Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
|||
Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Contemporary popular music > Easy listening, MOR
Starting with 1964's Goldfinger, every James Bond film has followed the same ritual, and so has its audience: after an exciting action sequence the screen goes black and the viewer spends three long minutes absorbing abstract opening credits and a song that sounds like it wants to return to 1964. In The James Bond SongsR authors Adrian Daub and Charles Kronengold use the genre to trace not only a changing cultural landscape, but also evolving conceptions of what a pop song is. They argue that the story of the Bond song is the story of the pop song more generally, and perhaps even the story of its end. Each chapter discusses a particular segment of the Bond canon and contextualizes it in its eras music and culture. But the book also asks how Bond and his music reflected and influenced our feelings about such topics as masculinity, race, money, and aging. Through these individual pieces the book presents the Bond song as the perfect anthem of late capitalism. The Bond songs want to talk about the fulfillment that comes from fast cars, shaken Martinis and mindless sex, but their unstable speakers, subjects, and addressees actually undercut the logic of the lifestyle James Bond is sworn to defend. The book is an invitation to think critically about pop music, about genre, and about the political aspects of popular culture in the twentieth century and beyond.
The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies consolidates an area of scholarly inquiry that examines how electrical technologies and their corresponding economies of scale have rendered music and sound increasingly mobile - portable, fungible, and ubiquitous. At once a marketing term, a common mode of everyday-life performance, and an instigator of experimental aesthetics, "mobile music" opens up a space for studying the momentous transformations in the production, distribution, consumption, and experience of music and sound that took place from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. The second volume of the handbook examines the aesthetics of mobile music and its proliferating forms of performance, incorporating epistemologies and methodologies from a number of disciplines, including music studies, sound studies, mobility studies, communication studies, new media studies, performance studies, and more. The contributors draw on political economy and economic sociology, ethnography and autoethnography, musical and sonic transcription, analysis and hermeneutics, and historical and archival research. The chapters treat a significant number of devices, including the the flash drive, the field recorder, the mobile phone, the handheld video game, the laptop computer, the siren, and even a pair of shoes. The Handbook likewise investigates the sonification and musicalization of vehicles - boom cars, trains, and ice cream trucks - and the sonics and musics of walking, texting, and commuting. Its chapters cover a large swath of the world - the US, the UK, Japan, Brazil, Germany, Turkey, Mexico, France, China, Jamaica, Iraq, the Philippines, India - and a similarly broad array of musical styles and practices, from the recondite and subcultural to the mass-popular and global. The most comprehensive book of its kind, this handbook is a necessary reference for scholars in multiple fields.
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.
English comedy from the fifteenth to the early seventeenth century abounds in song lyrics, but most of the original tunes were thought to have been lost-until now. By deducing that playwrights borrowed melodies from songs they already knew, Ross W. Duffin has used the existing English repertory of songs, both popular and composed, to reconstruct hundreds of songs from more than a hundred plays and other stage entertainments. Thanks to Duffin's incredible breakthrough, these plays have been rendered performable with period music for the first time in five hundred years. Some Other Note not only brings these songs back from the dead, but tells a thrilling tale of the investigations that unraveled these centuries-old mysteries.
In the wake of World War II, the cultural life of the United States underwent a massive transformation. At the heart of these changes during the early Cold War were the rise of the concept of identity and a reformulation of the country's political life. A revolution in music was taking place at the same time-a tumult of new musical styles and institutions that would lead to everything from the birth of rock 'n' roll to the new downtown experimental music scene. Together, these new cultural and musical trends came to define the era. In the search for new social affinities and modes of self-fashioning, music provided just the right tool. What Shall I Be follows the concept of identity as it developed alongside new post-war music making. Author Philip M. Gentry travels through four very different musical scenes: the R&B world of doo-wop pioneers the Orioles, the early film musicals of Doris Day, Asian American cabaret in San Francisco, and John Cage's infamous 4'33". The lives of musicians, composers, critics, and fans reveal how individuals negotiated the social changes sweeping the country in the initial days of the Cold War. As we are again swept up in a time of significant transformation, these early strategies help to inform the political and musical narratives of today.
