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Books > Music > Folk music
How big an act was the Kingston Trio? Big enough that the their first 19 albums not only reached Billboard's Top 100, but 14 of them entered the top 10, with five albums alone hitting the no. 1 spot! At the height of their popularity, the Kingston Trio was arguably the most popular vocal group in the world, having single-handedly ushered in the folk music boom of the late '50s and early '60s. Their meteoric rise quite literally paved the way for Bob Dylan; Joan Baez; Peter, Paul & Mary; and the many acts that followed in their wake. With the release of their version of "Tom Dooley" in fall 1958, the Kingston Trio changed American popular music forever, inspiring legions of young listeners to pick up guitars and banjoes and join together in hootenannies and sing-alongs. In Greenback Dollar: The Incredible Rise of The Kingston Trio, the first in-depth biography of America's first recording super-group, William J. Bush retraces the band members' personal and professional lives, from their rapid rise to stardom to their early retirement in 1967. Through interviews with Trio members, their families, and associates, Bush paints a detailed portrait of the Trio's formative early years and sudden popular success, their innovations in recording technology, pioneering of the college concert and intensive tour schedule, their impact on and response to the '60s protest movement, the first break-up of the Trio with Dave Guard's departure, and its re-formation with John Stewart. Lovers of folk music and students and scholars of the history of popular music and the music business, the counterculture movement, and the American folk tradition will find in Greenback Dollar a remarkably detailed view of the musical and cultural legacy that resulted in the Kingston Trio receiving a 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards.
Istanbul is home to a multimillion dollar transnational music industry, which every year produces thousands of digital music recordings, including widely distributed film and television show soundtracks. Today, this centralized industry is responding to a growing global demand for Turkish, Kurdish, and other Anatolian ethnic language productions, and every year, many of its top-selling records incorporate elaborately orchestrated arrangements of rural folksongs. What accounts for the continuing demand for traditional music in local and diasporic markets? How is tradition produced in twenty-first century digital recording studios, and is there a "digital aesthetics" to contemporary recordings of traditional music? In Digital Traditions: Arrangement and Labor in Istanbul's Recording Studio Culture, author Eliot Bates answers these questions and more with a case study into the contemporary practices of recording traditional music in Istanbul. Bates provides an ethnography of Turkish recording studios, of arrangers and engineers, studio musicianship and digital audio workstation kinesthetics. Digital Traditions investigates the moments when tradition is arranged, and how arrangement is simultaneously a set of technological capabilities, limitations and choices: a form of musical practice that desocializes the ensemble and generates an extended network of social relations, resulting in aesthetic art objects that come to be associated with a range of affective and symbolic meanings. Rich with visual analysis and drawing on Science & Technology Studies theories and methods, Digital Tradition sets a new standard for the study of recorded music. Scholars and general readers of ethnomusicology, Middle Eastern studies, folklore and science and technology studies are sure to find Digital Traditions an essential addition to their library.
