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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Folk music
Modernity, Complex Societies, and the Alphorn provides a fascinating examination of the musical instrument the alphorn, alphorn music and its performance. Indeed, it is the first book about this extraordinary instrument to appear in English. It analyses the alphorn phenomenon as a symbol of the Swiss nation, going back to the Swiss nation building process in the nineteenth century and the "invention of tradition" which began in the second half of the nineteenth century, before arriving at important issues of contemporary alphorn practice such as: what is tradition? How is it being negotiated? The insightful and valuable comments from key Swiss alphorn players add to the extensive ethnographic and archival material. Departing from this analysis, the case studies of Bavaria, the Netherlands, and Japan shed a light on the issues of worldwide migration of alphorn practice in the modern world, as well as on the diverse concepts of a Swiss imagery. Intellectually sophisticated yet easily accessible, the book ends with an exploration of how to use video and film for musical ethnography, considering the practical issues of filmmaking as well as the theoretical implications of shooting and editing for an ethnomusicological film. Drawing from the alphorn film as a sample, this book covers the entire filmmaking process, from the conception of the film to the feedback-sessions with the protagonists, providing fundamental insights into this technique for ethnomusicologists. Based on solid, careful, and complete research, this work will especially appeal to scholars of musicology, Swiss history, and filmography.
Songs of Protest, Songs of Love shows how songs can bring back voices from the past in a new way. The focus of the book is on rural Britain in a time of crisis. As the traditional rights of peasants were being jettisoned to enforce a new system of enclosure, rural labourers chanted out their concerns in songs of protest. These songs became increasingly strident and popular after the 1770s as rural life became even more precarious with fluctuating grain prices and uncertain employment opportunities. Many ballads in the eighteenth century were love songs. But these are also rich in social meaning. Many of these love songs celebrated the free and easy sexuality of rural workers, especially milkmaids and ploughmen, which was contrasted with the tepid and flaccid sex life attributed to urban aristocrats. The book will be of interest to scholars, advanced students and readers with an interest in cultural history and popular ballads. -- .
Islands are concentrated "instances" of place, in every sense of the term. As such, there are no better candidates for observing and critiquing the dynamics of globalization. Through the close analysis of musical performance and traditions, the scholarly contributors to Island Songs provide a global review of how island songs, their lyrics, and their singers engage with the challenges of modernity, migration, and social change, uncovering common patterns notwithstanding the diversity and local specificity of their subjects. In this musical exploration of the world of islands, a shared and deep "sense of place" is celebrated in song. This collection of essays is no less than a sonic narrative, an attempt to sing the inherent contradictions and paradoxical modalities of island lives today. Song lyrics, along with their accompanying music, can serve as a barometer of life and major cultural markers of change. Island Songs is a work of sonic anthropology that does more than probe song as a part of the sociocultural life on islands. It illuminates how song performs island life. Gathered here are 15 case study chapters on islands in the Caribbean, North Atlantic, Mediterranean, Baltic, and the South Pacific, all framed by four eclectic, conceptual essay contributions. In Island Songs, islands are presented as distinct vantage points for observing the merger of the local and the global, as poignantly expressed through song. This book brings together the perspectives and experiences of sociologists, anthropologists, geographers, cultural studies specialists, folklorists, ethnomusicologists, singers, and musicians. Island Songs will interest not only ethnomusicologists but any and all scholars interested in the effects of globalization on traditional cultures.
This book provides a practical introduction to researching and performing early Anglo-American secular music and dance with attention to their place in society. Supporting growing interest among scholars and performers spanning numerous disciplines, this book contributes quality new scholarship to spur further research on this overshadowed period of American music and dance. Organized in three parts, the chapters offer methodological and interpretative guidance and model varied approaches to contemporary scholarship. The first part introduces important bibliographic tools and models their use in focused examinations of individual objects of material musical culture. The second part illustrates methods of situating dance and its music in early American society as relevant to scholars working in multiple disciplines. The third part examines contemporary performance of early American music and dance from three distinct perspectives ranging from ethnomusicological fieldwork and phenomenology to the theatrical stage. Dedicated to scholar Kate Van Winkle Keller, this volume builds on her legacy of foundational contributions to the study of early American secular music, dance, and society. It provides an essential resource for all those researching and performing music and dance from the revolutionary era through the early nineteenth century.
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.
'All I can do is be me, whoever that is.' The many ides of Bob Dylan are revealed in this collection of the artist's words and lyrics. Having celebrated his 80th birthday in May 2021, with plaudits given around the globe, this influential and enigmatic troubadour-poet has been a-changing with the times since the 1960s, when he was the 'voice of a generation'. Nobel and Pulitzer prize-winner, musician, artist, author and actor, the living legend's words have inspired, enthralled, provoked and puzzled generations of fans, literary buffs, musicians and songwriters - and have been mulled over by academics and artists alike. This collection of quotes - humorous, grave, desperate, passionate, fearless, surreal - includes a rich tapestry of confessions, admonitions, laments, prophecies and existential meanderings. Interspersed with fascinating facts, The Little Guide to Bob Dylan sheds light on the deep inner workings of this taciturn man and his music. SAMPLE FACT: Many of Dylan's songs were hits for other artists, including the No.1s 'Mr Tambourine Man' for the Byrds, 'All Along the Watchtower' for Jimi Hendrix and 'Blowin' in the Wind' for Peter Paul & Mary.
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.
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.
50 Christmas carols
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
Equal parts outlaw, renegade, and legend, Waylon Jennings enjoyed a stellar music career for four decades and this no-holds-barred autobiography reveals the story of a man who infused conservative country music traditions with the energy of rock and roll to rewrite the rules of popular music in America. It chronicles all the chapters of Jennings's incredible life, including his beginnings as a dirt-poor son of a farm laborer; his role as Buddy Holly's protege; his influential friendships with such luminaries as Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and George Jones; the stunning success ushered in by his platinum 1976 anthology album, "Wanted: The Outlaws";""the drug habit that nearly destroyed him; and his three failed marriages and the journey that lead him to Jessi Colter, the woman who would become his wife for 25 years. With anecdotes, portraits, and little-known facts about Jennings's fellow country music stars, this book overflows with the honesty, true humor, and down-home charisma of an authentic honky-tonk hero.
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. |
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