From "Over the Rainbow" to "Moon River" and from Al Jolson to Barbra Streisand, The Songs of Hollywood traces the fascinating history of song in film, both in musicals and in dramatic movies such as High Noon. Extremely well-illustrated with 200 film stills, this delightful book sheds much light on some of Hollywood's best known and loved repertoire, explaining how the film industry made certain songs memorable, and highlighting important moments of film history along the way. The book focuses on how the songs were presented in the movies, from early talkies where actors portrayed singers "performing" the songs, to the Golden Age in which characters burst into expressive, integral song--not as a "performance" but as a spontaneous outpouring of feeling. The book looks at song presentation in 1930s classics with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and in 1940s gems with Judy Garland and Gene Kelly. The authors also look at the decline of the genre since 1960, when most original musicals were replaced by film versions of Broadway hits such as My Fair Lady.

Amidst the heated fray of the Culture Wars emerged a scrappy festival in downtown New York City called Bang on a Can. Presenting eclectic, irreverent marathons of experimental music in crumbling venues on the Lower East Side, Bang on a Can sold out concerts for a genre that had been long considered box office poison. Through the 1980s and 1990s, three young, visionary composers-David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe-nurtured Bang on a Can into a multifaceted organization with a major record deal, a virtuosic in-house ensemble, and a seat at the table at Lincoln Center, and in the process changed the landscape of avant-garde music in the United States. Bang on a Can captured a new public for new music. But they did not do so alone. As the twentieth century came to a close, the world of American composition pivoted away from the insular academy and towards the broader marketplace. In the wake of the unexpected popularity of Steve Reich and Philip Glass, classical presenters looked to contemporary music for relevance and record labels scrambled to reap its potential profits, all while government funding was imperilled by the evangelical right. Other institutions faltered amidst the vagaries of late capitalism, but the renegade Bang on a Can survived-and thrived-in a tumultuous and idealistic moment that made new music what it is today.

When the Swedish concert singer Jenny Lind toured the U.S. in 1850, she became the prototype for the modern pop star. Meanwhile, her manager, P.T. Barnum, became the prototype for another figure of enduring significance: the pop culture impresario. Starting with Lind's fabled U.S. tour and winding all the way into the twenty-first century, Live Music in America surveys the ongoing impact and changing conditions of live music performance in the U.S. It covers a range of historic performances, from the Fisk Jubilee Singers expanding the sphere of African American music in the 1870s, to Benny Goodman bringing swing to Carnegie Hall in 1938, to 1952's Moondog Coronation Ball in Cleveland - arguably the first rock and roll concert - to Beyonce's boundary-shattering performance at the 2018 Coachella festival. More than that, the book details the roles played by performers, audiences, media commentators, and a variety of live music producers (promoters, agents, sound and stage technicians) in shaping what live music means and how it has evolved. Live Music in America connects what occurs behind the scenes to what takes place on stage to highlight the ways in which live music is very deliberately produced and does not just spontaneously materialize. Along the way, author Steve Waksman uses previously unstudied archival materials to shed new light on the origins of jazz, the emergence of rock 'n' roll, and the rise of the modern music festival.