In African American Folksong and American Cultural Politics: The Lawrence Gellert Story, scholar and musician Bruce Conforth tells the story of one of the most unusual collections of African American folk music ever amassed-and the remarkable story of the man who produced it: Lawrence Gellert. Compiled between the World Wars, Gellert's recordings were immediately adopted by the American Left as the voice of the true American proletariat, with the songs-largely variants of traditional work songs or blues-dubbed by the Left as "songs of protest." As both the songs and Gellert's standing itself turned into propaganda weapons of left-wing agitators, Gellert experienced a meteoric rise within the circles of left-wing organizations and the American Communist party. But such success proved ephemeral, with Gellert contributing to his own neglect by steadfastly refusing to release information about where and from whom he had collected his recordings. Later scholars, as a result, would skip over his closely held, largely inaccessible research, with some asserting Gellert's work had been doctored for political purposes. And to a certain extent they were correct. Conforth reveals how Gellert at least "assisted" in the creation of some of his more political material. But hidden behind the few protest songs that Gellert allowed to become public was a vast body of legitimate African America folksongs-enough to rival the work of any of his contemporary collectors. Had Gellert granted access to all his material, scholars would have quickly seen that it comprised an incredibly complete and diverse collection of all African American song genres: work songs, blues, chants, spirituals, as well as the largest body of African American folktales about Irish Americans (what were referred to as "One Time I'shman" tales). It also included vast swaths of African American oral literature collected by Gellert as part of the Federal Writers' Project. In African American Folksong and American Cultural Politics, Conforth brings to light for the first time the entire body of work collected by Lawrence Gellert, establishing his place, and the place for the material he collected, within the pages of American folk song scholarship. In addition to shedding new light on the concept of "protest music" within African American folk music, Conforth discusses the unique relationship of the American Left to this music and how personal psychology and the demands of the American Communist party would come to ruin Gellert's life. African American Folksong and American Cultural Politics will appeal to students and scholars in the fields of American social and political history, African American studies, the history of American folk music, and ethnomusicology.
This book represents the volume of the International Musicological Conference "Musical Romania and Neighbouring Cultures. Traditions, Influences, Identities", which took place in Iasi (Romania) and was organised by the George Enescu University of Arts Iasi in collaboration with the International Musicological Society. The volume includes 35 papers of 38 authors who represent academic centres in Croatia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Romania. The diverse topics include ancient Romanian, Balkan or East-European music, music iconography, Byzantine and folkloristic traditions, as well as modern and contemporary music. The articles propose theoretical and methodological documentation on the interactions between liturgical, folkloric and academic works within this multicultural space.
We seldom consider how much we mistakenly presume in hewing to definitions of music that differ dramatically from the standpoint of other cultures. In What Makes Music European, Marcello Sorce Keller examines the limitations of accepted wisdom about the concept of music in Euro-Western culture. His investigations of the conclusions reached by music researchers of the past several decades considerably upsets the concepts relied upon by the concert-going public. Sorce Keller insightfully asks: Who makes the music? Should music be original, and how much can it be? Why do people identify with songs, pieces, styles, and repertoire? Why is music so ideological? Why do we misunderstand the music of different times and places, and why do we enjoy doing so? He also explores the juxtaposition of economy, society, and music making, as well as the concept of "illegal harmonies." In What Makes Music European, Sorce Keller addresses the little-discussed matters that are essential to an understanding of how music intersects with the life of so many people. Readers are offered an approach for thinking about music that depends as much on its history as on the concepts and attitudes of the social sciences. What Makes Music European concisely demonstrates, to those familiar with Western music, how peculiar Euro-Western concepts of music appear from a cross-cultural perspective. At the same time, it encourages ethnomusicologists to apply their knowledge to Western music and explain to its public how much of what listeners take for granted is, at the very least, highly debatable.
This book explores queer potentialities in the tribal folktales of India. It elucidates the queer elements in the oral narratives of four indigenous communities from East and Northeast India, which are found to be significant repositories of gender fluidity and non-normative desires. Departing from the popular understanding that 'Otherness' results largely from undue exposure to Western permissiveness, the author reveals how minority sexualities actually have their roots in aboriginal indigenous cultures and do not necessarily constitute a mimicry of the West. The volume endeavours to demystify the politics behind such vindictive propagation to sensitize the queerphobic mainstream about the essential endogenous presence of the queer in the spaces that are aboriginal. Based on extensive interdisciplinary research, this book is a first of its kind in the study of indigenous queer narratives. It will be useful to scholars and researchers of queer studies, gender studies, tribal and indigenous studies, literature, cultural studies, postcolonialism, sociology, political studies and South Asian studies.
