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Books > Music > Contemporary popular music > Rock & pop > General
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.
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.
For the first time in paperback, and fully updated-the definitive
history of the most popular rock-and-roll band of all time, the
Eagles. The Eagles are the most popular, enduring rock band in
America. With singles and albums hitting the top of the charts for
a quarter century and a greatest hits collection that has sold more
copies than any other recording in history, the Eagles have entered
the pantheon of pop music. To the Limit is the unauthorized account
of the group from its earliest years through the breakup, solo
careers, and reunions. Blending the country and folk music of the
late sixties with the melodic seductiveness of Detroit-style roots
rock, the Eagles brought a new sound to a stagnant music scene.
Under the brilliant management of David Geffen, the Eagles
projected a public image of unshakable camaraderie-embodied by the
cerebral, brooding Don Henley and the intuitive, self-destructive
Glenn Frey-bolstered by the gorgeous harmonies of their songs.
Behind the scenes, however, there was another story. chronicle of a
time, a place, and a group that succeeded in changing forever the
world of popular music.
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.
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.
The term 'flow' refers to experiences where the musician moves into
a consciousness in which time seems to be suspended and perception
of reality is blurred by unconscious forces. An essential part of
the jazz tradition, which often serves as the foundation of the
musician's identity, flow is recognised within the greater jazz
community as a critical factor in accomplished musicianship. Flow
as a concept is so deeply embedded in the scene that these
experiences are not generally discussed. It contributes to the
musicians' work motivation, providing a vital level of satisfaction
and accomplishment. The power of the experience, consciously or
unconsciously, has given rise to the creation of heroic images, in
which jazz musicians are seen as being bold, yet vulnerable, strong
and masculine, but still capable of expressing emotions. In this
discourse, musicians are pictured as people constantly putting
themselves on the line, exposing themselves and their hearts to one
another as well as to the audience. Heroic profiles are richly
constructed within the jazz scene, and their incorporation into
narratives of flow suggests that such images are inseparable from
jazz. It is thus unclear how far the musicians are simply reporting
personal experience as opposed to unconsciously perpetuating a
profoundly internalised mythology. Drawing on eighteen interviews
conducted with professional jazz musicians from around the world,
Elina HytAnen-Ng examines the fundamentals of the phenomenon of
flow in jazz that has led to this genre's popularity. Furthermore,
she draws on how flow experiences are viewed and constructed by
jazz musicians, the meanings they attach to it, and the quality of
music that it inspires.
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Bon Iver
(Paperback)
Mark Beaumont
1
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R629
R573
Discovery Miles 5 730
Save R56 (9%)
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The first in-depth biography of Bon Iver mainman Justin Vernon, Bon
Iver will tell his story via extensive and exclusive original
interviews with those around him throughout his rise from his
failed Wisconsin bands to the illness and isolation that forged his
breakthrough album For Emma, Forever Ago, and his subsequent
critical and commercial success as the latest US alternative icon.
Also features an overview of the US alternative scene that Bon Iver
sprung from.
This book explores the trend of retro and nostalgia within
contemporary popular music culture. Using empirical evidence
obtained from a case study of fans' engagement with older music,
the book argues that retro culture is the result of an inseparable
mix of cultural and technological changes, namely, the rise of a
new generation and cultural mood along with the encouragement of
new technologies. Retro culture has become a hot topic in recent
years but this is the first time the subject has been explored from
an academic perspective and from the fans' perspective. As such,
this book promises to provide concrete answers about why retro
culture dominates in contemporary society. For the first time ever,
this book provides an empirically grounded theory of popular music,
retro culture and its intergenerational audience in the
twenty-first century. It will appeal to advanced students of
popular music studies, cultural studies, media studies, sociology
and music.
This interdisciplinary volume explores the girl's voice and the
construction of girlhood in contemporary popular music, visiting
girls as musicians, activists, and performers through topics that
range from female vocal development during adolescence to girls'
online media culture. While girls' voices are more prominent than
ever in popular music culture, the specific sonic character of the
young female voice is routinely denied authority. Decades old
cliches of girls as frivolous, silly, and deserving of contempt
prevail in mainstream popular image and sound. Nevertheless, girls
find ways to raise their voices and make themselves heard. This
volume explores the contemporary girl's voice to illuminate the way
ideals of girlhood are historically specific, and the way adults
frame and construct girlhood to both valorize and vilify girls and
women. Interrogating popular music, childhood, and gender, it
analyzes the history of the all-girl band from the Runaways to the
present; the changing anatomy of a girl's voice throughout
adolescence; girl's participatory culture via youtube and rock
camps, and representations of the girl's voice in other media like
audiobooks, film, and television. Essays consider girl performers
like Jackie Evancho and Lorde, and all-girl bands like Sleater
Kinney, The Slits and Warpaint, as well as performative
'girlishness' in the voices of female vocalists like Joni Mitchell,
Beyonce, Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Kathleen Hanna, and Rebecca
Black. Participating in girl studies within and beyond the field of
music, this book unites scholarly perspectives from disciplines
such as musicology, ethnomusicology, comparative literature,
women's and gender studies, media studies, and education to
investigate the importance of girls' voices in popular music, and
to help unravel the complexities bound up in music and girlhood in
the contemporary contexts of North America and the United Kingdom.
