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Books > Music > Contemporary popular music > Rock & pop > General

Popular Music and the Myths of Madness (Paperback): Nicola Spelman Popular Music and the Myths of Madness (Paperback)
Nicola Spelman
R1,707 Discovery Miles 17 070 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Studies of opera, film, television, and literature have demonstrated how constructions of madness may be referenced in order to stigmatise but also liberate protagonists in ways that reinforce or challenge contemporaneous notions of normality. But to date very little research has been conducted on how madness is represented in popular music. In an effort to redress this imbalance, Nicola Spelman identifies links between the anti-psychiatry movement and representations of madness in popular music of the 1960s and 1970s, analysing the various ways in which ideas critical of institutional psychiatry are embodied both verbally and musically in specific songs by David Bowie, Lou Reed, Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper, The Beatles, and Elton John. She concentrates on meanings that may be made at the point of reception as a consequence of ideas about madness that were circulating at the time. These ideas are then linked to contemporary conventions of musical expression in order to illustrate certain interpretative possibilities. Supporting evidence comes from popular musicological analysis - incorporating discourse analysis and social semiotics - and investigation of socio-historical context. The uniqueness of the period in question is demonstrated by means of a more generalised overview of songs drawn from a variety of styles and eras that engage with the topic of madness in diverse and often conflicting ways. The conclusions drawn reveal the extent to which anti-psychiatric ideas filtered through into popular culture, offering insights into popular music's ability to question general suppositions about madness alongside its potential to bring issues of men's madness into the public arena as an often neglected topic for discussion.

Warrior, Courtier, Singer - Giulio Cesare Brancaccio and the Performance of Identity in the Late Renaissance (Paperback):... Warrior, Courtier, Singer - Giulio Cesare Brancaccio and the Performance of Identity in the Late Renaissance (Paperback)
Richard Wistreich
R1,722 Discovery Miles 17 220 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Giulio Cesare Brancaccio was a Neapolitan nobleman with long practical experience of military life, first in the service of Charles V and later as both soldier and courtier in France and then at the court of Alfonso II d'Este at Ferrara. He was also a virtuoso bass singer whose performances were praised by both Tasso and Guarini - he was even for a while the only male member of the famous Ferrarese court Concerto delle dame, who established a legendary reputation during the 1580s. Richard Wistreich examines Brancaccio's life in detail and from this it becomes possible to consider the mental and social world of a warrior and courtier with musical skills in a broader context. A wide-ranging study of bass singing in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Italy provides a contextual basis from which to consider Brancaccio's reputation as a performer. Wistreich illustrates the use of music in the process of 'self-fashioning' and the role of performance of all kinds in the construction of male noble identity within court culture, including the nature and currency of honour, chivalric virtA(1) and sixteenth-century notions of gender and virility in relation to musical performance. This fascinating examination of Brancaccio's social world significantly expands our understanding of noble culture in both France and Italy during the sixteenth century, and the place of music-making within it.

Music and Irish Identity - Celtic Tiger Blues (Hardcover): Gerry Smyth Music and Irish Identity - Celtic Tiger Blues (Hardcover)
Gerry Smyth
R4,764 Discovery Miles 47 640 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Music and Irish Identity represents the latest stage in a life-long project for Gerry Smyth, focusing here on the ways in which music engages with particular aspects of Irish identity. The nature of popular music and the Irish identity it supposedly articulates have both undergone profound change in recent years: the first as a result of technological and wider industrial changes in the organisation and dissemination of music as seen, for example, with digital platforms such as YouTube, Spotify and iTunes. A second factor has been Ireland's spectacular fall from economic grace after the demise of the "Celtic Tiger", and the ensuing crisis of national identity. Smyth argues that if, as the stereotypical association would have it, the Irish have always been a musical race, then that association needs re-examination in the light of developments in relation to both cultural practice and political identity. This book contributes to that process through a series of related case studies that are both scholarly and accessible. Some of the principal ideas broached in the text include the (re-)establishment of music as a key object of Irish cultural studies; the theoretical limitations of traditional musicology; the development of new methodologies specifically designed to address the demands of Irish music in all its aspects; and the impact of economic austerity on musical negotiations of Irish identity. The book will be of seminal importance to all those interested in popular music, cultural studies and the wider fate of Ireland in the twenty-first century.