This book presents a collection of essays on the debates about origins, authenticity, and identity in folk and blues music. The essays had their origins in an international conference on the Transatlantic routes of American roots music, out of which emerged common themes and questions of origins and authenticity in folk music, black and white, American and British. The central theme is musical influences, but issues of identity--national, local, and racial--are also recurring subjects. The extent to which these identities were invented, imagined, or constructed by the performers, or by those who recorded their work for posterity, is also a prominent concern and questions of racial identity are particularly central. The book features a new essay on the blues by Paul Oliver alongside an essay on Oliver's seminal blues scholarship. There are also several essays on British blues and the links between performers and styles in the United States and Britain and new essays on critical figures such as Alan Lomax and Woody Guthrie. This volume uniquely offers perspectives from both sides of the Atlantic on the connections and interplay of influences in roots music and the debates about these subjects drawing on the work of eminent established scholars and emerging young academics who are already making a contribution to the field. Throughout, the contributors offer the most recent scholarship available on key issues.
The 1930s and 1940s represented an era in United States history when large groups of citizens took political action in response to their social and economic circumstances. The vision, attitudes, beliefs and purposes of participants before, during, and after this time period played an important part of American cultural history. Richard and JoAnne Reuss expertly capture the personality of this era and the fascinating chronology of events in American Folk Music and Left-Wing Politics, 1927-1957, a historical analysis of singers, writers, union members and organizers and their connection to left-wing politics and folk music during this revolutionary time period. While scholarship on folk music, history, and politics is not unique in and of itself, Reuss' approach is noteworthy for its folklorist perspective and its long, encompassing assessment of a broad cross-section of participants and their interactions. An innovative and informative look into one of the most evocative and challenging eras in American history, American Folk Music and Left-Wing Politics, 1927-1957 stands as a historic milestone in this period's scholarship and evolution.
This new edition of "Journeyman," Ewan MacColl's vivid and entertaining autobiography, has been re-edited from the original manuscript, and includes a new introduction by Peggy Seeger, for whom he wrote the unforgettable "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." MacColl, a singer, songwriter, actor, playwright and broadcaster, begins this fascinating account with his working class Salford childhood, traces the founding and life of Theatre Workshop, one of Britain's most innovative theatre companies, then moves on to his work with folksingers, the Radio Ballads and his ascent into old age. Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger were among the main leaders of the UK folksong revival. "Journeyman" documents their struggle to secure the integrity of that revival as the popular media appropriated and re-created traditional music for commercial gain. An entertaining and thought-provoking slice of British history, it will appeal to those interested in the histories of folk music, theatre, radio, left-wing politics and the Manchester area.
Ulster's marching bands form perhaps the most vibrant participatory folk music tradition in contemporary Europe, and are one of the most significant and visible elements of working-class loyalist culture in the divided society of Northern Ireland. Their significance springs largely from the central place they have assumed in the lives of their members. This book presents an ethnography of three County Antrim flute bands from the very different genres of 'part-music', 'melody' and 'blood and thunder'. The author explores the emotional rewards of communal music-making and the way that identities are formed through the acquisition of tastes, competences and skills within specific communal contexts, paying particular attention to the impact of class position. These issues are examined in the context of the competitions, concerts and street parades that are central to the social lives of thousands of band members and supporters in Northern Ireland.
This book was awarded a Special Mention Citation in the 2010 competition for the 'de la Torre Bueno Prize' by The Society of Dance History Scholars. In the region of Salento in Southern Italy, the music and dance of the pizzica has been used in the ritual of tarantism for many centuries as a means to cure someone bitten by the taranta spider. This book, a historical and ethnographic study of tarantism and pizzica, draws upon seven hundred years of writings about the ritual contributed by medical practitioners, scientists, travel writers and others. It also investigates the contemporary revival of interest in pizzica music and dance as part of the 'neo-tarantism' movement, where pizzica and the history of tarantism form a complex web of place, culture and identity for Salentines today. This is one of the first books in English to explore this fascinating ritual practice and its contemporary resurgence. It uses an interdisciplinary framework based in performance studies to ask wider questions about the experience of the body in performance, and the potential of music and dance to create a sense of personal and collective transformation and efficacy.