The role of motion pictures in the popularity of rock music became
increasingly significant in the latter twentieth century. Rock
music and its interaction with film is the subject of this
significant book that re-examines and extends Serge Denisoff's
pioneering observations of this relationship. Prior to Saturday
Night Fever rock music had a limited role in the motion picture
business. That movie's success, and the success of its soundtrack,
began to change the silver screen. In 1983, with Flashdance, the
situation drastically evolved and by 1984, ten soundtracks, many in
the pop/rock genre, were certified platinum. Choosing which rock
scores to discuss in this book was a challenging task. The authors
made selections from seminal films such as The Graduate, Easy
Rider, American Graffiti, Saturday Night Fever, Help!, and Dirty
Dancing. However, many productions of the period are significant
not because of their success, but because of their box office and
record store failures. Risky Business chronicles the interaction of
two major mediums of mass culture in the latter twentieth century.
This book is essential for those interested in communications,
popular culture, and social change.
Converging theory and practice, this book provides a unique
analysis of Korean youth's attempts to become global celebrities
within the growing K-pop phenomenon, which is rapidly becoming part
of global media systems and culture. K-pop has become one of the
most popular cultural forms in the global music markets, despite
having a relatively new global presence. Its recent spread around
the world suggests that K-pop exists as a local-based genre of
music in global markets, including Western markets. Unlike other
existing books on K-pop, which mainly focus solely on academic
analyses or industrial perspectives, K-Pop Idols: Popular Culture
and the Emergence of Korean Music Industry combines theory with
industry and musical aesthetics. Following the idol group Nine
Muses through a year-long chronicle, the authors portray the
everyday lives of young girls relentlessly pursuing happiness,
satisfaction, and the achievement of their dreams in the K-pop
world.
Few styles of popular music have generated as much controversy as
progressive rock, a musical genre best remembered today for its
gargantuan stage shows, its fascination with epic subject matter
drawn from science fiction, mythology, and fantasy literature, and
above all for its attempts to combine classical music's sense of
space and monumental scope with rock's raw power and energy. Its
dazzling virtuosity and spectacular live concerts made it hugely
popular with fans during the 1970s, who saw bands such as King
Crimson, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, and
Jethro Tull bring a new level of depth and sophistication to rock.
On the other hand, critics branded the elaborate concerts of these
bands as self- indulgent and materialistic. They viewed progressive
rock's classical/rock fusion attempts as elitist, a betrayal of
rock's populist origins.
In Rocking the Classics, the first comprehensive study of
progressive rock history, Edward Macan draws together cultural
theory, musicology, and music criticism, illuminating how
progressive rock served as a vital expression of the counterculture
of the late 1960s and 1970s. Beginning with a description of the
cultural conditions which gave birth to the progressive rock style,
he examines how the hippies' fondness for hallucinogens, their
contempt for Establishment-approved pop music, and their
fascination with the music, art, and literature of high culture
contributed to this exciting new genre. Covering a decade of music,
Macan traces progressive rock's development from the mid- to
late-sixties, when psychedelic bands such as the Moody Blues,
Procol Harum, the Nice, and Pink Floyd laid the foundation of the
progressive rock style, and proceeds to the emergence of the mature
progressive rock style marked by the 1969 release of King Crimson's
album In the Court of the Crimson King. This "golden age" reached
its artistic and commercial zenith between 1970 and 1975 in the
music of bands such as Jethro Tull, Yes, Genesis, ELP, Gentle
Giant, Van der Graaf Generator, and Curved Air.
In turn, Macan explores the conventions that govern progressive
rock, including the visual dimensions of album cover art and
concerts, lyrics and conceptual themes, and the importance of
combining music, visual motif, and verbal expression to convey a
coherent artistic vision. He examines the cultural history of
progressive rock, considering its roots in a bohemian English
subculture and its meteoric rise in popularity among a legion of
fans in North America and continental Europe. Finally, he addresses
issues of critical reception, arguing that the critics' largely
negative reaction to progressive rock says far more about their own
ambivalence to the legacy of the counterculture than it does about
the music itself.
An exciting tour through an era of extravagant, mind-bending, and
culturally explosive music, Rocking the Classics sheds new light on
the largely misunderstood genre of progressive rock.