Shimmering in maximal minimalism, joyful bleakness, and bodiless intimacy, Laurie Anderson's Big Science diagnosed crises of meaning, scale, and identity in 1982. Decades later, the strange questions it poses loom even larger: How do we remain human when our identities are digitally distributed? Does technology bring us closer together or further apart? Can we experience the stillness of "now" when time is always moving? How does our experience become memory? Laurie Anderson pioneered new techniques and aesthetics in performance art, becoming its first and most enduring superstar. In this book, author S. Alexander Reed dives into the wonderfully strange making and meanings of this singular album and of its creator's long artistic career. Packed with scrupulous new research, reception history, careful description, and dizzying creativity, this book is an interdisciplinary love letter to a record whose sounds, politics, and expressions of gendered identity grow more relevant each day.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER '. . . a compelling memoir. Breezy and unpretentious, The Sanest Guy in the Room is a delightful collection of memories, insider information and after-dinner anecdotes' The Times 'Brilliant stories and wonderful behind-the-scenes glimpses of a life and career in show-business . . . It's bloody brilliant . . . Read it!' Michael Ball Don Black is the songwriter's songwriter, a composer's dream collaborator, and the man behind some of the twentieth century's greatest musical numbers. Black made his first foray into the glittering world of showbiz as a stand-up, before realising his error and focusing on his lifelong passion instead - music. Shirley Bassey, Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, Henry Mancini and Barbra Streisand are just some of the artists Black has worked with over the years - not to mention his frequent collaborator, West End legend Andrew Lloyd Webber - in what can only be described as a remarkable musical career. Yet, never one to court fame, Black has always remained what Mark Steyn coined as 'the sanest guy in the room'. Interwoven with the stories behind songs such as 'Diamonds are Forever' and 'Born Free' are vignettes of Black's life with his beloved wife Shirley, who died in March 2018, after almost sixty years of marriage. Black writes movingly about how the enormity of his grief changed his life, and how the dark days are slowly turning into dark moments. The Sanest Guy in the Room is a rich and delightful paean to a life lived through song. It reveals the essence of Black's craft, looks at those who have inspired him and allows us to understand what made those icons tick. It is also a poignant tribute to Shirley, his biggest inspiration. Told with wit, warmth and great humour, this is Don Black's astonishing musical journey and an insight into a life behind the lyrics.

On Popular Music and Its Unruly Entanglements comprises eleven essays that explore the myriad ways in which popular music is entwined within social, cultural, musical, historical, and media networks. The authors discuss genres as diverse as mainstream pop, hip hop, classic rock, instrumental synthwave, video game music, amateur ukelele groups, and audiovisual remixes, while also considering the music's relationship to technological developments, various media and material(itie)s, and personal and social identity. The collection presents a range of different methodologies and theoretical positions, which results in an eclecticism that aptly demonstrates the breadth of contemporary popular music research. The chapters are divided into three major sections that address: wider theoretical and analytical issues ("Broad Strokes"), familiar repertoire or concepts from a new perspective ("Second Takes"), and the meanings to arise from music's connections with other media forms ("Audiovisual Entanglements").

Since launching his career at the Village Voice in the early 1980s Greg Tate has been one of the premiere critical voices on contemporary Black music, art, literature, film, and politics. Flyboy 2 provides a panoramic view of the past thirty years of Tate's influential work. Whether interviewing Miles Davis or Ice Cube, reviewing an Azealia Banks mixtape or Suzan-Lori Parks's Topdog/Underdog, discussing visual artist Kara Walker or writer Clarence Major, or analyzing the ties between Afro-futurism, Black feminism, and social movements, Tate's resounding critical insights illustrate how race, gender, and class become manifest in American popular culture. Above all, Tate demonstrates through his signature mix of vernacular poetics and cultural theory and criticism why visionary Black artists, intellectuals, aesthetics, philosophies, and politics matter to twenty-first-century America.

With ongoing debates on Scottish independence, immigration, Britain's place in the EU, multiculturalism, national identity and the specter of a past Empire complicating ethnically-defined notions of "Britishness," the Kingdom seems far from United. As a cultural force that is often discussed as giving voice to the voiceless and empowering marginalized communities, hip-hop has become a space in which to explore and debate these issues-defining global community while celebrating locality. In Brithop, author Justin A. Williams finds new hope in an often-neglected figure: the British rapper. Through themes of nationalism, history, subculture, politics, humor and identity, Brithop explores multiple forms of politics in rap discourses from Wales, Scotland and England. Featuring rappers and groups such as The Streets, Goldie Lookin Chain, Akala, Lowkey, Stanley Odd, Loki, Speech Debelle, Lady Sovereign, Shadia Mansour, Shay D, Stormzy, Sleaford Mods, Riz MC and Lethal Bizzle, Williams investigates how rappers in the UK respond to the "postcolonial melancholia" of post-Empire Britain. Brithop shows a rich, multifaceted cultural reality reflective of both the postcolonial condition of the UK and the importance of localism within its varying cultures.

