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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Contemporary popular music > Rock & pop
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.
Rock Atlas has hundreds of stories which deliver a fresh, new
insight into the lives of the UK and Ireland's rock and pop stars.
This fact-packed look at rock and pop, from an entirely different
perspective, throws up many new revelations about our favourite
musicians. When you ve finished reading the stories, you can visit
the places. Every one of the book's 800 entries is followed by
directions for how to find the iconic venues, record shops,
statues, album cover shoots, childhood homes and festival sites.
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.
When Jeff Buckley drowned at the age of thirty in 1997, he not only left behind a legacy of brilliant music -- he brought back haunting memories of his father, '60s troubadour Tim Buckley, a gifted musician who barely knew his son and who himself died at twenty-eight. Both father and son made transcendent music that mixed rock, jazz, and folk; both amassed a cadre of obsessive, adoring fans. This absorbing dual biography -- based on interviews with more than one hundred friends, family members, and business associates as well as access to journals and unreleased recordings -- tells for the first time the intriguing, often heartbreaking story of these two musicians. It offers a new understanding of the Buckleys' parallel lives -- and tragedies -- while exploring the changing music business between the '60s and the '90s. Finally, it tells the story of a father and son, two complex, enigmatic men who died searching for themselves and each other.
This collection of three hip hop plays by Conrad Murray and his
Beats & Elements collaborators Paul Cree, David Bonnick Junior
and Lakeisha Lynch-Stevens, is the first publication of the
critically acclaimed theatre-maker's work. The three plays use hip
hop to highlight the inequalities produced by the UK's class
system, and weave lyricism, musicality and dialogue to offer
authentic accounts of inner-city life written by working-class
Londoners. The plays are accompanied by two introductory essays:
The first gives a specific social and historical context that helps
readers make sense of the plays, the second positions hip hop as a
contemporary literary form and offers some ways to read hip hop
texts as literature. The collection also includes a foreword by
leading hip hop theatre practitioner Jonzi D, interviews with the
Beats & Elements company, and a glossary of words for students
and international readers.
There is no denying that the last couple of years have been tough
for all of us. Life has changed drastically due to the Covid 19
pandemic, and this includes rock icons. Suzi Quatro has never had a
regular job. Being a rock and roll musician is what she has been
doing her whole life. Then suddenly, everything changed, and
instead of constantly being on tour, she found herself at home.
Suzi is never one to sit around idling her time and the pandemic
produced an album that has done very well indeed. It has also
produced her third hardcover coffee table book, sharing her
thoughts as the days and the weeks passed. Full to the brim with
private photographs in colour, Suzi lets us in to her life in this
window of time when the world changed. Her thoughts about the state
of life as she sees it is meant as an inspiration to us all. "The
third in my series of illustrated coffee table books, 1 year in
lockdown,1 year on this roller coaster called life, 1 year where
you can go through every single emotion you have in 5 minutes.
Sometimes you smile, sometimes you cry, many times you just hit the
wall. I faithfully did my instagram posts every morning sharing my
feelings and tribulations, trying to lift people's spirits. It
helps to share. It helps to know you're not alone. Enjoy my moods!
( I blame being a Gemini!!) Suzi Quatro"
What happens in our unconscious minds when we listen to, produce or
perform popular music? The Unconscious - a much misunderstood
concept from philosophy and psychology - works through human
subjects as we produce music and can be traced through the music we
engage with. Through a new collaboration between music theorist and
philosopher, Smith and Overy present the long history of the
unconscious and its related concepts, working systematically
through philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche,
psychoanalysts such as Freud and Lacan, to theorists such as
Deleuze and Kristeva. The theories offered are vital to follow the
psychological complexity of popular music, demonstrated through
close readings of individual songs, albums, artists, genres, and
popular music practices. Among countless artists, Listening to the
Unconscious draws from Prince to Sufjan Stevens, from Robyn to Xiu
Xiu, from Joanna Newsom to Arcade Fire, from PJ Harvey to LCD Sound
System, each of whom offer exciting inroads into the fascinating
worlds of our unconscious musical minds. And in return, theories of
the unconscious can perhaps takes us deeper into the heart of
popular music.
Released in 2008, J-pop trio Perfume's GAME shot to the top of
Japanese music charts and turned the Hiroshima trio into a
household name across the country. It was also a high point for
techno-pop, the genre's biggest album since the heyday of Yellow
Magic Orchestra. This collection of maximalist but emotional
electronic pop stands as one of the style's finest moments, with
its influence still echoing from artists both in Japan and from
beyond. This book examines Perfume's underdog story as a group long
struggling for success, the making of GAME, and the history of
techno-pop that shaped it. 33 1/3 Global, a series related to but
independent from 33 1/3, takes the format of the original series of
short, music-basedbooks 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.
Elvis Presley stands tall as perhaps the supreme icon of
20th-century U.S. culture. But he was perceived to be deeply
un-American in his early years as his controversial adaptation of
rhythm and blues music and gyrating on-stage performances sent
shockwaves through Eisenhower's conservative America and far
beyond. This book explores Elvis Presley's global transformation
from a teenage rebel figure into one of the U.S.'s major
pop-cultural embodiments from a historical perspective. It shows
how Elvis's rise was part of an emerging transnational youth
culture whose political impact was heavily conditioned by the Cold
War. As well as this, the book analyses Elvis's stint as G.I.
soldier in West Germany, where he acted as an informal ambassador
for the so-called American way of life and was turned into a deeply
patriotic figure almost overnight. Yet, it also suggests that
Elvis's increasingly synonymous identity with U.S. culture
ultimately proved to be a double-edged sword, as the excesses of
his superstardom and personal decline seemingly vindicated
long-held stereotypes about the allegedly materialistic nature of
U.S. society. Tracing Elvis's story from his unlikely rise in the
1950s right up to his tragic death in August 1977, this book offers
a riveting account of changing U.S. identities during the Cold War,
shedding fresh light on the powerful role of popular music and
consumerism in shaping images of the United States during the
cultural struggle between East and West.
The colorful "Punk Professor", new-wave musician, and
critic/filmmaker spins a dazzling survey of women in punk, from the
genre's inception in 1970s London to the current voices making
waves around the globe. As an industry insider and pioneering
post-punk musician, Vivien Goldman's perspective on music
journalism is unusually well-rounded. In Revenge of the She-Punks,
she probes four themes-identity, money, love, and protest-to
explore what makes punk such a liberating art form for women. With
her visceral style, Goldman blends interviews, history, and her
personal experience as one of Britain's first female music writers
in a book that reads like a vivid documentary of a genre defined by
dismantling boundaries. A discussion of the Patti Smith song "Free
Money," for example, opens with Goldman on a shopping spree with
Smith. Tamar-Kali, whose name pays homage to a Hindu goddess,
describes the influence of her Gullah ancestors on her music, while
the late Poly Styrene's daughter reflects on why her
Somali-Scots-Irish mother wrote the 1978 punk anthem "Identity,"
with the refrain "Identity is the crisis you can't see." Other
strands feature artists from farther afield (including in Colombia
and Indonesia) and genre-busting revolutionaries such as Grace
Jones, who wasn't exclusively punk but clearly influenced the
movement while absorbing its liberating audacity. From punk's Euro
origins to its international reach, this is an exhilarating world
tour.
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