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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Contemporary popular music
Keith Hatschek tells the story of three determined artists: Louis
Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, and Iola Brubeck and the stand they took
against segregation by writing and performing a jazz musical titled
The Real Ambassadors. First conceived by the Brubecks in 1956, the
musical's journey to the stage for its 1962 premiere tracks
extraordinary twists and turns across the backdrop of the civil
rights movement. A variety of colorful characters, from Broadway
impresarios to gang-connected managers, surface in the compelling
storyline. During the Cold War, the US State Department enlisted
some of America's greatest musicians to serve as jazz ambassadors,
touring the world to trumpet a so-called "free society." Honored as
celebrities abroad, the jazz ambassadors, who were overwhelmingly
African Americans, returned home to racial discrimination and
deferred dreams. The Brubecks used this double standard as the
central message for the musical, deploying humor and pathos to
share perspectives on American values. On September 23, 1962, The
Real Ambassadors's stunning debut moved a packed arena at the
Monterey Jazz Festival to laughter, joy, and tears. Although
critics unanimously hailed the performance, it sadly became a
footnote in cast members' bios. The enormous cost of reassembling
the star-studded cast made the creation impossible to stage and
tour. However, The Real Ambassadors: Dave and Iola Brubeck and
Louis Armstrong Challenge Segregation caps this jazz story by
detailing how the show was triumphantly revived in 2014 by Jazz at
Lincoln Center. This reaffirmed the musical's place as an integral
part of America's jazz history and served as an important reminder
of how artists' voices are a powerful force for social change.
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Trouble Bored
(Hardcover)
Matthew Ryan Lowery; Cover design or artwork by Scott White
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R621
Discovery Miles 6 210
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Banned
(Hardcover)
D Kershaw, Ben Thomas
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R798
Discovery Miles 7 980
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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The first scholarly discussion on the band, Pearl Jam and
Philosophy examines both the songs (music and lyrics) and the
activities (live performances, political commitments) of one of the
most celebrated and charismatic rock bands of the last 30 years.
The book investigates the philosophical aspects of their music at
various levels: existential, spiritual, ethical, political,
metaphysical and aesthetic. This philosophical interpretation is
also dependent on the application of textual and poetic analysis:
the interdisciplinary volume puts philosophical aspects of the
band's lyrics in close dialogue with 19th- and 20th-century
European and American poetry. Through this widespread philosophical
examination, the book further looks into the band's immense
popularity and commercial success, their deeply loyal fanbase and
genuine sense of community surrounding their music, and the pivotal
place the band holds within popular music and contemporary culture.
Bob Dylan's ways with words are a wonder, matched as they are with
his music and verified by those voices of his. In response to the
whole range of Dylan early and late (his songs of social
conscience, of earthly love, of divine love, and of contemplation),
this critical appreciation listens to Dylan's attentive genius,
alive in the very words and their rewards.
"Fools they made a mock of sin." Dylan's is an art in which sins
are laid bare (and resisted), virtues are valued (and manifested),
and the graces brought home. The seven deadly sins, the four
cardinal virtues (harder to remember?), and the three heavenly
graces: these make up everybody's world -- but Dylan's in
particular. Or rather, his worlds, since human dealings of every
kind are his for the artistic seizing. Pride is anatomized in "Like
a Rolling Stone," Envy in "Positively 4th Street," Anger in "Only a
Pawn in Their Game" ... But, hearteningly, Justice reclaims "Hattie
Carroll," Fortitude "Blowin' in the Wind," Faith "Precious Angel,"
Hope "Forever Young," and Charity "Watered-Down Love."
In The "New Yorker, Alex Ross wrote that "Ricks's writing on
Dylan is the best there is. Unlike most rock critics --
'forty-year-olds talking to ten-year-olds, ' Dylan has called them
-- he writes for adults." In the "Times (London), Bryan Appleyard
maintained that "Ricks, one of the most distinguished literary
critics of our time, is almost the only writer to have applied
serious literary intelligence to Dylan ..."
Dylan's countless listeners (and even the artist himself, who
knows?) may agree with W.H. Auden that Ricks "is exactly the kind
of critic every poet dreams of finding."
Rob Deering has been listening to music his whole life, but it was
only in his mid-thirties that - much to his surprise - he found
himself falling in love with the hugely popular, nearly perfect,
sometimes preposterous activity of running In this vividly conjured
collection, Rob shares stories of when a run, a place and a tune
come together in a life-defining moment. His adventures in running
have spanned four continents, fifteen marathons and numberless
miles of park and pavement, and the carefully chosen music
streaming through his headphones has spurred him forward
throughout. What makes the perfect running tune? Where can you find
the best routes, even in an unfamiliar town? Why do people put
themselves through marathons? In Running Tracks, Rob Deering shares
his sometimes surprising answers to these questions, and explains
how a hobby became an obsession that changed his life forever.