Ambitious and groundbreaking, Electric Shock tells the story of popular music, from the birth of recording in the 1890s to the digital age, from the first pop superstars of the twentieth century to the omnipresence of music in our lives, in hit singles, ringtones and on Spotify. Over that time, popular music has transformed the world in which we live. Its rhythms have influenced how we walk down the street, how we face ourselves in the mirror, and how we handle the outside world in our daily conversations and encounters. It has influenced our morals and social mores; it has transformed our attitudes towards race and gender, religion and politics. From the beginning of recording, when a musical performance could be preserved for the first time, to the digital age, when all of recorded music is only a mouse-click away; from the straitlaced ballads of the Victorian era and the 'coon songs' that shocked America in the early twentieth century to gangsta rap, death metal and the multiple strands of modern dance music: Peter Doggett takes us on a rollercoaster ride through the history of music. Within a narrative full of anecdotes and characters, Electric Shock mixes musical critique with wider social and cultural history and shows how revolutionary changes in technology have turned popular music into the lifeblood of the modern world.
The Oxford Handbook of Sondheim Studies offers a series of cutting-edge essays on the most important and compelling topics in the growing field of Sondheim Studies. Focusing on broad groups of issues relating to the music and the production of Sondheim works, rather than on biographical questions about the composer himself, the handbook represents a cross-disciplinary introduction to comprehending Sondheim in musicological, theatrical, and socio-cultural terms. This collection of never-before published essays addresses issues of artistic method and musico-dramaturgical form, while at the same time offering close readings of individual shows from a variety of analytical perspectives. The handbook is arranged into six broad sections: issues of intertextuality and authorship; Sondheim's pioneering work in developing the non-linear form of the concept musical; the production history of Sondheim's work; his writing for film and television; his exploitation and deployment of a wide range of musical genres; and how interpretation through key critical lenses (including sociology, history, and feminist and queer theory) establishes his position in a broader cultural context.
In The Country Music Reader Travis D. Stimeling provides an anthology of primary source readings from newspapers, magazines, and fan ephemera encompassing the history of country music from circa 1900 to the present. Presenting conversations that have shaped historical understandings of country music, it brings the voices of country artists and songwriters, music industry insiders, critics, and fans together in a vibrant conversation about a widely loved yet seldom studied genre of American popular music. Situating each source chronologically within its specific musical or cultural context, Stimeling traces the history of country music from the fiddle contests and ballad collections of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the most recent developments in contemporary country music. Drawing from a vast array of sources including popular magazines, fan newsletters, trade publications, and artist biographies, The Country Music Reader offers firsthand insight into the changing role of country music within both the music industry and American musical culture, and presents a rich resource for university students, popular music scholars, and country music fans alike.
To the tune of "Yankee Doodle," the American obsession with politics was born alongside America itself. From the end of the Revolutionary War through to the antebellum era, music made front page news and brought men to blows. Both common citizens and politiciansaeven early presidents of the young nationaused well-known songs to fuel heated debates over the meaning of liberty, the future and nature of the republic, and Americans' proper place within it. As both propaganda and protest, music called for allegiance to a new federal government, spread utopian visions of worldwide revolution, broadcast infringements on American freedoms, and spun exaggerated tales of national military might. In Hail Columbia!, author Laura Lohman uncovers hundreds of songs circulated in newspapers, broadsides, song collections, sheet music, manuscripts, and scrapbooks over the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. These give evidence that a diversity of Americansaelite lawyers, immigrant actresses, humble craftsmen, and African American abolitionistsaemployed music for political purposes, creating new and deeply partisan lyrics to famous tunes of "Yankee Doodle," "The Star-Spangled Banner," and the like. These charged versions found their way to electioneering, tavern gatherings, presidential encomia, street theatre, and community celebrations, making song a political weapon between neighbours and citizens, to hail the new nation in partisan terms.
As charismatic and gifted as he was volatile, Jimmy Martin recorded dozens of bluegrass classics and co-invented the high lonesome sound. Barbara Martin Stephens became involved with the King of Bluegrass at age seventeen. Don't Give your Heart to a Rambler tells the story of their often tumultuous life together. Barbara bore his children and took on a crucial job as his booking agent when the agent he was using failed to obtain show dates for the group. Female booking agents were non-existent at that time but she persevered and went on to become the first female booking agent on Music Row. She also endured years of physical and emotional abuse at Martin's hands. With courage and candor, Barbara tells of the suffering and traces the hard-won personal growth she found inside motherhood and her work. Her vivid account of Martin's explosive personality and torment over his exclusion from the Grand Ole Opry fill in the missing details on a career renowned for being stormy. Barbara also shares her own journey, one of good humor and proud achievements, and filled with fond and funny recollections of the music legends and ordinary people she met, befriended, and represented along the way. Straightforward and honest, Don't Give your Heart to a Rambler is a woman's story of the world of bluegrass and one of its most colorful, conflicted artists.
