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Books > Music > Theory of music & musicology > General
If given another chance to write for the series, which albums would
33 1/3 authors focus on the second time around? This anthology
features compact essays from past 33 1/3 authors on albums that
consume them, but about which they did not write. It explores often
overlooked and underrated albums that may not have inspired their
33 1/3 books, but have played a large part in their own musical
cultivation. Questions central to the essays include: How has this
album influenced your worldview? How does this album intersect with
your other creative and critical pursuits? How does this album
index a particular moment in cultural history? In your own personal
history? Why is the album perhaps under-the-radar, or a buried
treasure? Why can't you stop listening to it? Bringing together 33
1/3's rich array of writers, critics, and scholars, this collection
probes our taste in albums, our longing for certain tunes, and our
desire to hit repeat--all while creating an expansive "must-listen"
list for readers in search of unexplored musical territories.
Political campaigning affects numerous realms under the
communication umbrella with each channel seeking to influence as
many individuals as possible. In higher education, there is a
growing scholarly interest in communication issues and subjects,
especially on the role of music, in the political arena. Music and
Messaging in the African Political Arena provides innovative
insights into providing music and songs as an integral part of
sending political messages to a broader spectrum of audiences,
especially during political campaigns. The content within this
publication covers such topics as framing theory, national
identity, and ethnic politics, and is designed for politicians,
campaign managers, political communication scholars, researchers,
and students.
The Hispanic rite, a medieval non-Roman Western liturgy, was
practiced across the Iberian Peninsula for over half a millennium
and functioned as the most distinct marker of Christian identity in
this region. As Christians typically began every liturgical day
throughout the year by singing a vespertinus, this chant genre in
particular provides a unique window into the cultural and religious
life of medieval Iberia. The Hispanic rite has the largest corpus
of extant manuscripts of all non-Roman liturgies in the West, which
testifies to the importance placed on their transmission through
political and cultural upheavals. Its chants, however, use a
notational system that lacks clear specification of pitch and has
kept them barred from in-depth study. Text, Liturgy and Music in
the Hispanic Rite is the first detailed analysis of the
interactions between textual, liturgical, and musical variables
across the entire extant repertoire of a chant genre central to the
Hispanic rite, the vespertinus. By approaching the vespertini
through a holistic methodology that integrates liturgy, melody, and
text, author Raquel Rojo Carrillo identifies the genre's norms and
traces the different shapes it adopts across the liturgical year
and on different occasions. In this way, the book offers an
unprecedented insight into the liturgical edifice of the Hispanic
rite and the daily experience of Christians in medieval Iberia.
This book explores an album of popular music with a remarkable
significance to a violent wave of postcolonial tensions in the
Netherlands in the 1970s. Several "actions" were claimed by a small
number of first-generation descendants of ca. 12,500 reluctant
migrants from the young independent state of Indonesia (former
Dutch East Indies). Transferred in 1951, this culturally coherent
group consisted of ex-Royal Dutch Colonial Army personnel and their
families. Their ancient roots in the Moluccan archipelago and their
protestant-christian faith defined their minority image. Their
sojourn should have been temporary, but frustratingly turned out to
be permanent. At the height of strained relations, Massada rose to
the occasion. Astaganaga (1978) is a telling example of the will to
negotiate a different diasporic Moluccan identity through uplifting
contemporary sounds.
A first-ever book on the subject, New York City Blues: Postwar
Portraits from Harlem to the Village and Beyond offers a deep dive
into the blues venues and performers in the city from the 1940s
through the 1990s. Interviews in this volume bring the reader
behind the scenes of the daily and performing lives of working
musicians, songwriters, and producers. The interviewers capture
their voices - many sadly deceased - and reveal the changes in
styles, the connections between performers, and the evolution of
New York blues. New York City Blues is an oral history conveyed
through the words of the performers themselves and through the
photographs of Robert Schaffer, supplemented by the input of Val
Wilmer, Paul Harris, and Richard Tapp. The book also features the
work of award-winning author and blues scholar John Broven. Along
with writing a history of New York blues for the introduction,
Broven contributes interviews with Rose Marie McCoy, ""Doc"" Pomus,
Billy Butler, and Billy Bland. Some of the artists interviewed by
Larry Simon include Paul Oscher, John Hammond Jr., Rosco Gordon,
Larry Dale, Bob Gaddy, ""Wild"" Jimmy Spruill, and Bobby Robinson.
