Translating for Singing discusses the art and craft of translating singable lyrics, a topic of interest in a wide range of fields, including translation, music, creative writing, cultural studies, performance studies, and semiotics. Previously, such translation has most often been discussed by music critics, many of whom had neither training nor experience in this area. Written by two internationally-known translators, the book focusses mainly on practical techniques for creating translations meant to be sung to pre-existing music, with suggested solutions to such linguistic problems as those associated with rhythm, syllable count, vocal burden, rhyme, repetition and sound. Translation theory and translations of lyrics for other purposes, such as surtitles, are also covered. The book can serve as a primary text in courses on translating lyrics and as a reference and supplementary text for other courses and for professionals in the fields mentioned. Beyond academia, the book is of interest to professional translators and to librettists, singers, conductors, stage directors, and audience members.

Although David Bowie has famously characterized himself as a "leper messiah," a more appropriate moniker might be "rock god" someone whose influence has crossed numerous sub-genres of popular and classical music and can at times seem ubiquitous. By looking at key moments in his career (1972, 1977-79, 1980-83, and 1995-97) through several lenses--theories of sub-culture, gender/sexuality studies, theories of sound, post-colonial theory, and performance studies Waldrep will examine Bowie's work in terms not only of his auditory output but his many reinterpretations of it via music videos, concert tours, television appearances, and occasional movie roles. Future Nostalgia will look at all aspects of Bowie's career--musical recordings, live concerts, music videos, film performances, and television appearance--in an attempt to trace Bowie's contribution to the performative paradigms that constitute contemporary rock music.

In Chocolate Surrealism Njoroge Njoroge highlights connections among the production, performance, and reception of popular music at critical historical junctures in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The author sifts different origins and styles to place socio-musical movements into a larger historical framework. Calypso reigned during the turbulent interwar period and the ensuing crises of capitalism. The Cuban rumba/son complex enlivened the postwar era of American empire. Jazz exploded in the Bandung period and the rise of decolonization. And, lastly, Nuyorican Salsa coincided with the period of the civil rights movement and the beginnings of black/brown power. Njoroge illuminates musics of the circum-Caribbean as culturally and conceptually integrated within the larger history of the region. He pays close attention to the fractures, fragmentations, and historical particularities that both unite and divide the region's sounds. At the same time, he engages with a larger discussion of the Atlantic world. Njoroge examines the deep interrelations between music, movement, memory, and history in the African diaspora. He finds the music both a theoretical anchor and a mode of expression and representation of black identities and political cultures. Music and performance offer ways for the author to re-theorize the intersections of race, nationalism and musical practice, and geopolitical connections. Further music allows Njoroge a reassessment of the development of the modern world system, through local, popular responses to the global age. The book analyzes different styles, times, and politics to render a brief history of Black Atlantic sound.

The state of contemporary music is dizzyingly diverse in terms of style, media, traditions, and techniques. How have trends in music developed over the past decades? Music Composition in the 21st Century is a guide for composers and students that helps them navigate the often daunting complexity and abundance of resources and influences that confront them as they work to achieve a personal expression. From pop to classical, the book speaks to the creative ways that new composers mix and synthesize music, creating a music that exists along a more continuous spectrum rather than in a series of siloed practices. It pays special attention to a series of critical issues that have surfaced in recent years, including harmony, the influence of minimalism, the impact of technology, strategies of "openness," sound art, collaboration, and improvisation. Robert Carl identifies an emerging common practice that allows creators to make more informed aesthetic and technical decisions and also fosters an inherently positive approach to new methods.

This book forms a basis and a starting point for a closer dialogue between musicologists, anthropologists and psychologists to achieve a better understanding of the cultural psychology of musical experience. This is done by arranging a meeting point or an arena in which different aspects of psychology and musicology touch and encounters each other due to how the two fields might be defined today. In line with this the book consists of a group of scholars that have their feet solidly grounded in psychology, social science or musicology, but at the same time have a certain interest in uniting them. On this basis it is divided into five parts, which investigates musical sensations, musical experiences, musical transformations, musical fundamentals and the notion of a cultural psychology of music. Thus another aim of this book is to prepare the basis for a further growth of a cultural psychology that is able to include the experiences of music as a basis for understanding the ordinary human life. Thus this book should be of interest for those who want to investigate the mysterious intersection between music and psychology.

An iconic symbol and sound of the Lucumi/Santeria religion, Afro-Cuban bata are talking drums that express the epic mythological narratives of the West African Yoruba deities known as "orisha." By imitating aspects of speech and song, and by metaphorically referencing salient attributes of the deities, bata drummers facilitate the communal praising of "orisha" in a music ritual known as a "toque de santo."

In "The Artistry of Afro-Cuban Bata Drumming," Kenneth Schweitzer blends musical transcription, musical analysis, interviews, ethnographic descriptions, and observations from his own experience as a ritual drummer to highlight the complex variables at work during a live Lucumi performance.