Popular music and masculinity have rarely been examined through the lens of research into monstrosity. The discourses associated with rock and pop, however, actually include more 'monsters' than might at first be imagined. Attention to such individuals and cultures can say things about the operation of genre and gender, myth and meaning. Indeed, monstrosity has recently become a growing focus of cultural theory. This is in part because monsters raise shared concerns about transgression, subjectivity, agency, and community. Attention to monstrosity evokes both the spectre of projection (which invokes familial trauma and psychoanalysis) and shared anxieties (that in turn reflect ideologies and beliefs). By pursuing a series of insightful case studies, Scary Monsters considers different aspects of the connection between music, gender and monstrosity. Its argument is that attention to monstrosity provides a unique perspective on the study of masculinity in popular music culture.
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Educationdraws together current thinking and practice on popular music education from empirical, ethnographic, sociological and philosophical perspectives. Through a series of unique chapters from authors working at the forefront of music education, this book explores the ways in which an international group of music educators each approach popular music education. Chapters discuss pedagogies from across the spectrum of formal to informal learning, including "outside" and "other" perspectives that provide insight into the myriad ways in which popular music education is developed and implemented. The book is organized into the following sections: - Conceptualizing Popular Music Education - Musical, Creative and Professional Development - Originating Popular Music - Popular Music Education in Schools - Identity, Meaning and Value in Popular Music Education - Formal Education, Creativities and Assessment Contributions from academics, teachers, and practitioners make this an innovative and exciting volume for students, teachers, researchers and professors in popular music studies and music education.
That rare thing, an academic study of music that seeks to tie together the strands of the musical text, the industry that produces it, and the audience that gives it meaning... A vital read for anyone interested in the changing nature of popular music production and consumption" - Dr Nathan Wiseman-Trowse, The University of Northampton Popular music entertains, inspires and even empowers, but where did it come from, how is it made, what does it mean, and how does it eventually reach our ears? Tim Wall guides students through the many ways we can analyse music and the music industries, highlighting crucial skills and useful research tips. Taking into account recent changes and developments in the industry, this book outlines the key concepts, offers fresh perspectives and encourages readers to reflect on their own work. Written with clarity, flair and enthusiasm, it covers: Histories of popular music, their traditions and cultural, social, economic and technical factors Industries and institutions, production, new technology, and the entertainment media Musical form, meaning and representation Audiences and consumption. Students' learning is consolidated through a set of insightful case studies, engaging activities and helpful suggestions for further reading.
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.
"K-Pop: Popular Music, Cultural Amnesia, and Economic Innovation in South Korea" seeks at once to describe and explain the emergence of export-oriented South Korean popular music and to make sense of larger South Korean economic and cultural transformations. John Lie provides not only a history of South Korean popular music--the premodern background, Japanese colonial influence, post-Liberation American impact, and recent globalization--but also a description of K-pop as a system of economic innovation and cultural production. In doing so, "K-Pop" delves into the broader background of South Korea that gave rise to K-pop in this wonderfully informed history and analysis of a pop culture phenomenon sweeping the globe.
Hollywood's conversion to sound in the 1920s created an early peak in the film musical, following the immense success of The Jazz Singer. The opportunity to synchronize moving pictures with a soundtrack suited the musical in particular, since the heightened experience of song and dance drew attention to the novelty of the technological development. Until the near-collapse of the genre in the 1960s, the film musical enjoyed around thirty years of development, as landmarks such as The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St Louis, Singin' in the Rain, and Gigi showed the exciting possibilities of putting musicals on the silver screen. The Oxford Handbook of Musical Theatre Screen Adaptations traces how the genre of the stage-to-screen musical has evolved, starting with screen adaptations of operettas such as The Desert Song and Rio Rita, and looks at how the Hollywood studios in the 1930s exploited the publication of sheet music as part of their income. Numerous chapters examine specific screen adaptations in depth, including not only favorites such as Annie and Kiss Me, Kate but also some of the lesser-known titles like Li'l Abner and Roberta and problematic adaptations such as Carousel and Paint Your Wagon. Together, the chapters incite lively debates about the process of adapting Broadway for the big screen and provide models for future studies.
Peaceful Piano Playlist presents a collection of 35 piano solos for the intermediate pianist. Inspired by the popular peaceful piano playlists available on streaming services, it features original pieces by Ludovico Einaudi, Agnes Obel, Max Richter, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Joep Beving, Poppy Ackroyd, Alexis Ffrench, Keaton Henson, Alexandre Desplat, and many more.