Also featured are over 160 photographs, including those by
respected photographers Anton Mikofsky, Wilmer, and Harris, that
provide a vivid visual history of the music and the times from
Harlem to Greenwich Village and neighboring areas. New York City
Blues delivers a strong sense of the major personalities and places
such as Harlem's Apollo Theatre, the history, and an in-depth
introduction to the rich variety, sounds, and styles that made up
the often-overlooked New York City blues scene.
""Is there jazz in China?"" This is the question that sent author
Eugene Marlow on his quest to uncover the history of jazz in China.
Marlow traces China's introduction to jazz in the early 1920s, its
interruption by Chinese leadership under Mao in 1949, and its
rejuvenation in the early 1980s with the start of China's opening
to the world under Premier Deng Xiaoping. Covering a span of almost
one hundred years, Marlow focuses on a variety of subjects--the
musicians who initiated jazz performances in China, the means by
which jazz was incorporated into Chinese culture, and the musicians
and venues that now present jazz performances. Featuring unique,
face-to-face interviews with leading indigenous jazz musicians in
Beijing and Shanghai, plus interviews with club owners, promoters,
expatriates, and even diplomats, Marlow marks the evolution of jazz
in China as it parallels China's social, economic, and political
evolution through the twentieth and into the twenty-first century.
Also featured is an interview with one of the extant members of the
Jimmy King Big Band of the 1940s, one of the first major
all-Chinese jazz big bands in Shanghai. Ultimately, Jazz in China:
From Dance Hall Music to Individual Freedom of Expression is a
cultural history that reveals the inexorable evolution of a
democratic form of music in a Communist state.
Most die-hard Brazilian music fans would argue that Getz/Gilberto,
the iconic 1964 album featuring "The Girl from Ipanema," is not the
best bossa nova record. Yet we've all heard "The Girl from Ipanema"
as background music in a thousand anodyne settings, from cocktail
parties to telephone hold music. So how did Getz/Gilberto become
the Brazilian album known around the world, crossing generational
and demographic divides? Bryan McCann traces the history and making
of Getz/Gilberto as a musical collaboration between leading figure
of bossa nova Joao Gilberto and Philadelphia-born and New
York-raised cool jazz artist Stan Getz. McCann also reveals the
contributions of the less-understood participants (Astrud
Gilberto's unrehearsed, English-language vocals; Creed Taylor's
immaculate production; Olga Albizu's arresting,
abstract-expressionist cover art) to show how a perfect balance of
talents led to not just a great album, but a global pop sensation.
And he explains how Getz/Gilberto emerged from the context of Bossa
Nova Rio de Janeiro, the brief period when the subtle harmonies and
aching melodies of bossa nova seemed to distill the spirit of a
modernizing, sensuous city. 33 1/3 Global, a series related to but
independent from 33 1/3, takes the format of the original series of
short, music-based books and brings the focus to music throughout
the world. With initial volumes focusing on Japanese and Brazilian
music, the series will also include volumes on the popular music of
Australia/Oceania, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and more.
The field of Sound Studies has changed and developed dramatically
over the last two decades involving a vast and dizzying array of
work produced by those working in the arts, social sciences and
sciences. The study of sound is inherently interdisciplinary and is
undertaken both by those who specialize in sound and by others who
wish to include sound as an intrinsic and indispensable element in
their research. This is the first resource to provide a wide
ranging, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary investigation and
analysis of the ways in which researchers use a broad range of
methodologies in order to pursue their sonic investigations. It
brings together 49 specially commissioned chapters that ask a wide
range of questions including; how can sound be used in current
academic disciplines? Is sound as a methodological tool
indispensable for Sound Studies and what can sound artists
contribute to the discourse on methodology in Sound Studies? The
editors also present 3 original chapters that work as provocative
‘sonic methodological interventions’ prefacing the 3 sections
of the book.
From the mid-1950s through the 1960s, Hungarian composer Gyoergy
Ligeti went through a remarkable period of stylistic transition,
from the emulation of his fellow countryman Bela Bartok to his own
individual style at the forefront of the Western-European
avant-garde. Through careful study of the sketches and drafts, as
well as analysis of the finished scores, Metamorphosis in Music
takes a detailed look at this compositional evolution. Author
Benjamin R. Levy includes sketch studies created through
transcriptions and reproductions of archival material-much of which
has never before been published-providing new, detailed information
about Ligeti's creative process and compositional methods. The book
examines all of Ligeti's compositions from 1956 to 1970, analyzing
little-known and unpublished works in addition to recognized
masterpieces such as Atmospheres, Aventures, the Requieim, and the
Chamber Concerto. Discoveries from Ligeti's sketches, prose, and
finished scores lead to an enriched appreciation of these already
multifaceted works. Throughout the book, Levy interweaves sketch
study with comments from interviews, counterbalancing the
composer's own carefully crafted public narrative about his work,
and revealing lingering attachments to older forms and insights
into the creative process. Metamorphosis in Music is an essential
treatment of a central figure of the musical midcentury, who found
his place in a generation straddling the divide between the modern
and post-modern eras.
