At fifteen, Sanford Brunson Campbell (1884-1952) became enchanted with the new sounds of ragtime and ran away from his rural Kansas home, hopping a train to Sedalia, Missouri, determined to take piano lessons from a black musician he had never met. Scott Joplin nicknamed his white protege ""The Ragtime Kid."" A composer and entertainer at the dawn of the ragtime era, ""Brun"" was a prime mover in the ragtime revival of the 1940s and helped establish Joplin's prominence as an American virtuoso. Campbell's own legacy was tarnished by his inability to tell a straight story and he was often dismissed as a liar and a clown. Based on his memoirs, musical compositions and correspondence with music industry notables, this first comprehensive biography of Campbell reveals an engaging storyteller and a devotee wholly dedicated to a musical genre that had been given up as dead. His firsthand account of life as an itinerant pianist in the Midwest provides a unique picture of life a century ago.

The Singer-Songwriter in Europe is the first book to explore and compare the multifaceted discourses and practices of this figure within and across linguistic spaces in Europe and in dialogue with spaces beyond continental borders. The concept of the singer-songwriter is significant and much-debated for a variety of reasons. Many such musicians possess large and zealous followings, their output often esteemed politically and usually held up as the nearest popular music gets to high art, such facets often yielding sizeable economic benefits. Yet this figure, per se, has been the object of scant critical discussion, with individual practitioners celebrated for their isolated achievements instead. In response to this lack of critical knowledge, this volume identifies and interrogates the musical, linguistic, social and ideological elements that configure the singer-songwriter and its various equivalents in Europe, such as the French auteur-compositeur-interprete and the Italian cantautore, since the late 1940s. Particular attention is paid to the emergence of this figure in the post-war period, how and why its contours have changed over time and space subsequently, cross-cultural influences, and the transformative agency of this figure as regards party and identity politics in lyrics and music, often by means of individual case studies. The book's polycentric approach endeavours to redress the hitherto Anglophone bias in scholarship on the singer-songwriter in the English-speaking world, drawing on the knowledge of scholars from across Europe and from a variety of academic disciplines, including modern language studies, musicology, sociology, literary studies and history.

Hamilton opened on Broadway in 2015 and quickly became one of the hottest tickets the industry has ever seen. Lin-Manuel Miranda - who wrote the book, lyrics, and music, and created the title role - adapted the show from Ron Chernow's biography Alexander Hamilton. Although it seems an unlikely source for a Broadway musical, Miranda found a liminal space where the life that Hamilton led and the issues that he confronted came alive more than two centuries later while also commenting on contemporary life in the United States and how we view our nation's history. With a score largely based on rap and drawing on other aspects of hip-hop culture, and staged with actors of color playing the white Founding Fathers, Hamilton has much to say about race in the United States today and in our past, but at the same time it leaves important things insufficiently explained, such as the role of women and people of color in Hamilton's time. Dueling Grounds: Revolution and Revelation in the Musical Hamilton is a volume that combines the work of theater scholars and practitioners, musicologists, and scholars in such fields as ethnomusicology, history, gender studies, and economics in a multi-faceted approach to the show's varied uses of liminality, looking at its creation, casting philosophy, dance and movement, costuming, staging, direction, lyrics, music, marketing, and how aspects of race, gender, and class fit into the show and its production. Demonstrating that there is much to celebrate, as well as challenging issues to confront concerning Hamilton, Dueling Grounds is an uncompromising look at one of the most important musicals of the century.

Using a collection of over one thousand popular songs from the war years, as well as around 150 soldiers' songs, John Mullen provides a fascinating insight into the world of popular entertainment during the First World War. Mullen considers the position of songs of this time within the history of popular music, and the needs, tastes and experiences of working-class audiences who loved this music. To do this, he dispels some of the nostalgic, rose-tinted myths about music hall. At a time when recording companies and record sales were marginal, the book shows the centrality of the live show and of the sale of sheet music to the economy of the entertainment industry. Mullen assesses the popularity and significance of the different genres of musical entertainment which were common in the war years and the previous decades, including music hall, revue, pantomime, musical comedy, blackface minstrelsy, army entertainment and amateur entertainment in prisoner of war camps. He also considers non-commercial songs, such as hymns, folk songs and soldiers' songs and weaves them into a subtle and nuanced approach to the nature of popular song, the ways in which audiences related to the music and the effects of the competing pressures of commerce, propaganda, patriotism, social attitudes and the progress of the war.