Coming to London aged thirteen from desperate poverty in Jamaica; pregnant at fifteen; fifteen years later singing in Boney M, one of the biggest international groups of the late-1970s; a messy group split during the 1980s; a 1990s solo career interrupted by six bouts of cancer - ovarian, breast, lymph node (twice), spine and oesophagus - and having to learn to walk again. Yet throughout Marcia Barrett has remained totally cheerful, relentlessly optimistic and a shining inspiration, looking on every obstacle as a mere inconvenience rather than anything insurmountable. Now, she is ready to tell her fantastic story, which is much more than just a pop star autobiography. It is a charming, candid, laugh-out-loud story of survival, triumph, indomitable spirit and total upfullness, often driven by sheer force of will. It is a feelgood story which will resonate amongst all.
***NOMINATED FOR THE NME BEST BOOK AWARD 2017 *** The first and only OFFICIAL book from ZAYN, for his ultimate fans. Zayn's autobiography features exclusive, never-before-seen photographs alongside his story. -------------------------------- 'This book is my diary of a period that I would like to share with you all. I hope that there are things in the book that contextualise some of the moments and memories we have all shared together. There are things I address in the book that are very personal to me, things that I have never told anyone, things I still find hard to talk about. It's a part of a journey I'm still on' - ZAYN ZAYN opens up with this collection of thoughts, inspiration, and never-before-seen personal photographs. After five years of massive success with One Direction, ZAYN launched his career as a solo artist with Mind of Mine, becoming one of the most successful artists in the world. Now, for the first time ever, ZAYN is going to tell and show all in this intimate and raw scrapbook of his life. Never-before-released photos give readers insight to ZAYN, no-holds-barred. Gorgeously designed with hundreds of full-color photographs and Zayn's notes, drawings, song lyrics, and personal stories, the book captures Zayn's most private moments and his candid feelings on fame, success, music, and life. The next chapter of ZAYN'S evolution into global superstar, told by the artist who is living it. Global superstar ZAYN shares a photographic journey of his life since leaving One Direction. *** Reviews for Mind of Mine: "A singer eager to reclaim the parts of himself that five years in the pop klieg lights forced into the shadows." -The New York Times "Sonically, you won't find many pop albums in 2016 more immaculately conceived than this." -SPIN "Sublime." -USA Today "Malik can sing . . . he's done this before, but not like this." -Rolling Stone "A moody, deeply textured R&B album..." -Los Angeles Times "Zayn has clearly achieved his aim of making an album of sexy, credible pop-R&B." -NME
#1 New York Times Bestseller A People Magazine Top Ten Book of the Year 'A sensational memoir ...brilliantly well written. Carly Simon is incapable of writing a boring sentence ...you can forgive anything for the unparalleled brilliance of her writing' - Lynn Barber, Sunday Times 'Hugely affecting memoir ...heartfelt and remarkable' - Fiona Sturges, Independent Carly Simon is a household name. She was the staple of the '70s and '80s Billboard charts and was famously married to James Taylor with whom she has two children. She has had a career that has spanned four decades, resulting in thirteen top 40 hits, including the Number 1 song 'You're So Vain', numerous Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe and an Academy Award. She was the first artist in history to win a Grammy Award, an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for her song 'Let the River Run' (from the film Working Girl). Boys in the Trees is a rhapsodic, beautifully composed memoir of a young woman's coming of age amongst the glamorous literati and intelligentsia of Manhattan (her father was Richard Simon, co-founder of publishing giant Simon & Schuster), a reflection on a life begun amidst secrets and shame, and a powerful story of the strength to leave that all behind and forge a path of art, music and love in the Golden Age of folk and rock. At once an insider's look into a life in the spotlight, a lyric reflection on a particular time in our culture's history, and a beautiful memoir about the pains and joys of love and art, Boys in the Trees is the story Carly Simon has long been waiting to tell the world. Praise for the US edition: 'One of the best celebrity memoirs of the year' Hollywood Reporter 'Intelligent and captivating' People 'Compelling' Rolling Stone
Streisand: A Biography is much more than the story of the world's greatest living performer, how she got there, and why she remains at the top after three decades, it is also, in Anne Edward's sure hands, a compelling chronicle of a woman's fight to validate her appearance, her talent, and her right to love and be loved. Time and time again Streisand has demonstrated the ability to reinvent herself to keep pace with the continuing changes in musical taste. This updated edition of Edwards's pioneering biography chronicles her public life as a political activist as well as her private life as Mrs. James Brolin.