Once the domain of a privileged few, the art of record production
is today within the reach of all. The rise of the ubiquitous DIY
project studio and internet streaming have made it so. And while
the creative possibilities available to everyday musicians are
seemingly endless, so too are the multiskilling and project
management challenges to be faced. In order to demystify the
contemporary popular-music-making phenomenon, Marshall Heiser
reassesses its myriad processes and wider sociocultural context
through the lens of creativity studies, play theory and cultural
psychology. This innovative new framework is grounded in a diverse
array of creative-practice examples spanning the CBGBs music scene
to the influence of technology upon modern-day music. First-hand
interviews with Jerry Harrison (Talking Heads), Bill Bruford (King
Crimson, Yes) and others whose work has influenced the way records
are made today are also included. Popular Music, Power and Play is
as thought provoking as it will be indispensable for scholars,
practitioners and aficionados of popular music and the arts in
general.
The astonishing run of albums unleashed upon an unsuspecting public
within the span of five years created the legend of Alice Cooper
that lives on to this day. But we're talking about the original
Alice Cooper group here, a band called that with a lead singer also
going by that name. In other words, the legend was built by Vincent
"Alice Cooper" Furnier, Michael Bruce, Glen Buxton, Dennis Dunaway
and "platinum god" Neal Smith. It is all of them working together -
along with producer Bob Ezrin - that created the mystique of songs
like "I'm Eighteen," "Is It My Body," "Desperado," "Under My
Wheels," "Be My Lover," "Elected" and "No More Mr. Nice Guy." And
it is all of them working together - along with crack management in
Shep Gordon and Joe Greenberg-that created the shock rock buzz that
kept the newspapers full of indignation about this band set out to
destroy human civilization. Easy Action: The Original Alice Cooper
Group tells the story in meticulous chronological detail, from the
band's early days in Phoenix as The Spiders, through being broke on
the Sunset Strip, followed by a career-reviving relocation to a
notorious party house on the outskirts of Pontiac, Michigan.
Corroborating the improbable sequence of events is a plethora of
stories from the band themselves, who explain how the original
Alice Cooper group went from politely ignored pariahs in Los
Angeles to international Public Enemies No. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Listen to the guys and their good-natured explanations behind the
mayhem, and it soon becomes apparent that the ghoulish makeup
around the singer's eyes and the boa constrictor around his neck -
not to mention the head-choppings, the hangings and the hard rock -
were all served up in good fun. Now it's time for you, dear reader,
to join in the fun and see why Alice Cooper was, for a golden
moment in time fully 50 years ago now, the most feared and revered
act in all of rock 'n' roll.
By reinterpreting 20th-century poetry as a listening to and writing
through noise, The Poetics of Noise from Dada to Punk constructs a
literary history of noise through poetic sound and performance.
This book traces how poets figure noise in the disfiguration of
poetic voice. Materializing in the threshold between the heard and
the unheard, noise emerges in the differentiation and otherness of
sound. It arises in the folding of an "outside" into the "inside"
of poetic performance both on and off the page. Through a series of
case studies ranging from verse by ear-witnesses to the First World
War, Dadaist provocations, jazz modernist song and poetry, early
New York City punk rock, contemporary sound poetry, and noise
music, The Poetics of Noise from Dada to Punk describes productive
failures of communication that theorize listening against the grain
of sound's sense.
How did Melbourne earn its place as one of the world's 'music
cities'? Beginning with the arrival of rock 'n' roll in the 1950s,
this book explores the development of different sectors of
Melbourne's popular music ecosystem in parallel with broader
population, urban planning and media industry changes in the city.
The authors draw on interviews with Melbourne musicians, venue
owners and policy-makers, documenting their ambitions and
experiences across different periods, with accompanying spotlights
on the gendered, multicultural and indigenous contexts of playing
and recording in Melbourne. Focusing on pop and rock, this is the
first book to provide an extensive historical lens of popular music
within an urban cultural economy that in turn investigates the
contemporary nature and challenges of urban music activities and
policy.
Popular music in Japan has been under the overwhelming influence of
American, Latin American and European popular music remarkably
since 1945, when Japan was defeated in World War II. Beginning with
gunka and enka at the turn of the century, tracing the birth of hit
songs in the record industry in the years preceding the War, and
ranging to the adoption of Western genres after the War--the rise
of Japanese folk and rock, domestic exoticism as a new trend and
J-Pop--Popular Music in Japan is a comprehensive discussion of the
evolution of popular music in Japan. In eight revised and updated
essays written in English by renowned Japanese scholar Toru Mitsui,
this book tells the story of popular music in Japan since the late
19th century when Japan began positively embracing the West.
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