Using a collection of over one thousand popular songs from the war years, as well as around 150 soldiers' songs, John Mullen provides a fascinating insight into the world of popular entertainment during the First World War. Mullen considers the position of songs of this time within the history of popular music, and the needs, tastes and experiences of working-class audiences who loved this music. To do this, he dispels some of the nostalgic, rose-tinted myths about music hall. At a time when recording companies and record sales were marginal, the book shows the centrality of the live show and of the sale of sheet music to the economy of the entertainment industry. Mullen assesses the popularity and significance of the different genres of musical entertainment which were common in the war years and the previous decades, including music hall, revue, pantomime, musical comedy, blackface minstrelsy, army entertainment and amateur entertainment in prisoner of war camps. He also considers non-commercial songs, such as hymns, folk songs and soldiers' songs and weaves them into a subtle and nuanced approach to the nature of popular song, the ways in which audiences related to the music and the effects of the competing pressures of commerce, propaganda, patriotism, social attitudes and the progress of the war.

There is a growing awareness around the world of the pressing need to archive the material remnants of popular music so as to safeguard the national and local histories of this cultural form. Current research suggests that in the past 20 or so years there has been an expansion of DIY heritage practice, with the founding of numerous DIY popular music institutions, archives and museums around the world. This edited collection seeks to explore the role of DIY or Pro-Am (Professional-Amateur) practitioners of popular music archiving and preservation. It looks critically at ideas around "DIY preservationism," "self-authorised" and "unauthorised" heritage practice and the "DIY institution," while also unpacking the potentialities of bottom-up, community-based interventions into the archiving and preservation of popular music's material history. With an international scope and an interdisciplinary approach, this is an important reference for scholars of popular music, heritage studies and cultural studies.

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.

Simon Frith has been one of the most important figures in the emergence and subsequent development of popular music studies. From his earliest academic publication, The Sociology of Rock (1978), through to his recent work on the live music industry in the UK, in his desire to 'take popular music seriously' he has probably been cited more than any other author in the field. Uniquely, he has combined this work with a lengthy career as a music critic for leading publications on both sides of the Atlantic. The contributions to this volume of essays and memoirs seek to honour Frith's achievements, but they are not merely 'about Frith'. Rather, they are important interventions by leading scholars in the field, including Robert Christgau, Antoine Hennion, Peter J. Martin and Philip Tagg. The focus on 'sociology and industry' and 'aesthetics and values' reflect major themes in Frith's own work, which can also be found within popular music studies more generally. As such the volume will become an essential resource for those working in popular music studies, as well as in musicology, sociology and cultural and media studies.

Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens and Leo Ferre are three emblematic figures of post-war French popular music who have been constantly associated with each other by the public and the media. They have been described as the epitome of chanson, and of 'Frenchness'. But there is more to the trio than a musical trinity: this new study examines the factors of cultural and national identity that have held together the myth of the trio since its creation. This book identifies the combination of cultural and historical circumstances from which the works of these three singers emerged. It presents an innovative analysis of the correlation between this iconic trio and the evolution of national myths that nurtured the cultural aspirations of post-war French society. It explores the ways in which Brel, Brassens and Ferre embody the myth of the left-wing intellectual and of the authentic 'Gaul' spirit, and it discusses the ambiguous attitude of post-war French society towards gender relations. The book takes an original look at the trio by demonstrating how it illustrates the popular representation of a key issue of French national identity: the paradoxical aspiration to both revolution and the maintenance of the status quo.

Peggy Lee holds a special place in the history of American popular and jazz music. From her birth on May 26, 1920, to her final recording on August 26, 1995, to the New Yorker's obituary from February of 2002, this chronological record covers every moment of her professional life. Detailed entries describe recordings (both albums and songs), radio and television appearances, her work in films, and her songwriting efforts, drawing from interviews with Lee and others, nightclub and concert reviews, and a wealth of other sources. Appendices list CD releases of Lee's recordings and the songs she composed. Illustrated with many rare photographs.

