pop music world is undoubtedly fascinating, it would ring hollow without the scores of incredible songs that accompanied each milestone. These songs are the focus of rock writer Jim Beviglia's latest foray into the catalogs of rock royalty. Counting Down the Beatles: Their 100 Finest Songs features Beviglia's list of the best songs in the band's unparalleled oeuvre. Ranked in descending order from #100 to #1, each song is accompanied by a lengthy essay providing information on the song's writing and recording, context on where it falls within the band's timeline, and the author's analysis and explanation why it deserves its position in this hallowed canon. Every fan of the Beatles, from attendees at their first U.S.tour to the newest generation's devotees, will find this collection an informative, insightful, and entertaining adventure. Not only will it reveal little-known facts, but it just may start some arguments and settle a few debates.

The International Who's Who in Popular Music 2023 gives biographical information and contact details for some of the most talented and influential artists and individuals from the world of popular music. Now in its twenty-fourth edition, there are over 7,000 biographies charting the careers and achievements of artists in pop, rock, folk, jazz, dance, world, country music and much more. Key Features: - each entry includes full biographical information: principal career details, recordings and compositions, honours and contact information where available - each entrant is given the opportunity to update his or her information - spans the full range of the popular music industry, from rock to jazz and dance to country - provides information on established names as well as up-and-coming artists - a directory section provides details of music festivals, awards, organizations within the industry, and digital music sources - for ease of reference, the book includes an index of music group members. In one accessible volume this title offers users a vast collection of information on the most famous and influential people in the popular music industry.

Benny Joseph made his living as a professional photographer in Houston's black community during the crucial decades from the 1950s through the early 1980s, when the amplified pulse of rhythm and blues underscored the social changes sweeping the nation. Joseph photographed everything from parades and teen hops to impassioned speeches by civil rights leaders Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall. Under contract to the pioneering black entrepreneur Don Robey, owner of the Duke and Peacock recording labels, Joseph photographed many of the popular recording artists of the day, including B.B. King, Mahalia Jackson, Buddy Ace, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, and Della Reese. With over 120 unique black and white photographs, this is a must have for all rhythm and blues enthusiasts, and a valuable historical resource for photography collectors. Writer, photographer, and filmmaker Alan Govenar met Joseph in 1984 when he was closing his studio in Houston's Third Ward and worked with him over the next five years, sifting through thousands of negatives to identify and contextualize his most compelling images of this remarkable era.

This volume provides a transnational study of the impact of musical cultures in the Eastern Baltics-Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Russia-at the end of the Cold War and in the early post-Communist period. Throughout the book, the contributors explore and conceptualize transnational musical collaboration and the diffusion of information, people, and ideas focusing on musical activity which shaped the moral and artistic outlook of several generations. The volume sheds light on the transformative power of politically and socially engaged music and offers a deeper understanding of the artistic potential of societies and its impact on social and political change.

One of the greats of blues music, Willie Dixon was a recording artist whose abilities extended beyond that of bass player. A singer, songwriter, arranger, and producer, Dixon's work influenced countless artists across the music spectrum. In Willie Dixon: Preacher of the Blues, Mitsutoshi Inaba examines Dixon's career, from his earliest recordings with the Five Breezes through his major work with Chess Records and Cobra Records. Focusing on Dixon's work on the Chicago blues from the 1940s to the early 1970s, this book details the development of Dixon's songwriting techniques from his early professional career to his mature period and compares the compositions he provided for different artists. This volume also explores Dixon's philosophy of songwriting and its social, historical, and cultural background. This is the first study to discuss his compositions in an African American cultural context, drawing upon interviews with his family and former band members. This volume also includes a detailed list of Dixon's session work, in which his compositions are chronologically organized.

To date, there has been a significant gap in work on the social history of music in Britain from 1950 to the present day. The three volumes of Live Music in Britain address this gap and do so through a unique prism-that of live music. The key theme of the books is the changing nature of the live music industry in the UK, focused upon popular music but including all musical genres. Via this focus, the books offer new insights into a number of other areas, including the relationship between commercial and public funding of music, changing musical fashions and tastes, the impact of changing technologies, the changing balance of power within the music industries, the role of the state in regulating and promoting various musical activities within an increasingly globalised music economy, and the effects of demographic and other social changes on music culture. Drawing on new archival research, a wide range of academic and non-academic secondary sources, participant observation and a series of interviews with key personnel, the books have the potential to become landmark works within Popular Music Studies and broader cultural history. The second volume covers the period from Hyde Park to the Hacienda (1968-84).