Foundations of Mariachi Education: Materials, Methods, and Resources, the first book of its kind, is a comprehensive handbook on teaching mariachi in secondary school to music students of all levels. Beginning with how to start a mariachi program, each chapter addresses a specific topic in mariachi education, including choosing appropriate repertoire, preparing for performances, and teaching each mariachi instrument-including voice. Each instrument chapter includes practical advice on care of the instrument, tuning, posture, fingerings, technique, and the role of the instrument within the mariachi ensemble. With dozens of music exercises distributed throughout the chapters, this resource shows you how to build your students' technical skills using mariachi repertoire so your students truly shine onstage. You'll also learn how to develop a district-wide program and use mariachi to support literacy goals. Whether you have experience teaching mariachi music or not, this book will guide you through each step of starting or developing a program, from changing an instrument string to buying trajes for your students to executing mariachi mOnicos. This resource is a must-have for every music educator looking for ways to bring new energy to the music classroom.
What did popular song mean to people across the world during the First World War? For the first time, song repertoires and musical industries from countries on both sides in the Great War as well as from neutral countries are analysed in one exciting volume. Experts from around the world, and with very different approaches, bring to life the entertainment of a century ago, to show the role it played in the lives of our ancestors. The reader will meet the penniless lyricist, the theatre chain owner, the cross-dressing singer, fado composer, stage Scotsman or rhyming soldier, whether they come from Serbia, Britain, the USA, Germany, France, Portugal or elsewhere, in this fascinating exploration of showbiz before the generalization of the gramophone. Singing was a vector for patriotic support for the war, and sometimes for anti-war activism, but it was much more than that, and expressed and constructed debates, anxieties, social identities and changes in gender roles. This work, accompanied by many links to online recordings, will allow the reader to glimpse the complex role of popular song in people's lives in a period of total war.
Greek Rebetiko from a Psychocultural Perspective: Same Songs Changing Minds examines the ways in which audiences in present-day Greece and Turkey perceive and use the Greek popular song genre rebetiko to cultivate specific cultural habits and identities. In the past, rebetiko has been associated chiefly with the lower strata of Greek society. But Daniel Koglin approaches the subject from a different perspective, exploring the mythological and ritual aspects of rebetiko, which intellectual elites on both sides of the Aegean Sea have adapted to their own world views in our age of globalized consumption. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods from ethnomusicology, ritual studies, conceptual history and music psychology, Koglin casts light on the role played by national perceptions in the processes of music production and consumption. His analysis reveals that rebetiko persistently oscillates between conceptual categories: it is a music both ours and theirs, marginal and mainstream, joyful and grievous, sacred and profane. The study culminates in the thesis that this semantic multistability is not only a key concept to understanding the ongoing popularity of rebetiko in Greece, and its recent renaissance in Turkey, but also a fundamental aspect of the human experience on the south-eastern borders of Europe. The volume presents current research in the field of Systematic Musicology at the Institute of Musicology, University of Hamburg. Internationally leading research like the unique 'Acoustic Camera' developed at the Institute or a real-time hardware implementation of Physical Modeling as well as important contributions to the field of Musical Neurocognition and Psychology, like Forensic Music Psychology, or the development of a Syllogistic Music Theory addresses hot topics in Systematic Musicology today. Der Band prasentiert die aktuelle Forschung der Systematischen Musikwissenschaft am Institut fur Musikwissenschaft, Universitat Hamburg. Bei der international fuhrenden Forschung, wie etwa der weltweit groessten 'Akustischen Kamera', welche am Institut entwickelt wurde, oder der Echtzeit-Hardware-Implementierung von physikalischer Modellierung wie auch bei wichtigen Beitragen auf den Gebieten der Musikalischen Neurokognition und Musikalischen Psychologie, z.B. der Forensischen Musikpsychologie oder der Entwicklung einer Syllogistischen Musiktheorie, handelt es sich um Schlusselthemen heutiger Musikwissenschaft.