Integral in enabling trance possessions by the "orisha," by far the most dramatic expressions of Lucumi faith, bata drummers are also entrusted with controlling the overall ebb and flow of the four- to six-hour "toque de santo." During these events, bata drummers combine their knowledge of ritual with an extensive repertoire of rhythms and songs. Musicians focus on the many thematic acts that unfold both concurrently and in quick succession. In addition to creating an emotionally charged environment, playing salute rhythms for the "orisha," and supporting the playful song competitions that erupt between singers, bata drummers are equally dedicated to nurturing their own drumming community by creating a variety of opportunities for the musicians to grow artistically and creatively."

The increasing interest in artistic research, especially in music, is throwing open doors to exciting ideas about how we generate new musical knowledge and understanding. This book examines the wide array of factors at play in innovative practice and how by treating it as research we can make new ideas more widely accessible. Three key ideas propel the book. First, it argues that artistic research comes from inside the practice and exists in a space that accommodates both objective and subjective observation and analyses because the researcher is the practitioner. It is a space for dialogue between apparently opposing binaries: the composer and the performer, the past and the present, the fixed and the fluid, the intellectual and the intuitive, the abstract and the embodied, the prepared and the spontaneous, the enduring and the transitory, and so on. It is not so much constructed in a logical, sequential manner in the way of the scientific method of doing research but more as a "braided" space, woven from many disparate elements. Second, the book articulates the notion that artistic research in music has its own verification procedures that need to be brought into the academy, especially in terms of the moderation of non-traditional research outputs, including the description of the criteria for allocation of research points for the purposes of data collection, as well as real world relevance and industry engagement. Third, by way of numerous examples of original and creative music making, it demonstrates in practical terms how exploration and experimentation functions as legitimate academic research. Many of the case studies deliberately cross boundaries that were previously assumed to be rigid and definite in order to blaze new musical trails, creating new collaborations and synergies.

Ludic Dreaming uses (sometimes fictional) dreams as a method for examining sound and contemporary technoculture's esoteric exchanges, refusing both the strictures of visually dominated logic and the celebratory tone that so often characterizes the "sonic turn." Instead, through a series of eight quasi-analytical essays on the condition of listening, the book forwards a robust engagement with sounds (human and nonhuman alike) that leverages particularity in its full, radical singularity: what is a dream, after all, if not an incipient physics that isn't held to the scientific demand for repeatability? Thus, these studies declare their challenge to the conventions of argumentation and situate themselves at a threshold between theory and fiction, one that encourages reader and writer alike to make lateral connections between otherwise wildly incongruent subjects and states of affairs. Put differently, Ludic Dreaming is a how-to book for listening away from the seeming fatality of contemporary technologies, which is to say, away from the seeming inevitability of late capitalistic nihilism.

In Heavy Metal Music in Latin America: Perspectives from the Distorted South, the editors bring together scholars engaged in the study of heavy metal music in Latin America to reflect on the heavy metal genre from a regional perspective. The contributors' southern voices diversify metal scholarship in the global north. An extreme musical genre for an extreme region, the contributors explore how issues like colonialism, dictatorships, violence, ethnic extermination and political persecution have shaped heavy metal music in Latin America, and how music has helped shape Latin American culture and politics.

Porphyry's Commentary, the only surviving ancient commentary on a technical text, is not merely a study of Ptolemy's Harmonics. It includes virtually free-standing philosophical essays on epistemology, metaphysics, scientific methodology, aspects of the Aristotelian categories and the relations between Aristotle's views and Plato's, and a host of briefer comments on other matters of wide philosophical interest. For musicologists it is widely recognised as a treasury of quotations from earlier treatises, many of them otherwise unknown; but Porphyry's own reflections on musical concepts (for instance notes, intervals and their relation to ratios, quantitative and qualitative conceptions of pitch, the continuous and discontinuous forms of vocal movement, and so on) and his snapshots of contemporary music-making have been undeservedly neglected. This volume presents the first English translation and a revised Greek text of the Commentary, with an introduction and notes designed to assist readers in engaging with this important and intricate work.