Dawn ot the DAW tells the story of how the dividing line between the traditional roles of musicians and recording studio personnel (producers, recording engineers, mixing engineers, technicians, etc.) has eroded throughout the latter half of the twentieth century to the present. Whereas those equally adept in music and technology such as Raymond Scott and Les Paul were exceptions to their eras, the millennial music maker is ensconced in a world in which the symbiosis of music and technology is commonplace. As audio production skills such as recording, editing, and mixing are increasingly co-opted by musicians teaching themselves in their do-it-yourself (DIY) recording studios, conventions of how music production is taught and practiced are remixed to reflect this reality. Dawn ot the DAW first examines DIY recording practices within the context of recording history from the late nineteenth century to the present. Second, Dawn ot the DAW discusses the concept of "the studio as musical instrument" and the role of the producer, detailing how these constructs have evolved throughout the history of recorded music in tandem. Third, Dawn ot the DAW details current practices of DIY recording-how recording technologies are incorporated into music making, and how they are learned by DIY studio users in the musically-chic borough of Brooklyn. Finally, Dawn ot the DAW examines the broader trends heard throughout, summarizing the different models of learning and approaches to music making. Dawn ot the DAW concludes by discussing the ramifications of these new directions for the field of music education.
Is there such a thing today as music that's meaningfully new? In our contemporary era of remixing and retro styles, cynics and romantics alike cry "It's all been done before" while record labels and media outlets proclaim that everything is new. Coded into our daily conversations about popular music, newness as an artistic and cultural value is too often taken for granted. Nothing Has Been Done Before instigates a fresh debate about newness in American pop, rock 'n' roll, rap, folk, and R&B made since the turn of the millennium. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach that combines music criticism, philosophy, and the literary essay, Robert Loss follows the stories of a diverse cast of musicians who seek the new by wrestling with the past, navigating the market, and speaking politically. The transgressions of Bob Dylan's "Love and Theft". The pop spectacle of Katy Perry's 2015 Super Bowl halftime show. Protest songs against the war in Iraq. Nothing Has Been Done Before argues that performance heard in a historical context always creates a possibility for newness, whether it's Kendrick Lamar's multi-layered To Pimp a Butterfly, the Afrofuturist visions of Janelle Monae, or even a Guided By Voices tribute concert in a local dive bar. Provocative and engaging, Nothing Has Been Done Before challenges nothing less than how we hear and think about popular music-its power and its potential.
Popular music artists, as performers in the public eye, offer a privileged site for the witnessing and analysis of ageing and its mediation. The Late Voice undertakes such an analysis by considering issues of time, memory, innocence and experience in modern Anglophone popular song and the use by singers and songwriters of a 'late voice'. Lateness here refers to five primary issues: chronology (the stage in an artist's career); the vocal act (the ability to convincingly portray experience); afterlife (posthumous careers made possible by recorded sound); retrospection (how voices 'look back' or anticipate looking back); and the writing of age, experience, lateness and loss into song texts. There has been recent growth in research on ageing and the experience of later stages of life, focusing on physical health, lifestyle and psychology, with work in the latter field intersecting with the field of memory studies. The Late Voice seeks to connect age, experience and lateness with particular performers and performance traditions via the identification and analysis of a late voice in singers and songwriters of mid-late twentieth century popular music. |
You may like...
Public Service Ethics - Individual and…
James S. Bowman, Jonathan P. West
Hardcover
R3,916
Discovery Miles 39 160
Fundraising in the Creative and Cultural…
Michelle Wright, Ben Walmsley, …
Paperback
R1,559
Discovery Miles 15 590
Civil Service Systems in East and…
Chong-Min Park, Yousueng Han, …
Paperback
R1,107
Discovery Miles 11 070
Multi-Criteria Decision Making Theory…
Mohamed Abdel-Basset, Ripon Kumar Chakrabortty, …
Hardcover
R3,599
Discovery Miles 35 990
Managing Complexity in Healthcare
Lesley Kuhn, Kieran Le Plastrier
Hardcover
R1,493
Discovery Miles 14 930
Storytelling with Data in Healthcare
Eric Bouillon, Kevin Masick
Paperback
R1,096
Discovery Miles 10 960
Blockchain for Healthcare Systems…
Sheikh Mohammad Idrees, Parul Agarwal, …
Hardcover
R3,186
Discovery Miles 31 860
|