Sit back, relax and relive the memories of over 90 more classic albums selected by Tim Burgess from his legendary Listening Parties In less than 2 years, tens of thousands of music lovers have pressed play at the same time as legendary musicians to share the communal experience of a Listening Party. Over 1,000 online events, fans and artists - from McCartney to Blondie, Joy Division to Iron Maiden - have shared insightful recollections, intimate conversations and behind-the-scenes revelations. This follow-up to the bestselling The Listening Party Volume 1 gathers together over 90 more of the most essential parties and celebrates the unique power of a Listening Party to connect music creators with listeners. It's an appropriate tribute to the unifying power of music and how it continues to enthral millions around the world every single day. "Hey Twitter, let's all say a big thanks to Tim for these brilliant events this year! We really needed them. So much great music being talked about.'" - Sir Paul McCartney "Twitter being used for something really positive." - Mary Beard

In the mid-20th century, African musicians took up Cuban music as their own and claimed it as a marker of black Atlantic connections and of cosmopolitanism untethered from European colonial relations. Today, Cuban/African bands popular in Africa in the 1960s and '70s have moved into the world music scene in Europe and North America, and world music producers and musicians have created new West African-Latin American collaborations expressly for this market niche. World Music and the Black Atlantic follows two of these bands, Orchestra Baobab and AfroCubism, and the industry and audiences that surround them-from musicians' homes in West Africa, to performances in Europe and North America, to record label offices in London. World Music and the Black Atlantic examines the intensely transnational experiences of musicians, industry personnel, and audiences as they collaboratively produce, circulate, and consume music in a specific post-colonial era of globalization. Musicians, industry personnel, and audiences work with and push against one another as they engage in personal collaborations imbued with histories of global travel and trade. They move between and combine Cuban and Malian melodies, Norwegian and Senegalese markets, and histories of slavery and independence as they work together to create international commodities. Understanding the unstable and dynamic ways these peoples, musics, markets, and histories intersect elucidates how world music actors assert their places within, and produce knowledge about, global markets, colonial histories, and the black Atlantic. World Music and the Black Atlantic offers a nuanced view of a global industry that is informed and deeply marked by diverse transnational perspectives and histories of transatlantic exchange.

Gear Acquisition Syndrome, also known as GAS, is commonly understood as the musicians unrelenting urge to buy and own instruments and equipment as an anticipated catalyst of creative energy and bringer of happiness. For many musicians, it involves the unavoidable compulsion to spend money one does not have on gear perhaps not even needed. The urge is directed by the belief that acquiring another instrument will make one a better player. This book pioneers research into the complex phenomenon named GAS from a variety of disciplines, including popular music studies and music technology, cultural and leisure studies, consumption research, sociology, psychology and psychiatry. The newly created theoretical framework and empirical studies of online communities and offline music stores allow the study to consider musical, social and personal motives, which influence the way musicians think about and deal with equipment. As is shown, GAS encompasses a variety of practices and psychological processes. In an often life-long endeavour, upgrading the rig is accompanied by musical learning processes in popular music.

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.

Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart are one of the defining duos of musical theater, contributing dozens of classic songs to the Great American Songbook and working together on over 40 shows before Hart's death. With hit after hit on both Broadway and the West End, they produced many of the celebrated songs of the '20s and '30s-such as "Manhattan," "The Lady is a Tramp," and "Bewitched"-that remain popular favorites with great cultural resonance today. Yet the early years of these iconic collaborators have remained largely unexamined. We'll Have Manhattan: The Early Work of Rodgers & Hart provides unprecedented insight into the first, formative period of Rodgers and Hart's collaboration. Author Dominic Symonds examines the pair and their work from their first meeting in 1919 to their brief flirtation with Hollywood in the early 1930s as they left the theater to explore sound film. During this time, their output was prodigious, progressive, and experimental. They developed their characteristic style and a new approach to musical theater writing that provided the groundwork for the development of the Broadway musical. Symonds also analyzes the theme of identity that runs throughout Rodgers and Hart's work, how the business side of the theater affected their artistic output, and their continued experimentation with a song's dramatic role within a narrative. We'll Have Manhattan goes beyond a biographical or historical look at Rodgers and Hart's early years-it's also an accessible but authoritative study of their material. Symonds documents their early shows and provides deft critical and analytical commentary on their evolving practice and its influence on the subsequent development of the American musical. Fans of musical theater and devotees of Rodgers and Hart will find this definitive exploration of their early works to be an essential addition to their Broadway library.