Music scholarship has been rethinking its understanding of Franz
Schubert and his work. How might our modern aesthetic values and
historical knowledge of Schubert's life affect how we interpret his
music? Schubert's Instrumental Music and Poetics of Interpretation
demonstrates how updated analysis of Schubert and his instrumental
works reveals expressive meaning. In six chapters, each devoted to
one or two of Schubert's pieces, René Rusch explores alternate
forms of unity and coherence, offers critical assessments of
biographical and intertextual influence, investigates narrative,
and addresses the gendering of the composer and his music. Rusch's
comparative analyses and interpretations address four significant
areas of scholarly focus in Schubert studies, including his use of
chromaticism, his unique forms, the impact of events in his own
life, and the influence of Beethoven. Drawing from a range of
philosophical, hermeneutic, historical, biographical, theoretical,
and analytical sources, Schubert's Instrumental Music and Poetics
of Interpretation offers readers a unique and innovative foray into
the poetics of contemporary analysis of Schubert's instrumental
music and develops new ways to engage with his repertoire.
Connecting four centuries of political, social, and religious
history with fieldwork and language documentation, A Transatlantic
History of Haitian Vodou analyzes Haitian Vodou's African origins,
transmission to Saint-Domingue, and promulgation through song in
contemporary Haiti. Split into two sections, the African chapters
focus on history, economics, and culture in Dahomey, Allada, and
Hueda while scrutinizing the role of Europeans in fomenting
tensions. The political, military, and slave trading histories of
the kingdoms in the Bight of Benin reveal the circumstances of
enslavement, including the geographies, ethnicities, languages, and
cultures of enslavers and enslaved. The study of the spirits,
rituals, structure, and music of the region's religions sheds light
on important sources for Haitian Vodou. Having royal, public, and
private expressions, Vodun spirit-based traditions served as
cultural systems that supported or contested power and enslavement.
At once suppliers and victims of the European slave trade, the
people of Dahomey, Allada, and Hueda deeply shaped the emergence of
Haiti's creolized culture. The Haitian chapters focus on Vodou's
Rada Rite (from Allada) and Gede Rite (from Abomey) through the
songs of Rasin Figuier's Vodou Lakay and Rasin Bwa Kayiman's Guede,
legendary rasin compact discs released on Jean Altidor's Miami
label, Mass Konpa Records. All the Vodou songs on the discs are
analyzed with a method dubbed "Vodou hermeneutics" that harnesses
history, religious studies, linguistics, literary criticism, and
ethnomusicology in order to advance a scholarly approach to Vodou
songs.
‘Sonic intimacy’ is a key concept through which sound, human
and technological relations can be assessed in relation to racial
capitalism. What is sonic intimacy, how is it changing and what is
at stake in its transformation, are questions that should concern
us all. Through an analysis of alternative music cultures of the
Black Atlantic (reggae sound systems, jungle pirate radio and grime
YouTube music videos), Malcolm James critically shows how sonic
intimacy pertains to modernity’s social, psychic, spatial and
temporal movements. This book explores what is urgently at stake in
the development of sonic intimacy for human relations and
alternative black and anti-capitalist public politics.
Following the Drums: African American Fife and Drum Music in
Tennessee is an epic history of a little-known African American
instrumental music form. John M. Shaw follows the music from its
roots in West Africa and early American militia drumming to its
prominence in African American communities during the time of
Reconstruction, both as a rallying tool for political militancy and
a community music for funerals, picnics, parades, and dances.
Carefully documenting the music's early uses for commercial
advertising and sports promotion, Shaw follows the strands of the
music through the nadir of African American history during
post-Reconstruction up to the form's rediscovery by musicologists
and music researchers during the blues and folk revival of the late
1960s and early 1970s. Although these researchers documented the
music, and there were a handful of public performances of the music
at festivals, the story has a sad conclusion. Fife and drum music
ultimately died out in Tennessee during the early 1980s. Newspaper
articles from the period and interviews with music researchers and
participants reawaken this lost expression, and specific band
leaders receive the spotlight they so long deserved. Following the
Drums is a journey through African American history and Tennessee
history, with a fascinating form of music powering the story.
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