No band has ever been able to demonstrate the enduring power of
rock and roll quite like the Rolling Stones, who continue to
enthrall, provoke, and invigorate their legions of fans more than
fifty years since they began. In Counting Down the Rolling Stones:
Their 100 Finest Songs, rock writer Jim Beviglia dares to rank the
band's finest 100 songs in descending order. Beviglia provides an
insightful explanation about why each song deserves its place.
Looking at the story behind the song and supplying a fresh take on
the musical and lyrical content, he illuminates these unforgettable
songs for new and diehard fans alike. Taken together, the
individual entries in Counting Down the Rolling Stones tell a
fascinating story of the unique personalities and incredible
talents that made the Stones a band for the ages. Counting Down the
Rolling Stones is the perfect playlist builder, whether it is for
the longtime fan or the newbie just getting acquainted with the
work of Mick, Keith, and the boys.
Years after its release, Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over
the Sea remains one of the most beloved and best-selling albums in
all of indie music, hailed as a classic so influential as to be
almost synonymous with the ongoing vinyl revival. But despite its
outsized impact, a question looms even larger: why did frontman
Jeff Mangum, just as the record propelled him to the brink of music
superstardom, choose instead to disappear entirely? The mystery has
perplexed listeners for decades-until now. In barely two years,
Neutral Milk Hotel rose from house show obscurity in Athens,
Georgia, to widespread hype and critical acclaim, selling out rock
clubs across the country and gracing the tops of numerous year-end
best-of lists. But just as his band was reaching the escape
velocity necessary to ascend from indie rock success to mainstream
superstar, Mangum hit the eject button. After the 1998 release of
Aeroplane and a worldwide tour to support it, Mangum stopped
playing shows, releasing new music, or even doing interviews. He
never explained why, not even to his friends or colleagues, but
thanks to both the strength of Aeroplane and his vexing decision to
walk away from rock stardom, Neutral Milk Hotel's impact only grew
from there. In Endless Endless, Adam Clair finds the answer to
indie rock's biggest mystery, which turns out to be much more
complicated and fascinating than the myths or popular speculation
would have you believe. To understand Mangum and Neutral Milk Hotel
and Aeroplane requires a deep dive into the unconventional inner
workings of the mercurial collective from which they emerged, the
legendary Elephant 6 Recording Company. Endless Endless details the
rise and fall of this radical music scene, the lives and
relationships of the and the colossal influence that still radiates
from it, centered around the collective's accidental figurehead,
one of the most idolized and misunderstood artists in the world,
presenting Mangum and his collaborators in vividly human detail and
shining a light into the secret world of these extraordinary and
aggressively bizarre artists. Endless Endless offers unprecedented
access to this notoriously mysterious collective, featuring more
than 100 new interviews and dozens of forgotten old ones, along
with never-before-seen photos, answering questions that have
persisted for decades while also provoking new ones. In this deeply
researched account, Endless Endless examines not just how the
Elephant 6 came to be so much more than the sum of its parts, but
how community can foster art-and how art can build community.
The Singer-Songwriter in Europe is the first book to explore and
compare the multifaceted discourses and practices of this figure
within and across linguistic spaces in Europe and in dialogue with
spaces beyond continental borders. The concept of the
singer-songwriter is significant and much-debated for a variety of
reasons. Many such musicians possess large and zealous followings,
their output often esteemed politically and usually held up as the
nearest popular music gets to high art, such facets often yielding
sizeable economic benefits. Yet this figure, per se, has been the
object of scant critical discussion, with individual practitioners
celebrated for their isolated achievements instead. In response to
this lack of critical knowledge, this volume identifies and
interrogates the musical, linguistic, social and ideological
elements that configure the singer-songwriter and its various
equivalents in Europe, such as the French
auteur-compositeur-interprete and the Italian cantautore, since the
late 1940s. Particular attention is paid to the emergence of this
figure in the post-war period, how and why its contours have
changed over time and space subsequently, cross-cultural
influences, and the transformative agency of this figure as regards
party and identity politics in lyrics and music, often by means of
individual case studies. The book's polycentric approach endeavours
to redress the hitherto Anglophone bias in scholarship on the
singer-songwriter in the English-speaking world, drawing on the
knowledge of scholars from across Europe and from a variety of
academic disciplines, including modern language studies,
musicology, sociology, literary studies and history.
This book is a comprehensive guide to a career in the music
industry. Offering advice as to how to get into the business, it
explains the main features of a wide range of jobs, such as
management, production, promotion and merchandise through to the
working lives of recording artists and session musicians.
Easy piano arrangements with song lyrics and chord symbols complete
with song background notes and playing hints and tips. Suitable for
grades 1-3.