This book presents the first in-depth study of the Eurovision Song Contest from an Australian perspective. Using a cultural studies approach, the study draws together fan interviews and surveys with media and textual analysis of the contest itself. In doing so, it begins to answer the question of why the European song contest appeals to viewers in Australia. It explores and challenges the dominant narrative that links Eurovision fandom to post-WWII European migration, arguing that this Eurocentric narrative presents a limited view of how contemporary Australian multicultural society operates in the context of globalized culture. It concludes with a consideration of the future of the Eurovision Song Contest as Australia enters into the 'Asian century'.

Drawing on methodologies and approaches from media and cultural studies, sociology, social history and the study of popular music, this book outlines the development of the study of men and masculinities, and explores the role of cultural texts in bringing about social change. It is against this backdrop that The Beatles, as a cultural phenomenon, are set, and their four live action films, spanning the years 1964-1970, are examined as texts through which to read changing representations of men and masculinity in 'the Sixties'. Dr Martin King considers ideas about a male revolt predating second-wave feminism, The Beatles as inheritors of the possibilities of the 1950s and The Beatles' emergence as men of ideas: a global cultural phenomenon that transgressed boundaries and changed expectations about the role of popular artists in society. King further explores the chosen Beatle texts to examine discourses of masculinity at work within them. What emerges is the discovery of discourses around resistance, non-conformity, feminized appearance, pre-metrosexuality, the male star as object of desire, and the emergence of The Beatles themselves as a text that reflected the radical diversity of a period of rapid social change. King draws valuable conclusions about the legacy of these discourses and their impact in subsequent decades.

The International Who's Who in Popular Music 2013 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 fifteenth 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.

Redefining Mainstream Popular Music is a collection of seventeen essays that critically examines the idea of the "mainstream" in and across a variety of popular music styles and contexts. Notions of what is popular vary across generations and cultures - what may have been considered alternative to one group may be perceived as mainstream to another. Incorporating a wide range of popular music texts, genres, scenes, practices and technologies from the United Kingdom, North America, Australia and New Zealand, the authors theoretically challenge and augment our understanding of how the mainstream is understood and functions in the overlapping worlds of popular music production, consumption and scholarship. Spanning the local and the global, the historic and contemporary, the iconic and the everyday, the book covers a broad range of genres, from punk to grunge to hip-hop, while also considering popular music through other mediums, including mash-ups and the music of everyday work life. Redefining Mainstream Popular Music provides readers with an innovative and nuanced perspective of what it means to be mainstream.

From the beginning of her career in 1935 to her death in 1963 and right up to the present, Edith Piaf has been recognized as unique and iconic. She is France's most celebrated and mythified singing star across the world. Recital 1961 explores her most important album: the live recording of her comeback concert at the Paris Olympia on 29 December 1960, which unveiled her keynote song, 'Non je ne regrette rien' (No Regrets). It examines the content, context and significance of the concert in relation to Piaf's career, her life and her celebrity. What was so special about the performance and why did the ecstatic audiences, that night and at the subsequent performances in 1961, find it so powerful and moving? The book dissects the live show, the album and the songs that feature on it, and at a deeper level their place in the invention of the public Piaf we know today - asking why, more than a century after her birth and 60 years after her death, we still remember her, listen to her and commemorate her around the world.

Made in Ireland: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive and thorough introduction to the history, sociology and musicology of 20th- and 21st-century Irish popular music. The volume consists of essays by leading scholars in the field and covers the major figures, styles and social contexts of popular music in Ireland. Each essay provides adequate context so readers understand why the figure or genre under discussion is of lasting significance to Irish popular music. The book is organized into three thematic sections: Music Industries and Historiographies, Roots and Routes and Scenes and Networks. The volume also includes a coda by Gerry Smyth, one of the most published authors on Irish popular music.

Made in Germany: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology of contemporary German popular music. Each essay, written by a leading scholar of German music, covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of pop music in Germany and provides adequate context so readers understand why the figure or genre under discussion is of lasting significance. The book first presents a general description of the history and background of popular music in Germany, followed by essays organized into thematic sections: Historical Spotlights; Globally German; Also "Made in Germany"; Explicitly German; and Reluctantly German.

Best known as the writer of the lyric for the popular Disney song ""Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf"", as well as the American standard ""Willow Weep for Me"", Ann Ronell was also a translator and orchestrator for operatic works. This biography traces Ronell's life from her early days in Omaha, Nebraska and recounts her marriage to producer Lester Cowan and her friendships with George Gershwin, Kurt Weill and the baritone John Charles Thomas. It includes over forty pictures, a chronology, family tree, film credits, her senior dissertations, and a complete list of her works.