Turbo-folk Music and Cultural Representations of National Identity in Former Yugoslavia (Paperback): Uros Cvoro Turbo-folk Music and Cultural Representations of National Identity in Former Yugoslavia (Paperback)
Uros Cvoro
R1,707 Discovery Miles 17 070 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Turbo-folk music is the most controversial form of popular culture in the new states of former Yugoslavia. Theoretically ambitious and innovative, this book is a new account of popular music that has been at the centre of national, political and cultural debates for over two decades. Beginning with 1970s Socialist Yugoslavia, Uros Cvoro explores the cultural and political paradoxes of turbo-folk: described as 'backward' music, whose misogynist and Serb nationalist iconography represents a threat to cosmopolitanism, turbo-folk's iconography is also perceived as a 'genuinely Balkan' form of resistance to the threat of neo-liberalism. Taking as its starting point turbo-folk's popularity across national borders, Cvoro analyses key songs and performers in Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia. The book also examines the effects of turbo on the broader cultural sphere - including art, film, sculpture and architecture - twenty years after its inception and popularization. What is proposed is a new way of reading the relationship of contemporary popular music to processes of cultural, political and social change - and a new understanding of how fundamental turbo-folk is to the recent history of former Yugoslavia and its successor states.

Frank Zappa and the And (Paperback): Paul Carr Frank Zappa and the And (Paperback)
Paul Carr
R1,830 Discovery Miles 18 300 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

This collection of essays, documented by an international and interdisciplinary array of scholars, represents the first academically focused volume exploring the creative idiolect of Frank Zappa. Several of the authors are known for contributing significantly to areas such as popular music, cultural, and translation studies, with expertise and interests ranging from musicology to poetics. The publication presents the reader with an understanding of the ontological depth of Zappa's legacy by relating the artist and his texts to a range of cultural, social, technological and musicological factors, as encapsulated in the book's title - Frank Zappa and the And. Zappa's interface with religion, horror, death, movies, modernism, satire, freaks, technology, resistance, censorship and the avant-garde are brought together analytically for the first time, and approached non chronologically, something that strongly complies with the non linear perspective of time Zappa highlights in both his autobiography and recordings. The book employs a variety of analytical approaches, ranging from literary and performance theory, 'horrality' and musicology, to post modern and textually determined readings, and serves as a unique and invaluable guide to Zappa's legacy and creative force.

Taarab Music in Zanzibar in the Twentieth Century - A Story of 'Old is Gold' and Flying Spirits (Paperback): Janet... Taarab Music in Zanzibar in the Twentieth Century - A Story of 'Old is Gold' and Flying Spirits (Paperback)
Janet Topp Fargion
R1,702 Discovery Miles 17 020 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

The musical genre of taarab is played for entertainment at weddings and other festive occasions all along the Swahili Coast in East Africa. Taarab contains all the features of a typical 'Indian Ocean' music, combining influences from Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, India and the West with local musical practices. In Taarab, Music in Zanzibar, Janet Topp Fargion traces the development of the genre in Zanzibar, from the late nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth. Of special interest is the role of women. Although men play the main role in the composition and performance of the genre, Topp Fargion argues that the modernization of the genre owes a debt to the participation of women - as audiences and primary consumers, but also as poets and innovators of musical concepts. The book weaves together the historical, social, economic, religious and political dynamics involved in the development of the genre, and investigates how these are played out in the performance of taarab music on Zanzibar.

Music, Sexuality and the Enlightenment in Mozart's Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutte (Paperback): Charles Ford Music, Sexuality and the Enlightenment in Mozart's Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutte (Paperback)
Charles Ford
R1,632 Discovery Miles 16 320 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Music, Sexuality and the Enlightenment explains how Mozart's music for Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and CosA fan tutte 'sounds' the intentions of Da Ponte's characters and their relationships with one another. Mozart, by way of the infinitely generative and beautiful logic of the sonata principle, did not merely interpret Da Ponte's characterizations but lent them temporal, musical forms. Charles Ford's analytic interpretation of these musical forms concerns processes and structures in detail and at medium- to long-term levels. He addresses the music of a wide range of arias and ensembles, and develops original ways to interpret the two largely overlooked operatic genres of secco recitative and finales. Moreover, Ford presents a new method by which to relate musical details directly to philosophical concepts, and thereby, the music of the operas to the inwardly contradictory thinking of the European Enlightenment. This involves close readings of late eighteenth-century understandings of 'man' and nature, self and other, morality and transgression, and gendered identities and sexuality, with particular reference to contemporary writers, especially Goethe, Kant, Laclos, Rousseau, Sade, Schiller, Sterne and Wollstonecraft. The concluding discussion of the implied futures of the operas argues that their divided sexualities, which are those of the Enlightenment as a whole, have come to form our own unquestioned assumptions about gender differences and sexuality. This, along with the elegant and eloquent precision of Mozart's music, is why Figaro, Giovanni and CosA still maintain their vital immediacy for audiences today.