So many who love to sing are drawn to the immediacy and essential simplicity of the music we commonly call folk. Folk music, in fact, can serve as the perfect entry point for those just starting on their singing careers because of the ways in which it sidesteps the strictures of classical forms without giving up the fundamentals of professional singing techniques. In So You Want to Sing Folk Music, singer and writer Valerie Mindel demystifies this sprawling genre, looking at a variety of mainly traditional American musical styles as well as those of the folk revival that continues in various forms to this day. The aim is to help the fledgling singer better understand the scope of folk music and find his or her voice in the genre, looking at the "how" of creating a vocal sound that reflects a folk-based style. The book looks at specific repertories and ways of approaching them in terms of both working up material and performing it. It also looks at some of the realities of folk music in the twenty-first century that affect both amateurs and professionals. Additional chapters by Scott McCoy, Wendy LeBorgne, and Matthew Edwards address universal questions of voice science and pedagogy, vocal health, and audio enhancement technology. The So You Want to Sing series is produced in partnership with the National Association of Teachers of Singing. Like all books in the series, So You Want to Sing Folk Music features online supplemental material on the NATS website. Please visit www.nats.org to access style-specific exercises, audio and video files, and additional resources.
In this volume, twenty-three scholars pay tribute to the life and work of Joachim Braun with musicological essays covering the breadth of Professor Braun's several fields of research. Topics covered include Jewish music and music in ancient Israel/Palestine, musical cultures of the Baltic States, and the historical study of musical instruments. Its collected essays range in approach from archival to analytical and from iconographic to critical, and consider a wide range of subjects, including the music of Jewish displaced persons during and after World War II, Roman and Byzantine organology, medieval hymnody, and Soviet musical life under Stalin.
Much has been written about the songs gathered in North America in the first half of the 20th century. However, there is scant information on those individuals responsible for gathering these songs. The Ballad Collectors of North America: How Gathering Folksongs Transformed Academic Thought and American Identity fills this gap, documenting the efforts of those who transcribed and recorded North American folk songs. Both biographical and topical, this book chronicles not only the most influential of these song catchers but also examines the main schools of thought on the collection process, the leading proponents of those schools, and the projects that they shaped. Contributors also consider the role of technology especially the phonograph in the collection efforts. Chapters organized by region cover such areas as Appalachia, the West, and Canada, while others devoted to specialized topics from the cowboy tune and occupational song to the commercialization of folk music through song collections and anthologies. Ballad Collectors investigates the larger role of the ballad in the development of American identity, from the national appreciation of cowboy songs in popular culture to the use of Appalachian song forms in radio broadcasts to the role of dustbowl ballads in the urban folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s. Finally, this collection assesses the changing role of songs and song texts in the academic fields of folklore, anthropology, musicology, and ethnomusicology. Scholars and students of American cultural and social history, as well as fans of North American folk and popular music, will find The Ballad Collectors of North America a fascinating story of how the American folk tradition gained greater visibility, fueling the revolutions that would follow in the writing and performance of American music.
This book offers an overview of issues related to the regulated, formal organization of sound and speech in verse intended for singing. Particularly, it is concerned with the structural properties and underlying mechanisms involved in the association of lyrics and music. While in spoken verse the underlying metrical scheme is grounded in the prosody of the language in which it is composed, in sung verse the structure is created by the mapping of specific prosodic units of the text (syllables, moras, tones, etc.) onto the rhythmic-melodic structure provided by the tune. Studying how this mapping procedure takes place across different musical genres and styles is valuable for what it can add to our knowledge of language and music in general, and also for what it can teach us about individual languages and poetic traditions. In terms of empirical coverage, the collection includes a wide variety of (Western) languages and metrical/musical forms, ranging from the Latin hexameter to the Norwegian stev, from the French chant courtois to the Sardinian mutetu longu. Readers interested in formal analyses of vocal music, or in metrics and linguistics, will find useful insights here.