The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical provides a comprehensive academic survey of British musical theatre offering both a historical account of the musical's development from 1728 and a range of in-depth critical analyses of the unique forms and features of British musicals, which explore the aesthetic values and sociocultural meanings of a tradition that initially gave rise to the American musical and later challenged its modern pre-eminence. After a consideration of how John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728) created a prototype for eighteenth-century ballad opera, the book focuses on the use of song in early nineteenth century theatre, followed by a sociocultural analysis of the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan; it then examines Edwardian and interwar musical comedies and revues as well as the impact of Rodgers and Hammerstein on the West End, before analysing the new forms of the postwar British musical from The Boy Friend (1953) to Oliver! (1960). One section of the book examines the contributions of key twentieth century figures including Noel Coward, Ivor Novello, Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Webber, director Joan Littlewood and producer Cameron Macintosh, while a number of essays discuss both mainstream and alternative musicals of the 1960s and 1970s and the influence of the pop industry on the creation of concept recordings such as Jesus Christ Superstar (1970) and Les Miserables (1980). There is a consideration of "jukebox" musicals such as Mamma Mia! (1999), while essays on overtly political shows such as Billy Elliot (2005) are complemented by those on experimental musicals like Jerry Springer: the Opera (2003) and London Road (2011) and on the burgeoning of Black and Asian British musicals in both the West End and subsidized venues. The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical demonstrates not only the unique qualities of British musical theatre but also the vitality and variety of British musicals today.

"The Music of the Netherlands Antilles: Why Eleven Antilleans Knelt before Chopin's Heart" is not your usual musical scholarship. In October 1999, eleven Antilleans attended the service held to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Frederic Chopin's death. This service, held in the Warsaw church where the composer's heart is kept in an urn, was an opportunity for these Antilleans to express their debt of gratitude to Chopin, whose influence is central to Antillean music history. Press coverage of this event caused Dutch novelist and author Jan Brokken (b. 1949) to start writing this book, based on notes he took while living on Curacao from 1993 to 2002.

Anyone hoping to discover an overlooked chapter of Caribbean music and music history will be amply rewarded with this Dutch-Caribbean perspective on the pan-Caribbean process of creolization. On Curacao, the history and legacy of slavery shaped culture and music, affecting all the New World. Brokken's portraits of prominent Dutch Antillean composers are interspersed with cultural and music history. He puts the Dutch Caribbean's contributions into a broader context by also examining the nineteenth-century works by pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk from New Orleans and Manuel Saumell from Cuba. Brokken explores the African component of Dutch Antillean music--examining the history of the rhythm and music known as "tambu" as well as American jazz pianist Chick Corea's fascination with the tumba rhythm from Curacao. The book ends with a discussion of how recent Dutch Caribbean adaptations of European dance forms have shifted from a classical approach to contemporary forms of Latin jazz."

One of "The Telegraph"'s Best Music Books 2011

Alex Ross's award-winning international bestseller, "The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century," has become a contemporary classic, establishing Ross""as one of our most popular and acclaimed cultural historians." Listen to This," which takes its title from a beloved 2004 essay""in which Ross describes his late-blooming discovery of pop music, ""showcases the best of his writing from more than a decade at" The New Yorker." These pieces, dedicated to classical and popular""artists alike, are at once erudite and lively. In a previously unpublished""essay, Ross brilliantly retells hundreds of years of music""history--from Renaissance dances to Led Zeppelin--through a few""iconic bass lines of celebration and lament. He vibrantly sketches""canonical composers such as Schubert, Verdi, and Brahms; gives""us in-depth interviews with modern pop masters such as Bjork""and Radiohead; and introduces us to music students at a Newark""high school and indie-rock hipsters in Beijing.
Whether his subject is Mozart or Bob Dylan, Ross shows how music expresses the full complexity of the human condition. Witty, passionate, and brimming with insight, "Listen to This "teaches us how to listen more closely.

This is a pioneering study of the phenomenon of vibration and its history and reception through culture. The study of the senses has become a rich topic in recent years. "Senses of Vibration" explores a wide range of sensory experience and makes a decisive new contribution to this growing field by focussing not simply on the senses as such, but on the material experience - vibration - that underpins them. This is the first book to take the theme of vibration as central, offering an interdisciplinary history of the phenomenon and its reverberations in the cultural imaginary. It tracks vibration through the work of a wide range of writers, including physiologists (who thought vibrations in the nerves delivered sensations to the brain), physicists (who claimed that light, heat, electricity and other forms of energy were vibratory), spiritualists (who figured that spiritual energies also existed in vibratory form), and poets and novelists from Coleridge to Dickens and Wells. "Senses of Vibration" is a work of scholarship that cuts through a range of disciplines and will reverberate for many years to come.

Humming is a ubiquitous and mundane act many of us perform. The fact that we often hum to ourselves, to family members, or to close friends suggests that humming is a personal, intimate act. It can also be a powerful way in which people open up to others and share collective memories. In religious settings such as Tibetan chanting, humming offers a mesmerising sonic experience. Then there are hums that resound regardless of human activity, such as the hums of impersonal objects and man-made or natural phenomena. The first sound studies book to explores the topic of humming, Humming offers a unique examination of the polarising categories of hums, from hums that are performed only to oneself, that are exercised in religious practice, that claim healing, and that resonate with our bodies, to hums that can drive people to madness, that emanate from cities and towns, and that resound in the universe. By acknowledging the quirkiness of hums within the established discourse in sound studies, Humming takes a truly interdisciplinary view on this familiar yet less-trodden sonic concept in sound studies.