The Sociology of Wind Bands - Amateur Music Between Cultural Domination and Autonomy (Paperback): Vincent Dubois, Jean-matthieu... The Sociology of Wind Bands - Amateur Music Between Cultural Domination and Autonomy (Paperback)
Vincent Dubois, Jean-matthieu Meon, translated by Jean-Yves Bart
R1,827 Discovery Miles 18 270 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Despite the musical and social roles they play in many parts of the world, wind bands have not attracted much interest from sociologists. The Sociology of Wind Bands seeks to fill this gap in research by providing a sociological account of this musical universe as it stands now. Based on a qualitative and quantitative survey conducted in northeastern France, the authors present a vivid description of the orchestras, the backgrounds and practices of their musicians, and the repertoires they play. Their multi-level analysis, ranging from the cultural field to the wind music subfield and to everyday life relationships within bands and local communities, sheds new light on the social organisation, meanings and functions of a type of music that is all too often taken for granted. Yet they go further than merely portraying a musical genre. As wind music is routinely neglected and socially defined in terms of its poor musical quality or even bad taste, the book addresses the thorny issue of the effects of cultural hierarchy and domination. It proposes an imaginative and balanced framework which, beyond the specific case of wind music, is an innovative contribution to the sociology of lowbrow culture.

The Journals and Letters of Susan Burney - Music and Society in Late Eighteenth-Century England (Paperback): Philip Olleson The Journals and Letters of Susan Burney - Music and Society in Late Eighteenth-Century England (Paperback)
Philip Olleson
R1,827 Discovery Miles 18 270 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Susan Burney (1755-1800) was the third daughter of the music historian Charles Burney and the younger sister of the novelist Frances (Fanny) Burney. She grew up in London, where she was able to observe at close quarters the musical life of the capital and to meet the many musicians, men of letters, and artists who visited the family home. After her marriage in 1782 to Molesworth Phillips, a Royal Marines officer who served with Captain Cook on his last voyage, she lived in Surrey and later in rural Ireland. Burney was a knowledgeable enthusiast for music, and particularly for opera, with discriminating tastes and the ability to capture vividly musical life and the personalities involved in it. Her extensive journals and letters, a selection from which is presented here, provide a striking portrait of social, domestic and cultural life in London, the Home Counties and in Ireland in the late eighteenth century. They are of the greatest importance and interest to music and theatre historians, and also contain much that will be of significance and interest for Burney scholars, social historians of England and Ireland, women's historians and historians of the family.

Play it Again: Cover Songs in Popular Music (Paperback): George Plasketes Play it Again: Cover Songs in Popular Music (Paperback)
George Plasketes
R1,832 Discovery Miles 18 320 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Covering"the musical practice of one artist recording or performing another composer's song"has always been an attribute of popular music. In 2009, the internet database Second Hand Songs estimated that there are 40,000 songs with at least one cover version. Some of the more common variations of this "appropriationist" method of musical quotation include traditional forms such as patriotic anthems, religious hymns such as Amazing Grace, Muzak's instrumental interpretations, Christmas classics, and children's songs. Novelty and comedy collections from parodists such as Weird Al Yankovic also align in the cover category, as does the "larcenous art" of sampling, and technological variations in dance remixes and mash-ups. Film and television soundtracks and advertisers increasingly rely on versions of familiar pop tunes to assist in marketing their narratives and products. The cover phenomenon in popular culture may be viewed as a postmodern manifestation in music as artists revisit, reinterpret and re-examine a significant cross section of musical styles, periods, genres, individual records, and other artists and their catalogues of works.The cover complex, with its multiple variations, issues, contexts, and re-contextualizations comprises an important and rich popular culture text. These re-recordings represent artifacts which embody artistic, social, cultural, historical, commercial, biographical, and novel meanings. Through homage, allusion, apprenticeship, and parody, among other modes, these diverse musical quotations express, preserve, and distribute popular culture, popular music and their intersecting historical narratives. Play it Again represents the first collection of critical perspectives on the many facets of cover songs in popular music.