This book bridges a gap in existing scholarship by foregrounding
the contribution of women to the nineteenth-century Lied. Building
on the pioneering work of scholars in recent years, it consolidates
recent research on women's achievements in the genre, and develops
an alternative narrative of the Lied that embraces an understanding
of the contributions of women, and of the contexts of their
engagement with German song and related genres. Lieder composers
including Fanny Hensel, Clara Schumann, Pauline Viardot-Garcia and
Josephine Lang are considered with a stimulating variety of
analytical approaches. In addition to the focus on composers
associated with history and theory of the Lied, the various
chapters explore the cultural and sociological background to the
Lied's musical environment, as well as engaging with gender studies
and discussing performance and pedagogical contexts. The range of
subject matter reflects the interdisciplinary nature of current
research in the field, and the energy it generates among scholars
and performers. Women and the Nineteenth-Century Lied aims to widen
readers' perception of the genre and help promote awareness of
women's contribution to nineteenth-century musical life through
critical appraisal of the cultural context of the Lied, encouraging
acquaintance with the voices of women composers, and the variety of
their contributions to the repertoire.
It has taken Liverpool almost half a century to come to terms with
the musical, cultural and now economic legacy of the Beatles and
popular music. At times the group was negatively associated with
sex and drugs images surrounding rock music: deemed unacceptable by
the city fathers, and unworthy of their support. Liverpudlian
musicians believe that the musical legacy of the Beatles can be a
burden, especially when the British music industry continues to
brand the latest (white) male group to emerge from Liverpool as
'the next Beatles'. Furthermore, Liverpudlians of perhaps differing
ethnicities find images of 'four white boys with guitars and drums'
not only problematic in a 'musical roots' sense, but for them
culturally devoid of meaning and musically generic. The musical and
cultural legacy of the Beatles remains complex. In a
post-industrial setting in which both popular and traditional
heritage tourism have emerged as providers of regular employment on
Merseyside, major players in what might be described as a Beatles
music tourism industry have constructed new interpretations of the
past and placed these in such an order as to re-confirm, re-create
and re-work the city as a symbolic place that both authentically
and contextually represents the Beatles.
The double bass - the preferred bass instrument in popular music
during the 1960s - was challenged and subsequently superseded by
the advent of a new electric bass instrument. From the mid-1960s
and throughout the 1970s, a melismatic and inconsistent approach
towards the bass role ensued, which contributed to a major change
in how the electric bass was used in performance and perceived in
the sonic landscape of mainstream popular music. Investigating the
performance practice of the new, melodic role of the electric bass
as it appeared (and disappeared) in the 1960s and 1970s, the book
turns to the number one songs of the American Billboard Hot 100
charts between 1951 and 1982 as a prime source. Through interviews
with players from this era, numerous transcriptions - elaborations
of twenty bass related features - are presented. These are
juxtaposed with a critical study of four key players, who provide
the case-studies for examining the performance practice of the
melodic electric bass. This highly original book will be of
interest not only to bass players, but also to popular
musicologists looking for a way to instigate methodological and
theoretical discussions on how to develop popular music analysis.
Divided into three sections, Linda Phyllis Austern collects
eighteen, cross-disciplinary essays written by some of the most
important names in the field to look at this stimulating topic. The
first section focuses on the cultural and scientific ways in which
music and the sense of hearing work directly on the mind and body.
Part Two investigates how music works on the socially constructed,
representational or sexualized body as a means of healing,
beautifying and maintaining a balance between the mental and
physical. Finally, the book explores the action of music as it is
heard and sensed by wider social units, such as the body politic,
mass communication, from print to sound recording, and broadcast
technologies.
Listening according to mood is likely to be what most people do
when they listen to music. We want to take part in, or even be part
of, the emerging world of the musical work. Using the sources of
musical history and philosophy, Erik Wallrup explores this
extremely vague and elusive phenomenon, which is held to be
fundamental to musical hearing. Wallrup unfolds the untold musical
history of the German word for 'mood', Stimmung, which in the 19th
century was abundant in the musical aesthetics of the
German-Austrian sphere. Martin Heidegger's much-discussed
philosophy of Stimmung is introduced into the field of music,
allowing Wallrup to realise fully the potential of the concept.
Mood in music, or, to be more precise, musical attunement, should
not be seen as a peculiar kind of emotionality, but that which
constitutes fundamentally the relationship between listener and
music. Exploring mood, or attunement, is indispensable for a
thorough understanding of the act of listening to music.
SIMON & GARFUNKEL is a definitive account of Paul Simon and Art
Garfunkel's career together. With unique material and exclusive
interviews with fellow musicians, promoters and friends, acclaimed
author Spencer Leigh has written a compelling biography of some of
the world's biggest musical stars. With remarkable stories about
the duo on every page, the book not only charts their rise to
success and the years of their fame, but analyses the personalities
of the two men and the ups and downs of their often fraught
relationship.
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