Can classical music change lives? In Soul Music, novelist Candace Allen embarks on a personal journey that takes her from the streets of London and Scotland to Venezuela, where the Sistema scheme has offered thousands of young people a route out of the ghetto mentality through virtuoso musical training, bringing global fame to the charismatic conductor Gustavo Dudamel; to Ramallah, and Daniel Barenboim's East-West Divan Orchestra in which young Israelis and Palestinians play side-by-side.

During the heyday of Cold War cultural politics, state-sponsored performances of classical and popular music were central to the diplomatic agendas of the United States and the Soviet Union, while states on the periphery of the conflict often used state-funded performances to articulate their position in the polarized global network. In Albania in particular, the postwar government invested heavily in public performances, effectively creating a new genre of popular music: the wildly popular light music. In Audible States: Socialist Politics and Popular Music in Albania, author Nicholas Tochka traces an aural history of Albania's government through a close examination of the development and reception of light music as it has long been broadcast at an annual song competition, Radio-Television Albania's Festival of Song. Drawing on a wide range of archival resources and over forty interviews with composers, lyricists, singers, and bureaucrats, Tochka describes how popular music became integral to governmental projects to improve society-and a major concern for both state-socialist and post-socialist regimes between 1945 and the present. Tochka's narrative begins in the immediate postwar period, arguing that state officials saw light music as a modernizing agent that would cultivate a cosmopolitan, rational populace. Interweaving archival research with ethnographic interviews, author Nicholas Tochka argues that modern political orders do not simply render social life visible, but also audible. As the Cold War thawed and communist states fell, the post-socialist government turned again to light music, now hoping that these musicians could help shape Albania into a capitalist, "European" state. Incorporating insights from ethnomusicology, governmental studies, and post-socialist studies, Audible States presents an original perspective on music and government that reveals the fluid, pervasive, but ultimately limited nature of state power in the modern world. Tochka's project represents a nascent entry in a growing area of study in music scholarship that focuses on post-soviet Europe and popular musics. A remarkably researched and engagingly written study, Audible States is a foundational text in this area and will be of great interest for music scholars and graduate students interested in popular music, sound studies, and politics of the Cold War.

With their unforgettable melodies, timeless messages, and stylistic indebtedness to both jazz and Broadway, American popular standards have proven to be among the most widely performed and enjoyed songs of the past century. Shaped in many ways by the technological and cultural developments of the early twentieth century, they have also managed to transcend these origins and become an enduring part of the American musical landscape. Ann van der Merwe explores how and why American songbook standards developed in the early twentieth century and how these standards have shaped American-and even global-musical culture ever since. The American Songbook explores key aspects of individual songs, including the musical and lyrical reasons for their broad appeal and applicability over the years. The American songbook continues to permeate the fabric of our daily lives. It is a repertoire that spans generations, from Fred Astaire to Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga. As a result, music lovers both young and old will enjoy discovering how these beloved songs emerged and why they remain relevant a century later.

