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Books > Music > Folk music
In The Late Victorian Folksong Revival: The Persistence of English
Melody, 1878-1903, E. David Gregory provides a reliable and
comprehensive history of the birth and early development of the
first English folksong revival. Continuing where Victorian
Songhunters, his first book, left off, Gregory systematically
explores what the Late Victorian folksong collectors discovered in
the field and what they published for posterity, identifying
differences between the songs noted from oral tradition and those
published in print. In doing so, he determines the extent to which
the collectors distorted what they found when publishing the
results of their research in an era when some folksong texts were
deemed unsuitable for "polite ears." The book provides a reliable
overall survey of the birth of a movement, tracing the genesis and
development of the first English folksong revival. It discusses the
work of more than a dozen song-collectors, focusing in particular
on three key figures: the pioneer folklorist in the English west
country, Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould; Frank Kidson, who greatly
increased the known corpus of Yorkshire song; and Lucy Broadwood,
who collected mainly in the counties of Sussex and Surrey, and with
Kidson and others, was instrumental in founding the Folk Song
Society in the late 1890s. The book includes copious examples of
the song tunes and texts collected, including transcriptions of
nearly 300 traditional ballads, broadside ballads, folk lyrics,
occupational songs, carols, shanties, and "national songs,"
demonstrating the abundance and high quality of the songs recovered
by these early collectors.
Laurence Picken has long been recognised as a pioneer in the study
of Oriental and other non-Western musics. Some of his pupils,
colleagues and friends from four continents have here brought
together this volume of essays as a tribute to him on his
seventieth birthday. The book aims to reflect characteristic
aspects of Dr Picken's work: his conception of musicology as a
science, his sense of historical perspective and - perhaps most
importantly - his delight in music of almost every kind. Appealing
in particular to those engaged in the study of non-Western music,
the volume will also interest everyone concerned with musical
structures and their development.
Saibara ('Drover's Songs') is the title of a genre of measured
Japanese court song, traditionally believed to have been derived
from the songs of pack-horse drivers bringing tribute from the
provinces to the Heian capital and known to have formed part of the
official court repertory at least since AD 859. From literature of
the Heian period (782 1184) it is evident that these songs enjoyed
great popularity at court as entertainment music practised by noble
amateurs. Six songs are still performed today, albeit vastly
modified. As well as being of value to musicologists, these volumes
will interest readers concerned with early Japanese literature and
paleography.
This book is a wide-ranging study of the varieties of gamelan music
in contemporary Java seen from a regional perspective. While the
focus of most studies of Javanese music has been limited to the
court-derived music of Surakarta and Yogyakarta, Sutton goes beyond
them to consider also gamelan music of Banyumas, Semarang and east
Java as separate regional traditions with distinctive repertoires,
styles and techniques of performance and conceptions about music.
Sutton's description of these traditions, illustrated with numerous
musical examples in Javanese cipher notation, is based on extensive
field experience in these areas and is informed by the criteria
that Javanese musicians judge to be most important in
distinguishing them.
Saibara ('Drover's Songs') is the title of a genre of measured
Japanese court song, traditionally believed to have been derived
from the songs of pack-horse drivers bringing tribute from the
provinces to the Heian capital and known to have formed part of the
official court repertory at least since AD 859. From literature of
the Heian period (782 1184) it is evident that these songs enjoyed
great popularity at court as entertainment music practised by noble
amateurs. Six songs are still performed today, albeit vastly
modified. As well as being of value to musicologists, these volumes
will interest readers concerned with early Japanese literature and
paleography.
Koreans of the fifteenth century recorded for posterity a large
body of music which has been preserved to the present day. This
book presents that music in transcription, with an introductory
section providing detailed background on the music itself and on
the sources, the song texts, court dances, musical instruments and
possibilities for performance on western instruments. The fact that
the song texts are translated makes this the largest published
anthology of early Korean verse in translation. The book concludes
with a detailed bibliography and glossaries including the original
Chinese for the titles of the pieces, names of the instruments,
etc. Though its origins are distant from us in both time and place,
the fifteenth-century Korean repertoire is immediately appealing to
the occidental ear: hence this collection will be of interest not
only to the student of Asian music but also to any musician with a
taste for the unusual.
A traveling salesman with little formal education, Max Hunter
gravitated to song catching and ballad hunting while on business
trips in the Ozarks. Hunter recorded nearly 1600 traditional songs
by more than 200 singers from the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s,
all the while focused on preserving the music in its unaltered
form. Sarah Jane Nelson chronicles Hunter's song collecting
adventures alongside portraits of the singers and mentors he met
along the way. The guitar-strumming Hunter picked up the recording
habit to expand his repertoire but almost immediately embraced the
role of song preservationist. Being a local allowed Hunter to merge
his native Ozark earthiness with sharp observational skills to
connect--often more than once--with his singers. Hunter's own
ability to be present added to that sense of connection. Despite
his painstaking approach, ballad collecting was also a source of
pleasure for Hunter. Ultimately, his dedication to capturing Ozarks
song culture in its natural state brought Hunter into contact with
people like Vance Randolph, Mary Parler, and non-academic
folklorists who shared his values.