Sound, Society and the Geography of Popular Music (Paperback): Ola Johansson Sound, Society and the Geography of Popular Music (Paperback)
Ola Johansson; Thomas L. Bell
R1,677 Discovery Miles 16 770 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Popular music is a cultural form much rooted in space and place. This book interprets the meaning of music from a spatial perspective and, in doing so it furthers our understanding of broader social relations and trends, including identity, attachment to place, cultural economies, social activism and politics. The book's editors have brought together a team of scholars to discuss the latest innovative thinking on music and its geographies, illustrated with a fascinating range of case studies from the USA, Canada, the Caribbean, Australia and Great Britain.

Popular Music and the State in the UK - Culture, Trade or Industry? (Paperback): Martin Cloonan Popular Music and the State in the UK - Culture, Trade or Industry? (Paperback)
Martin Cloonan
R1,707 Discovery Miles 17 070 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

In an era of the rise of the free market and economic globalization, Martin Cloonan examines why politicians and policymakers in the UK have sought to intervene in popular music - a field that has often been held up as the epitome of the free market form. Cloonan traces the development of government attitudes and policies towards popular music from the 1950s to the present, discovering the prominence of two overlapping concerns: public order and the political economy of music. Since the music industry began to lobby politicians, particularly on the issue of copyright in relation to the internet, an inherent tension has become apparent with economic rationale on one side, and Romantic notions of 'the artist' on the other. Cloonan examines the development of policy under New Labour; numerous reports which have charted the economics of the industry; the New Deal for Musicians scheme and the impact of devolution on music policy in Scotland. He makes the case for the inherently political nature of popular music and asserts that the development of popular music policies can only be understood in the context of an increasingly close working relationship between government and the cultural industries. In addition he argues that a rather myopic view of the music industries has meant that policy initiatives have lacked cohesion and have generally served the interests of multinational corporations rather than struggling musicians.

Punk Aesthetics and New Folk - Way Down the Old Plank Road (Paperback): John Encarnacao Punk Aesthetics and New Folk - Way Down the Old Plank Road (Paperback)
John Encarnacao
R1,707 Discovery Miles 17 070 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Joanna Newsom, Will Oldham (a.k.a. 'Bonnie Prince Billy'), and Devendra Banhart are perhaps the best known of a generation of independent artists who use elements of folk music in contexts that are far from traditional. These (and other) so called 'new folk' artists challenge our notions of 'finished product' through their recordings, intrinsically guided by practices and rhetoric inherited from punk. This book traces a fractured trajectory that includes Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, Bob Dylan, psych-folk of the sixties (from Vashti Bunyan to John Fahey), lo-fi and outsider recordings (from Captain Beefheart and The Residents to Jandek, Daniel Johnston and Smog), and recent experimental folk (Animal Collective, Six Organs of Admittance, Charalambides) to contextualise the first substantial consideration of new folk. In the process, Encarnacao reviews the literature on folk and punk to argue that tropes of authenticity, though constructions, carry considerable power in the creation and reception of recorded works. New approaches to music require new analytical tools, and through the analysis of some 50 albums, Encarnacao introduces the categories of labyrinth, immersive and montage forms. This book makes a compelling argument for a reconsideration of popular music history that highlights the eternal compulsion for spontaneous, imperfect and performative recorded artefacts.

Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation (Hardcover, New): David Malvinni Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation (Hardcover, New)
David Malvinni
R1,653 Discovery Miles 16 530 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