In the 1920s and 30s, musicians from Latin America and the Caribbean were flocking to New York, lured by the burgeoning recording studios and lucrative entertainment venues. In the late 1940s and 50s, the big-band mambo dance scene at the famed Palladium Ballroom was the stuff of legend, while modern-day music history was being made as the masters of Afro-Cuban and jazz idiom conspired to create Cubop, the first incarnation of Latin jazz. Then, in the 1960s, as the Latino population came to exceed a million strong, a new generation of New York Latinos, mostly Puerto Ricans born and raised in the city, went on to create the music that came to be called salsa, which continues to enjoy avid popularity around the world. And now, the children of the mambo and salsa generation are contributing to the making of hip hop and reviving ancestral Afro-Caribbean forms like Cuban rumba, Puerto Rican bomba, and Dominican palo. Salsa Rising provides the first full-length historical account of Latin Music in this city guided by close critical attention to issues of tradition and experimentation, authenticity and dilution, and the often clashing roles of cultural communities and the commercial recording industry in the shaping of musical practices and tastes. It is a history not only of the music, the changing styles and practices, the innovators, venues and songs, but also of the music as part of the larger social history, ranging from immigration and urban history, to the formation of communities, to issues of colonialism, race and class as they bear on and are revealed by the trajectory of the music. Author Juan Flores brings a wide range of people in the New York Latin music field into his work, including musicians, producers, arrangers, collectors, journalists, and lay and academic scholars, enriching Salsa Rising with a unique level of engagement with and interest in Latin American communities and musicians themselves.

Una de las superestrellas mas impresionantes y adoradas en la historia de la musica latina, Selena fue un fenomemeno del espectaculo quien compartio todo lo que era con sus millones de fans. Su tragica muerte a la temprana edad de veintitres anos privo al mundo de su talento y su potencial ilimitado; a su familia la dejo sin su querido angel; y a su esposo, Chris Perez, sin el amor de su vida. Por mas de una decada, Chris se agarro de lo unico que le quedaba de su esposa: los recuerdos conmovedores, y en ocasiones dolorosos, de su amor profundo. Ahora, por primera vez, Chris habla sobre su poderosa amistad, su relacion prohibida y su floreciente matrimonio interrumpido por la imperdonable muerte de Selena. La conmovedora historia de Chris ofrece una vision unica de la sinceridad y vulnerabilidad de Selena ante el amor, su fuerza y conviccion para luchar por ese amor, y su fortaleza absoluta al encontrar la paz y tranquilidad con su familia despues de que aceptaran al unico hombre al que entrego su corazon. Al tiempo que muestra un aspecto de Selena nunca antes revelado y aclara algunas concepciones erroneas sobre su vida y su muerte, "Para Selena, con amor "es una historia de amor eterno que inmortaliza el corazon y el alma de un icono extraordinario, inolvidable e irremplazable. Incluye fotos eclusivas.

Spirits Rejoice! takes its name from a record by jazz saxophonist of the mid-1960s, Albert Ayler-later used, with an exclamation point added, by Louis Moholo-Moholo-and is appropriated in Jason Bivins's book to express the overlap of religion and jazz music through history. Bivins explore themes that have resounded throughout the musical genre that are also integral to the practice of religions in the United States. Much writing about jazz falls into one of three categories: glorified record reviews or discographies; impressionistic descriptions of the actual sounds and dense musicological analyses; or contextualizing it within institutions or extant narratives that are easier to analyze. Using religious studies as a point of comparison Bivins seeks to go beyond these approaches. Instead, he takes to heart a commonly invoked characteristic of jazz, and improvises on the standard questions and stories that might be told. Rather than producing a history or a series of biographical entries, Spirits Rejoice! will generate a collection of themes, pursuits, reoccurring foci, and interpretations. When ranging across the cultural history of American jazz, these themes emerge not just in the musicians' own words (in interviews, liner notes, or journals) but also from the bandstand, audience reception, and critical interrogation. Bivins looks at themes such as musical creativity as related to specific religious traditions, jazz as a form of ritual and healing, and jazz cosmologies and metaphysics, drawing conclusions that explore how "the sound of spirits rejoicing" challenges not only prevailing understandings of race and music, but also the way we think about "religion."

From Mummers to Madness considers developments in the production and consumption of popular music in England over a period of some two hundred years, which saw dramatic changes in the socio-economic, demographic and cultural life of the country. Popular music, it is argued, was not simply a response to the wider developments that were taking place but contributed to the ongoing process of adaptation and change.