For the many poor and working-class Northeastern Brazilians who have been displaced from their home region for economic reasons, the music of forro is a redemptive attempt at establishing an immanent relationship to history and community in the diaspora. The redemption explored in this book is multifaceted, including a desire to return home as part of a larger workforce in a sustainable economy, the desire to see the region's rich culture celebrated throughout Brazil, and to ensure that its traditional legacies are both preserved and further enriched through respectful innovation. The acute perceptiveness of forro musicians in portraying the diasporic experience of Northeastern Brazilians is elaborated in various chapters, including: one chapter focused on lyrical, musical, and collective representations or manifestations of diasporic nostalgia (saudade), another chapter analyzing the lyrico-musical representation of rural workers' alienation from - and resistance to - life in the urban centers, and a third chapter which contextualizes forro's descriptions of the experiences of Brazil's internal migrants, utilizing an array of testimonials and academic studies on the subject of interregional migration to reveal both the wisdom of forro lyricists and some of their blind spots. The study also includes a historical analysis of this Northeastern genre's transformation from a rhythm called baiao that symbolically represented the Northeast as a simple, coherent entity, to forro, a more allegorical representation with a greater appreciation for the class, gender, racial, and generational complexity of the region. The development of the genre, as well as the circulation of theory related to cultural production and identity, are contextualized in a global economy.
Contributions by Tina Bucuvalas, Anna Caraveli, Aydin Chaloupka, Sotirios (Sam) Chianis, Frank Desby, Stavros K. Frangos, Stathis Gauntlett, Joseph G. Graziosi, Gail Holst-Warhaft, Michael G. Kaloyanides, Panayotis League, Roderick Conway Morris, National Endowment for the Arts/National Heritage Fellows, Nick Pappas, Meletios Pouliopoulos, Anthony Shay, David Soffa, Dick Spottswood, Jim Stoynoff, and Anna Lomax Wood Despite a substantial artistic legacy, there has never been a book devoted to Greek music in America until now. Those seeking to learn about this vibrant and exciting music were forced to seek out individual essays, often published in obscure or ephemeral sources. This volume provides a singular platform for understanding the scope, practice, and development of Greek music in America through essays and profiles written by principal scholars in the field. Greece developed a rich variety of traditional, popular, and art music that diasporic Greeks brought with them to America. In Greek American communities, music was and continues to be an essential component of most social activities. Music links the past to the present, the distant to the near, and bonds the community with an embrace of memories and narrative. From 1896 to 1942, more than a thousand Greek recordings in many genres were made in the United States, and thousands more have appeared since then. These encompass not only Greek traditional music from all regions, but also emerging urban genres, stylistic changes, and new songs of social commentary. Greek Music in America includes essays on all of these topics as well as history and genre, places and venues, the recording business, and profiles of individual musicians. This book is required reading for anyone who cares about Greek music in America, whether scholar, fan, or performer.
The Greek folk songs Dimotika Tragoudia in Greek are songs of the Greek countryside, from island towns to mountain villages. They have been passed down from generation to generation in a centuries-long oral tradition, lasting until the present. They are songs of every aspect of old Greek life: from love songs and ballads, to laments for the dead, to songs of travel and brigands. Written down at the start of the nineteenth century, they are the first works of modern Greek poetry, playing a crucial role in forming the country's modern language and literature. Still known and sung today, they are the Homer of modern Greece. This new translation brings the songs to an English readership for the first time in over a century, capturing the lyricism of the Greek in modern English verse. Translator info: Joshua Barley is a translator of modern Greek literature and writer. He read Classics at Oxford and modern Greek at King's College, London. His translations of Ilias Venezis' Serenity and Makis Tsitas' God Is My Witness are published by Aiora Press. A Greek Ballad, selected poems of Michalis Ganas (translated with David Connolly is published by Yale University Press). Foreword by A.E. Stallings, American poet and translator. |
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