More than fifteen years since the death of lead guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead stand as a symbol of the unresolved cultural clashes of the 1960s. The band's thirty-year odyssey is a testament to the American imagination, with thousands of live concert recordings by fans and the band itself, preserved alongside an impressive array of images, artwork, and paraphernalia. Most recently, the Grateful Dead have released from their vault their entire 1972 European tour, one of the largest boxed sets of live music-seventy-three compact discs-ever released. This publicly available archive of recorded music lays the groundwork for David Malvinni's exploration of the band's musical signature as the ultimate jam band in Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation. Malvinni considers a select group of songs from the Dead's early repertoire, from its unique covers of "Viola Lee Blues," "Midnight Hour," and "Love Light" to original masterpieces like "Dark Star." Marrying basic music analysis to philosophical frames offered by improvisatory musings of Heidegger, Derrida, and Deleuze, Malvinni presents the core aesthetic underlying the Dead's musical styling. In tracing the evolution of the band's unique jam style, Malvinni outlines the Dead's gift as gatherers and inventors of old and new soundscapes in their multifaceted improvisations. Like no other band, the Dead brought together a variety of styles from roots and folk to country and modal jazz to postmodern European art music. Devoted Deadheads reveled in the band's polyglot, risk-filled approach to playing live and the joint band-audience quest to reach a type of sonic cosmic ecstasy, commonly described as the "X factor." Although fans and scholars alike recognize the Grateful Dead as icons of psychedelic music, the band's improvisatory approach still remains an enigma to the uninitiated. In Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation, Malvinni unravels this mystery, walking readers through the band's musical decision-making process. Written for rock music fans with little to no background in music theory, as well as scholars and students of popular music culture, the book reveals the method behind the seeming chaos of America's greatest jam band.

Hip-Hop Turntablism, Creativity and Collaboration (Paperback): Sophy Smith Hip-Hop Turntablism, Creativity and Collaboration (Paperback)
Sophy Smith
R1,813 Discovery Miles 18 130 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Armed only with turntables, a mixer and a pile of records, hip-hop DJs and turntable musicians have changed the face of music. However, whilst hip-hop has long been recognised as an influential popular culture both culturally and sociologically, hip-hop music is rarely taken seriously as an artistic genre. Hip-Hop Turntablism, Creativity and Collaboration values hip-hop music as worthy of musicological attention and offers a new approach to its study, focusing on the music itself and providing a new framework to examine not only the musical product, but also the creative process through which it was created. Based on ten years of research among turntablist communities, this is the first book to explore the creative and collaborative processes of groups of DJs working together as hip-hop turntable teams. Focusing on a variety of subjects - from the history of turntable experimentation and the development of innovative sound manipulation techniques, to turntable team formation, collective creation and an analysis of team routines - Sophy Smith examines how turntable teams have developed new ways of composing music, and defines characteristics of team routines in both the process and the final artistic product. Relevant to anyone interested in turntable music or innovative music generally, this book also includes a new turntable notation system and methodology for the analysis of turntable compositions, covering aspects such as material, manipulation techniques and structure as well as the roles of individual musicians.

Popular Music in France from Chanson to Techno - Culture, Identity and Society (Paperback): Hugh Dauncey Popular Music in France from Chanson to Techno - Culture, Identity and Society (Paperback)
Hugh Dauncey
R1,827 Discovery Miles 18 270 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

In France during the 1960s and 1970s, popular music became a key component of socio-cultural modernisation as the music/record industry became increasingly important in both economic and cultural terms in response to demographic changes and the rise of the modern media. As France began questioning traditional ways of understanding politics and culture before and after May 1968, music as popular culture became an integral part of burgeoning media activity. Press, radio and television developed free from de Gaulle's state domination of information, and political activism shifted its concerns to the use of regional languages and regional cultures, including the safeguard of traditional popular music against the centralising tendencies of the Republican state. The cultural and political significance of French music was again revealed in the 1990s, as French-language music became a highly visible example of France's quest to maintain her cultural 'exceptionalism' in the face of the perceived globalising hegemony of English and US business and cultural imperialism. Laws were passed instituting minimum quotas of French-language music. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed developing issues raised by new technologies, as compact discs, the minitel telematics system, the internet and other innovations in radio and television broadcasting posed new challenges to musicians and the music industry. These trends and developments are the subject of this volume of essays by leading scholars across a range of disciplines including French studies, musicology, cultural and media studies and film studies. It constitutes the first attempt to provide a complete and up-to-date overview of the place of popular music in modern France and the reception of French popular music abroad.

Desire, Drink and Death in English Folk and Vernacular Song, 1600-1900 (Paperback): Vic Gammon Desire, Drink and Death in English Folk and Vernacular Song, 1600-1900 (Paperback)
Vic Gammon
R1,707 Discovery Miles 17 070 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

This much-needed book provides valuable insights into themes and genres in popular song in the period c. 1600-1900. In particular it is a study of popular ballads as they appeared on printed sheets and as they were recorded by folk song collectors. Vic Gammon displays his interest in the way song articulates aspects of popular mentality and he relates the discourse of the songs to social history. Gammon discusses the themes and narratives that run through genres of song material and how these are repeated and reworked through time. He argues that in spite of important social and economic changes, the period 1600-1850 had a significant cultural consistency and characteristic forms of popular musical and cultural expression. These only changed radically under the impact of industrialization and urbanization in the nineteenth century. The book will appeal to those interested in folk song, historical popular music (including church music), ballad literature, popular literature, popular culture, social history, anthropology and sociology.

