Today, teachers and performers of Turkish classical music intentionally cultivate melancholies, despite these affects being typically dismissed as remnants of the Ottoman Empire. Melancholic Modalities is the first in-depth historical and ethnographic study of the practices socialized by musicians who enthusiastically teach and perform a present-day genre substantially rooted in the musics of the Ottoman court and elite Mevlevi Sufi lodges. Author Denise Gill analyzes how melancholic music-making emerges as pleasurable, spiritually redeeming, and healing for both the listener and performer. Focusing on the diverse practices of musicians who deploy and circulate melancholy in sound, Gill interrogates the constitutive elements of these musicians' modalities in the context of emergent neoliberalism, secularism, political Islamism, Sufi devotionals, and the politics of psychological health in Turkey today. In an essential contribution to the study of ethnomusicology and psychology, Gill develops rhizomatic analyses to allow for musicians' multiple interpretations to be heard. Melancholic Modalities uncovers how emotion and musical meaning are connected, and how melancholy is articulated in the world of Turkish classical musicians. With her innovative concept of "bi-aurality," Gill's book forges new possibilities for the historical and ethnographic analyses of musics and ideologies of listening for music scholars.

Singers are faced with a unique challenge among musicians: they must express not just the music, but the lyrics too. To effectively communicate the meaning behind these words, singers must understand the many references embedded in the vast international repertoire of great art songs. They must deal with the meaning of the lyrics, frequently in a language not their own and of a culture unfamiliar to them.
From Zelter and Schubert to Rorem and Musto, Researching the Song serves as an invaluable guide for performers, teachers, and enthusiasts to the art song repertoire. Its more than 2,000 carefully researched entries supply information on most of the mythological, historical, geographical, and literary references contained in western art song. The authors explain the meaning of less familiar literary terms, figures, and authors referenced in song while placing songs in the context of larger literary sources. Readers will find entries dealing with art songs from the German, French, Italian, Russian, Spanish, South American, Greek, Finnish, Scandinavian, and both American and British English repertoires. Sources, narratives, and explanations of major song cycles are also given. Organized alphabetically, the lexicon includes brief biographies of poets, lists of composers who set each poet's work, bibliographic materials, and brief synopses of major works from which song texts were taken, including the plots of all Restoration theater works containing Purcell's vocal music.
The more performers know and understand the literary elements of a song, the richer their communication will be. Researching the Song is a vital aid for singers and teachers in interpreting art songs and buildingsong recital programs.

Owning the Masters provides the first in-depth history of sound recording copyright. It is this form of intellectual property that underpins the workings of the recording industry. Rather than being focused on the manufacture of goods, this industry is centred on the creation, exploitation and protection of rights. The development and control of these rights has not been straightforward. This book explores the lobbying activities of record companies: the principal creators, owners and defenders of sound recording copyright. It addresses the counter-activity of recording artists, in particular those who have fought against the legislative and contractual practices of record companies to claim these master rights for themselves. In addition, this book looks at the activities of the listening public, large numbers of whom have been labelled 'pirates' for trespassing on these rights. The public has played its own part in shaping copyright legislation. This is an essential subject for an understanding of the economic, artistic and political value of recorded sound.

The definitive book on bop drumming -- a style that is both the turning point and the cornerstone of contemporary music's development. This comprehensive book and audio presentation covers time playing, comping, soloing, brushes, more jazz essentials, and charts in an entertaining mix of text, music, and pertinent quotes.

Sin Documentos is a landmark album in Spanish popular culture and continues to maintain considerable popularity more than two decades after its release. The characteristic guitar riff of the title song, a kind of rumba-rock, still occupies a place at every party in Spain. Los Rodriguez's success came after a decade characterized by the rise and fall of local-language punk and new wave bands. By the time Sin Documentos appeared, however, rock journalism was fascinated by the thriving indie scene, where the bands were singing in English and had turned to grunge and noise rock. This book evaluates the influence of Latin American pop-rock in the modernization of Spanish popular music from the 1950s, despite the Anglophilia of Spanish rock scenes, especially in the 1990s. Through interviews with members of the band and members of the record label DRO, analysis of the media coverage of the album and a cultural analysis of its meanings, it delves into the cultural trends of Spain throughout the 1990s and beyond.

'A really great book.' Bruce Springsteen With a foreword by Billy Bragg. Few artists have captured the American experience of their time as wholly as folk legend Woody Guthrie. Singer, songwriter and political activist, Guthrie drew a lifetime of inspiration from his roots on the Oklahoma frontier in the years before the Great Depression. His music -- scathingly funny songs and poignant folk ballads -- made heard the unsung life of field hands, migrant workers, and union organisers, and showed it worthy of tribute. Though his career was tragically cut short by the onset of a degenerative disease that ravaged his mind and body, the legacy of his life and music had already made him an American cultural icon, and has resounded with every generation of musician and music lover since. In this definitive biography, renowned journalist Joe Klein creates an unforgettable portrait of a man as gifted, restless and complicated as the American landscape he came from.