A series of little books of short carefully graded folk tunes
beginning with the simplest passages and progressing to more
difficult leaps, rhythms, chromatics, and modulations. The later
books introduce two-part sight singing.
This study of Polish folk music is especially enlightening as it
reveals both the history and practice of a musical tradition and
offers an illuminating view of a culture and its social activities.
Within her study, Anna Czekanowska analyses the vocal and
instrumental traditions of Polish folk music, tracing the
background history, the influences of geography and politics, and
the practice, often within contemporary society, of such social
events as the harvest, the solstice and weddings. The function of
folk culture within contemporary life, for both Polish and
non-Polish inhabitants of the country, is also examined. Professor
Czekanowska also discusses the birth of Polish ethno- musicology as
a discipline and details some methodological aspects for research.
This study contributes to a greater understanding and appreciation
of Polish music and, in a wider aspect, of Slavonic culture. The
book contains numerous illustrations of instruments and cultural
events, music examples, maps, a discography and bibliography.
How do marginalized communities speak back to power when they are
excluded from political processes and socially denigrated? In what
ways do they use music to sound out their unique histories and
empower themselves? How can we hear their voices behind stereotyped
and exaggerated portrayals promoted by mainstream communities,
record producers and government officials? Sounding Roman: Music
and Performing Identity in Western Turkey explores these questions
through a historically-grounded and ethnographic study of Turkish
Roman ("Gypsies") from the Ottoman period up to the present.
Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork (1995 to the present),
collected oral histories, historical documents of popular culture
(recordings, images, song texts, theatrical scripts), legal and
administrative documents, this book takes a hard look at historical
processes by which Roman are stereotyped as and denigrated as
"cingene"--a derogatory group name equivalent to the English term,
"gypsy", and explores creative musical ways by which Roman have
forged new musical forms as a means to create and assert new social
identities. Sounding Roman presents detailed musical analysis of
Turkish Roman musical genres and styles, set within social,
historical and political contexts of musical performances. By
moving from Byzantine and Ottoman social contexts, we witness the
reciprocal construction of ethnic identity of both Roman and Turk
through music in the 20th century. From neighborhood weddings held
in the streets, informal music lessons, to recording studios and
concert stages, the book traces the dynamic negotiation of social
identity with new musical sounds. Through a detailed ethnography of
Turkish Roman ("Gypsy") musical practices from the Ottoman period
to the present, this work investigates the power of music to
configure new social identities and pathways for political action,
while testing the limits of cultural representation to effect
meaningful social change.
While Fernando Ortiz's contribution to our understanding of Cuba
and Latin America more generally has been widely recognized since
the 1940s, recently there has been renewed interest in this scholar
and activist who made lasting contributions to a staggering array
of fields. This book is the first work in English to reassess
Ortiz's vast intellectual universe. Essays in this volume analyze
and celebrate his contribution to scholarship in Cuban history, the
social sciences notably anthropology and law, religion and national
identity, literature, and music. Presenting Ortiz's seminal
thinking, including his profoundly influential concept of
'transculturation', Cuban Counterpoints explores the bold new
perspectives that he brought to bear on Cuban society. Much of his
most challenging and provocative thinking which embraced
simultaneity, conflict, inherent contradiction and hybridity has
remarkable relevance for current debates about Latin America's
complex and evolving societies."
The Songs of Septimus Winner is a testament to a man with an
extraordinarily unusual career in music. Most modern-day readers
may have never heard of Septimus Winner or Alice Hawthorne. But the
music they created is now part of the pantheon of what we might now
term "America's folk songs". Most Americans might remember songs
such as "Ten Little Indians" or "Der Deitscher?s Dog" from their
childhood just as they may know "Jimmy Crack Corn" or "Oh,
Susannah!" but few know the men and women who wrote these songs or
their significance to generations of nineteenth-century Americans.
Septimus Winner (1827?1902) is one of these forefathers of American
popular song. His musical contributions are significant: well over
300 popular songs, over 2000 arrangements of both his own and
others' music, and an astounding array of pedagogical books. Culled
from the original sheet music publications and presented unedited,
this volume explores twenty-two of Winner's best loved songs
including "Ten Little Injuns," "Whispering Hope," "Listen to the
Mocking Bird," "The Deitscher's Dog" and "Give Us Back Our Old
Commander."
This collection of poems rooted in the wild and beautiful lands
that lie between England and Scotland describes a traditionally
lawless area whose inhabitants owed allegiance first to kin and
laird and then to the authorities in London or Edinburgh. Recording
a violent, clannish world of fierce hatreds and passionate
loyalties, the ballads tell vivid tales of raids, feuds and
betrayals, romances and acts of revenge.
For almost 50 years, Dave Hadfield has followed the genres of music
that grabbed his youthful heart and mind. Now, in 'All the Wrong
Notes' he has written not just a musical memoir, but a personal and
social history of the last half-century. Like a Zelig with a finger
in his ear, he has been where folk music has happened and describes
it, affectionately but warts-and-all, in a way it has never been
described before.
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