The Defence of Tradition in Brazilian Popular Music - Politics, Culture and the Creation of Musica Popular Brasileira... The Defence of Tradition in Brazilian Popular Music - Politics, Culture and the Creation of Musica Popular Brasileira (Paperback)
Sean Stroud
R1,697 Discovery Miles 16 970 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Sean Stroud examines how and why MAsica Popular Brasileira (MPB) has come to have such a high status, and why the musical tradition (including MPB) within Brazil has been defended with such vigour for so long. He emphasizes the importance of musical nationalism as an underlying ideology to discussions about Brazilian popular music since the 1920s, and the key debate on so-called 'cultural invasion' in Brazil. The roles of those responsible for the construction of the idea of MPB are examined in detail. Stroud analyses the increasingly close relationship that has developed between television and popular music in Brazil with particular reference to the post-1972 televised song festivals. He goes on to consider the impact of the Brazilian record industry in the light of theories of cultural imperialism and globalization and also evaluates governmental intervention relating to popular music in the 1970s. The importance of folklore and tradition in popular music that is present in both MA!rio de Andrade and Marcus Pereira's efforts to 'musically map' Brazil is clearly emphasized. Stroud contrasts these two projects with Hermano Vianna and ItaA Cultural's similar ventures at the end of the twentieth century that took a totally different view of musical 'authenticity' and tradition. Stroud concludes that the defence of musical traditions in Brazil is inextricably bound up with nationalistic sentiments and a desire to protect and preserve. MPB is the musical expression of the Brazilian middle class and has traditionally acted as a cultural icon because it is associated with notions of 'quality' by certain sectors of the media.

Anyone Can Do It: Empowerment, Tradition and the Punk Underground (Paperback): Pete Dale Anyone Can Do It: Empowerment, Tradition and the Punk Underground (Paperback)
Pete Dale
R1,827 Discovery Miles 18 270 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

For more than three decades, a punk underground has repeatedly insisted that 'anyone can do it'. This underground punk movement has evolved via several micro-traditions, each offering distinct and novel presentations of what punk is, isn't, or should be. Underlying all these punk micro-traditions is a politics of empowerment that claims to be anarchistic in character, in the sense that it is contingent upon a spontaneous will to liberty (anyone can do it - in theory). How valid, though, is punk's faith in anarchistic empowerment? Exploring theories from Derrida and Marx, Anyone Can Do It: Empowerment, Tradition and the Punk Underground examines the cultural history and politics of punk. In its political resistance, punk bears an ideological relationship to the folk movement, but punk's faith in novelty and spontaneous liberty distinguish it from folk: where punk's traditions, from the 1970s onwards, have tended to search for an anarchistic 'new-sense', folk singers have more often been socialist/Marxist traditionalists, especially during the 1950s and 60s. Detailed case studies show the continuities and differences between four micro-traditions of punk: anarcho-punk, cutie/'C86', riot grrrl and math rock, thus surveying UK and US punk-related scenes of the 1980s, 1990s and beyond.

Guilhermina Suggia: Cellist (Paperback): Anita Mercier Guilhermina Suggia: Cellist (Paperback)
Anita Mercier
R1,707 Discovery Miles 17 070 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Born in 1885 in Porto, Portugal, to a middle-class musical family, Guilhermina Suggia began playing cello at the age of five. A child prodigy, she was already a seasoned performer when she won a scholarship to study with Julius Klengel in Leipzig at the age of sixteen. Suggia lived in Paris with fellow cellist Pablo Casals for several years before World War I, in a professional and personal partnership that was as stormy as it was unconventional. When they separated Suggia moved to London, where she built a spectacularly successful solo career. Suggia's virtuosity and musicianship, along with the magnificent style and stage presence famously captured in Augustus John's portrait, made her one of the most sought-after concert artists of her day. In 1927 she married Dr Jose Casimiro Carteado Mena and settled down to a comfortable life divided between Portugal and England. Throughout the 1930s, Suggia remained one of the most respected musicians in Europe. She partnered on stage with many famous instrumentalists and conductors and completed numerous BBC broadcasts. The war years kept her at home in Portugal, where she focused on teaching, but she returned to England directly after the war and resumed performing. When Suggia died in 1950, her will provided for the establishment of several scholarship funds for young cellists, including England's prestigious Suggia Gift. Mercier's study of Suggia's letters and other writings reveal an intelligent, warm and generous character; an artist who was enormously dedicated, knowledgeable and self-disciplined. Suggia was one of the first women to make a career of playing the cello at a time when prejudice against women playing this traditionally 'masculine' instrument was still strong. A role model for many other musicians, she was herself a fearless pioneer.