To serve the British nation in World War II, the BBC charged itself with mobilizing popular music in support of Britain's war effort. Radio music, British broadcasters and administrators argued, could maintain civilian and military morale, increase industrial production, and even promote a sense of Anglo-American cooperation. Because of their widespread popularity, dance music and popular song were seen as ideal for these tasks; along with jazz, with its American associations and small but youthful audience, these genres suddenly gained new legitimacy at the traditionally more conservative BBC. In Victory through Harmony, author Christina Baade both tells the fascinating story of the BBC's musical participation in wartime events and explores how popular music and jazz broadcasting helped redefine notions of war, gender, race, class, and nationality in wartime Britain. Baade looks in particular at the BBC's pioneering Listener Research Department, which tracked the tastes of select demographic groups including servicemen stationed overseas and young female factory workers in order to further the goal of entertaining, cheering, and even calming the public during wartime. The book also tells how the wartime BBC programmed popular music to an unprecedented degree with the goal of building national unity and morale, promoting new roles for women, virile representations of masculinity, Anglo-American friendship, and pride in a common British culture. In the process, though, the BBC came into uneasy contact with threats of Americanization, sentimentality, and the creativity of non-white "others," which prompted it to regulate and even censor popular music and performers. Rather than provide the soundtrack for a unified "People's War," Baade argues, the BBC's broadcasting efforts exposed the divergent ideologies, tastes, and perspectives of the nation. This illuminating book will interest all readers in popular music, jazz, and radio, as well as British cultural history and gender studies.

Famed lyricist Dorothy Fields penned the words to more than four hundred songs, among them mega-hits such as "On the Sunny Side of the Street," "I Can't Give You Anything But Love, " and "The Way You Look Tonight." In Pick Yourself Up, Charlotte Greenspan offers the most complete treatment of Fields's life and work to date, tracing her rise to prominence in a male-dominated world. Born in 1904 into a show business family - her father, Lou Fields, was a famed stage comedian turned Broadway producer - Fields first teamed with songwriter Jimmy McHugh in the late 1920s and went on to a series of Hollywood collaborations with Jerome Kern, including the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers classic Swing Time. With her brother Herbert, she co-authored the books for several of Cole Porter's shows and for Irving Berlin's classic Annie Get Your Gun. Fields's lyrics - colloquial, urbane, sometimes slangy, sometimes sensuous - won her high praise from later generations of songwriters including Stephen Sondheim, and her stellar career opened a path for other women in her profession, among them Betty Comden and Dory Previn.

From "Over the Rainbow" to "Moon River" and from Al Jolson to Barbra Streisand, The Songs of Hollywood traces the fascinating history of song in film, both in musicals and in dramatic movies such as High Noon. Extremely well-illustrated with 200 film stills, this delightful book sheds much light on some of Hollywood's best known and loved repertoire, explaining how the film industry made certain songs memorable, and highlighting important moments of film history along the way. The book focuses on how the songs were presented in the movies, from early talkies where actors portrayed singers "performing" the songs, to the Golden Age in which characters burst into expressive, integral song-not as a "performance" but as a spontaneous outpouring of feeling. The book looks at song presentation in 1930s classics with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and in 1940s gems with Judy Garland and Gene Kelly. The authors also look at the decline of the genre since 1960, when most original musicals were replaced by film versions of Broadway hits such as My Fair Lady.

A new and wide-ranging view of the confluence, since the 1990s, of the fields of contemporary literature and popular music in Germany. In Germany the decade beginning in the mid-1990s brought an unprecedented "confusion of the spheres" of literature and popular music. Popular musicians "crossed over" into the literary field, editors and writers called for contemporary German literature to become more like popular music, writers attempted to borrow structural aspects from music or paid new attention to popular music at the thematic level. Others sought to raise their profiles by means of performance models taken from the popular music field. This book sets out to make sense of this situation. It argues for more inclusive and detailed attention to what it calls "musico-centric fiction," for which it discerns intellectual precursors going back to the 1960s and also identifies examples written since the turn of the millennium, after the would-be death of "pop literature." In doing so, it focuses on fiction and paratextual interventions by authors including Peter Handke, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, Rainald Goetz, Andreas Neumeister, Thomas Meinecke, Matthias Politycki, Frank Goosen, Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre, Thomas Brussig, Karen Duve, and Kerstin Grether. Andrew Wright Hurley is Senior Lecturer in German and Cultural Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.

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.