America's Songs tells the "stories behind" the most beloved popular songs of the last century. We all have songs that have a special meaning in our lives; hearing them evokes a special time or place. Little wonder that these special songs have become enduring classics. Nothing brings the roarin '20s to life like "Tea for Two" or "I'm just Wild About Harry"; the Great Depression is evoked in all of its pain and misery in songs like "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?; "God Bless America" revives the powerful hope that American democracy promised to the world during the dark days of World War II; "Young at Heart" evokes the postwar optimism of the '50s. And then there are the countless songs of love, new romance, and heartbreak: "As Time Goes By," "Always," "Am I Blue"...the list is endless. Along with telling the stories behind these songs, America's Songs suggests, simply and succinctly, what makes a song great. The book illuminates the way each great song melds words and music -- sentiment and melody -- into a seamless whole. America's Songs also traces the fascinating but mysterious process of collaboration, the give-and-take between two craftsmen, a composer and a lyricist, as they combined their talents to create a song. For anyone interested in the history of the songs that America loves, America'sSongs will make for fascinating reading.

How does the sacred/secular opposition explain itself in the context of musical production? This volume traces this binary as it frames Western Classical music and Indian Classical music in the 18th and 19th centuries, laying the ground for a contemporary exploration of what is ostensibly sacred music in South Asia. Offering a potent critique of musicological knowledge-making, Virinder S. Kalra explores examples of South Asian musics in various domains and traverses a new cartography of music in which the sacred and the secular overlap. Drawing on examples which include Qawaali, Kirtan and popular devotional genres, Sacred and Secular Musics offers new empirical material, as well as new insights into conceptualising religion and music, and the ways in which music performs sacredness and secularity across the contested India-Pakistan border in the region of Punjab. Through its deconstruction of the sacred/secular opposition, Sacred and Secular Musics explores the relationship of religion and music to wider questions of religion and politics. Its postcolonial approach brings Asia into the Western sacred/secular opposition, and provides a set of analytical tools - a language and range of theories - to allow further exploration of non-western religious music.

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").

The Shubert name has been synonymous with Broadway for almost as long as Broadway entertainment itself. With seventeen Broadway theatres including the Ambassador, the Music Box, and the Winter Garden, The Shubert Organization perpetuates brothers Lee and Jacob Shubert's business legacy. In The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows: The Untold Tale of Ziegfeld's Rivals, author Jonas Westover investigates beyond the Shuberts' business empire into their early revues and the centrifugal role they played in developing American theatre as an art form. The Shubert-produced revues, titled Passing Shows, were terrifically popular in the teens and twenties, consistently competing with Florenz Ziegfeld's Follies for the greatest numbers of stars, biggest spectacles, and ultimately the largest audiences. The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows is the first-ever book to unpack the colorful history of the productions, delving into their stars, costumes, stagecraft, and orchestration in unprecedented detail. Providing a fresh and exciting window into American theatrical history, Westover traces the fascinating history of the Shuberts' revue series, presented annually from 1912-1924, and covers more broadly the glorious days of early Broadway. In addition to its compelling history of Broadway's Golden Age, The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows also provides a revisionary argument about the overarching history of the revue. Bolstered by a rich collection of documents in the Shubert Theater Archive, Westover argues against the popular misconception that the Shubert's competitor, producer Florenz Ziegfield - responsible for the better-known Follies - was the sole proprietor of Broadway audiences. As Westover proves, not only were the Passing Shows as popular as the Follies but also a key component in a history of the revue that is vastly more complex than previous scholarship has shown. The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows brings to fruition years of original research and invaluable insights into the gilded formation of present day Broadway.

The night and popular music have long served to energise one another, such that they appear inextricably bound together as trope and topos. This history of reciprocity has produced a range of resonant and compelling imaginaries, conjured up through countless songs and spaces dedicated to musical life after dark. Nocturnes: Popular Music and the Night is one of the first volumes to examine the relationship between night and popular music. Its scope is interdisciplinary and geographically diverse. The contributors gathered here explore how the problems, promises, and paradoxes of the night and music play off of one another to produce spaces of solace and sanctuary as well as underpinning strategies designed to police, surveil and control movements and bodies. This edited collection is a welcome addition to debates and discussions about the cultures of the night and how popular music plays a continuing role in shaping them.