Sounds of the Borderland - Popular Music, War and Nationalism in Croatia since 1991 (Paperback): Catherine Baker Sounds of the Borderland - Popular Music, War and Nationalism in Croatia since 1991 (Paperback)
Catherine Baker
R1,707 Discovery Miles 17 070 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Sounds of the Borderland is the first book-length study of how popular music became a medium for political communication and contested identification during and after Croatia's war of independence from Yugoslavia. It extends existing cultural studies literature on music, politics and the state, which has largely been grounded in Western European and North American political systems. It also responds to an emerging fascination with the culture and politics of contemporary south-east Europe, expanding scholarship on the post-Yugoslav conflicts by going on to encompass significant social and political changes into the present day. The outbreak of war in 1991 saw almost every professional musician in Croatia take part in a wave of patriotic music-making and the powerful state television system strive to bring popular music under its control. As the political imperative shifted from securing national survival to consolidating a homogenous nation-state, the music industry responded with several strategies for creating a national popular music, producing messages about the nation and, in the ongoing debates over the origins of the folk music that inspired many songs, a way to define the nation by expressing what Croatia was not. The war on ethnic ambiguity which cut through individuals' social and creative lives played out across the airwaves, sales racks and gossip columns of a small country that imagined itself a historical and cultural borderland. These explicit and implicit narratives of nationhood connect many political phases: the months of fiercest fighting, the stabilised front, the uneasy post-war years when the symbolic frontline region of eastern Slavonia had still not returned to Croatian sovereignty, the euphoria and instability after the end of the Tudjman regime in 2000, and Croatia's fraught journey towards the European Union. Baker's book provides valuable insight into the role of music in a wartime and post-conflict society and will be essential reading for researchers and students interested in south-east Europe or the transformation of entertainment during and after conflict.

Elvis Costello and Thatcherism - A Psycho-Social Exploration (Paperback): David Pilgrim, Richard Ormrod Elvis Costello and Thatcherism - A Psycho-Social Exploration (Paperback)
David Pilgrim, Richard Ormrod
R1,827 Discovery Miles 18 270 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

The emergence of Thatcherism around 1980, which ushered in a period of neo-liberalism in British politics that still resonates today, led musicians, like other artists, to respond to their context of production. This book uses the early work of one of these musicians, Elvis Costello, to explore the relationship between popular music and politics in one historical period. It is not a biography but an exploration of the interaction between a creative musician's works and their context of constraint and opportunity. Pilgrim and Ormrod unpack the political meaning of Thatcherism and deal with matters arising in that political context about Costello's life but which had resonance for many others at the time (and still do). These topics include the politics of race, class, gender and ageing, emphasising the recurring theme of nostalgia in modern and post-modern life. Throughout the book examples are provided of Costello's songs and how they work musically to illustrate or stimulate the contextual discussion. The book will be of significant interest to musicologists, sociologists and social psychologists.

The North American Folk Music Revival: Nation and Identity in the United States and Canada, 1945-1980 (Paperback): Gillian... The North American Folk Music Revival: Nation and Identity in the United States and Canada, 1945-1980 (Paperback)
Gillian Mitchell
R1,707 Discovery Miles 17 070 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

This work represents the first comparative study of the folk revival movement in Anglophone Canada and the United States and combines this with discussion of the way folk music intersected with, and was structured by, conceptions of national affinity and national identity. Based on original archival research carried out principally in Toronto, Washington and Ottawa, it is a thematic, rather than general, study of the movement which has been influenced by various academic disciplines, including history, musicology and folklore. Dr Gillian Mitchell begins with an introduction that provides vital context for the subject by tracing the development of the idea of 'the folk', folklore and folk music since the nineteenth century, and how that idea has been applied in the North American context, before going on to examine links forged by folksong collectors, artists and musicians between folk music and national identity during the early twentieth century. With the 'boom' of the revival in the early sixties came the ways in which the movement in both countries proudly promoted a vision of nation that was inclusive, pluralistic and eclectic. It was a vision which proved compatible with both Canada and America, enabling both countries to explore a diversity of music without exclusiveness or narrowness of focus. It was also closely linked to the idealism of the grassroots political movements of the early 1960s, such as integrationist civil rights, and the early student movement. After 1965 this inclusive vision of nation in folk music began to wane. While the celebrations of the Centennial in Canada led to a re-emphasis on the 'Canadianness' of Canadian folk music, the turbulent events in the United States led many ex-revivalists to turn away from politics and embrace new identities as introspective singer-songwriters. Many of those who remained interested in traditional folk music styles, such as Celtic or Klezmer music, tended to be very insular and conservative in their approach, rather than linking their chosen genre to a wider world of folk music; however, more recent attempts at 'fusion' or 'world' music suggest a return to the eclectic spirit of the 1960s folk revival. Thus, from 1945 to 1980, folk music in Canada and America experienced an evolving and complex relationship with the concepts of nation and national identity. Students will find the book useful as an introduction, not only to key themes in the folk revival, but also to concepts in the study of national identity and to topics in American and Canadian cultural history. Academic specialists will encounter an alternative perspective from the more general, broad approach offered by earlier histories of the folk revival movement.

I Drum, Therefore I Am - Being and Becoming a Drummer (Paperback): Gareth Dylan Smith I Drum, Therefore I Am - Being and Becoming a Drummer (Paperback)
Gareth Dylan Smith
R1,617 Discovery Miles 16 170 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Despite their central role in many forms of music-making, drummers have been largely neglected in the scholarly literature on music and education. But kit drummers are increasingly difficult to ignore. While exponents of the drum kit are frequently mocked in popular culture, they are also widely acknowledged to be central to the musical success and aesthetic appeal of any musical ensemble in which they are found. Drummers are also making their presence felt in music education, with increasing opportunities to learn their craft in formal contexts. Drawing on data collected from in-depth interviews and questionnaires, Gareth Dylan Smith explores the identities, practices and learning of teenage and adult kit drummers in and around London. As a London-based drummer and teacher of drummers, Smith uses his own identity as participant-researcher to inform and interpret other drummers' accounts of their experiences. Drummers learn in multi-modal ways, usually with a keen awareness of exemplars of their art and craft. The world of kit drumming is highly masculine, which presents opportunities and challenges to drummers of both sexes. Smith proposes a new model of the 'Snowball Self', which incorporates the constructs of identity realization, learning realization, meta-identities and contextual identities. Kit drummers' identities, practices and learning are found to be intertwined, as drummers exist in a web of interdependence. Drummers drum; therefore they are, they do, and they learn - in a rich tapestry of means and contexts.

Stereo: Comparative Perspectives on the Sociological Study of Popular Music in France and Britain (Paperback): Philippe Le Guern Stereo: Comparative Perspectives on the Sociological Study of Popular Music in France and Britain (Paperback)
Philippe Le Guern; Edited by Hugh Dauncey
R1,827 Discovery Miles 18 270 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

The term 'Popular Music' has traditionally denoted different things in France and Britain. In France, the very concept of 'popular' music has been fiercely debated and contested, whereas in Britain and more largely throughout what the French describe as the 'Anglo-saxon' world 'popular music' has been more readily accepted as a description of what people do as leisure or consume as part of the music industry, and as something that academics are legitimately entitled to study. French researchers have for some decades been keenly interested in reading British and American studies of popular culture and popular music and have often imported key concepts and methodologies into their own work on French music, but apart from the widespread use of elements of 'French theory' in British and American research, the 'Anglo-saxon' world has remained largely ignorant of particular traditions of the study of popular music in France and specific theoretical debates or organizational principles of the making and consuming of French musics. French, British and American research into popular music has thus coexisted - with considerable cross-fertilization - for many years, but the barriers of language and different academic traditions have made it hard for French and anglophone researchers to fully appreciate the ways in which popular music has developed in their respective countries and the perspectives on its study adopted by their colleagues. This volume provides a comparative and contrastive perspective on popular music and its study in France and the UK.

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